If you're on a job with low audit fees, the budget will always screw you over. Either because you'll be seen as a naysayer since no one wants to be realistic or you just won't come under budget.

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@OP that's why our eat hours. You're going to need to get the work done anyways, so booking hours doesn't correlate with amount of hours you need to work. If management is going to take the route of being unrealistic with the budget, better to eat the hours and make yourself look good. People who come in at budget get promoted. People who blow their budgets have issues. It's really a stupid move on Management to have horribly unrealistic budgets, but it is what it is. When you eat your hours and get promoted to SM, you can then fight the budgeting process. Trying to swim against the tide as a senior is a recipe for disaster.

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Also the other thing is if you're over budget the SM/partner is going to ask for detail to determine if they can charge the client. This means you're going to need to keep detail over every hour you work and track every single task you do and how long it takes. This is a significant amount of work. Don't even think about being over budget without such detail to explain why you're over. Its much easier to just eat the hours since most of us, especially at the lower levels, don't keep the request detail to explain overages. I know this is a taboo subject, but this is the reality of the situation.

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Yeah, the job(s) you're on can make or break your career regardless of how well you perform.

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It's just one of the 8235 excuses managers use to not promote you until you either start bringing in clients, do so much work for them that they become dependent on you and you threaten to leave, stay long enough that they actually feel sorry for you and pity promote you, put out for them, all of the above, or some combination of the above.

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When you say managers - I don't think any seniors are expected to bring in clients - are they?

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lol yes. They do say that, don't they.

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They tell you not to eat hours, but they also set unrealistic budgets and hold it against you when you go over the unrealistic budget. You gotta do what's best for you. When you get to higher levels and start seeing the budgeting process you realize what a game it is. It's built top down, not bottom up. The fee is fixed and the firm makes you obtain a target realization (say 84%). If you're under this target realization you have a huge hassle trying to get the budget approved, which means you either need to a) increase fees or b) decrease hours. The far majority of times the partner has no room to increase fees, so it's the hours that budge and become unreasonable. It's a big game. Do what makes you look best.

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It's the freaking Kobayashi Maru simulator is what it is.

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It's a flawed business model

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I meant the decision makers which can be different ranks depending on the firm.

Ah good point

I hate how right this answer is 😤

They explicitly tell us not to eat hours though

Actually it's BS because you're salaried so it doesn't matter how many hours you incur on it they're still paying you the same dollar per day. Which is just another argument that it's just an excuse for them to put you down, criticize you, not give you a good raise.

@bdo1 It matters in the long run. In the short run you're right but in the long run number of hours worked impacts hiring which impacts cost.

How does it impact hiring?

@PwC1 if it mattered as much as they say it does they would set realistic budgets. The minute they stop setting realistic budgets I stop believing all the bullshit about it mattering.

@BDO1 if a market has 100,000 hours a year they will need more staff than if they have 80,000.

@manager1 I don't think you're wrong, but I think it has a lot to do with the people setting budgets don't have the same incentives as most of the people saying don't eat hours.

Your thinking is backwards. We're talking about getting a job done in a certain number of hours. just because it takes longer doesn't mean it's going to cause them to hire more people.

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