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Finally left TCS last week and feel the most happiest person ever.TCS was my 4th organisation and I had joined TCS to settle for long term but after 1 year I realised this is the worst organisation one can be with.No first year hike for laterals, no support provided to hard working dedicated employees, only support and leaves are gifted to employees who do nothing and know nothing except dodging work and getting escalations from clients.Forced wfo, forced completion of useless trainings etc.
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Hit my hours for this week. What now?
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Even better. We are the last firm left in-office in a 50+ story tower with multiple confirmed cases tower-wide. Thats how much we’re trusted.
I read once somewhere something along the lines, if you trusted me enough to hire me then you should trust me to do the work.
No but honestly it seems like everyone is working more and at all hours
Wow. The micromanagement.
We don’t have to submit an email but we are now required to enter our billables at the end of every day. Normally they just have to be in the system by the end of the month.
That's just good billing practice. It's easy to make mistakes and loose hours unless you enter your time contemporaneously.
My firm just moved to mandatory daily hour submissions instead of the usual weekly.
Oh hey. We both work at the same firm I'm guessing.
I love seeing corporate attorneys complain about being subjected to something similar to the billable hour. Welcome to my life all the time. Also I know I’m coming off like a dick and I’m sorry, just know it’s out of pure jealousy.
Yeah - my firm mentioned this, and I started today.
I am PI now so contingency, and got out of the practice of billable hours. But - I was family law beforehand. Came in handy today!
I don’t understand. Do they think people are going to choose not to meet their monthly requirement? I’m on a team of associates who have never missed our monthly numbers, but we are all being hammered by the partners. Being called out in team-wide emails, being told we will be recommended for termination if we come in under our number. They are demanding perfection right now. Only way to motivate employees in civil litigation is through fear apparently.
Sounds like some bad people to work for.
My company leadership lack EQ. The CEO thinks people don’t work if they are not in the office. He walks around seeing who is in the office.
That sounds annoying. I hate the old school thought guys.
Management thinks that everybody at your firm is a lazy bone.
The CEO exercises severe control and doesn’t trust people.
We send an end of day report with specific questions
When I’ve done this for myself, not because I need to report to anyone, I found it highly beneficial. I was able to increase efficiency and trim loss of leisure time. But I’m so sorry to hear people are being hammered. That’s very poor leadership. Sounds like they’re operating from fear or panic.
I’ve been entering my time contemporaneously since I started practicing 6 years ago. It’s much better for actually capturing your time than waiting
Maybe trust should go two ways here. Many firms in this unprecedented environment are in survival mode and understanding the financials on a daily basis is key to survival. At least where I am, this isn’t a game of torture the associate, but rather try to make sure the associate has a job once we reach the other side of this crisis.
I love the confusion in this thread. For “Associates” that are posting, the title “Counsel” usually means in-house (it could be “Of Counsel” - not sure how Fishbowl titles those people). In-house has a wide range of time-keeping responsibilities. Some people just report how many hours they work, while other like me have to divide their time into business units. You don’t have to say what you are doing, but if you haven’t kept track of it, a business unit leader that looks at who charged to her/his business unit may question you and you would be without an answer - which is just awkward.
The major thing that was mentioned above is “trust.” Doc Seidman wrote a pretty good book called “How”. It is different than other business books because it goes deep into how companies work (as opposed to that other equally good book by Simon Sinek, “Start with Why”). If you are working for a company that does not trust you, they show it in their rules and responses to situations like this. Given your title, Counsel - unless that is short for General Counsel, your biggest leverage point to change culture is that you can leave. I have changed whole forms that way. I told the managing partner of the firm all that they were doing wrong, and they didn’t take me seriously. I left, and in my exit interview, I told the senior partner what I had told the managing partner, and all the associates’ lives improved. So, don’t underestimate your own power, but also understand that if the CEO is the owner, he may never change. He may never move. And he doesn’t have to. That is the benefit of being CEO. If not the owner, if things go downhill, all the pressure really is on him. Non-owner CEO’s have the biggest target on their back in the whole company. Different people react differently to that pressure.
But with lower leverage, you can play the long game - I am a huge fan of the long game. Start with reading that book “How” and recommending it to others (corporate people love other corporate people who read and recommend good corporate-speak books). Next, if you are in a meeting when a policy idea is being proposed (don’t mistake that for one that has already been decided and is being rolled out - that is different), talk about things like “culture” and how it will affect it. Talk about the wrong that is being corrected by the policy and if it could be fixed on a more individual level, explore how to fix the policy.
On hours reporting issues like this, instead of reporting hour-by-hour, check yourself and if you are more productive than before, use overall productivity metrics, and you may find that you don’t have to justify the hour-by-hour just that you are at least as productive as you were. If you can show that, that is the first step in the long game.
I am sole in house counsel. The CEO will never change. I am planning my exit as soon as I can.
We don’t have that system at my company, but a colleague previously worked for a company that had instituted this sort of system. He hated it so much that when the topic was broached internally as a form of metric, he was the first to flat out reject it even for discussion purposes. He said it was a soft form of billable hours. Our department is extremely hands off letting us be responsible for keeping up with our own work and competently servicing our internal clients.
It was stated they will be monitoring daily. I keep track of my hours manually, and then enter at the end of the week. As long as I bill enough hours, it shouldn’t matter.
Nope. Get them in every day. The quality of your time entries is important. I bet you can hardly remember what you did yesterday let alone 25 days ago.
They just said "input time more often than usual".
I usually input time once a month.
I'll be inputting once a week now.
Yeah I have to do the same thing. I think most employers are doing this because they feel uncomfortable and think we are not going to do any work from home.
Business attorney - required to come in 2-3 days a week still and submit hourly reports on WFH days. Salaried but being pushed to do more billable work. I’d imagine it’s in anticipation of being on full lock down country-wide in the next 2-4 weeks.
Ours is just beginning of day and end of day check ins with task items in general