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Hi All,
I joined Tech Mahindra for 5 days only and didn't find suitable timing for my project and emailed resignation mail to manager and HR. After that HR asked me to resign over portal but at the same time blocked my portal. After requesting many times they didn't unblock my portal and pretended like they want to unblock but there is some issue going on and marked my profile absconded. I have cleared fnf but they are not providing reliving letter but added pf amount also. What to do?
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Subject Expert
OP, serious questions, asked respectfully. When you say you know someone who was “stealthily laid off,” what do you mean, exactly? How do you know that he or she didn’t have performance or professional development problems, or hadn’t violated some standard, or wasn’t able to attract enough work to justify the substantial cost of continuing to employ him or her? And what if anything do you know about possible adjustments to partner compensation, which might (or might not) be useful context? I’m not challenging you. I just want to understand your perspective and what it’s based on. And if it would be helpful to you I would be happy to offer the gently delivered perspective of a longtime biglaw partner who is living through his third economic meltdown in the last 20 years.
Subject Expert
The main uncertainties are how long “this” goes on and whether things get worse. Especially if the economy worsens and clients further restrict their legal spend, firms may have to get more radical. But if you’re still there, there’s reason to be optimistic. In the meantime do what you can to keep busy with paid and pro bono work and do your best to take care of yourself.
I know firms look at their summer programs differently, but I think for most big law the idea is that the offer is something to lose versus something to earn over the summer (no matter how much we try and convince the summers). The default is that you'll get an offer unless your work product is egregious and even then it's more likely to be withheld for behavioral problems. However, a virtual program makes behavior issues so much less observable. Also, shorter programs means ramping up and down is much less feasible, and remote work introduces a lot of complications (ex. If the firm isn't issuing firm laptops, no way would it be acceptable for the summers to work on client material on their personal computers). So I do not begrudge firms for taking a little stress off the summers by stating up front that they'll get an offer. Can you imagine being in those students' position? So what they are getting 5 weeks of full pay (you probably got 9-10, and for them it's practically a 50% paycut for them). They still have crippling student loan debt (of which they now have less to start paying it off with). They also only get 5 weeks to prove themselves and make important connections with their colleagues. They are still the smallest fish in the pond when they do come to work full time and will be most at risk of being laid off. It harms no one for the firm to guarantee offers. Not going forward with the program probably wouldn't have saved that person from being let go even if it was a BS stealth layoff, so throwing some law students under the bus doesn't do anyone any good. There probably are other, legitimate reasons to be peaved with how your firm is managing the crisis, but I don't think this is one.
Subject Expert
A1 it’s pretty hilarious that you’re blaming “them” (presumably firms) for media attention generated by ... wait for it ... leaks from associates to ATL. My firm didn’t make any public announcements concerning either its restructure summer programs or the pay cuts imposed on partners and counsel. In fact I’d be willing to bet that almost none of our associates even know about the cuts. And the only reason they know about the changes to the summer program is we had to announce when the summers would start and leave.
“Won’t be reimbursing virtual lunches or coffees” confuses me. Are you expecting the firm to pay you to make yourself a cup of coffee because you’re going to drink it while on a Zoom call?
Mentor
I still don't understand the guaranteed offer without having the summers at least presenting something on PowerPoint or writing an essay. It's not like business is booming to guarantee everyone will get a $200K job next year
TL1, respectfully, everyone working in biglaw is only (or principally) ‘in this’ for the paycheck he or she is collecting. Including, I’d wager, yourself, at least if you are being honest with your life choices. There are numerous ways to add social value with a JD. Working at a large transactional or corporate defense firm is not one of them.
Nothing whatsoever wrong with that, but it does suggest the preachiness should be tamped down, especially when addressing ‘young people’ who may have legitimate concerns about their personal finances and significantly less visibility into firm operations and priorities than you.
This is one of those chicken and egg questions. Is someone a partner at a biglaw firm because they love what they do? Or do they love what they do because they’re a partner at a biglaw firm.
I believe that TL1 genuinely loves his job because to thrive in biglaw, you kind of have to. Most of the partners at all the firms I’ve worked at genuinely loved the high stakes litigation or the big deals that they worked on. And you can develop that love when you are given the opportunities and autonomy as a young lawyer.
That said, I also agree with A2 and A1 that no one goes to law school wanting to be a corporate lawyer forever, just as no one goes to college wanting to be an ibanker (unless they’ve watched too much suits or want to make a lot of money).
Most firms believe that life will go on after this pandemic, and learned from the 08/09 crisis that you end up with a dearth of experienced associates from certain class years if you slow down your associate recruiting too much during a downturn (which absolutely crushed the associates who made it from those class years once the economy came back). That means (1) firms actually need this summer class to commit to come back and (2) they need to treat this summer class well in order to recruit next year’s class. It’s not “saving face”, it’s called running a business and investing limited resources where they are going to have the best impact on the long-term health of the firm.
Agreed. This is the absurd situation at my firm as well. At least you're busy -- my workload has slowed down considerably while partners are also being urged to prioritize giving assignments to the summers. Biglaw only cares about keeping up with the Jones's and the next shiny new cog to place in the system.
Subject Expert
So you added a new fact that you hadn’t shared before — your 20% pay cut. I certainly understand your frustration. FWIW I and my colleagues have absorbed a pay cut of between 35% and 50% for the rest of the year so that our associates and staff can continue receiving their full salaries, and so that we could retain a 5 week summer program for 70 or so law students. I mention that so you understand that I support the retention of a summer program even through a portion of the cost has come directly out of our pocket.
On your point about keeping up with the joneses, we are in violent agreement that the Cravath scale is applied far too broadly in biglaw. The economics at the tippy top of biglaw (Cravath, Wachtell, Skadden, Kirkland, Latham, and a few others) are VASTLY different than in the next 20 or so firms, whose economics are VASTLY different than the next 40 or so firms, whose economics are VASTLY different than those of the rest of the sheep herd that reflexively swallows its puke and bumps salaries every time Cravath or more recently Milbank does. I hope that the pandemic accelerates the inevitable tectonic split when most of biglaw decouples from the tippy top firms and establishes a second tier associate pay scale. Someone has to blink. And at some point someone will. But until then if any of the firms that shouldn’t but does pay on the Cravath scale decides to go it alone, ATL will publish the story within nano seconds (based on an associate tip) and the pioneer firm will have grave difficulty recruiting top talent for some material time, particularly if many other firms don’t follow it immediately in separating from the Cravath scale. We need top talent for most of our work. Thus, the current situation.
On keeping the summer program, as I said elsewhere on another branch of this string, our current summers include the core of our mid level queue in 2024. If we cancelled the program, we would be feeling it for years - including years after you probably will be gone. That’s a real issue. Could we find bodies in 5 years? Probably. But they wouldn’t be the brightest and most accomplished, because for better or worse a big part of the recruiting pipeline for most firms continues to run through the 2L summer program.
I should also add that I have actually advocated for years that we permanently eliminate our entire summer program, hire a very few part time academic year clerks who did their 2L summer stints elsewhere and have genuinely sparkling resumes, and do the rest of our hiring in the lateral market, starting with 3rd years. Doing that would save a lot of money that we spend on summers and lose on first years, weed out most of the people who aren’t cut out for biglaw, let other firms fund the massive costs associated with the initial training of associates, and allow us to hire people when we need them, rather than years before we need them. I still think that’s a good idea. But as long as my firm remains beholden to hiring mainly from the 2L pool, we can’t just bail out of that pool for one year and expect things to go well in future years.
One can point to summer programs / guaranteed offers as mainly for optics reasons and keeping up with the Joneses, and I won’t take issue with that here, and I appreciate the point about the summers soaking up some minor billables. That said, I assure you partners are more than taking their fair share of the financial hit on this and other things, at least at my firm, thus far.
This is in response to some of the posts to me as OP after a long weekend of work so apologies in advance for the crabbiness:
1. Kid was fired for having the lowest billable hours of the group. Not sure about performance, but I know certain associates were hoarding work so I feel for him.
2. There are students working without pay for summer jobs (as I did 1L year) so I can’t say i agree we should feel bad our summers are not entitled to their full 8 weeks.
3. Yes, you should at least give me a small token of appreciation like a $20 gift card for coffee if you’re badgering me to “give work” and “mentor” when these “virtual mentoring events” aren’t billable and I’m already barely above water.
4. I understand the optics and the desire to “invest” in summers. But based on experience, I wouldn’t say all summers deserve offers, and in the long run you actually lose out if they’re shitty associates. I think sometimes, it’s also because guaranteed offers makes them take their jobs for granted.
5. It would be nice if firms invested more in junior and mid level associates. Why do you think there is so much turnover? You can’t just “invest” in summers. You need to actively invest in us, as associates, during our career if you want people to stick around long term.
You need to apply your argument in #4 to all summer classes, not just the current one. By that logic, it’s perfectly normal for firms to be letting some associates go - pandemic or not.
Subject Expert
Our are generating substantive work and get offers only if the work is good.