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I'm a midlevel and I've been here since my summer associate days. This is a huge betrayal and 100% worse because they're so calculated and acting like it's totally fine. Plus we've been hemorrhaging midlevels so this is a cool reward for those of us who've been loyal to the firm and picking up all the slack. At our firm's 5th year associate training/retreat, Doug Clark said that the firm would watch the market and do whatever is market. So wtf is this haha
Imagine losing $25,000 as a mid level because of 10 hours after this. I would have been on the phone with a recruiter within 60 seconds of receiving that email lol
I hope the blowback forces them to reverse course like HL
A9, that could out me, so no, but I’m senior enough to where the special bonus is not insignificant. I discussed the special bonus when I was negotiating my offer but they just said “we have no insight into that yet” but they gave me a date i had to start by…coincidentally these “special bonuses” were announced a few weeks after the deadline they gave me.
Enthusiast
What gets me is the extent of the calculated efforts to screw over the associates. The management probably knew about the Hogan backlash, so they devised a scheme to minimize the special bonus payout while claiming market.
They clearly:
1. waited until all associate hours were in from 2024 to study the data to draw a threshold for special bonus (I suspect most WSGR associates who made regular bonus didn't bill over 2000)
2. And as if that's not enough, delayed special bonus payout to March 31 to screw over associates who were planning to give notice on Jan 31, the regular bonus payout day.
It's really bad faith.
Subject Expert
There is no argument—it’s worse.
100
Enthusiast
How has A&P avoid being roasted, their special bonus requirement is 2200 hrs.
Enthusiast
But why tho? Why would it have been better for for the delta to be 250 vs 50 hr. FYI, A&P’s typical hourly target is 2000, so setting 2200 for special bonus is management’s way of not matching without saying they are not matching
Mentor
Why is WSGR worse than the other firms that did the same thing?
Mentor
Arnold Porter and Baker Botts I believe. Maybe there are others. Hogan also, and even that was after not matching at all
What did they do?
They waited until the new year to announce that they were giving out the market special bonuses, but tying it to 2,000 hours (standard bonus requirement is 1950) and Wilson does not pay any extra money for hours above 1950, so many associates just aim for 1950 by Dec 31 and now won’t get the special bonus. They’re also not paying out the special bonus until the end of March to prevent people from giving notice in Jan.
1,000%
Maybe folks shouldn't literally target coming in a hair above the bonus cutoff?
The flaw in that analogy, A8, is that bonuses are backward looking. Sure, there are some market-matching elements to it, but don't forget that a a bonus really is just that - a bonus. It is tied to firm performance + associate performance. No one associates were plugging away in June with the belief they'd be entitled to some bonus PLUS some extra special bonus if they hit 1951 hours.
Now - if the firm had told people January 1, 2024 that if they worked 1951, they'd get X + Y, then I'd agree with you... but (at least as I understand it) the firm never promised anything prior to making its final decision.
Put it this way: If the firm sets a bonus cutoff at 1950 and you work 1951 - fine, get your bonus, you're abiding by the rules. But seems odd to complain that you didn't also get ANOTHER special bonus, set at a higher cap... to be clear, it may be different than how other firms approached bonuses this year, but I'm not seeing anything anywhere that suggests it was deceptive or a bait-and-switch.