Related Posts
How many trials per year do "trial lawyers" do?
Best memoir you ever read?
Pro
Tag lines for gentrification
Hey Fishbowlers! I just received an off from Dell for a Technical Content Developer 2 position. Fully remote, 5% bonus, 10k sign on bonus, $76,500K base pay. I have 3 year of experience in technical writing. BS in Com and MS in Eng Management. Is the offer good for position and my experience?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Ask what people normally do for lunch. It’s going to give you some insight about if people are too busy to break away, constantly order in/grab and eat while working, or have enough WLB to make food at home and bring in. It also sounds a little less like asking “how much do I *have* to work” while actually giving you some insights.
This is brilliant, thank you!
Maybe ask them why they joined the firm and how their experience compares to biglaw. Maybe ask about vacations they’ve been on and if they don’t take any, that’s probably a red flag
Great call, thank you!
When you ask questions about things like benefits, time off, working from home, don’t just listen to the words they’re saying but how they’re saying it. Partners at small firms can be very controlling and might use “we’re like a family” to say “we expect you to always be available.” Or they may not want to commit to a specific maternity leave or work from home policy because they want to give themselves flexibility to change their mind or quietly have different rules for different people. So instead they’ll say “oh, don’t worry about it, we always work it out.” I remember at my old firm a partner went off on a first year associate hire because he dared ask for his offer in writing. I was a young associate myself and had only worked in small firms at that point so I thought “oh, I guess that’s a bad thing to ask for.” Now that I’m older and also in BigLaw I know what a red flag it is to never want to commit anything to writing.
FWIW, I have never worked in BigLaw, but I have worked in very small firms as well as mid-law, and I found that the very small firms were atrocious - the partners ran them like little dictatorships, and God help you if you didn’t toe the line they set (which may or may not have ever been communicated to you). I had better luck with mid-law: more people to work with, more checks and balances, etc.
My experience with little firms is similar! And I worked in BL.
F