You won’t get away with it in a client facing role unless you want to stall completely in your career. I’m sure people will do hybrid and commute for a couple of days but even then you are going to lose out. Some will find places to work where they can do that and that’s fair enough, that’s the labour market. I think though the idea that you will be able to drive a successful career from Zoom is fanciful in that sort of industry.
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Define successful? We’re talking solicitors already well established in big firms. Unless they want to go for partner they’re well off out of it.
As they are now established, they are somewhat fortunate. Won’t be the case for younger employees who will get the hybrid model at best.
But make no mistake, they will completely stall in their career financially and progression wise. Fair enough if they are happy enough with that, each to their own.
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I reckon lots of people pushing near 100k salaries will be happy to bank that and take the better work life balance that wasn’t on offer before.
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But they’ll see where they are in a couple of years.
I’d know a couple around professional service firms and the three absolutes they have is that you cannot train younger staff remotely, that you won’t be able to develop client relationships remotely but also crucially, that hybrid/flexibility is the way forward for your senior staff.
The former two have not actually been tested during Covid. It’s all well and good saying during the acute phase of Covid that you were fine in training younger employees remotely because everyone was in the same boat. Part and parcel of those jobs in one of those firms is to bring through the next person. When I bill one of these places I know that the younger grunt are a big part of the work performed and you just accept that as the reality of it. But that requires someone overseeing them and the younger employees will be back in the office, make no mistake about it. There will be some other associate putting in the hours with them and they will get the kudos for that. This won’t be noticed until offices are fully back.
In terms of client work, the exact same. Half of this stuff is bullshit salesmanship and people want to meet. You could get away with doing that stuff from down the country when everyone was at home, but you wont get away with that now. I don’t have any interest in giving work to a “team” whose members can’t meet face to face like other humans.
In terms of these firms, they generally push you out if you reach an age where partner isn’t on the cards. Sure if you are saying you are willing to keep the same salary and essentially make your peers money until retirement.
Flexibility is obviously key but I think there’s a lot of delusion built up over WFH in industries like that.
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Most people who don’t want to be partner want to leave.
Exactly- so I don’t see how this is really going to be a revolution for them. The firms themselves will stake them out and they’ll be gone.
The key point though is that a lot of people say they can do their job perfectly well remotely but really are in a bit of a bubble.
Iv been involved in hundreds of transactions with solrs and I’d say maybe 30 or 40 times was ever at meetings in an office. Any time we did it was nothing more than a swizz to ramp up fees IMO. Def is loads of things I can think of they would need to go to an office for but by and large the bulk of their work can be done remotely, the politicking and schmoozing the primary reason to go to the office
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The great resignation will help career options
I think I would prefer the conniption 
Our fella only gets distracted for a minute or two by most shows, but is glued to In The Night Garden when it comes on.
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Deloitte have gotten rid of half their office space in Dublin. They don’t want or expect everyone to come back. They are very happy with how wfh is going and apparently made absolutely massive profits during the period of wfh.
Any accountancy firm bucking against this trend will quickly find themselves without staff. A lot of them have already left Dublin and aren’t going back. The flexible ones will snap them up and maybe they’ll be willing to do it for 10k or 20k less now that they are living in Sligo or somewhere rather than Dublin. Rather than being an exception I would see the professional services as one of the easiest to flip to work from home.
Training people in will be a bit messier perhaps, but adapt or die. Huge money to be saved on rents and all the bullshit office perks as well
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Within any transaction or deal there will be loads of side meetings. There’ll be some origination. Some advisor will have got the gig because they met X at Y place. There’ll be human interaction online that chain. The meetings and calls to get through the details are a tiny part of the importance of these things. We are social creatures and that’s where opportunities lie.
I don’t think you can seriously be in contentious areas of law like litigation and think you’ll have the same career from Zoom as someone who can meet people in confidence.
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I’d often be walking around the house humming a cocomelon song unbeknownst. I’d say the whole thing is scientifically designed to turn you into a zombie. The fucking money they make with nursery rhymes. Genius
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The lovey dovey parents in it would sicken your shit some days.
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Most of them don’t actually have the office space to accommodate staff as they were always designed for a lot of roles to be on site regardless. That’s why they are “happy”, these places will churn hundreds of employees a year regardless and I’d hazard a guess at what pool they will largely end up from.
They are also very happy with flexible working. That is not in question, the working world has changed.
But you are not going to change the world from your home office 100% in firms like that, that’s the reality. In terms of training what is going to happen is that the type of person who thinks their role is just delivering a power point or excel is going to get a lower bonus than the person who goes into the office to teach younger employees how to do their job. It doesn’t matter if you do the nicest report going. These are training firms, that is their economic model and way they sustain themselves. This has not hit people yet because they have been living in a bubble.
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Someone who’s been working for/with my life partner for the last 21 months left the company today and they never met in person. Interviewed and hired by others when she was still on maternity leave but assigned to her team. I was delighted because I’d a pain in my hole listening to her giving out yards about how bone idle useless the now ex colleague was.
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Hoping you stay in your current working arrangements for the sake of your bourgeoning athletics career
I wouldn’t hire Deloitte to walk the dog
Agree with all that mainly. But no reason a fella can’t be wfh and going to a meeting at a client site for origination and going for lunch and going home again rather than back to his office.
Agreed with litigation also, can’t be done from home. But majority of legal work isn’t litigation its grungy paperwork aand drafting and revisions etc.
The training point is the biggest issue as you mentioned. I’d say huge opportunity in that space for a proper solution to how that can be cracked, bit away from that now but prize is massive for companies who engage it
Before Covid they had mentioned that a big reason they maintained city centre offices was young people wanted to work in a city and live and socialize there.
That hypothesis will be tested now.
Next year or two will certainly tell a lot as to what hybrid working ends up looking like. The days of 5 full days in an office from 9 are gone but equally I think lads who think they won’t go in at all are coddling themselves.