Anonymous User wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 12:11 am
I guess I'm really surprised by some of the comments about phone calls. One of the big things I was taught as a junior was to pick up the phone right away if I'm in the office and also respond to emails right away. Even now that I'm outside of biglaw, I still operate the same way. I expect my day to be filled with random phone calls and emails. At night I have a chance to focus on writing. Now that I'm managing others, I do call more than email because it takes longer to draft an email. When I have ten things in my head that I need to delegate to others to do, I can get that out in minutes over the phone (or, alternatively, chat, since teleworking started and we have that capability). I think if you're a subordinate, your job is to make your superior's job easier, not vice versa. So if my boss is asking me to do something, I'm doing everything I can to make his job easier without worrying about whether his way of telling me was the most convenient for me.
if someone calls you should answer, of course, but repeatedly calling at your convenience and without even attempting to set aside a time that works for both (that email literally takes seconds), says you're a lazy manager imo.
juniors, like literally everyone else in biglaw, have other deals and workstreams. the narrow-minded and myopic conception that a junior's job is just to make your life easier so they should abide by your every convenience, without any meaningful consideration given for whether that actually reflects best practices as
someone managing someone else, is ignoring that a huge part of your job is to make sure we are working well between our deals as well, not just doing what's easiest or most efficient for you.
even when deals are bonkers crazy, people can usually find the time to organize an outlook invitation to speak, even if asking is literally just a 5 second teams message. it's really not that hard.
we will always take that call, but having the view that "person below me should do what's easiest for me, without any thought on process or management otherwise" .. do you like working with people above you that treat and manage you that way? I would guess no.