This is all fair (although I think there are some definitional quibbles with how we characterize certain things in part 1, but I think we can each see where we're coming from at least).A. Nony Mouse wrote:Honestly, those things aren't really what I've seen most people here complain about in biglaw, though. "Being on call," to me, isn't the same as sitting in your office with nothing to do until 5:30, when a boss tells you you have to complete a new project that they need by morning, especially when the only reason you didn't get it earlier was someone else didn't feel like dealing with it until then (or the morning deadline is artificial). Maybe you mean something different by "being on call," though. As for the work, people (in corporate, not lit) make fun of changing commas, but I don't think people generally call it busy work - the issue may be that it's not always inherently very interesting or challenging work, but it has to get done under challenging deadlines with little training and little tolerance for error. But the combination of uninteresting and high stress doesn't, to me, mean the same thing as busy work. And I haven't seen people really complain about getting told different things by different bosses, or about dealing with bureaucratic bullshit. (Except maybe keeping track of hours/billing time, but that's a very specific kind of pain in the ass which doesn't really match what I think of as "bureaucratic bullshit.")First Offense wrote:Like having a lot of bosses telling you different things? Like having to be on call? Like hating the people you work with? Like doing what amounts to little more than busy work? Like dealing with annoying bureaucratic bullshit?A. Nony Mouse wrote:Maybe that's because income isn't the whole story, and there are lots of entirely different ways why one's work life can suck.
That's most jobs. Hell, that may be all jobs.
Yeah, I agree that there's a lot of privilege involved in being in biglaw. I think most people acknowledge that it's not like they're working in a coal mine - they talk about it as being the worst because this is a law school board and there's an implicit expectation that they're characterizing as the worst within the legal profession, not life generally (and even then, yeah, it's a privileged position compared to being in shitlaw with similar hours but crap pay or exit options). It's true that not everyone realizes that, but I also don't think it has to be expressly referenced every time anyone here talks about their job for that to be understood. But then, you and I may just see that differently, based on our different responses to the original link.Saw your edit: Fair. There's nothing that says that Biglaw can't suck. That being said - to hear TLS talk about it, it is the worst thing in the world. Even with the six figures in debt the majority of us take out, we have so much more life flexibility that others don't have. Do you know how many people can afford to leave their job after three years if they hate it and do a gig that pays half of your previous salary (or even less) and still have a halfway decent QoL? Not many.
Instead of focusing on the struggles that are particular to Biglaw, people on here instead behave like they're carrying a cross that no one else can fathom. It isn't a focused "my job sucks", but rather it's spoken of in absolute terms. Probably 90% of people in our age group would kill to be in our shoes - instead of acknowledging that, we whine about how they don't even know how bad it is to have your boss call you in on a Friday to work the weekend.
To the second part: yeah, on TLS bitching about work makes some sense in a place with a lot of lawyers and future lawyers. It may be nothing more than the equivalent of sitting at a bar with coworkers after a particularly rough day at (insert random job here) and bitching about it. Bitching is cathartic, and something everyone needs to do about their job, even if they get to play with puppies all day every day. The postings on here generally don't bother me much for that very reason, but the article strikes a different chord to me. My thought with an article of this variety is that it is, by nature, at the minimum less targeted to a law-only crowd. While the majority of the audience may be lawyers/students, posting a blog/article runs more of a risk, or perhaps better put, designed to hit a wider audience. (I think the writing style, which seems very un-lawyerly feeds into that instinct for me).
To the rest of the comments - I mean shit, everyone jumps down my throat, I get to hit back a little bit, even if it is impotently.
Edit: Except for the comment directed at chuckbass. That dude is a chode.
