Not getting my bonus this year Forum

[Anonymous User]

How are folks doing so far? Things are slow in my v20 corporate group this year. I just found I'll have to bill like 300 hours by the end of 2022 to get my bonus which is impossible.

[Anonymous User]

How are folks doing so far? Things are slow in my v20 corporate group this year. I just found I'll have to bill like 300 hours by the end of 2022 to get my bonus which is impossible.

Should have went to a firm without billable reqs

[Anonymous User]

Have you hit your firm's maximum for pro bono that will count towards a bonus?

[Anonymous User]

If anyone hears of firms paying bonuses to associates who do not meet their annual budget requirement, please let everyone know on this thread. Posting anonymously because my V5 firm said at an all-hands meeting that this was under consideration due to market conditions (e.g., cap mkts group generally slow this year, but killed it the last three years), and leadership specifically asked associates to share any information regarding other firms paying bonuses to associates who do not meet their annual budget requirement.

This may be a pipe dream, but I'm holding out hope for those who billed 2300+ over the past three years but will fall a bit short this year due to market conditions.

[Anonymous User]

As you all know it would especially suck to be close to the target but don't get the bonus. Depending on where I stand in the middle of December, I would just use up all my vacations and not give a fuck

[Anonymous User]

OP, I'm really sorry to hear this. I work at a firm that has no explicit hours requirement and the discussion ITT drives home how valuable that can be. Yes, most years it's true that "there's no requirement because you'll bill much more" but everyone has an off year from time to time and it's reassuring to know that you don't get totally screwed when that happens.

It blows my mind that more firms don't do this i.e., drop a hard requirement. Partners are bad talent managers etc. but even still it is so obviously and unnecessarily demoralizing for someone to e.g., bill 1,975 hours for the firm and be told "sorry, you were 25 hours shy so you don't get $50,000 extra. Tough luck."

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

It blows my mind that more firms don't do this i.e., drop a hard requirement. Partners are bad talent managers etc. but even still it is so obviously and unnecessarily demoralizing for someone to e.g., bill 1,975 hours for the firm and be told "sorry, you were 25 hours shy so you don't get $50,000 extra. Tough luck."

In practice this almost never happens. Q4 work usually gets diverted from anyone who plainly isn't going to get bonus to those who need a steady flow or even extra work to hit it, so no one falls in what effectively is a per-hour compensation crevasse. At my old 2000-minimum firm the distribution was lots of people between 2000 and 2100, and then almost no one until you got to about 1750 or so. Obviously, when they don't have to pay you a bonus for that, low hours are tolerated more even in good times. That's not to say a down year at a V5 is not accepted; just that you're more likely to get away with multiple years of shenanigans at a firm with less going around.