- Quickdraw McLaw
- 35 Comments
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A reader is having problems with employee retention and wants your input on a simple question–what keeps you at your current job? Is it primarily the pay, the people, the private chef, necessity, etc?
To The Employed
- Law
- Posted on 11 years ago
It's a balancing act. My current job pays $55K and I graduated in December. I feel like if I tried hard I could get to $70K within the month. BUT, my current job has the best benefits I've ever had in my entire life. 0 deductible. 0 premiums. Copays are so low as are prescriptions. ALSO, I've never had such a low-stress workload in my life; I work about 32-34 hours a week and receive full salary on 40 hours. Staff isn't that great. Anytime I think of leaving I juggle the pros and cons and I end up wanting to stay. I'm grateful for the low stress and benefits.
How's that working out with your student loans, if you have any? 55K is pretty good for right out of law school, but I'd imagine that "more likely than not" you might have some student loans, perhaps even pretty sizable.
10K because I only have a Bachelors degree. Boyd wait-listed me but we'll see how that goes.
Do you get PERS? If so, stay put and just keep punching that ticket. Yes, you will have ended up taking more from civilization than you gave back to it by the time you retire, but I don't think you will care while sitting in an oversized RV cruising down the highway while net contributors toil to pay your pension. Live it.
If you are not on PERS, then maybe it's time to quit. Get a job that taxes your abilities at the highest levels. Pay and benefits are irrelevant. Becoming the best that you can be is all that matters. And besides, you'll be too busy working and achieving to get sick or blow your paycheck.
Good luck.
Thanks! I'm not on PERS. I'm doing some fun stuff on my spare time for myself that generates passive income. Hopefully in a little while it'll dwarf hour-for-money income and if not I have tons of fun doing it. Love my field. I applied to Boyd for weird reasons.
So wait, you are NOT an attorney?
Said only had a bachelors degree
There's a pay as you earn option for loans. I still have $130K left and pay just over $400 a month.
"55K is pretty good for right out of law school"??? You either graduated in 1982 or are an oppressive, out-of-touch legal employer. The recession is over. Can't keep exploiting new lawyers. No one who has gone through college, law school, and passed the bar should take a job for less than 75k in private practice. Seriously.
12:26, you missed it, he hasn't gone to law school
Money is the root of all evil and the reason for staying. Pay me more and I'm all yours.
Define "more money." What amount or percentage of your current salary would cause you to leave?
If the attorney whose name is on the letterhead is only concerned about converting staff time to billable hours so he can keep the Lamborghini and BMW he drives, or the Porsche he got for his wife, you will see a revolving door of employees marching in and out.
Or the Filipina mistress that he has to now support because he's going through a divorce with his wife who recently found out and kicked him out.
Get your facts right. She was Laotian.
Things that keep me in my current job, despite relatively low pay for my experience: flexibility for dealing with family issues (not a problem to leave for doctor visits or school matters), good benefits, interesting work, supervisor respects and listens to me but also takes time to teach me, people are genuinely nice and treat support staff well, and everyone – including those at the top – work hard when there are big projects and then everyone gets to relax when deadlines are less intense.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-people-quit-their-jobs-2015-7
This article hits the nail on the head!
It's a balancing act for me as well. I left my former law firm after realizing I did not want to do that type of work long term and felt my career was not advancing at the pace I thought it should, which was the result of many contributing factors. Pay was not a motivating factor in my decision to begin looking for a new job; that said, I probably would not have taken a position with a lower salary.
Off topic, but has anyone looked at the leak of Ashley Madison data? Rumor has it that a few partners are freaking out right now….https://ashleymadisonleakeddata.com/
Who cares? It's 2015. If my wife saw my Tinder account she'd yawn. Ho ho ho.
Now, on the other hand, I would love the see the emails Hillary scrubbed from her private, offsite State Department server. That is news. Europe is drowning in a tsunami of illegal immigration as a direct result of Hillary's idiotic decisions. Let's see who paid Hillary to do it, and why.
All this sexy talk has me hungry for a Subway sandwich!
3:33: The whole Jared thing takes "eat fresh" to a troubling new level.
Am I going to hell for making that joke?
No, you made me laugh. That guy had issues. Making jokes about people's issues is healthy.
there is nothing fresh about Jared jokes. It is disgusting to make jokes about pedophiles
Well, we have to admit that being a union goon with local ties makes life easier. Take this sissy for example. He wasn't man enough to deal with a kids football league in an honest and forthright manner, so he just poisoned the kids. At work, he wasn't man enough to accept that a convicted sissy poison pants piker shouldn't supervise the department that delivers water to an entire city. So he hides behind the union and his local "juice" ties. Like a sissy.
Now, ask yourself if you worked with this cretin, would you stick around? Probably not. My experience is that for every sissy cretin you lose at least three decent, honest hard working employees. Period. That's how a city becomes like, say, Detroit. A little corruption, a powerful union, some insider dealings and weak political leaders. That's all. Same goes for law firms. Lionel and Gordon taught us all something important this past year. Listen carefully!
As for me, I just jet when shit happens. My family suffers more when I try to ride it out. I prefer to say "bye" and keep my dignity. It's like the typical abusive relationship. How many times are you going to let her hit you on the head with a frying pan? Hit me once, fuck you. Hit me twice, fuck me.
This is the most inane post I have read in a while. How do you take the original concept of employee retention and turn it into an anti union, Detroit is bad diatribe? Detroit had a corrupt mayor, and white flight with a shrinking economy, the unions weren't the issue at all. But whatever furthers your agenda Roger Ailes.
I have found that whenever you do the little things; let somebody leave early for a doctor's appointment, see their kid off on the first day of school, give them a bonus when they're not expecting it, that's when your employees stay. When you forget about them, they feel less important and they leave.
In 25 plus years working with hundreds of law firms as a marketing consultant/coach, this is what I have observed: If the majority of the firm (partners AND associates AND support staff) regularly meets as a team, and works together achieving mutually beneficial results, attrition disappears and retention prevails.
I stay at my current job because the pay is good and they cut me in on the business I originate even though I am an associate. So I hustle more to get them more money which gets me more money. Sure, they could grind hours out of me, and in the short run they'd probably make more money. But in the long run, they come out ahead with the business I generate.
I'm done. I have grown to hate being a lawyer. Nothing can make me want to continue. I love being client free, deadline free, and oh yes, client free! I love the freedom to wake up in the morning and say, "What am I going to do today?" I should go back to school, beef up my math skills and get my MD. But if I get my MD, then I'll be carping about the evil insurance companies. Why, just why, didn't I drop out of high school?
If you can make it long enough.. the lifestyle you seek is out there.. It's called "retirement". I know because I'm under 60 and living it
People don't leave companies—They leave management.
The last law firm I left, I did so because of the long hours, the low pay, and the managing partner's hectic personality. The subject area was actually a lot of fun, but in the end, I didn't like working seven days straight, until midnight many nights out of the week, with a salary that meant I had to live in a place with a roommate. I am much happier now that I've moved on.
Money is important, but no amount of money is worth working in a toxic atmosphere.
Boulder City attorney DUI Dave Olsen has the best gig in town. The Boulder City Mormon elite keep him employed even though he was found guilty of multiple ethics violations, cost the city mega dough for his bad advice with suing the residents and bad contracts which the city lost in litigation. He makes in the high 100,000's, has a full pension which the city pays including medical and works 4 days a week. Moral of this story…….lie for the Lord or those that you serve……..Woodbury, Walker, Leavitt and Fraser.