$80,000 for a Year Off? She'll Take It! | Hacker News Reader

$80,000 for a Year Off? She'll Take It!

nytimes.com

68 pointsphyscab42 comments

A friend of mine interned at Skadden last summer and has a job offer from them to start this fall. He said that new graduates are being offered the same arrangement -- a lump sum to postpone his start date by one year. He doesn't think he's going to take it, for a few reasons. I don't blame him; I would be really worried that the job would disappear over that year. They say it's safe, but it seems a lot tougher to lay off existing staff than to lay off someone who hasn't started yet.

I remember hearing about Skadden during the Clinton imbroglio. To get into Skadden is probably like getting into D.E. Shaw

"The salary for a first-year associate (i.e., fresh out of law school) is reported to be $160,000, not including the annual discretionary bonus.[25]"

"Arguably the most recognizable law firm outside the legal industry, the firm is considered one of the most prestigious in the world, consistently ranking in the top five of Vault's annual list of the top law firms in the U.S. and boasting highly competitive foreign practices. The Skadden Fellowship, funded by the firm, is considered the most prestigious public-interest grant in the U.S. and is greatly sought-after by graduates of top law schools."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skadden,_Arps,_Slate,_Meagher_&...

Employers with a significant number of employees working under stressful conditions should consider voluntary furlough programs, regardless of the state of the economy. Vacation, as it is currently implemented, can increase stress on these employees. If you're expected to clear the decks before you leave, possibly handle important issues that arise while you're out, and deal with a backlog when you return, vacation is very unattractive. A well-designed furlough program can allow the employer to plan for available staffing and let employees sanely decompress.

Such a program needn't be solely for saving money on payroll. (Obviously, a partial salary furlough is only really attractive to well-paid employees.) A good program would increase productivity and bring to the table fresher, better ideas.

When I was at SAP there was a program where you could set aside part of your salary for 6 months of paid leave after 5 years. Unfortunately you had to be over 30 to claim it.

Why 30 Years, specifically?

All I can do is guess: for most German professionals, that'd be within 5 years of getting out of college anyway (Germans usually start college at 20 or 21 and it takes 6 years, typically.). It's possible that given that, anyone younger than 30 was still seen as a "new hire" rather than "a career person". Since I started there when I was 22 though it was rather a disappointment. It might have kept me around longer, since after 4 years I wanted out -- but might have stuck around for that break at 5 years, and then who knows afterwards.

I guess Skadden thinks its economical to pay $80K as a retainer fee than to go out and recruit the same people with equivalent experience in a year. Another way to look at it is a generous severance package with an option to rehire.

The alternative is to lay off 2/3 of their associates.

Laying off people in a large organization is often very expensive, especially if you only think you need to cover a temporary drop in demand.

- Redundancy process fees including consultants.

- Salaries for the length of the consultation period.

- Stress and de-motivation in the retained workforce.

- Severance or early retirement pay.

- Recruitment fees and signing bonuses once/if the staff are needed again.

- Loss of efficiency and experience of new hires compared to old staff.

I can easily see that coming to a lot more than $80k per post.

It boggles my mind that lawyers make so much money.

COBOL programmers make lots of money to deal with legacy systems, and those are 40 years old, and completely specified!

Imagine if you had to analyze specifications written in a notoriously imprecise language, every variable is global (remember "that depends on what the definition of 'is' is"?), and new definitions and analogies are coming in every day.

I'm definitely switching to COBOL.

Sounds like I have been a COBOL programmer for a while, without even knowing.

The second paragraph was meant to refer to laws, not a programming language.

Sounds like you need http://www.coboloncogs.org/INDEX.HTM

They're in high demand. Blame our complex judicial system and the people looking to abuse it.

Plus 3 years of law school and some tough bar exams.

Sure. But we made those complex laws. We can simplify them for the benefit of the society!

It amazes me sometimes.....so much money rolling towards a profession that does not produce any wealth!

I can understand the argument that lawyers are paid out of proportion to their contribution to society. But I've never understood the people who claim that they literally contribute nothing.

It's better to have laws than to not have them, and laws require interpretation. That's what the legal system does. It may be that most lawyering is pointless, but certainly not all.

keep in mind that a lot of lawyers work 60-80 hour weeks.

I'm guessing these aren't the programmer "I was in the office for 60ish hours, but got a lot of surfing and some side-project research, plus a bit of game-playing done" 60-80 hour weeks.

$80,000 X 3 = $240k/year

At an industry standard 80 hours/week, that works out to $60/hr. I don't know any good developers that would take a contract for only $60/hr. Do you?

Excellent point. It's actually quite miserable pay considering the lifestyle hit.

That is a fair point - though I actually doubt that 80 hrs/week is standard. There are those weeks, but they're not the norm. The lawyers I know (the ones at the big first) work about 50-60 hrs/week. Still tough, but nowhere near that bad. Unfortunately, this is all anecdotal, just what I've observed and what friends have told me.

Also, the lawyer is not contracting - it's a job. I think plenty of developers would take a job that pays 240K/yr for a 60 hr workweek.

$60/hr for 2080hr/year (assuming 40hr workweek) == $124,800/yr - plenty of developers would take that.

I would. Does that make me easy, or just cheap?

Profession is protected and controlled (like medical profession). Supply is controlled. Too many complex laws. Need somebody to interpret them at a hefty fee!

This is a very cheap way to figure out which associates aren't interested in working hard enough to become partner.

Identify them for $80k and then let them go.

It costs that much just to hire a new person on average, I'd imagine it would be even higher for lawyers.

Basically, instead of laying people off and re-hiring them when the time is right, they're spending the capital up front to create a pool of "firm approved" candidates. (It's not a flat 80K, it's 1/3 of salary - so cheaper people actually cost less to rehire than it would to go through the process after a lay off.)

Smart business running, but not exactly a great career move if you want to do well there.

I heard from friends that the Big 5 Accounting firms are making similar offers to their employees. 1\3 of your salary for 3 months and you can take it off.

Remember that a similar program for auto workers, the UAW's "jobs bank", was held out as an examplar of union featherbedding.

This is a private company for starters. The UAW jobs bank idea was forced by a union not management and was simply a move to make sure no one was fired even when it was cost effective to do so. They were paid between 85-100% salary too, not 33%.

In this case they want to trim costs a bit but also want to retain the employees. This will save money, not tank the company and require billions in Federal emergency loans.

The UAW jobs bank idea was forced by a union not management

You misspelled "agreed to". Nobody pointed a gun at a CEO and made him sign the contract.

Both sides made bad decisions, but when forced with the possibility of a strike dumb ideas like the jobs bank get approved. Even without a gun.

Actually a gun is involved.

Suppose UAW workers fail to show up to work, and the CEO fires them and hires replacements. In that case, men with guns show up and shut down GM (it's illegal to fire striking workers and hire replacements).

Also, if negotiations break down, men with guns may show up and broker an agreement (mandatory arbitration).

Unions, as they currently exist, are based very strongly on using threats of force against non-union workers and employers.

The CEO of GM did, in fact, have virtually no choice in the matter.

This is simply not true, at least in the USA. See for example:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/APPEALS+PANEL+VOIDS+PENALTY+FO...

and

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/16/us/caterpillar-s-trump-car...

Thousands of workers threatening to shut down your entire operation is pretty much the biggest gun you can find, in my mind.

The workers are "threatening to shut down your entire operation" by refusing to work for you on the terms that you would prefer. That's negotiation, not violence.

If it was negotiation, the CEO could go and hire someone else.

A negotiation you can't walk away from is not a negotiation.

As someone upthread pointed out, the CEO was free to do just that (or at least, would have become free to do it as soon as the pre-existing contract ran out).

Painful read, because this offer's essentially a trap.

Law firms care beyond what is healthy about "professional image", at the personal level as well as for the firm. Anyone who takes this sort of offer is essentially penciling himself out for the best assignments and the partner track. A 6th-year associate is going to know what she's doing and probably has decided she isn't going to make partner, or doesn't want to do so, anyway. For her, this might be a good deal. A first-year who takes a stipend to defer is setting himself up for disaster. It looks really bad; it's a horrible way to start one's career.

She is making 240k/year as an Associate and get's to keep 1/3 of it on her vacation. I don't think most first-year prospects are going to be making that much.

PS: If anything this could help you make partner by having something which differentiates you from the pack. Assuming they do something interesting an don't just sit at home for a year.

That's fascinating. The partner at my former firm was from Skadden. He said it was a sweat shop. Sickening. It's good that they're doing something with a little work/life balance.

Like most lawyers, after a while he found that money wasn't everything. Even with his nice car, and house, he felt empty--he's now an entrepreneur and loving it.

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