| Topic Name: |
Billable hours quotas |
| Message Name: |
nobody cares? |
| Date Posted: |
01/16/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
I have been a senior managers at two major firms (stratgey practices of big 5 firms).
My experience is that junior level individuals (undergrad hires through 2 years post MBA) are nominally expected to hit about 90% utilization over the course of a year. It drops to about 80% at the next (manager) level, and <= 75% at the senior manager level ... and can be quite a bit lower, if one is involved in a significant amount of thought leadership or sales / proposal activity.
Both of the firms I have worked with typically counted most proposal and thought leadership activity towards "billable" houirs in meeting the stated goals, *if* the work was assigned to the individual by the practice. Also, neither firm had an absolute cutoff which suggested that you *had* to hit the nominal target to get a bonus.
As a practical matter, I received good evaluations in the past 2 years even though I hit only about 40% billable utilizatiojn in each year, against a nominal target of 70% ...
Consequently, I am surprised trhat your firm has hard-and-fast "meet the numbers" rules ... especially so at junior levels ... at the firms where I've worked, it's clear that junior staffers are *assigned* to the best available project to meet their abilities, career goals & firm needs ... since they are *assigned* to projects, they are not really in control of whether they hit 80% vs 90% utilization. It is true that a junuior staffer with 80% would be scrutinized at year end, as to whether they had promoted themselves well enough, developed appropriate skills, and delivered onthe projects they had worked on, and *might* be be penalized a bit on bonus if that scritiny came up looking a bit short ... but it would not be a hard-and-fast "numbers" decision. |
| Message: |
I've been at 2 top strat firms, and neither cared a bit about billable hours. In fact, one firm even asks consulting staff to limit their hours to 75 a week; otherwise, they believe, one burns out too quickly. Nobody at either firm cares when or how you work as long as you get your stuff done.
The partners are responsible for selling enough work so that consulting staff stays highly utilized. We fill out time cards at the end of the month, but for me and other consultants, it's an educated guess of base weekly hours adjusted based on (1) how many dinners and dates I had to cancel with my significant other to stay in the office working, which indicates late nights, and (2) how much weekend work I did.
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