8 ms·

Funny, I had this exact same thought. The red flags for me were their use of “clock in” and “shift”. Those are not concepts generally in play for IT staff at

by nlh 5y ago

Funny, I had this exact same thought. The red flags for me were their use of “clock in” and “shift”. Those are not concepts generally in play for IT staff at law firms.

fesoliveira 5y ago
FWIW he mentions that there is no IT department in the firm, and that he works under administration.
- DennisP 5y ago
  And he's working from home, so "clock in" basically means logging in.
- rhino369 5y ago
  This is the actual red flag. A mid-size firm simply couldn't function without IT. They could outsource it to a contractor, but, in that case, they'd never then hire someone for 90k to do one small IT task. If there is any true to this, he's probably on the books as an "Litigation Support Tech" and his job probably involves (or is supposed to involve) more than he's describing--like interfacing with vendors who do the actual data/document processing.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    You’d be surprised. I interviewed at a multi-million dollar firm and there were two IT people there for the whole firm.
    - rhino369 5y ago
      Two is infinitely more than zero.
      - withinboredom 5y ago
        My point was that they may not even be big enough for one. “Plug and play” might be good enough for now (a shared drive means someone is around though, someone had to set it up).
        rhino369 5y ago
        There are definitely small firms that rely on the young paralegal who is a self taught super user. But that sort of firm wouldn't pay someone 90k for doing a small part of all IT. Slight chance this person was hired as a "case assistant" or "litigation support" and not IT. Firms definitely hire that sort of person--though they usually bill their time--so hopefully the OP isn't submitting fraudulent time entries. But 90k is a lot for that sort of role without expectation that you are performing other tasks.
        withinboredom 5y ago
        I’m still skeptical. I was hired at ridiculous rates once ($2k an hour) to validate DKIM signatures by a small time firm. 90k to be “on call” and validate things seems totally reasonable even from a small firm.
        rhino369 5y ago
        Courts don't actually require you to check hashes like the OP claims. They do remarkably little evidence authentication unless the opposing party contests the evidence. Digital evidence is by default produced to the other side by low quality TIFF files. If you want to accuse the other side of manipulation, you bring in an expert (who probably bills at nearly 1000 bucks an hour). I didn't take this as a sign of OP being false because its likely he just doesn't understand why the firm wants to him to validate hashes. The likely reason is other employees fucked up transfers.
        withinboredom 5y ago
        Nailed why I was hired. :)
laurent123456 5y ago
$90K just to move some files from one folder to another seems high too. Either the job involves more than what's he saying, or it's simply fake.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  Yeah this is the big red flag for me. I believe that a law firm without a ton of technical knowledge would hire someone to do this work manually, but they'd get an intern or something, this is not skilled work.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It's easy to overstate the technical difficulty of lots of basic IT work, especially if people are tech illiterate. There might be an element of deliberate fraud if this guy is spelling out the difficulty of the job as justifying his pay to management. I've seen very clever goldbricking similar to this, where management doesn't know enough to understand what good IT looks like, or how to value IT work.
    - downrightmike 5y ago
      how to value IT work-- yup
    - toyg 5y ago
      On the other side: the business can clearly afford it, so the value he brings is entirely justified from a commercial perspective. The fact that they can find cheaper alternatives on the IT market is a different issue. You can buy a new branded car for $$$ and be sure it will work for years with minimal maintenance, or you can shop around and buy a passable 15-year-old car; in both cases it will likely get you from A to B for a while, but the chance of having problems is lower with the new "whip". This guy, to the business, is the equivalent of leasing a new car every year: they can afford it and brings no risk as far as they can see. The obsession with capital efficiency can often turn into a disease. Why should we drive down our own wages, when the market is willing to pay more?
    - 5y ago
adrianN 5y ago
I had a software engineering job where I clocked in and time was tracked. Pretty good deal for people who tend to overwork themselves.
- hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
  I did as well. My company ran a 36 hour hackathon. By law, hours 8-12 were 1.5x time and hours 13+ were 2x time. It was basically an extra paycheck.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Your company ran a paid hackathon? Were you able to do whatever you want? Or was it a crunch to get a project launched?
    - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
      Yep, paid hackathon, but participation was voluntary. There were a few limitations: * It had to directly relate to the product. * You could not use the time to work on some existing project. * You had to be able to finish it by the end of the hackathon. Hackathon projects were sometimes adopted by a permanent team, if there was a good fit.
      - bckr 5y ago
        How many incidents did those nice new features cause?
        hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
        They didn't cause problems in the way you're implying. We took the time to polish hackathon projects before releasing them. We didn't just shove them out the door as soon as they were done. That said, one of them was an unmitigated disaster. Leadership loved it, users hated it, you know the drill. The company eventually gave in and turned the feature off three years later.
michaelbuckbee 5y ago
That actually rang fairly true to me as some of the law offices I interacted with (consultant) did so as they did some sort of fractional billing to the clients for internal IT time. I actually wonder if that's not the bigger scam here, that the firm is re-billing this person's make-work job in some sort of time and materials way that there is financial incentive to keep him doing this unnecessary role.
- rhino369 5y ago
  If the firm was billing his time, he'd have to create a billing log. You generally can't get away with billing for IT. But you can bill for "litigation support" which is the intersection of IT and litigation. Though its much more involved than just uploading files to an FTP.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Depends how shady the firm is :-) Also for probably any litigation that is IT related you could probably get away with a lot more
    - rhino369 5y ago
      Firms navigate this by making the employees fill out their own billing entries. If OP is filling out fraudulent billing entries then that would explain why nobody is checking up on him. If he's billed out, his real work output is billed-hours.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        No reason (to need, in this situation) for the automated program to run faster than a human. The right hours billed to a human instead of the human's computer is.. not quite so fraudulent?
hungryforcodes 5y ago
I've never seen an IT company in North America use that.
cptskippy 5y ago
This is how a lot of small businesses operate, and Law Firms are small in terms of staff. Everyone tracks their hours, even if their hours aren't billable. The same thing happens at engineering firms small or large. Everyone tracks their hours the same way. Heck, I'm a salaried IT staff at an enterprise level nfp and have to track my hours in two different systems. One of those systems is the same one used by hourly staff and has the concept of clocking in/out.
decebalus1 5y ago
I disagree. Yes, 'clocking in' is not a frequent process for IT people but it heavily depends on the company. My first job was for a company that billed its clients based on hours. Even if it was pretty much ridiculous for us (IT crowd) to do so, we did clock in just like everyone else, so that our billing department had a more 'accurate' representation of how much we worked for that client, even if our work was pretty much shared across all clients. I'm skeptical of these anonymous texts as well, but 'clocking in' is not a red flag. Also, in my current role I still do 'shifts' when I'm on-call, although I don't 'clock in' anymore.
wccrawford 5y ago
I had a job that tried to implement a time logging system. Most of IT just didn't. Eventually they explained to us that the payroll guy uses that to cut the checks, and it's a huge pain in their ass if we don't use the system. They compromised by asking us to log in and out at least once each pay period. That was fine, and we did. But they really did try to get us to go whole hog on it at first.

by nlh 5y ago

Funny, I had this exact same thought. The red flags for me were their use of “clock in” and “shift”. Those are not concepts generally in play for IT staff at law firms.

fesoliveira 5y ago

FWIW he mentions that there is no IT department in the firm, and that he works under administration.

DennisP 5y ago
And he's working from home, so "clock in" basically means logging in.
rhino369 5y ago
This is the actual red flag. A mid-size firm simply couldn't function without IT. They could outsource it to a contractor, but, in that case, they'd never then hire someone for 90k to do one small IT task. If there is any true to this, he's probably on the books as an "Litigation Support Tech" and his job probably involves (or is supposed to involve) more than he's describing--like interfacing with vendors who do the actual data/document processing.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  You’d be surprised. I interviewed at a multi-million dollar firm and there were two IT people there for the whole firm.
  - rhino369 5y ago
    Two is infinitely more than zero.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      My point was that they may not even be big enough for one. “Plug and play” might be good enough for now (a shared drive means someone is around though, someone had to set it up).
      - rhino369 5y ago
        There are definitely small firms that rely on the young paralegal who is a self taught super user. But that sort of firm wouldn't pay someone 90k for doing a small part of all IT. Slight chance this person was hired as a "case assistant" or "litigation support" and not IT. Firms definitely hire that sort of person--though they usually bill their time--so hopefully the OP isn't submitting fraudulent time entries. But 90k is a lot for that sort of role without expectation that you are performing other tasks.
        withinboredom 5y ago
        I’m still skeptical. I was hired at ridiculous rates once ($2k an hour) to validate DKIM signatures by a small time firm. 90k to be “on call” and validate things seems totally reasonable even from a small firm.
        rhino369 5y ago
        Courts don't actually require you to check hashes like the OP claims. They do remarkably little evidence authentication unless the opposing party contests the evidence. Digital evidence is by default produced to the other side by low quality TIFF files. If you want to accuse the other side of manipulation, you bring in an expert (who probably bills at nearly 1000 bucks an hour). I didn't take this as a sign of OP being false because its likely he just doesn't understand why the firm wants to him to validate hashes. The likely reason is other employees fucked up transfers.
        withinboredom 5y ago
        Nailed why I was hired. :)

laurent123456 5y ago

$90K just to move some files from one folder to another seems high too. Either the job involves more than what's he saying, or it's simply fake.

vlunkr 5y ago
Yeah this is the big red flag for me. I believe that a law firm without a ton of technical knowledge would hire someone to do this work manually, but they'd get an intern or something, this is not skilled work.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It's easy to overstate the technical difficulty of lots of basic IT work, especially if people are tech illiterate. There might be an element of deliberate fraud if this guy is spelling out the difficulty of the job as justifying his pay to management. I've seen very clever goldbricking similar to this, where management doesn't know enough to understand what good IT looks like, or how to value IT work.
  - downrightmike 5y ago
    how to value IT work-- yup
  - toyg 5y ago
    On the other side: the business can clearly afford it, so the value he brings is entirely justified from a commercial perspective. The fact that they can find cheaper alternatives on the IT market is a different issue. You can buy a new branded car for $$$ and be sure it will work for years with minimal maintenance, or you can shop around and buy a passable 15-year-old car; in both cases it will likely get you from A to B for a while, but the chance of having problems is lower with the new "whip". This guy, to the business, is the equivalent of leasing a new car every year: they can afford it and brings no risk as far as they can see. The obsession with capital efficiency can often turn into a disease. Why should we drive down our own wages, when the market is willing to pay more?
  - 5y ago

adrianN 5y ago

I had a software engineering job where I clocked in and time was tracked. Pretty good deal for people who tend to overwork themselves.

hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
I did as well. My company ran a 36 hour hackathon. By law, hours 8-12 were 1.5x time and hours 13+ were 2x time. It was basically an extra paycheck.
- gruez 5y ago
  Your company ran a paid hackathon? Were you able to do whatever you want? Or was it a crunch to get a project launched?
  - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
    Yep, paid hackathon, but participation was voluntary. There were a few limitations: * It had to directly relate to the product. * You could not use the time to work on some existing project. * You had to be able to finish it by the end of the hackathon. Hackathon projects were sometimes adopted by a permanent team, if there was a good fit.
    - bckr 5y ago
      How many incidents did those nice new features cause?
      - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
        They didn't cause problems in the way you're implying. We took the time to polish hackathon projects before releasing them. We didn't just shove them out the door as soon as they were done. That said, one of them was an unmitigated disaster. Leadership loved it, users hated it, you know the drill. The company eventually gave in and turned the feature off three years later.

michaelbuckbee 5y ago

That actually rang fairly true to me as some of the law offices I interacted with (consultant) did so as they did some sort of fractional billing to the clients for internal IT time. I actually wonder if that's not the bigger scam here, that the firm is re-billing this person's make-work job in some sort of time and materials way that there is financial incentive to keep him doing this unnecessary role.

rhino369 5y ago
If the firm was billing his time, he'd have to create a billing log. You generally can't get away with billing for IT. But you can bill for "litigation support" which is the intersection of IT and litigation. Though its much more involved than just uploading files to an FTP.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Depends how shady the firm is :-) Also for probably any litigation that is IT related you could probably get away with a lot more
  - rhino369 5y ago
    Firms navigate this by making the employees fill out their own billing entries. If OP is filling out fraudulent billing entries then that would explain why nobody is checking up on him. If he's billed out, his real work output is billed-hours.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      No reason (to need, in this situation) for the automated program to run faster than a human. The right hours billed to a human instead of the human's computer is.. not quite so fraudulent?

hungryforcodes 5y ago

I've never seen an IT company in North America use that.

cptskippy 5y ago

This is how a lot of small businesses operate, and Law Firms are small in terms of staff. Everyone tracks their hours, even if their hours aren't billable. The same thing happens at engineering firms small or large. Everyone tracks their hours the same way. Heck, I'm a salaried IT staff at an enterprise level nfp and have to track my hours in two different systems. One of those systems is the same one used by hourly staff and has the concept of clocking in/out.

decebalus1 5y ago

I disagree. Yes, 'clocking in' is not a frequent process for IT people but it heavily depends on the company. My first job was for a company that billed its clients based on hours. Even if it was pretty much ridiculous for us (IT crowd) to do so, we did clock in just like everyone else, so that our billing department had a more 'accurate' representation of how much we worked for that client, even if our work was pretty much shared across all clients. I'm skeptical of these anonymous texts as well, but 'clocking in' is not a red flag. Also, in my current role I still do 'shifts' when I'm on-call, although I don't 'clock in' anymore.

wccrawford 5y ago

I had a job that tried to implement a time logging system. Most of IT just didn't. Eventually they explained to us that the payroll guy uses that to cut the checks, and it's a huge pain in their ass if we don't use the system. They compromised by asking us to log in and out at least once each pay period. That was fine, and we did. But they really did try to get us to go whole hog on it at first.