Jobs and Self-Interest

I've been at my current job for about three years now, and it's been fun. I sign my own work, take my own cases to trial, and I have relative autonomy about how I handle my caseload: so long as everything gets done, my timesheet is full, and I'm available to take calls between 9 and 5, nobody really gives a damn if I take a two-hour nap on the leather couch I have in my office, and then take an extended lunch-break because the nearest Chipotle is a bit of a drive. Fortunately, we ultimately moved into a new building, from which a Chipotle is only a few blocks away, and where my large windows give me an excellent view of Redrock Canyon and the Spring Mountains. This move has significantly decreased my gasoline expenses, but with no net gain, since my Chipotle expenses have skyrocketed.

But all is not well.

My firm can no longer afford me, and is unwilling to even try. I've been in the game for five years now. Law firms are able to pay salaries to mid-level associates either by pyramid-building with younger associates, or by cherry-picking mid-level (higher billable) work for such mid-level people to handle. My firm has made it abundantly clear that there will be no pyramid-building beneath me, and has no mid-level billable work for me to do. Further, all three partners - all of whom work out of our Reno office - refuse to believe that I can move to a different Las Vegas firm and make 150% of what I'm making here, to do the exact same job. The party line is that I should be working to build this firm into a place that can afford to pay me what I think I'm worth, because I'm not really getting unsolicited calls from other attorneys to come work with them; those people calling with those job offers are not serious. It was pure serendipity that I sent out five resumes one morning, and had four interviews lined up before the close of business that day. Apparently, the associates of my firm's Las Vegas office are suffering from collective hallucinations about how much the market demands our services and expertise, and how much the market will pay for that service and expertise.

In my very first discussion with my current boss, he said that, when you're in business, the biggest problem you face is finding and keeping good people. How much of that is because good people always need to move to another job to catch up to the market rate they should be getting paid already?

While it's certainly easy to quote Adam Smith as I turn my back on my current peers to look for another job, I have problems with that. First of all, I think Adam Smith had it wrong; read up on the Nash Equilibrium Theory (or just watch "A Beautiful Mind"). While it's a toss-up as to which scenario we're LESS likely to face on large scale: either the dynamic closed system envisioned by Nash, or the vacuum of relevant collateral and/or intersectional interests which would allow us to pursue Smith's selfish ways, the truth is probably somewhere in between. Besides which - while I am generally as rational as a human being is capable of being - I'm pissed off. Neither Smith nor Nash included spite in their calculations of human responses and interaction, further muddying the grey area between the two. Turns out that emotional response pretty much short-circuits any sort of rational behavior. Anyone who has ever dated a member of the female species should be acutely aware of this phenomenon.

But putting aside the psychosis inherent in X-chromosomes, and returning to my current job situation, the simple fact of the matter is that even if my current firm offered to match whatever salary I get ultimately offered elsewhere, I'd probably still leave. I'm chuckling as I imagine the response of my current bosses once I do inevitably Give Them The Finger, and leave them with 38 active case files that need to be managed by someone. Fucking bastards.

But it is what it is, the firm will do just fine without me, and all this too shall pass. And I'll be fine. And making more money, to boot.

I'm not sure what all this says about me, including that John Nash and Adam Smith do, in fact, come into my thinking as I pursue the future of my professional career. But I think it must say something.