Comment by tialaramex

3 years ago

Many lawyers have to religiously time track everything. Because hours attributable to a specific client are billed and billable hours are where the revenue comes from.

On the other hand, lawyers knowledge of the law and legal procedures doesn't become stale after a few years.

"Requires 20 years experience in the Affordable Care Act" - Said no law firm ever

  • On the other hand, tax codes and laws change all the time. If the law changes, and you don't know it as a professional in that area, the outcome isn't good.

    Every field has to deal with change. In law, you've got politicians changing the rules, in the corporate area, you've got Office Politicians changing the rules.

  • It does get stale and changes per jurisdiction. Just look at how GDPR and CCPA changed the privacy landscape. At least programmers don’t have to deal with linked lists having different time complexities in California.

This happens for quite a few software engineering jobs too.

It's not the 6 minutes I heard lawyers do, but I definitely have been asked to track intervals of 15 minutes.

  • If you were a lawyer and said "I am not willing to track my time" you limit your options significantly more than a programmer

No SWE has been audited for pointing their JIRA ticket too high.

  • Totally not true. Creating room to sit on your thumbs through the time management system gets noticed by pretty much everyone. Some SWE roles are billed to client accounts hourly, too.