All,
I thought I'd come out and ask the general public for their experiences in the Consulting industry to gain insight as to what is the "norm," if any, for a Friday when working remotely. I'm currently working for one of the Big 4 Consulting groups, and have been on my project for a few months now. We've had a busy times (though the hours still weren't too bad), working 14 hour days plus one of the weekend days.
But when shit isnt hitting the fan, my Fridays are really laid back, extremely so that I'm a tad concerned, to the point where I question is this normal? or do I have it that lucky? On Fridays, I do on average about 2 hrs max of client work. The most I've ever spent on client work was around 5hrs, and that was due to a client call lasting 3 hours. Very rarely do I even need to do the 2 hours of client work on a Friday. Last week, I managed to do only around 30 minutes of work the entire day and started my weekend at 11am (basically a 3 day weekend)
I realized that this was an issue, and began reaching out to my friends who are also first years at other consulting firms, and many have voiced the same type of productivity (average roughly around 2-3 hrs of actual work). I'm starting to question whether this is typical for a Friday? or if I should cherish the moments I have left on this project if it only goes downhill form here.
Love to get perspectives from people from other firms. My assumption going in was that working remote would be laid back, but you'd still have a shit ton of stuff to do, its just the fact that you get to do it form home.
Depends on the project / project team / Client you are on. Some Project Leaders may expect their team to be fully engaged on a Friday, while others are more laid back. Also seems like a lot of internal events happen on Fridays which may cut into the time that you're expected to be working on client related work.
I've had it vary from full-on workdays, to what you've mentioned.
Why are you questioning this? Go with it.
From what I've seen, you're experiencing the norm
There are no trophies for most hours worked. If you can get away with it, do it.
I try to show up by 9 and leave by 5:30 on Friday, would imagine I do 5-6 hours of real work in that time, on average at least.
Fridays are extremely unproductive, on average I think 4-6 hours of work is probably right You get to office late, you have 2 hour lunch, then you grab coffee with a colleague + office events
It really depends on your project/team and whether it's a travel project . When I worked in Big4 consulting and was on a travel project (ie: the 3-4-5 schedule), Friday was a essentially a joke. I "worked" from home on most Fridays and even then, like you, worked 2 hours at most on client work.
It's generally the norm as Fridays are viewed as a chance to reconnect/network with your home office and catch-up on things like office events, trainings, and administrative matters. I think there's even the general belief out there that Friday is laid-back in part to allow you to take care of personal matters like doctor and dental appointments.....things you can't really do while traveling and probably would've scheduled during your work week if you were in a regular 9-5 job.
At the end of the day, I wouldn't worry too much about it. For one, you're not really going to be that productive on a project while away from your team anyway so no need to stress out (it's understood that the value-add will be limited given the circumstances). Second, in a sense it's already factored into the schedule......this is why you're working 14 hours a day on the client site so you get the bulk of your work done by Thursday and have Friday to tie up any loose ends.
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