CanadianAirbusPilot
SOPs should not be something which are in company manuals but pilots are not comfortable following them and in daily operations they do things differently. This creates a culture where no one believes in the wisdom of OPS department's or the manufacturer's procedures and has his own thing going. In FBW aircraft FCOM knowledge is not enough to develop your own procedures as the design features, logic of computers and limitation of certain modes is not given in its entirety nor an average pilot is software expert to understand all that. Safer is to refer the matter to the company and the manufacturer and seek their guidance or approval. This particular use of ATHR or V/S may not create problems but the attitude to be different is problematic and can create problems. For example in a GA after setting TOGA thrust FMA call out is mandatory and essential according to Airbus. Three airlines relegated this to after raising gear and this resulted in incidents in all those airlines and in the worst case the aircraft came down to 14ft. above runway in IMC. It could have been fatal on another day.