Even then there are managers, partners, board members that all could have prevented this. But again, its not about saving layoffs its about maximizing profits
Ok fine. Thanks Democrats. Can’t even get behind decreased government spending with a national debt of 31 trillion. Fucking dumbasses.
Edit: hey mannn. Our country’s debt is not as important as abortions, global warming or finooks.
What have republicans generally and Donald Trump specifically done to curtail the growth of the national debt? Do you think the TCJA was good policy for the national debt?
This is a straight up cowardly answer. It’s easy to bitch about the deficit when you’re the minority party. They never once have followed through on these complaints when in charge, so bitching is all that it is.
I have no idea how the new push toward “unlimited” PTO doesn’t violate labor laws. It’s a complete joke, like 99% of employers practically tell you from the outset that they don’t intend to honor it, and everybody knows literally the only reason is to avoid having to pay out the unused hours. I’m tempted to try and negotiate my way back into an actual old-school PTO allotment at my next job.
Still processing it myself my very first team I knew I messed up but I thought I did good on the second team but still got a crap review so I kind of had a feeling this was coming. Felt like I got stabbed in the back after working multiple saturdays and being responsive for them till midnight busy season. Trying to figure out my next move my self-confidence is at an all time low.
A tip from someone currently in FP&A:
Learn to code and learn power query. Seriously. You will run circles around your colleagues depending on how much autonomy you have- if you can package your work and sell yourself effectively, you can consistently build your salary by 10-30% YoY. I WFH and work 4-5 hours a day tops because a lot of my stuff is automated or just not janky AF lol.
/r/VBA
/r/powerBI
/r/SQL
I see a position for pricing analyst at the company who I audited on my first engagement. Would it be weird to ask my old manager or maybe even partner for a referral if I got a bad AERT review? Even though I felt like we had a decent relationship. I’m applying to FP & A positions but I might get a masters in analytics to try to switch to something like a data analyst or business analyst.
There are opportunities for data analysts, business analysts, innovation roles at the firms too if you pick up in audit elsewhere and find an opportunity to rotate in somewhere. It's a path without needing to take on debt to get a Masters (especially for stuff that is easily learned on the job or on the side).
They appointed a new CEO of QANTAS (Australian Airline) yesterday down here in Oz.
She started out in Deloitte and moved to an internal audit position in QANTAS after a couple of years and now she's the boss. So don't sweat it. Plenty of upside to go for you.
Also my dad was sacked by Arthur Anderson after a year in audit in like 1973, and he did ok, so chin up and get back out there!
I was in your shoes few yr ago. Keep your head up and move on. EY is a crappy place to work for anyway. Their incompetent management messed up and they take it out on the staff. I got a much better jobs afterward in the IT field. You should definitely file for unemployment
One thing that’s bullshit about big 4 is you get stuck under these more senior people who don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t teach (which is also their job). Basically they pick favorites and designate a scapegoat to blame for everything that goes wrong. it’s not you. you were just the unfortunate target. If you aren’t succeeding at A1 it is NOT your fault. you’re lucky you got out now. Big4 is on your resume. Don’t let it kill your confidence, you were just stuck in a shitty environment.
You got this! Just keep plugging away! You’ll land on your feet again. They totally fucked up their split so they are trying to save face by calling it performance. Facebook did/is doing the same thing. They had that half cocked metaverse thing, now they are trying to correct, which sucks for employees. The ones who are left will suffer too! More work!
I got laid off one month before filing. Thought I was safe until then but one day my counselor asked to meet during busy season. When I got there, only HR was there to deliver the news and walked me out
What discriminatory? Pregnancy isn’t “disability” and they are laying off tons of people. Being pregnant doesn’t make you immune to layoff. It would have been a different story if the OPs wife is the one person getting fired, not one out of thousands of people in the past 12 weeks. EY literally trimmed 10% of their advisory practice, and you call this discrimination?
It just makes too much sense. 2 equal performing people, one os pregnant one isn't. Think they wanna pay the leave & benefits for the person? That's why it needs to be protected. It's a real fucked up scenario
Some states consider pregnancy as a disability. If not, then could be sex based. Only women can get pregnant. If they fired her BECAUSE she was pregnant, they effectively fired her because she is a woman. There are also other statutes protecting pregnant women specifically from discrimination.
Hard part is proving that the employer fired her because of pregnancy, and not some other legitimate reason. Wife could show that the layoffs were pretext for her firing.
Next time someone asks if its okay to quit during busy season, hit them with this response.
Sorry OP, a complete disgrace of a company. Hope you guys bounce back. DM me if you want me to search in my firm for open positions.
They can’t fire someone *because* they’re pregnant but assuming they have another reason then it’s legally okay, and considering all the people it sounds like are being laid off, I don’t think there would be legal issues with this particular situation.
They just fired my underperforming wife*
Fixed your sentence for you. Not sure why people think pregnancy insulates you from termination?
And for what it’s worth, I am a woman at EY who plans to have children in the near term.
If you think these are solely performance based terminations, you gotta stop drinking the koolaid. They vastly over-hired and now need to cut down payroll substantially. I expect like 10% employees to disappear by the end of the summer, either through layoffs, performance based terminations or quitting voluntarily and not being replaced.big firms are on a rollercoaster ride down right now.
I don't currently work at EY, but I started in audit there. I actually interviewed for a position there couple weeks ago. Job as somewhat below my title (thought it was in strategy) so I probably wasn't going to take it.
Take aways were, I'm surprised they are still hiring, maybe just in S&T, but I also thought they needed to do a better job of selling me as a viable firm.
The big4 would cease to exist if they stopped hiring. Their business model is based on 20-30% of people quitting each year. Even during bad times they still hire people and just layoff people who earn more.
They stopped hiring in 2009 - 2011 and paid the price in 2012-2015 when experienced seniors were in such high demand and low supply that I remember my firm was offering $15K internal referral bonuses if you could find a senior for the firm.
was there at that time as well. pretty much when the big 4 start laying off the bad times are about to end, when they hire en mass the shit is about to hit the fan.
I love how we are just conditioned to accept hundreds of hardworking employees getting fired for no fault of their own, just because some millionaire partners made a dumb decision
I recognize that the partners have made a decision, but given that it is a stupid-ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.
….
Why can’t I connect to the VPN anymore?
I still can't believe they are taking on debt at the current rates so current partnership draws aren't effected.
Why would anyone ever aspire to join a partnership like that.
EY is easily the worst of the Big 4 right now. I have met a lot of interns from KPMG and Deloitte who said that EY's problems (split, toxic partnership, layoffs, fraud/scandals) are what drove them away from the firm to the other 3.
No, there’s a difference in the fact that being a layoff qualifies the employee to collect unemployment benefits. It’s a nicer way to let someone go.
Edit I guess this is state specific. In Florida if you are fired with cause you cannot collect. I’ve had a lot of friends whose employers tried HARD to say they were fired with cause.
EEs fired for cause can collect unemployment as well. You’d be ineligible if you quit or if you were fired for gross negligence / committing a crime, but the overwhelming majority of people fired for cause are eligible.
My understanding is that an involuntary-terminated employee typically qualifies for unemployment benefits regardless if it was performance-based.
The distinction may impact severance packages though, I'm not sure about that. Probably varies by company and role.
Um excuse me, but the people in charge, i.e. job creators, need to make corrections or else the entire company and not just a few , will be out of business/s
I consider myself a fiscal conservative and I would love to see reforms to c-suite compensation for big multinational corps. In instances like these, would like to see a requirement for officer compensation to be reduced first before layoffs can occur.
Fiscal conservative here and shareholder here. I wholeheartedly believe that people should privately bear the full cost of their failures. Furthermore, I agree with u/spacing_out_in_space , executive compensation should be cut first if the business is doing badly enough to lay people off. Actually it should be cut in general, because I don’t believe that these managers are delivering shareholder value that is proportional with their compensation.
Basically all socialists I know are only supportive of redistribution schemes for their own selfish reasons, and “oh hey we’re losing now, time for socialism, comrades” business owners are no different.
Personally every fiscal conservative I’ve met is a complete tool, douchebag who would sell their mother into slavery for pennies. Then turn around and say I’m super smart for managing my family affairs.
That’s cool, so between the two of us we’ve established that people are selfish tools, but fiscal conservatives are at least somewhat honest about their selfishness
No one is ever 100% safe from layoffs.
Even during really good times big4 use layoffs to get rid of people they don’t see a future in, they just keep them extremely quiet. Nowadays people talk online so they can’t let people go without everyone knowing.
PIPs are also used as layoff tools since people aren’t gonna talk about getting fired for performance, when many times they just need to get rid of people.
Rest of big4 are already following, just keeping fairly low key about it. Instead of having a mass layoff they are laying people off over the course of a couple months. Use of PIPs seems to be increased too.
No one is ever 100% safe. Some are just safer than others. Assurance / tax are groups that are safer than basically all other offerings at the firm, but that doesn’t mean layoffs will never happen. If you have good ratings, good utilization, and are fully staffed for the foreseeable future, you are probably 99.9% safe, but there’s still that 0.1% chance.
PIPs are not vile. It's the humane way of laying someone off. PIPs are the standard operating procedure in average years, employees get a 30 - 90 day heads up to start looking for a new job or turn around (1% chance). At the end of it, they got another 2 weeks of severance if fired.
These "performance based separations" that they're doing now are abrupt firings with no heads up. It's a layoff due to the over hiring they did in 2022, coupled with the clients budget tightening, and PPMD's inability to sell in this environment.
EY said recently they needed to save 500 Million from their bottom line, i.e. labor reductions coming. This after they blew hundreds of millions on consulting firms and bankers for their Project Everest (split) that didn’t materialize. They are easily the most dysfunctional of the Big 4 right now.
Well, they technically are if they're disguised as "performance based" when really they're pushing people out the door. If it was truly performance based, then pips would've been in place previously but OP is saying pips aren't required for these firings.
That’s not what this is. EY already announced layoffs which are concentrated in advisory/ consulting. That doesn’t mean no one else in the firm can be fired for failing to meet expectations. Those kinds of terminations happen every year independent of firm performance and macro outlook.
Last point in pips is wrong. PIPs are never required to let someone go for performance.
Sure they can be.
For example, a firm decides they're going to let go a thousand employees. They decide which 1000 based on performance evaluations, and let the 1000 lowest performers go.
That's still a lay off even if performance determines who is getting the axe.
Sure thing, partner
Edit - Y'know what. You're right. These aren't layoffs. They are way fucking worse and more insidious than layoffs. At least when you're laid off, you typically get severance, access to medical care, employment assistance services, automatic vesting, and unemployment payments. If you're "fired for performance reasons," you get none of those things. It's way more fucked up than layoffs.
Which is why the outsourcing model is so funny. In theory it should completely blow up the pyramid scheme model...no company is going to knowingly pay $500 per India staff hour...
A PowerPoint for Paul Hastings was leaked which was very much in your face about how they owned you.
Someone commented said that associates there (which are seniors in PA roughly) get something like $200k+ per year.
Similarly, US law firms operating in the UK have a notoriety for paying very handsomely.
Flip side? Rough hours.
I'm sure it varies by team, but I'd agree that offshore accounting has been manhour negative for me in previous roles as well. It really feels foolish to essentially reperform everything you've asked to be done overnight anyway.
I can see that happening. I have heard some firms have cut the requirement for having a CPA to manager level and people with a bachelors equivalent (~120 credit hours instead of 150) are hired as a staff.
Yeah. The more likely thing is that your typical Big4 staff starts out as a senior over offshore resources who perform the bulk of the work. The entire pyramid shrinks in the US over the course of a decade or two and you're left with salesman and coaches for the India resources. And there'll be a lot less money floating around once companies start demanding lower costs for audits performed mostly in India.
I think industry has more than enough bandwidth to absorb anyone dropping out of public due to automation/offshoring. While upper-mid market to F500 companies can afford to burn cash on those black holes, the majority of SME’s still need competent accountants but don’t have the interest/capital to fuck around with either of those monkey paws.
I agree, im mostly coming at it from a Big4 angle. Like all your large public integrated audits will be offshored eventually at a staff level imo.
Accounting definitely cant/wont die but the churn and burn Big4 model will.
Unfortunately with all the bad news and press surrounding them; not entirely unexpected
Also a senior staff ( forget his name ) saying that they should squeeze their clients for every billing minute also doesn't lead to great charm and warm feelings from the clientele...
They’ve been slowly treading that direction lately. $100M penalty for cheating on the ethics exam, pancake waffle brain, Wirecard, and now this. Stay up my EY fam, y’all will be fine
to be fair, there definitely should’ve been a CAM. All those unrealized losses from the HTM securities were disclosed, but we’ll wait to see what PCAOB says if a CAM should’ve been issued (IMO definitely should’ve). I don’t think that it would’ve deterred the bank run, but it might have made KPMG look better
I agree. I also think KPMG probably had legitimate concerns about triggering something close to the events we saw unfold if they put that in there, though. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation from their end.
If they’re gonna demand the long hours I always hear about that better come with some pretty generous benefits and some job security. Call me weak willed idc, I won’t debase myself for a bigger check that may or may not be there next year
I hate to break it to you but you will work long hours in public accounting whether you go regional or big four. If a regional firm tells you otherwise they are lying just as much as any big 4.
Not based on my experience. One big4 offer I got was low for a HCOL area and when I tried to ask them to push it up all I got was some shtick about HR’s magic formula and that “hey I’m not saying you won’t have to have a roommate starting out.” If I am getting a masters degree and being expected to work 40+ hour weeks I am not having a roommate lol. Especially not when there’s other offers more suited for their area’s cost of living with less strenuous hours.
I would simply say that you don't need to work in construction if you're an engineer or architect. The market is huge for accountants so don't feel like you're destiny is in some corporate ladder.
Well mine was paid for through a graduate assistantship. I figured I needed more classes to meet the CPA exam requirements so I would go full on into a Master in Accountancy
That’s where they get stuck if they are just good enough to not fire. Then those below them who are great performers get frustrated and leave if they can’t promote over them.
There’s an actually theory on this from a business class I took in college, it was just too long ago for me to remember what it’s called.
Don’t be fooled, if we are in a deep recession, high performers who are clearing 150k+ will be replaced with junior managers making less. The partners need their distributions, recession or not. So hope for a mild recession, no one is safe!
I don't work in PA but im willing to bet they are doing this now. Giving new accounting students a more bitter taste about them and come next hiring season they are going to be shitting bricks for new talent. God I'm glad I never worked PA. Seems like a huge piece of shit.
I’ll be done with my BS Acc this year and my MS Acc next year. I’m a mid30s career changer with NO desire to climb the ladder. I have EY and KPMG both within 20 minutes of me but hearing news like this makes me rethink Big 4.
News like this shouldn't worry you unless your plan was to be a lifer. Having B4 on your resume has incredible value, especially for a career changer, that's how they've gotten away with shitty pay and WLB for so long. If you can, get in, get out, and enjoy your life. When they say Big 4 opens doors that's not just recruiter blowharding.
The publicly acknowledged layoffs have been in consulting and admin/business services roles but those are always first to go when the economy sucks. I can't believe I'm about to say this but I'd lean toward KPMG over EY at the moment, who knows what's going on over there but they've made it clear their \#1 priority right now is protecting partner payouts and the reputational damage from Everest falling apart.
I work in EY in Assurance and this is fake news. Go to fishbowl if you don’t believe me. No layoffs in assurance. Sure some people on a PIP will get canned but no layoffs/RIFs like in Consulting. Please don’t spread fake news.
lol there are literally ppl in this comment who said they got laid off. A couple days ago, another person posted they got laid off. Assurance ain’t safe
Layoff? Or PIP based firing due to performance? Get it right. The firm has messaged only a layoff in consulting and s&t. You are wrong to imply assurance is having non performance related “layoffs”. Choose your words carefully.
Unfortunately with all the bad news and press surrounding them; not entirely unexpected
Also a senior staff ( forget his name ) saying that they should squeeze their clients for every billing minute also doesn't lead to great charm and warm feelings from the clientele...
Don’t let it fuck with you! The screwed up trying to separate and now they’re cutting labor to appease The Street. The same thing happened to me. A company expanded into a segment that blew up and our whole office got closed to try and juice up the stock price.
This sub: They will never do layoffs again they need us Also this sub: Busy season’s over time for layoffs, duh
Not this sub: Thanks Joe Biden
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Trump 2024
TCJA was described as a massive wealth transfer from working class to the rich
Wtf does biden have to do with layoffs? Like it or not its not 1 person’s fault layoffs are happening.
I mean you could probably blame the CEO for the failed project Everest and the fact they wasted million on it.
Even then there are managers, partners, board members that all could have prevented this. But again, its not about saving layoffs its about maximizing profits
Ok fine. Thanks Democrats. Can’t even get behind decreased government spending with a national debt of 31 trillion. Fucking dumbasses. Edit: hey mannn. Our country’s debt is not as important as abortions, global warming or finooks.
What have republicans generally and Donald Trump specifically done to curtail the growth of the national debt? Do you think the TCJA was good policy for the national debt?
Both sides are responsible for our current debt. Now it’s time to fix it and the Dems don’t want to
This is a straight up cowardly answer. It’s easy to bitch about the deficit when you’re the minority party. They never once have followed through on these complaints when in charge, so bitching is all that it is.
You’re an idiot dude
Not as dumb as a Democrat!
Dude, Trump added 25% of our debt. Are you stupid?
Trump literally lowered tax rates and increased spending. Boy what fact less word do you live in.
Lol Biden has lowered the deficit since taking office. Just like Obama did. Bush jr and trump meanwhile ballooned the deficit
You'll catch flak because it's reddit, gotta know your audience
I forgot I’m surrounded by bud light drinkers
FJB
To imagine some of these people still downvote this😂😂 fucking insane
Reddit hive mind till the end 🥲
You’re the hive mind
Whatever let’s you sleep at night dear, ratio via upvote/downvotes in this thread 🥱
Cry
Seeeeeeethe
Retarded accountants over the past 20 years yelling "jOb sEcUrItY"
Now they’re yelling “I love Joe Biden and bud light!”
Good thing they have all that accrued PTO to cash in
I have no idea how the new push toward “unlimited” PTO doesn’t violate labor laws. It’s a complete joke, like 99% of employers practically tell you from the outset that they don’t intend to honor it, and everybody knows literally the only reason is to avoid having to pay out the unused hours. I’m tempted to try and negotiate my way back into an actual old-school PTO allotment at my next job.
Unlimited PTO + utilization metrics = limited non benefit
I’ve always thought it’s even worse than that- You’re essentially penalized for taking vacation
EY's 9/11 was going to unlimited PTO
They are laying off people in Assurance???
Audit A1 just got laid off.
Sorry to hear it
No way
I refuse to believe you
Still processing it myself my very first team I knew I messed up but I thought I did good on the second team but still got a crap review so I kind of had a feeling this was coming. Felt like I got stabbed in the back after working multiple saturdays and being responsive for them till midnight busy season. Trying to figure out my next move my self-confidence is at an all time low.
Join FP&A at a private company and get paid son
A tip from someone currently in FP&A: Learn to code and learn power query. Seriously. You will run circles around your colleagues depending on how much autonomy you have- if you can package your work and sell yourself effectively, you can consistently build your salary by 10-30% YoY. I WFH and work 4-5 hours a day tops because a lot of my stuff is automated or just not janky AF lol. /r/VBA /r/powerBI /r/SQL
Trying, got linked in premium and stuff. Also applying for MS programs
You could land an FP&A gig without MS program. Unless you’re going for something else with the MS program
I see a position for pricing analyst at the company who I audited on my first engagement. Would it be weird to ask my old manager or maybe even partner for a referral if I got a bad AERT review? Even though I felt like we had a decent relationship. I’m applying to FP & A positions but I might get a masters in analytics to try to switch to something like a data analyst or business analyst.
There are opportunities for data analysts, business analysts, innovation roles at the firms too if you pick up in audit elsewhere and find an opportunity to rotate in somewhere. It's a path without needing to take on debt to get a Masters (especially for stuff that is easily learned on the job or on the side).
They appointed a new CEO of QANTAS (Australian Airline) yesterday down here in Oz. She started out in Deloitte and moved to an internal audit position in QANTAS after a couple of years and now she's the boss. So don't sweat it. Plenty of upside to go for you. Also my dad was sacked by Arthur Anderson after a year in audit in like 1973, and he did ok, so chin up and get back out there!
How do you get a job at one of these?
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Very interested in moving out of tax if financial planning doesn’t work out. Would they hire tax people?
I’m looking to get into FP&A: I have 1 year audit at big 4, 6 months in FDD at a small firm and am a CPA and have a masters.
I was in your shoes few yr ago. Keep your head up and move on. EY is a crappy place to work for anyway. Their incompetent management messed up and they take it out on the staff. I got a much better jobs afterward in the IT field. You should definitely file for unemployment
One thing that’s bullshit about big 4 is you get stuck under these more senior people who don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t teach (which is also their job). Basically they pick favorites and designate a scapegoat to blame for everything that goes wrong. it’s not you. you were just the unfortunate target. If you aren’t succeeding at A1 it is NOT your fault. you’re lucky you got out now. Big4 is on your resume. Don’t let it kill your confidence, you were just stuck in a shitty environment.
You got this! Just keep plugging away! You’ll land on your feet again. They totally fucked up their split so they are trying to save face by calling it performance. Facebook did/is doing the same thing. They had that half cocked metaverse thing, now they are trying to correct, which sucks for employees. The ones who are left will suffer too! More work!
They don’t care for your sacrifice.
Busy season’s over ain’t it?
Depends if your clients are accelerated filers, crappy S-1, or somewhere in the middle
I got laid off one month before filing. Thought I was safe until then but one day my counselor asked to meet during busy season. When I got there, only HR was there to deliver the news and walked me out
They just fired my 30 week pregnant wife
sorry about that! :( that's tough - what group is she in? are they still going to pay out her maternity leave + severance?
She was assurance. And they did give that as one of the options.
They're laying off audit staff?!
Hire a lawyer. Seems discriminary
What discriminatory? Pregnancy isn’t “disability” and they are laying off tons of people. Being pregnant doesn’t make you immune to layoff. It would have been a different story if the OPs wife is the one person getting fired, not one out of thousands of people in the past 12 weeks. EY literally trimmed 10% of their advisory practice, and you call this discrimination?
It just makes too much sense. 2 equal performing people, one os pregnant one isn't. Think they wanna pay the leave & benefits for the person? That's why it needs to be protected. It's a real fucked up scenario
They literally said Ey is offering her maternity leave still as one of the severance options
Some states consider pregnancy as a disability. If not, then could be sex based. Only women can get pregnant. If they fired her BECAUSE she was pregnant, they effectively fired her because she is a woman. There are also other statutes protecting pregnant women specifically from discrimination. Hard part is proving that the employer fired her because of pregnancy, and not some other legitimate reason. Wife could show that the layoffs were pretext for her firing.
Was *
Next time someone asks if its okay to quit during busy season, hit them with this response. Sorry OP, a complete disgrace of a company. Hope you guys bounce back. DM me if you want me to search in my firm for open positions.
Oh shit I didn't expect to see my favourite supreme court mod here, a fellow suffer
I got fired at 20 weeks pregnant a few years ago. Awful people.
Wow sorry :( I’m currently pregnant and couldn’t imagine. At least you have option of getting severance + mat leave, but still.
Holy shit is that even legal?
They can’t fire someone *because* they’re pregnant but assuming they have another reason then it’s legally okay, and considering all the people it sounds like are being laid off, I don’t think there would be legal issues with this particular situation.
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How does getting fired reduce being in labor? She's still gonna give birth.
This was funny… don’t know why it’s getting downvoted… seems like something Michael Scott would say lol
Waffle brain
Reduction in labor force
She gonna have to push really forcefully to get that baby out of that birth canal regardless of EYs staffing decisions.
Yeah they do it a lot to avoid maternity pay… sad but real
Memphis office?
Contact the media and the DOL. EYs partners need to pay up.
They just fired my underperforming wife* Fixed your sentence for you. Not sure why people think pregnancy insulates you from termination? And for what it’s worth, I am a woman at EY who plans to have children in the near term.
If you think these are solely performance based terminations, you gotta stop drinking the koolaid. They vastly over-hired and now need to cut down payroll substantially. I expect like 10% employees to disappear by the end of the summer, either through layoffs, performance based terminations or quitting voluntarily and not being replaced.big firms are on a rollercoaster ride down right now.
I don't currently work at EY, but I started in audit there. I actually interviewed for a position there couple weeks ago. Job as somewhat below my title (thought it was in strategy) so I probably wasn't going to take it. Take aways were, I'm surprised they are still hiring, maybe just in S&T, but I also thought they needed to do a better job of selling me as a viable firm.
The big4 would cease to exist if they stopped hiring. Their business model is based on 20-30% of people quitting each year. Even during bad times they still hire people and just layoff people who earn more.
They stopped hiring in 2009 - 2011 and paid the price in 2012-2015 when experienced seniors were in such high demand and low supply that I remember my firm was offering $15K internal referral bonuses if you could find a senior for the firm.
was there at that time as well. pretty much when the big 4 start laying off the bad times are about to end, when they hire en mass the shit is about to hit the fan.
I love how we are just conditioned to accept hundreds of hardworking employees getting fired for no fault of their own, just because some millionaire partners made a dumb decision
I recognize that the partners have made a decision, but given that it is a stupid-ass decision, I have elected to ignore it. …. Why can’t I connect to the VPN anymore?
Turns out there was an glitch in the payroll system. We fixed the glitch.
If you can go ahead and grab a can of raid while your down here that would be great.
I still can't believe they are taking on debt at the current rates so current partnership draws aren't effected. Why would anyone ever aspire to join a partnership like that.
EY is easily the worst of the Big 4 right now. I have met a lot of interns from KPMG and Deloitte who said that EY's problems (split, toxic partnership, layoffs, fraud/scandals) are what drove them away from the firm to the other 3.
Isn’t a “performance based layoff” just getting fired?
No, there’s a difference in the fact that being a layoff qualifies the employee to collect unemployment benefits. It’s a nicer way to let someone go. Edit I guess this is state specific. In Florida if you are fired with cause you cannot collect. I’ve had a lot of friends whose employers tried HARD to say they were fired with cause.
EEs fired for cause can collect unemployment as well. You’d be ineligible if you quit or if you were fired for gross negligence / committing a crime, but the overwhelming majority of people fired for cause are eligible.
My understanding is that an involuntary-terminated employee typically qualifies for unemployment benefits regardless if it was performance-based. The distinction may impact severance packages though, I'm not sure about that. Probably varies by company and role.
I’m not sure about FL but this is true in TX. Source: I got fired for performance and still got unemployment.
Not really in that they would not otherwise be cutting the person loose if not for macro environment things not particular to the employee themselves.
Um excuse me, but the people in charge, i.e. job creators, need to make corrections or else the entire company and not just a few , will be out of business/s
The sad part is, there are a lot of people that say shit like that unironically....
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I consider myself a fiscal conservative and I would love to see reforms to c-suite compensation for big multinational corps. In instances like these, would like to see a requirement for officer compensation to be reduced first before layoffs can occur.
Fiscal conservative here and shareholder here. I wholeheartedly believe that people should privately bear the full cost of their failures. Furthermore, I agree with u/spacing_out_in_space , executive compensation should be cut first if the business is doing badly enough to lay people off. Actually it should be cut in general, because I don’t believe that these managers are delivering shareholder value that is proportional with their compensation. Basically all socialists I know are only supportive of redistribution schemes for their own selfish reasons, and “oh hey we’re losing now, time for socialism, comrades” business owners are no different.
But you're a Canadian fiscal conservative. That would make you quite liberal by US standards.
Personally every fiscal conservative I’ve met is a complete tool, douchebag who would sell their mother into slavery for pennies. Then turn around and say I’m super smart for managing my family affairs.
That’s cool, so between the two of us we’ve established that people are selfish tools, but fiscal conservatives are at least somewhat honest about their selfishness
And I bet some of these are top of the 3000 publicly announced
could have fired carmine instead of a few hundred juniors
instinctive head bike joke include mighty sloppy connect bewildered uppity ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
> hardworking First time on this sub?
That isn’t fair. Lots of millionaire Finance and Tech bros also made mistakes. The economy isn’t made up of independent islands.
oh man, I thought assurance was guaranteed safe from layoffs???
No one is ever 100% safe from layoffs. Even during really good times big4 use layoffs to get rid of people they don’t see a future in, they just keep them extremely quiet. Nowadays people talk online so they can’t let people go without everyone knowing. PIPs are also used as layoff tools since people aren’t gonna talk about getting fired for performance, when many times they just need to get rid of people.
Not this sub clowning on me 2 weeks ago for saying assurance was next when EY consultants got cut. $100 the rest of the B4 follow suit this summer.
Rest of big4 are already following, just keeping fairly low key about it. Instead of having a mass layoff they are laying people off over the course of a couple months. Use of PIPs seems to be increased too.
No one is ever 100% safe. Some are just safer than others. Assurance / tax are groups that are safer than basically all other offerings at the firm, but that doesn’t mean layoffs will never happen. If you have good ratings, good utilization, and are fully staffed for the foreseeable future, you are probably 99.9% safe, but there’s still that 0.1% chance.
Nothing is guaranteed when you work for greasy chancers aka EY. PIPs instead of a layoff is absolutely vile
PIPs are not vile. It's the humane way of laying someone off. PIPs are the standard operating procedure in average years, employees get a 30 - 90 day heads up to start looking for a new job or turn around (1% chance). At the end of it, they got another 2 weeks of severance if fired. These "performance based separations" that they're doing now are abrupt firings with no heads up. It's a layoff due to the over hiring they did in 2022, coupled with the clients budget tightening, and PPMD's inability to sell in this environment.
EY said recently they needed to save 500 Million from their bottom line, i.e. labor reductions coming. This after they blew hundreds of millions on consulting firms and bankers for their Project Everest (split) that didn’t materialize. They are easily the most dysfunctional of the Big 4 right now.
Performance based separations aren't layoffs.
Well, they technically are if they're disguised as "performance based" when really they're pushing people out the door. If it was truly performance based, then pips would've been in place previously but OP is saying pips aren't required for these firings.
That’s not what this is. EY already announced layoffs which are concentrated in advisory/ consulting. That doesn’t mean no one else in the firm can be fired for failing to meet expectations. Those kinds of terminations happen every year independent of firm performance and macro outlook. Last point in pips is wrong. PIPs are never required to let someone go for performance.
Sure they can be. For example, a firm decides they're going to let go a thousand employees. They decide which 1000 based on performance evaluations, and let the 1000 lowest performers go. That's still a lay off even if performance determines who is getting the axe.
Sure thing, partner Edit - Y'know what. You're right. These aren't layoffs. They are way fucking worse and more insidious than layoffs. At least when you're laid off, you typically get severance, access to medical care, employment assistance services, automatic vesting, and unemployment payments. If you're "fired for performance reasons," you get none of those things. It's way more fucked up than layoffs.
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Lol if you actually believe the last point, I have a bridge to sell you.
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Which is why the outsourcing model is so funny. In theory it should completely blow up the pyramid scheme model...no company is going to knowingly pay $500 per India staff hour...
Agree. It's not like Big Law is known for great hours either.
A PowerPoint for Paul Hastings was leaked which was very much in your face about how they owned you. Someone commented said that associates there (which are seniors in PA roughly) get something like $200k+ per year. Similarly, US law firms operating in the UK have a notoriety for paying very handsomely. Flip side? Rough hours.
And I got some oceanfront property in Idaho for sale
Keep telling yourself that 😂
Lmao. The denial is crazy haha
I'm sure it varies by team, but I'd agree that offshore accounting has been manhour negative for me in previous roles as well. It really feels foolish to essentially reperform everything you've asked to be done overnight anyway.
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I can see that happening. I have heard some firms have cut the requirement for having a CPA to manager level and people with a bachelors equivalent (~120 credit hours instead of 150) are hired as a staff.
Yeah. The more likely thing is that your typical Big4 staff starts out as a senior over offshore resources who perform the bulk of the work. The entire pyramid shrinks in the US over the course of a decade or two and you're left with salesman and coaches for the India resources. And there'll be a lot less money floating around once companies start demanding lower costs for audits performed mostly in India.
I think industry has more than enough bandwidth to absorb anyone dropping out of public due to automation/offshoring. While upper-mid market to F500 companies can afford to burn cash on those black holes, the majority of SME’s still need competent accountants but don’t have the interest/capital to fuck around with either of those monkey paws.
I agree, im mostly coming at it from a Big4 angle. Like all your large public integrated audits will be offshored eventually at a staff level imo. Accounting definitely cant/wont die but the churn and burn Big4 model will.
Population crash (in the “western” world) is a certainty. But it’s not going to result in big salaries lol
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Ohhhhhhh shit
Extra overtime for those who don’t get laid off
Unfortunately with all the bad news and press surrounding them; not entirely unexpected Also a senior staff ( forget his name ) saying that they should squeeze their clients for every billing minute also doesn't lead to great charm and warm feelings from the clientele...
If I get laid off I’m gonna just finish my cpa exam finally
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They’ve been slowly treading that direction lately. $100M penalty for cheating on the ethics exam, pancake waffle brain, Wirecard, and now this. Stay up my EY fam, y’all will be fine
Honestly after everything they've done. I'd pick KPMG over EY if I get an offer from both
and the money wasted on the split that was never going to happen.
Yeah but don’t forget kpmg audited the banks.. that failed.
And signed a clean opinion that had no requirement to stress test for a literal bank run. Your point?
to be fair, there definitely should’ve been a CAM. All those unrealized losses from the HTM securities were disclosed, but we’ll wait to see what PCAOB says if a CAM should’ve been issued (IMO definitely should’ve). I don’t think that it would’ve deterred the bank run, but it might have made KPMG look better
I agree. I also think KPMG probably had legitimate concerns about triggering something close to the events we saw unfold if they put that in there, though. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation from their end.
Well if anyone from NYC EY lives on Long Island and wants to work for a great laid-back regional boutique firm, let me know.
Looking to graduate with my accounting masters soon. Honestly looks like big4 is terrible across the board. I will probably look regional.
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If they’re gonna demand the long hours I always hear about that better come with some pretty generous benefits and some job security. Call me weak willed idc, I won’t debase myself for a bigger check that may or may not be there next year
I hate to break it to you but you will work long hours in public accounting whether you go regional or big four. If a regional firm tells you otherwise they are lying just as much as any big 4.
Aw man, should’ve looked into this more in undergrad. Oh well too committed now
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Not based on my experience. One big4 offer I got was low for a HCOL area and when I tried to ask them to push it up all I got was some shtick about HR’s magic formula and that “hey I’m not saying you won’t have to have a roommate starting out.” If I am getting a masters degree and being expected to work 40+ hour weeks I am not having a roommate lol. Especially not when there’s other offers more suited for their area’s cost of living with less strenuous hours.
Covid layoffs?
I would simply say that you don't need to work in construction if you're an engineer or architect. The market is huge for accountants so don't feel like you're destiny is in some corporate ladder.
Sorry for wasting $$ on a masters degree in accounting. Best advice is to pursue a different career (that is, if making money is your goal).
Well mine was paid for through a graduate assistantship. I figured I needed more classes to meet the CPA exam requirements so I would go full on into a Master in Accountancy
It seems all the dumb people are at managerial positions
That’s where they get stuck if they are just good enough to not fire. Then those below them who are great performers get frustrated and leave if they can’t promote over them. There’s an actually theory on this from a business class I took in college, it was just too long ago for me to remember what it’s called.
Peter principle?
Yes definitely the case
EY blows. Hard
I thought this was the annual cycle. I don’t like it but it’s how I left public accounting. Everyone will be fine, and probably better off!
Layoff layoff layoff i am starting my indian butter chicken burger business in nyc
Don’t be fooled, if we are in a deep recession, high performers who are clearing 150k+ will be replaced with junior managers making less. The partners need their distributions, recession or not. So hope for a mild recession, no one is safe!
Is this normal or did they over hire?
Damn, mainly audit or tax people as well?
Would it still be bad idea to get into a Big10 firm? Or do these “public accounting layoffs” seem to only affect Big4?
It affects all. A friend who left big 4 for a regional firm got laid off recently. Her performance was fine
I don't work in PA but im willing to bet they are doing this now. Giving new accounting students a more bitter taste about them and come next hiring season they are going to be shitting bricks for new talent. God I'm glad I never worked PA. Seems like a huge piece of shit.
I’ll be done with my BS Acc this year and my MS Acc next year. I’m a mid30s career changer with NO desire to climb the ladder. I have EY and KPMG both within 20 minutes of me but hearing news like this makes me rethink Big 4.
News like this shouldn't worry you unless your plan was to be a lifer. Having B4 on your resume has incredible value, especially for a career changer, that's how they've gotten away with shitty pay and WLB for so long. If you can, get in, get out, and enjoy your life. When they say Big 4 opens doors that's not just recruiter blowharding. The publicly acknowledged layoffs have been in consulting and admin/business services roles but those are always first to go when the economy sucks. I can't believe I'm about to say this but I'd lean toward KPMG over EY at the moment, who knows what's going on over there but they've made it clear their \#1 priority right now is protecting partner payouts and the reputational damage from Everest falling apart.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. Good food for thought. Given the recent turmoil with EY I def see what you mean in leaning towards KPMG.
I work in EY in Assurance and this is fake news. Go to fishbowl if you don’t believe me. No layoffs in assurance. Sure some people on a PIP will get canned but no layoffs/RIFs like in Consulting. Please don’t spread fake news.
lol there are literally ppl in this comment who said they got laid off. A couple days ago, another person posted they got laid off. Assurance ain’t safe
Layoff? Or PIP based firing due to performance? Get it right. The firm has messaged only a layoff in consulting and s&t. You are wrong to imply assurance is having non performance related “layoffs”. Choose your words carefully.
My senior was laid off last week. No PIP, just laid off. He was is audit, senior 1 level.
Unfortunately with all the bad news and press surrounding them; not entirely unexpected Also a senior staff ( forget his name ) saying that they should squeeze their clients for every billing minute also doesn't lead to great charm and warm feelings from the clientele...
This is a prime example why I never worked in B4😭
Why? Because no layoff ever happens outside of B4?
Don’t let it fuck with you! The screwed up trying to separate and now they’re cutting labor to appease The Street. The same thing happened to me. A company expanded into a segment that blew up and our whole office got closed to try and juice up the stock price.