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26-Year-Old EY Employee Succumbs to 'Work Stress' Four Months After Joining

196 points by shscs911 2y ago

trilbyglens 2y ago
Afaik these sorts of consulting firms are built on the strategy of grinding people down and replacing them often. They know that having them on the CV is desirable and they deliberately burn people out with workload. But hey we gave up on labor rights and protections long ago, so what can be done?
- eastbound 2y ago
  France has labor rights and EY employees are still getting exploited. The DIRECCTE sieged their office on a Sunday and every employee was there.
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    "What should we do if they're here voluntarily?" — EY + Deloitte Austria
    - wiz21c 2y ago
      They are not there voluntarily. They are the product of social norms, social hierarchy, need for money, etc. If they knew exactyl what their in for they would probably change their mind. So EY should explain very clearly what they do. I guess it could be somthing like "welcome at EY, we work for the greatest accounts in the world, you'll meet the top mamangement of the top management and get tons of money and an a CV worth millions. However, to get that: we will push you to your limits. That implies: you may burn out (and needs psychological assistance for years), you may be so tired that you develop illness, you will be treated like inferior humans (although we won't tell you), we won't be responsible, you will work insane hours, we won't tolerate complains and you'll be fired at will"... But now I'm reading it, it's just like pictures of dmaged lungs on packs of cigarettes... Does it really help? :-( Companies which leads people to such extremes should be penalized.
      - listenallyall 2y ago
        In the 1980s, Michael Lewis wrote his first book, Liar's Poker, which gave a detailed, first-hand account of investment banking that was very similar to what you just described. Millions to be made, but the whole thing is absurd and everyone is treated like shit. The number of young college grads who wanted to go start their career in investment banking increased tremendously.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Austria is not a model to follow here.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    You can't discount regional culture though. Years ago when my father was leading a team in a bank in Paris, he would observe that most people were at the office before he was and he was nearly always the first to leave. But once when getting back to the office 5 minutes after realizing he had forgotten something important at his desk, the whole thing was empty. He realized all his subordinates would just wait for him to go in order to not be seen as lazy workers. It was all about pretending as some might have been playing solitaire while waiting, who knows. He had to implement a mandatory "leave before I do" rule to fight against this toxic culture. Years later I realized one coworker in my mostly swiss team was doing the same when I went back to my desk also for a forgotten item less than 5 minutes after my departure. One of my coworker was always still at his desk when I was heading home but when I went back, he was already gone. Out of curiosity I did it a few times and could only confirm. I even rammed into him in the corridor when I turned back literally 2 minutes later. That employee was french too. ---- Different culture, but similar. There are lots of indians and people of indian origin in my company. Most are obviously living in India and some living in UK and the USA. It seems to me that those living in India are spending a lot of time at work. Since I am on the euro timezone, they are obviously online when I am starting my day, but they are also always online a long time after I have shutdown my computer according to their activity on our enterprise chat app. I don't know the details of their local laws but this cannot be healthy in the long term.
    - Saline9515 2y ago
      It's the same everywhere. In France the partners forced it through collective agreements. There is now no upper limit on what they can ask from an associate. https://www.editions-legislatives.fr/actualite/temps-de-travail-tensions-chez-ey-1e-volet/ https://www.editions-legislatives.fr/actualite/temps-de-trav...
- Propelloni 2y ago
  Hmh, I've been working for PwC Germany a decade or two ago and while I wasn't "junior" by any stretch of imagination I had my share of "crunch time". I distinctly recall that PwC was an employer that cared a lot about their people. Back then we were in the office a lot and the amenities provided were top-notch, far surpassing any startup I have seen since. Weekend work was an exception, not the rule. Of course, being huge and in Germany they had an employee council and to follow local labor laws. So, coming to think of it, it might be more a Germany thing than a PwC thing ;)
  - torlok 2y ago
    You can give all the examples of socialism working in other first-world countries, and you still won't get through to the temporarily embarassed millionaires.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >temporarily embarassed millionaires That's a very long spelling of HN userbase ;)
      - red-iron-pine 2y ago
        I think you underestimate the HN userbase, there are a lot of heavyweights here, ranging from big names operating with less visibility, to Principles or SWE6+ at FAANGs. in other words, actual millionaires.
        Rinzler89 2y ago
        I know but the mentality is the same.
  - firecall 2y ago
    In Australia, PWC betrayed the Australian government by leaking secrets about taxation plans to other PWC clients. Such a lovely bunch of people :-/
- anshumankmr 2y ago
  I am from a Big four firm, my experience has been a bit of everything. Off late it has been better, but it has been quite strenous in the past.
kombookcha 2y ago
Reading this you almost get the sense that this compounding workload was deliberately cruel and backbreaking. Is this some kind of hazing done to new hires, or does EY just have an unbelievably toxic work culture in general?
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  Both. It's the knowledge that almost none of the associates (and lower) will stay longer than 1-2 years, so you can use and exploit them as meaty calculators. You also see this in any large private law or accounting firm.
- senectus1 2y ago
  I know a few accountants that have worked for EY etc... it is often toxic. but after their "indenture" and have moved on they dont seem to regret it.. its a weird accountant culture thing.
  - carlmr 2y ago
    It's frat culture turned into a company. You get hazed for a year or two and then you're part of the ingroup hazing the next batch.
  - loa_in_ 2y ago
    Maybe it's survivor bias - those who don't get to the after part are shunned and change their careers, so you don't hear of them.
- bilekas 2y ago
  As I heard from a few people who went straight after qualification was that they're very open to new recruits non experience and to have their name on the CV was basically the best way to move forward with their career opportunities. They have to stay for a year or two and during that time they also get some accounting qualifications (in my friends case) which can be carried on.
  - kreyenborgi 2y ago
gamblor956 2y ago
EY is pretty bad in the U.S. as well. They're Big 4 in terms of revenue but they haven't been Big 4 in terms of industry reputation for years. What little reputation EY had left was basically set on fire when their very-hyped "Project Everest" restructuring abysmally failed over basic issues that should have been addressed in the beginning. EY spent a fair amount to plan the restructuring and took on a fair amount of debt to pair for it (and of course it did this before bothering to make sure the stakeholders would actually go through with the plan)... Clients began to wonder why they should trust EY with their restructuring/business planning/etc if EY couldn't even handle its own. This resulted in a pretty significant outflow of clients in the consulting and tax groups. The debt service and loss of revenue led to several rounds of layoffs (in the U.S., and overseas), frozen promotions, etc. PwC and Deloitte were the major benefactors, but a lot of the Next 20 firms also scooped up former EY employees and clients. (Unfortunately for the remaining EY employees, like the woman in the reddit link, this led to severe overwork.)
bloqs 2y ago
More fuel for the fire. The wonderful American import of "guilt-fuelled work culture" where how hard you work direcrly correlates with your worth as a person. Remember, your career is worthless and your effort in school is wasted unless you have good word on your resume, feel guilty enough yet, lazybones? Those shareholders like it because it makes more money, and they are encouraged to be the sort of people that should want more money too. Good for them, successful businesspeople! This disgusting, inhuman pursuit "of number go up" has reached new heights because of the globalism issue. Citizens of successful, comfortable nations, instead of being economically free to pursue greater meaning and develop humanity further via the arts, and other pursuits of meaning, are instead forced to compete with millions of starved, desperate workers from developing nations, who are worked so hard they die in an accountancy job, and they are in turn pitched against the lowest bidder Why? corporate greed. How dare YOU ask for your number to go up as well, this other guy will do it for less and he has more qualifications than you! Billionaires should not exist
- fransje26 2y ago
  > The wonderful American import of "guilt-fuelled work culture" where how hard you work direcrly correlates with your worth as a person. > Billionaires should not exist. This has its roots in Calvinism though, not billionaires. And once you touch things related to faith, you are out of the rational world, while simultaneously touching the egregore of a nation. These two aspects alone mean that such issues are very difficult to change, with the current unrest and ever increasing political overbidding suggesting that the only catharsis will come from societal collapse, as there seems to be absolutely no room to discuss anything remotely linked to the identity of the nation or its citizens.
thefz 2y ago
Every junior in consulting companies that I spoke to has been explicit in saying that these companies put an excessive amount of work on new hires to gate those that don't want to grind out - and artificial effort barrage. Life gets easier once they get past this stage. Having had abysmal managers in my past, I always ask - where was in this case the manager's managers, and why has his shitty behavior not been reported in skip level?
- pjc50 2y ago
  What would reporting it to the skip level achieve? They will endorse these practices and you've definitely destroyed your career there by doing so.
  - pas 2y ago
    yep, here's a story about exactly that at Adobe https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey_company_26_yr_old_ca_4_month_xp_passed_away_rip/lnmahrn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
  - thefz 2y ago
    > What would reporting it to the skip level achieve? They exist for this sole reason: if your manager is not behaving correctly.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Again, you're assuming that the organization regards this treatment as "incorrect".
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  It’s more than junior waste a lot of time and are generally not very productive. Life gets easier after because people get better at what they do. Edit: For the people downvoting me, you have to understand that a senior in consulting is basically someone which can do the work by themselves without being babied. A junior is there to learn and hopefully help on simple things. I routinely produced more contents that some of my juniors on projects as a manager despite spending a tenth of their allocated time on it. That was fine. You don’t magically get good at consulting. You have to put in the time.
firecall 2y ago
This is reminiscent of the plot for Episode 1 of Season 1 of the TV Show Industry :-(
rockyj 2y ago
People here will not understand but there is a lot of background and culture behind this. There was another case where a McKinsey consultant (IIT+IIM postgrad) who joined the firm and commited suicide (https://www.consultancy.in/news/4168/young-mckinsey-consultant-commits-suicide-due-to-work-pressure https://www.consultancy.in/news/4168/young-mckinsey-consulta...). The story starts way back. In general the schooling syllabus in India is very broad and deep (I can say this now since I live outside India). Then due to the large population - around 30 million students complete school every year. After that there are not many good universities (you may have heard of IITs or NITs), only around 100-200K get into good unis. The competetion to get in is therefore intense. Preparation for these "entrance exams" can start at age 15 (or even earlier). If someone makes it somehow, graduation, postgrad and MBA is another similar struggle. Now you think you surely made it. The last 7-8 years of intense work and hardship are over, this is doubly true if the person is not from a well off family in India (which is very common). Preparation schools, hostels, being away from family etc. has its mental costs. Then you land a job and it hits you, as a new joiner in the hugely competitive Indian job market you are treated like sh* and all this while you thought "you made it" but the real struggle has just started. Long working hours, immense pressure and then the thought that all the hardwork you did in the past can come crashing down with one bad review. Combine that with the real stuggles of life as you move to a new city, manage finances, support family back home etc. it creates a huge amount of pressure. Some unfortunately are not able to handle it, they are in a position they feel that all was futile and no one can understand their situation.
- loa_in_ 2y ago
  Really can't fault people for coming to a conclusion that it's futile if they don't work for something except work. You need a life to look forwards to - otherwise what are you working your ass off for?
  - amonith 2y ago
    I'm very surprised that there haven't been any very bloody mass revolts yet in countries with work culture like this. I think it's inevitable some day because it has happened in most European countries somewhere in their history. It's kinda proven to be basically the only way to make a meaningful change. As you say, it doesn't make sense to keep living like this. Even farming for food only and forgoing access to any modern world amenities is better than this.
rojeee 2y ago
I qualified as a CA with EY in London around 15 years ago in banking audit. Left soon after qualifying. Some weeks I clocked in over 50 hours but never usually much more. Never had to do an all-nighter though I knew loads of people who did. Part of the reason I had a good experience was that I was lucky enough to work with an excellent manager who was well organised and knew how to audit without wasting time on spurious nonsense. I had to sacrifice a few Easter bank holidays in busy season but we got back the time in lieu. Outside of busy season was fairly quiet - Thursday afternoon pub lunches etc. Some people did far more hours than me but I think it was mostly self imposed. A small minority of the partners were twats but the vast majority were mindful of people’s well-being. Friday evening drinks in corney and barrow were sacred and on days I didnt want to work longer I just got up and left to the disbelief of the audit room - they got over it though!
- morsch 2y ago
  > Friday evening drinks in corney and barrow were sacred So there was an effectively mandatory work hangout every Friday evening?
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    Work drinks in fields like law and finance is London are _huge_. Even in tech they're a thing. Working in a pretty no-name tech company, I've did my share of out-til-2am, home by 3am, then back in work by 9am. Less so now I just exited my 20s, but the culture lives on.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      > back in work by 9am Nice of you to join us.
  - Balgair 2y ago
    Their function effectively becomes one of emotional/vibe meetings. You and your coworkers are 'drunk', so whatever you say has an excuse now. Because of the stiff upper lip, so to speak, culture of the normal workdays, you can't complain about workload, or that Steve is an ass, or that the project is pointless, etc. But with a 'drunk' cover, you can, and that information can get to the bosses and they can adjust things. That's why those meeting times are needed and all the folks need to be there with that excuse literally in hand. Or, so I've been told by older functional-alcoholic consultants back in my consulting days. Hey, at least the beer and gin were on the company card.
globular-toast 2y ago
The fetishisation of work addiction has a part to play in this. People have a tendency to accept abuse when they think it's "normal". For example, if your parents fought and argued all the time it's natural to think that's normal and find yourself in a similar, toxic relationship and never question it. We keep getting fed this idea that you need to break your back ("grind") to succeed, that working all day and all night is a good thing etc. So people will push themselves much further than they otherwise would. The people who cared for this person told her to stop, but she kept going because she believed (and this is a direct quote from the still grieving parent) that "becoming a chartered accountant involves years of toil, hardship and sacrifice". But who is telling these lies? The media, who fetishise this stuff, and the people who "made it" who, by the way, inherited their wealth, were a nepotism hire or are just more genetically gifted and/or lucky than you. Everyone will tell you their job is hard, they struggle and they deserve what they have, yet their backs are miraculously intact. Getting to the position I'm at has involved years of work and study, but hardship and toil? You've got to be kidding. I enjoy what I do. It's not a hardship. I read books and write programs for fun. I would never tell anyone that to succeed in this field they need to lose sleep and sacrifice their health and relationships. That would be abusive. That's how this starts.
tananan 2y ago
The one time I interviewed for a consultancy position, I felt "burn-out" from the interview itself. Under the veneer of “here we value always learning, see I was learning about field X this week, and field Y the week before”, the subtext was: you are not going to have a balanced life, cheerful fresh grad. It took me a bit to process why I felt so uncomfortable after the interview. Then a friend made it clear to me: you weren’t interviewing for a tech company, but for a consulting company (which works on tech solutions). I was thrown a curveball question in the partner’s domain of expertise which I managed to sort-of-answer, only to be told “Oh, I didn’t expect you to be able to answer.” Wtf? And in the end, it was made clear I wouldn’t be compensated much. The only time ime where the interviewer failed my “interview”. The sad thing is that these kinds of positions seem like the only viable path for some. And that this kind of grind is presented as the proper thing to engage in. I wish the best for the bereaved and the deceased.
- gruturo 2y ago
  > I was thrown a curveball question in the partner’s domain of expertise which I managed to sort-of-answer, only to be told “Oh, I didn’t expect you to be able to answer.” Wtf? This is perfectly normal. I also ask candidates things I don't expect them to be able to answer, I need to see if they will be honest about it or if they will start bullshitting their way around the issue or outright lie. It's OK to not know something, and it's very valuable (to me) if you are open about it.
  - tananan 2y ago
    That’s fair, and I’m sure it can be done tastefully. I gave an earnest answer and it got an overall positive response. But there was an air of “putting me in my place” and making it clear that this is not “fun and games”. When I mentioned my previous compensation (when I lived in a more affluent country), I was immediately made to know that this is unrealistic and even laughable for a starting position. Sprinkle in a 9h workday, in-office requirements and the fact that often people work overtime (“Though you really don’t need to do that.”), and the notion that the company cares about work-life balance rung very hollow. The HR question at the end - what do you do in your free time? (so that they could put it as a blurb on their People page) - was just the cherry on top. Basically I was given low expectations and I don’t recall the job ever being presented as something I’d want to do. I appreciate the honesty, I guess. Better to know upfront than find out latter. I did end up being called back, but declined. Soon enough I was making 1.5x the minimum they weren’t happy to accept upfront (“maybe once you’ve been with us for a while - you are an expense to us in the first months”). TBH, looking back at it, they were just predatorily looking for cheap labor in their new offices in a low-income area. Which is sad, since the interviewer came from the same country yet acted quite full of himself. I just happened to have more options than their “ideal” candidate.
yannis7 2y ago
I think the most tragic of all is that, based on my experiences in both startups and corporate cultures, most of that work people are killing themselves for is just "busywork" handed to them by managers who themselves don't know any better. The amount of waste in human energy & effort in pointless jobs that optimise for "being busy" is, as far as 1st-world problems are concerned, a humanitarian tragedy.
- eleveriven 2y ago
  I think that the pressure to constantly do something often leads to wasted effort on tasks that don't contribute meaningfully to the bigger picture. The human potential being wasted.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  TPS reports exist in many places. However companies like EY are predicated on performing incomprehensible amounts of busywork ground out by legions (literally: EY alone has nearly 100 Roman legions of headcount) of minions, constructing a illusion that the busywork is essential to any respectable Real Business Factory and lobbying for their flavor of busywork to be a legal requirement in as many jurisdictions as possible. It's like gun companies selling body armour. You could nuke most of these organisations to dust and all that really would happen would be an adjustment as everyone realises the complicated TPS reports weren't very useful anyway and the world keeps turning.
  - TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
    Having worked with or seen up close the results of more than one of these firms in various capacities and practices they provide, I wholeheartedly agree. There are some areas where there’s an argument to be made about cost effectiveness, but experience has demonstrated to me that if you’re retaining the services of groups in these firms that you realistically could afford much better service from somewhere else. Like direct hiring for the talent you need or recruiting your own contractors, working with vendors directly, etc. I’ve never seen results from these firms that make me go “oh wow! That’s worth what was paid!” I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. For my experiences, I’ve just never seen it.
derelicta 2y ago
Capitalism claims one more victim.
- gsck 2y ago
  Because famously no one has ever died from being over worked under communism
  - g8oz 2y ago
    Outside of the gulag prison system? It would be unlikely. A common saying that reflected the typical experience was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".
  - derelicta 2y ago
    In capitalism thats a wanted and necessary feature, under a socialist system thats an unfortunate accident. I gotta admit, it very likely happened because workers republics had to do what needed to be done to survive relentless attacks of western oligarchies.
  - bendigedig 2y ago
    To discredit capitalism is not necessarily to credit communism. We can surely criticise one without having to immediately complain about the other, can't we? Edit: To be clear, my problem with this is that to pretend that there is only a choice between 'capitalism' and 'communism' is a false dichotomy.
    - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
      >To discredit capitalism is not necessarily to credit communism. For most people a non-capitalist system is necessarily socialist/communist. So the response is apt for most situations. > there is only a choice between 'capitalism' and 'communism' is a false dichotomy. I fully agree, there are nuances that are not considered in what is traditionally defined as communism/socialism/capitalism. But it's important to note that most people understand things only in black and white, and never the shades of gray.
lolitan 2y ago
Indian management in India almost always sucks.
- youworkwepay 2y ago
  And it's an HR nightmare when a US work group becomes Indian led / dominated, especially by former H1B's. It quickly turns into importing Indian work cultures into the American legal system, frequently with nasty lawsuits....
eleveriven 2y ago
It’s crucial that companies address these toxic work cultures!
josefrichter 2y ago
Worked at EY in Europe. Usually 50-60 hours a week. 80-hour weeks were fairly common, especially on M&A projects. Once clocked 100 hours in a week on an urgent due diligence. But I'm hearing those days are gone and people there have much better work/life balance now.
H8crilA 2y ago
So why did she die exactly? You don't just die from overwork, and the real reasons can be surprising. There's a famous case of a medical worker who died in NY from overwork, except she also had a serotonin syndrome and essentially overheated to death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_Law
- fakedang 2y ago
  This has to be the HN version of the "Why are you gay?" meme. It doesn't matter how she died. Put anyone with normal health under overwork and excessive stress and they'll pass away soon enough. Whether it be a burst ulcer, excessive fatigue, lack of sleep, anorexia, whatever. From what I know, EY is using the same excuse as you are, trying to hide away under the "she had an underlying condition" excuse.
  - maximus-decimus 2y ago
    To me, how work stress can kill you is the most interesting part.
    - fakedang 2y ago
      Work stress exacerbates a bunch of other health conditions, even ones that you previously did not have. Think stomach ulcers, headaches, insomnia, whatever. It's pretty obvious. Stress has a direct effect on gut metabolism. There's a reason they call it second brain and whatnot.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        What GP says - it's interesting to know specifically which ones, out of "a bunch of other health conditions", can get exacerbated by work stress to the point of killing you. It's interesting to try and gleam, across many such stories, which conditions are likely to get you first. It's interesting then to backtrack this to warning signs. Etc. > Stress has a direct effect on gut metabolism. There's a reason they call it second brain and whatnot. That reason is just a recent meme, best I can tell.
ryzvonusef 2y ago
Asian work culture is toxic people talk about Japan/Korea, but it's the same all over, just that other countries are not famous enough economically to count. (basically all the hard work, none of the benefits) ____ Like I'm in Pakistan, I passed all my accountancy papers but I never went on to an audit firm because they pay below minimum wage, and they work so late that I realised I just didn't make sense, for one I'd be too late to catch the bus home. (Also another hilarious reason I'll share later.) For context, The minimum wage in pakistan for 2024 is 37,000 PKR per month [1] (That's 132 USD per month. Yes, one hundred thirty two dollars, for a whole month) This what you would pay for manual 'un-skilled' labour. The stipend rate for ICAP trainees depends on stage[2], but goes from PKR 19,700 ($70) to PKR 84,700 ($304) per month, but most people I knew were at the stage that pays PKR 30,700 ($110) per month. It's the same for any org hiring an ICAP trainee, be it Big4 or whatever. They call it stipend, to imply it isn't a salary and affected by salary laws, but these are proper 9am-9pm 6 days a week jobs you have to do for atleast 3 years. My accounting body ACCA (UK based, but works intenationally), doesn't specify a standard stipend rate, which means accounting firms are free to abuse us even below the pitiful ICAP rate. Here is an ad[3] on their own job board, by an 'ACCA-approved' employer, offering 15-20K stipend per month. ($54-$72) ____ This leads to the other, hilarious reason why I never went into an accounting firm... because we were banned by ICAP. Since ACCA never fixed rates, accounting firms starting hiring ACCA over Pakistani CA students, because they could pay use even less. This led to ICAP banning accounting firms from hiring non-Pakistan based accounting body students. Then ACCA had to go to the Competiton Commission of Pakistan [4] to get this ruling turned over. But by the time the judgement came in our favour, it had been too late for people like me. Anyhoo, I went on to other jobs, then went back to uni, currently doing my MSc (distance learning), but I do wonder sometimes what the other path would have taken me. Maybe I'd have been dead by overwork like the poor lady in the link. I guess that ban might have saved my life. ____ [1]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1855605/govt-notifies-rs37000-minimum-wage https://www.dawn.com/news/1855605/govt-notifies-rs37000-mini... [2]: https://icap.org.pk/students/training/stipend-rates/ https://icap.org.pk/students/training/stipend-rates/ [3]: https://jobs.accaglobal.com/job/12888611/acca-accountant-intern/?LinkSource=PremiumListing https://jobs.accaglobal.com/job/12888611/acca-accountant-int... [4]: https://cc.gov.pk/home/viewpressreleases/267 https://cc.gov.pk/home/viewpressreleases/267
Eumenes 2y ago
Working in big 4 consulting must be the worst corporate career in America. Low prestige, long hours, mediocre pay/benefits. The skills you develop are a mile long but an inch deep.
sotix 2y ago
I’m a CPA that worked in Big 4 accounting before quitting and switching into software engineering. To get my CPA, I had to obtain a master’s degree, sit for and pass all four sections of the CPA exam, and then work for roughly a year under a licensed CPA. The last requirement was easiest to fulfill at a Big 4. What I got for all of those credentials coming out of school was a starting salary of 55,000 in California and a whole lot of stress. Busy season was 80+ hour work weeks and included working on the weekends. I tried pushing back about working on Sundays, but I was the only one on the team who didn’t work. Once busy season was over, I was sold on the idea that the Summer would be easy, but that wasn’t the case. The partners took on more clients to generate more revenue for themselves, and I continued working 40+ hours during the Summer despite being told I wouldn’t. Worse, we couldn’t get newer members to join out of college and started outsourcing all of our audit work to the Philippines and India. The work from the Philippines was somewhat passable, and the work from India was unusable. So I had to do all this coordinating across time zones and a never ending amount of corrections to make the work meet the quality expected by a US-based audit firm. It wasn’t fun in the slightest. You can never have a perfect audit because there’s always more work that you can do. The system pushes you to fill every waking hour that it can get from you with work. It’s mostly meaningless busy-work that shouldn’t be ans stressful as it is. All of that for 55,000 with a graduate degree. Worse, the firm achieved record profits in 2020 yet froze salaries for those being promoted to senior (supposed to be a jump to about 100,000). I really miss the ease of interviews from having a CPA and the protections afforded by a body overseeing the industry. It was a lot better than the system we have as software engineers. But the sheer amount of work and stress was truly not worth the pay.
crmd 2y ago
The business model of every industry I look into, from electrician and carpenter shops to investment banking and management consulting, seems to run on the backs of an army of new hires who are worked to death by a small number of well paid senior people who lead very comfortable lives.
- solardev 2y ago
  Tis the end goal of capitalism, no?
jiggawatts 2y ago
Something I've noticed over the years based on my experience having consulted for over a hundred organisations is that skilled managers will make their employees work more efficiently, and unskilled managers can only make their employees work harder. Both methods can achieve higher output but the latter can squeeze out maybe +30% for a finite period of time until the employees burn out, but the former has no ceiling on productivity gains. You can achieve 10x, 100x, or even 1,000,000x efficiencies by not wasting time, using automation, better methods, or whatever. I've had serious discussions where the "work harder" people were suggesting 100 outsourced Indian IT techs for two years to do something I could do in a couple of weeks with some scripting. That's a 5,000x difference, in case you're counting. The inevitable consequence of this attitude is that to achieve "top performance", some orgs flog their staff like slaves to eke out +60%.
rehupaa 2y ago
[flagged]
dghughes 2y ago
From my experience auditing companies seem too erratic too in their findings. At an old job we had one Auditing firm (Deloitte or KPMG??) auditor who found a lot of issues. The auditor found a single cash register receipt among a year's worth of receipts, a pile, with the login name the supervisor not the employee. The supervisor forgot to log off and an employee used the cash register for one or two sales. A new auditing firm the next year found no issues which I knew was bull since the place changed over staff a dozen times and new management was far more incompetent.
oglop 2y ago
“ there is no work life balance in corporate life, you just have to build one” Wise words.
sharpshadow 2y ago
How is the payment for this type of conditions is it worth it? Working 7 days a week for 12h is over 80h/week that’s twice as many hours than the standard in Europe does it come with double payment?

196 points by shscs911 2y ago

Afaik these sorts of consulting firms are built on the strategy of grinding people down and replacing them often. They know that having them on the CV is desirable and they deliberately burn people out with workload. But hey we gave up on labor rights and protections long ago, so what can be done?

eastbound 2y ago
France has labor rights and EY employees are still getting exploited. The DIRECCTE sieged their office on a Sunday and every employee was there.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  "What should we do if they're here voluntarily?" — EY + Deloitte Austria
  - wiz21c 2y ago
    They are not there voluntarily. They are the product of social norms, social hierarchy, need for money, etc. If they knew exactyl what their in for they would probably change their mind. So EY should explain very clearly what they do. I guess it could be somthing like "welcome at EY, we work for the greatest accounts in the world, you'll meet the top mamangement of the top management and get tons of money and an a CV worth millions. However, to get that: we will push you to your limits. That implies: you may burn out (and needs psychological assistance for years), you may be so tired that you develop illness, you will be treated like inferior humans (although we won't tell you), we won't be responsible, you will work insane hours, we won't tolerate complains and you'll be fired at will"... But now I'm reading it, it's just like pictures of dmaged lungs on packs of cigarettes... Does it really help? :-( Companies which leads people to such extremes should be penalized.
    - listenallyall 2y ago
      In the 1980s, Michael Lewis wrote his first book, Liar's Poker, which gave a detailed, first-hand account of investment banking that was very similar to what you just described. Millions to be made, but the whole thing is absurd and everyone is treated like shit. The number of young college grads who wanted to go start their career in investment banking increased tremendously.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Austria is not a model to follow here.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  You can't discount regional culture though. Years ago when my father was leading a team in a bank in Paris, he would observe that most people were at the office before he was and he was nearly always the first to leave. But once when getting back to the office 5 minutes after realizing he had forgotten something important at his desk, the whole thing was empty. He realized all his subordinates would just wait for him to go in order to not be seen as lazy workers. It was all about pretending as some might have been playing solitaire while waiting, who knows. He had to implement a mandatory "leave before I do" rule to fight against this toxic culture. Years later I realized one coworker in my mostly swiss team was doing the same when I went back to my desk also for a forgotten item less than 5 minutes after my departure. One of my coworker was always still at his desk when I was heading home but when I went back, he was already gone. Out of curiosity I did it a few times and could only confirm. I even rammed into him in the corridor when I turned back literally 2 minutes later. That employee was french too. ---- Different culture, but similar. There are lots of indians and people of indian origin in my company. Most are obviously living in India and some living in UK and the USA. It seems to me that those living in India are spending a lot of time at work. Since I am on the euro timezone, they are obviously online when I am starting my day, but they are also always online a long time after I have shutdown my computer according to their activity on our enterprise chat app. I don't know the details of their local laws but this cannot be healthy in the long term.
  - Saline9515 2y ago
    It's the same everywhere. In France the partners forced it through collective agreements. There is now no upper limit on what they can ask from an associate. https://www.editions-legislatives.fr/actualite/temps-de-travail-tensions-chez-ey-1e-volet/ https://www.editions-legislatives.fr/actualite/temps-de-trav...
Propelloni 2y ago
Hmh, I've been working for PwC Germany a decade or two ago and while I wasn't "junior" by any stretch of imagination I had my share of "crunch time". I distinctly recall that PwC was an employer that cared a lot about their people. Back then we were in the office a lot and the amenities provided were top-notch, far surpassing any startup I have seen since. Weekend work was an exception, not the rule. Of course, being huge and in Germany they had an employee council and to follow local labor laws. So, coming to think of it, it might be more a Germany thing than a PwC thing ;)
- torlok 2y ago
  You can give all the examples of socialism working in other first-world countries, and you still won't get through to the temporarily embarassed millionaires.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >temporarily embarassed millionaires That's a very long spelling of HN userbase ;)
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      I think you underestimate the HN userbase, there are a lot of heavyweights here, ranging from big names operating with less visibility, to Principles or SWE6+ at FAANGs. in other words, actual millionaires.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        I know but the mentality is the same.
- firecall 2y ago
  In Australia, PWC betrayed the Australian government by leaking secrets about taxation plans to other PWC clients. Such a lovely bunch of people :-/
anshumankmr 2y ago
I am from a Big four firm, my experience has been a bit of everything. Off late it has been better, but it has been quite strenous in the past.

kombookcha 2y ago

Reading this you almost get the sense that this compounding workload was deliberately cruel and backbreaking. Is this some kind of hazing done to new hires, or does EY just have an unbelievably toxic work culture in general?

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
Both. It's the knowledge that almost none of the associates (and lower) will stay longer than 1-2 years, so you can use and exploit them as meaty calculators. You also see this in any large private law or accounting firm.
senectus1 2y ago
I know a few accountants that have worked for EY etc... it is often toxic. but after their "indenture" and have moved on they dont seem to regret it.. its a weird accountant culture thing.
- carlmr 2y ago
  It's frat culture turned into a company. You get hazed for a year or two and then you're part of the ingroup hazing the next batch.
- loa_in_ 2y ago
  Maybe it's survivor bias - those who don't get to the after part are shunned and change their careers, so you don't hear of them.
bilekas 2y ago
As I heard from a few people who went straight after qualification was that they're very open to new recruits non experience and to have their name on the CV was basically the best way to move forward with their career opportunities. They have to stay for a year or two and during that time they also get some accounting qualifications (in my friends case) which can be carried on.
- kreyenborgi 2y ago

gamblor956 2y ago

EY is pretty bad in the U.S. as well. They're Big 4 in terms of revenue but they haven't been Big 4 in terms of industry reputation for years. What little reputation EY had left was basically set on fire when their very-hyped "Project Everest" restructuring abysmally failed over basic issues that should have been addressed in the beginning. EY spent a fair amount to plan the restructuring and took on a fair amount of debt to pair for it (and of course it did this before bothering to make sure the stakeholders would actually go through with the plan)... Clients began to wonder why they should trust EY with their restructuring/business planning/etc if EY couldn't even handle its own. This resulted in a pretty significant outflow of clients in the consulting and tax groups. The debt service and loss of revenue led to several rounds of layoffs (in the U.S., and overseas), frozen promotions, etc. PwC and Deloitte were the major benefactors, but a lot of the Next 20 firms also scooped up former EY employees and clients. (Unfortunately for the remaining EY employees, like the woman in the reddit link, this led to severe overwork.)

bloqs 2y ago

More fuel for the fire. The wonderful American import of "guilt-fuelled work culture" where how hard you work direcrly correlates with your worth as a person. Remember, your career is worthless and your effort in school is wasted unless you have good word on your resume, feel guilty enough yet, lazybones? Those shareholders like it because it makes more money, and they are encouraged to be the sort of people that should want more money too. Good for them, successful businesspeople! This disgusting, inhuman pursuit "of number go up" has reached new heights because of the globalism issue. Citizens of successful, comfortable nations, instead of being economically free to pursue greater meaning and develop humanity further via the arts, and other pursuits of meaning, are instead forced to compete with millions of starved, desperate workers from developing nations, who are worked so hard they die in an accountancy job, and they are in turn pitched against the lowest bidder Why? corporate greed. How dare YOU ask for your number to go up as well, this other guy will do it for less and he has more qualifications than you! Billionaires should not exist

fransje26 2y ago
> The wonderful American import of "guilt-fuelled work culture" where how hard you work direcrly correlates with your worth as a person. > Billionaires should not exist. This has its roots in Calvinism though, not billionaires. And once you touch things related to faith, you are out of the rational world, while simultaneously touching the egregore of a nation. These two aspects alone mean that such issues are very difficult to change, with the current unrest and ever increasing political overbidding suggesting that the only catharsis will come from societal collapse, as there seems to be absolutely no room to discuss anything remotely linked to the identity of the nation or its citizens.

thefz 2y ago

Every junior in consulting companies that I spoke to has been explicit in saying that these companies put an excessive amount of work on new hires to gate those that don't want to grind out - and artificial effort barrage. Life gets easier once they get past this stage. Having had abysmal managers in my past, I always ask - where was in this case the manager's managers, and why has his shitty behavior not been reported in skip level?

pjc50 2y ago
What would reporting it to the skip level achieve? They will endorse these practices and you've definitely destroyed your career there by doing so.
- pas 2y ago
  yep, here's a story about exactly that at Adobe https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey_company_26_yr_old_ca_4_month_xp_passed_away_rip/lnmahrn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
- thefz 2y ago
  > What would reporting it to the skip level achieve? They exist for this sole reason: if your manager is not behaving correctly.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Again, you're assuming that the organization regards this treatment as "incorrect".
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
It’s more than junior waste a lot of time and are generally not very productive. Life gets easier after because people get better at what they do. Edit: For the people downvoting me, you have to understand that a senior in consulting is basically someone which can do the work by themselves without being babied. A junior is there to learn and hopefully help on simple things. I routinely produced more contents that some of my juniors on projects as a manager despite spending a tenth of their allocated time on it. That was fine. You don’t magically get good at consulting. You have to put in the time.

firecall 2y ago

This is reminiscent of the plot for Episode 1 of Season 1 of the TV Show Industry :-(

rockyj 2y ago

People here will not understand but there is a lot of background and culture behind this. There was another case where a McKinsey consultant (IIT+IIM postgrad) who joined the firm and commited suicide (https://www.consultancy.in/news/4168/young-mckinsey-consultant-commits-suicide-due-to-work-pressure https://www.consultancy.in/news/4168/young-mckinsey-consulta...). The story starts way back. In general the schooling syllabus in India is very broad and deep (I can say this now since I live outside India). Then due to the large population - around 30 million students complete school every year. After that there are not many good universities (you may have heard of IITs or NITs), only around 100-200K get into good unis. The competetion to get in is therefore intense. Preparation for these "entrance exams" can start at age 15 (or even earlier). If someone makes it somehow, graduation, postgrad and MBA is another similar struggle. Now you think you surely made it. The last 7-8 years of intense work and hardship are over, this is doubly true if the person is not from a well off family in India (which is very common). Preparation schools, hostels, being away from family etc. has its mental costs. Then you land a job and it hits you, as a new joiner in the hugely competitive Indian job market you are treated like sh* and all this while you thought "you made it" but the real struggle has just started. Long working hours, immense pressure and then the thought that all the hardwork you did in the past can come crashing down with one bad review. Combine that with the real stuggles of life as you move to a new city, manage finances, support family back home etc. it creates a huge amount of pressure. Some unfortunately are not able to handle it, they are in a position they feel that all was futile and no one can understand their situation.

loa_in_ 2y ago
Really can't fault people for coming to a conclusion that it's futile if they don't work for something except work. You need a life to look forwards to - otherwise what are you working your ass off for?
- amonith 2y ago
  I'm very surprised that there haven't been any very bloody mass revolts yet in countries with work culture like this. I think it's inevitable some day because it has happened in most European countries somewhere in their history. It's kinda proven to be basically the only way to make a meaningful change. As you say, it doesn't make sense to keep living like this. Even farming for food only and forgoing access to any modern world amenities is better than this.

rojeee 2y ago

I qualified as a CA with EY in London around 15 years ago in banking audit. Left soon after qualifying. Some weeks I clocked in over 50 hours but never usually much more. Never had to do an all-nighter though I knew loads of people who did. Part of the reason I had a good experience was that I was lucky enough to work with an excellent manager who was well organised and knew how to audit without wasting time on spurious nonsense. I had to sacrifice a few Easter bank holidays in busy season but we got back the time in lieu. Outside of busy season was fairly quiet - Thursday afternoon pub lunches etc. Some people did far more hours than me but I think it was mostly self imposed. A small minority of the partners were twats but the vast majority were mindful of people’s well-being. Friday evening drinks in corney and barrow were sacred and on days I didnt want to work longer I just got up and left to the disbelief of the audit room - they got over it though!

morsch 2y ago
> Friday evening drinks in corney and barrow were sacred So there was an effectively mandatory work hangout every Friday evening?
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  Work drinks in fields like law and finance is London are _huge_. Even in tech they're a thing. Working in a pretty no-name tech company, I've did my share of out-til-2am, home by 3am, then back in work by 9am. Less so now I just exited my 20s, but the culture lives on.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    > back in work by 9am Nice of you to join us.
- Balgair 2y ago
  Their function effectively becomes one of emotional/vibe meetings. You and your coworkers are 'drunk', so whatever you say has an excuse now. Because of the stiff upper lip, so to speak, culture of the normal workdays, you can't complain about workload, or that Steve is an ass, or that the project is pointless, etc. But with a 'drunk' cover, you can, and that information can get to the bosses and they can adjust things. That's why those meeting times are needed and all the folks need to be there with that excuse literally in hand. Or, so I've been told by older functional-alcoholic consultants back in my consulting days. Hey, at least the beer and gin were on the company card.

globular-toast 2y ago

The fetishisation of work addiction has a part to play in this. People have a tendency to accept abuse when they think it's "normal". For example, if your parents fought and argued all the time it's natural to think that's normal and find yourself in a similar, toxic relationship and never question it. We keep getting fed this idea that you need to break your back ("grind") to succeed, that working all day and all night is a good thing etc. So people will push themselves much further than they otherwise would. The people who cared for this person told her to stop, but she kept going because she believed (and this is a direct quote from the still grieving parent) that "becoming a chartered accountant involves years of toil, hardship and sacrifice". But who is telling these lies? The media, who fetishise this stuff, and the people who "made it" who, by the way, inherited their wealth, were a nepotism hire or are just more genetically gifted and/or lucky than you. Everyone will tell you their job is hard, they struggle and they deserve what they have, yet their backs are miraculously intact. Getting to the position I'm at has involved years of work and study, but hardship and toil? You've got to be kidding. I enjoy what I do. It's not a hardship. I read books and write programs for fun. I would never tell anyone that to succeed in this field they need to lose sleep and sacrifice their health and relationships. That would be abusive. That's how this starts.

tananan 2y ago

The one time I interviewed for a consultancy position, I felt "burn-out" from the interview itself. Under the veneer of “here we value always learning, see I was learning about field X this week, and field Y the week before”, the subtext was: you are not going to have a balanced life, cheerful fresh grad. It took me a bit to process why I felt so uncomfortable after the interview. Then a friend made it clear to me: you weren’t interviewing for a tech company, but for a consulting company (which works on tech solutions). I was thrown a curveball question in the partner’s domain of expertise which I managed to sort-of-answer, only to be told “Oh, I didn’t expect you to be able to answer.” Wtf? And in the end, it was made clear I wouldn’t be compensated much. The only time ime where the interviewer failed my “interview”. The sad thing is that these kinds of positions seem like the only viable path for some. And that this kind of grind is presented as the proper thing to engage in. I wish the best for the bereaved and the deceased.

gruturo 2y ago
> I was thrown a curveball question in the partner’s domain of expertise which I managed to sort-of-answer, only to be told “Oh, I didn’t expect you to be able to answer.” Wtf? This is perfectly normal. I also ask candidates things I don't expect them to be able to answer, I need to see if they will be honest about it or if they will start bullshitting their way around the issue or outright lie. It's OK to not know something, and it's very valuable (to me) if you are open about it.
- tananan 2y ago
  That’s fair, and I’m sure it can be done tastefully. I gave an earnest answer and it got an overall positive response. But there was an air of “putting me in my place” and making it clear that this is not “fun and games”. When I mentioned my previous compensation (when I lived in a more affluent country), I was immediately made to know that this is unrealistic and even laughable for a starting position. Sprinkle in a 9h workday, in-office requirements and the fact that often people work overtime (“Though you really don’t need to do that.”), and the notion that the company cares about work-life balance rung very hollow. The HR question at the end - what do you do in your free time? (so that they could put it as a blurb on their People page) - was just the cherry on top. Basically I was given low expectations and I don’t recall the job ever being presented as something I’d want to do. I appreciate the honesty, I guess. Better to know upfront than find out latter. I did end up being called back, but declined. Soon enough I was making 1.5x the minimum they weren’t happy to accept upfront (“maybe once you’ve been with us for a while - you are an expense to us in the first months”). TBH, looking back at it, they were just predatorily looking for cheap labor in their new offices in a low-income area. Which is sad, since the interviewer came from the same country yet acted quite full of himself. I just happened to have more options than their “ideal” candidate.

yannis7 2y ago

I think the most tragic of all is that, based on my experiences in both startups and corporate cultures, most of that work people are killing themselves for is just "busywork" handed to them by managers who themselves don't know any better. The amount of waste in human energy & effort in pointless jobs that optimise for "being busy" is, as far as 1st-world problems are concerned, a humanitarian tragedy.

eleveriven 2y ago
I think that the pressure to constantly do something often leads to wasted effort on tasks that don't contribute meaningfully to the bigger picture. The human potential being wasted.
grues-dinner 2y ago
TPS reports exist in many places. However companies like EY are predicated on performing incomprehensible amounts of busywork ground out by legions (literally: EY alone has nearly 100 Roman legions of headcount) of minions, constructing a illusion that the busywork is essential to any respectable Real Business Factory and lobbying for their flavor of busywork to be a legal requirement in as many jurisdictions as possible. It's like gun companies selling body armour. You could nuke most of these organisations to dust and all that really would happen would be an adjustment as everyone realises the complicated TPS reports weren't very useful anyway and the world keeps turning.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
  Having worked with or seen up close the results of more than one of these firms in various capacities and practices they provide, I wholeheartedly agree. There are some areas where there’s an argument to be made about cost effectiveness, but experience has demonstrated to me that if you’re retaining the services of groups in these firms that you realistically could afford much better service from somewhere else. Like direct hiring for the talent you need or recruiting your own contractors, working with vendors directly, etc. I’ve never seen results from these firms that make me go “oh wow! That’s worth what was paid!” I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. For my experiences, I’ve just never seen it.

derelicta 2y ago

Capitalism claims one more victim.

gsck 2y ago
Because famously no one has ever died from being over worked under communism
- g8oz 2y ago
  Outside of the gulag prison system? It would be unlikely. A common saying that reflected the typical experience was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".
- derelicta 2y ago
  In capitalism thats a wanted and necessary feature, under a socialist system thats an unfortunate accident. I gotta admit, it very likely happened because workers republics had to do what needed to be done to survive relentless attacks of western oligarchies.
- bendigedig 2y ago
  To discredit capitalism is not necessarily to credit communism. We can surely criticise one without having to immediately complain about the other, can't we? Edit: To be clear, my problem with this is that to pretend that there is only a choice between 'capitalism' and 'communism' is a false dichotomy.
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    >To discredit capitalism is not necessarily to credit communism. For most people a non-capitalist system is necessarily socialist/communist. So the response is apt for most situations. > there is only a choice between 'capitalism' and 'communism' is a false dichotomy. I fully agree, there are nuances that are not considered in what is traditionally defined as communism/socialism/capitalism. But it's important to note that most people understand things only in black and white, and never the shades of gray.

lolitan 2y ago

Indian management in India almost always sucks.

youworkwepay 2y ago
And it's an HR nightmare when a US work group becomes Indian led / dominated, especially by former H1B's. It quickly turns into importing Indian work cultures into the American legal system, frequently with nasty lawsuits....

eleveriven 2y ago

It’s crucial that companies address these toxic work cultures!

josefrichter 2y ago

Worked at EY in Europe. Usually 50-60 hours a week. 80-hour weeks were fairly common, especially on M&A projects. Once clocked 100 hours in a week on an urgent due diligence. But I'm hearing those days are gone and people there have much better work/life balance now.

H8crilA 2y ago

So why did she die exactly? You don't just die from overwork, and the real reasons can be surprising. There's a famous case of a medical worker who died in NY from overwork, except she also had a serotonin syndrome and essentially overheated to death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Zion_Law

fakedang 2y ago
This has to be the HN version of the "Why are you gay?" meme. It doesn't matter how she died. Put anyone with normal health under overwork and excessive stress and they'll pass away soon enough. Whether it be a burst ulcer, excessive fatigue, lack of sleep, anorexia, whatever. From what I know, EY is using the same excuse as you are, trying to hide away under the "she had an underlying condition" excuse.
- maximus-decimus 2y ago
  To me, how work stress can kill you is the most interesting part.
  - fakedang 2y ago
    Work stress exacerbates a bunch of other health conditions, even ones that you previously did not have. Think stomach ulcers, headaches, insomnia, whatever. It's pretty obvious. Stress has a direct effect on gut metabolism. There's a reason they call it second brain and whatnot.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      What GP says - it's interesting to know specifically which ones, out of "a bunch of other health conditions", can get exacerbated by work stress to the point of killing you. It's interesting to try and gleam, across many such stories, which conditions are likely to get you first. It's interesting then to backtrack this to warning signs. Etc. > Stress has a direct effect on gut metabolism. There's a reason they call it second brain and whatnot. That reason is just a recent meme, best I can tell.

ryzvonusef 2y ago

Asian work culture is toxic people talk about Japan/Korea, but it's the same all over, just that other countries are not famous enough economically to count. (basically all the hard work, none of the benefits) ____ Like I'm in Pakistan, I passed all my accountancy papers but I never went on to an audit firm because they pay below minimum wage, and they work so late that I realised I just didn't make sense, for one I'd be too late to catch the bus home. (Also another hilarious reason I'll share later.) For context, The minimum wage in pakistan for 2024 is 37,000 PKR per month [1] (That's 132 USD per month. Yes, one hundred thirty two dollars, for a whole month) This what you would pay for manual 'un-skilled' labour. The stipend rate for ICAP trainees depends on stage[2], but goes from PKR 19,700 ($70) to PKR 84,700 ($304) per month, but most people I knew were at the stage that pays PKR 30,700 ($110) per month. It's the same for any org hiring an ICAP trainee, be it Big4 or whatever. They call it stipend, to imply it isn't a salary and affected by salary laws, but these are proper 9am-9pm 6 days a week jobs you have to do for atleast 3 years. My accounting body ACCA (UK based, but works intenationally), doesn't specify a standard stipend rate, which means accounting firms are free to abuse us even below the pitiful ICAP rate. Here is an ad[3] on their own job board, by an 'ACCA-approved' employer, offering 15-20K stipend per month. ($54-$72) ____ This leads to the other, hilarious reason why I never went into an accounting firm... because we were banned by ICAP. Since ACCA never fixed rates, accounting firms starting hiring ACCA over Pakistani CA students, because they could pay use even less. This led to ICAP banning accounting firms from hiring non-Pakistan based accounting body students. Then ACCA had to go to the Competiton Commission of Pakistan [4] to get this ruling turned over. But by the time the judgement came in our favour, it had been too late for people like me. Anyhoo, I went on to other jobs, then went back to uni, currently doing my MSc (distance learning), but I do wonder sometimes what the other path would have taken me. Maybe I'd have been dead by overwork like the poor lady in the link. I guess that ban might have saved my life. ____ [1]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1855605/govt-notifies-rs37000-minimum-wage https://www.dawn.com/news/1855605/govt-notifies-rs37000-mini... [2]: https://icap.org.pk/students/training/stipend-rates/ https://icap.org.pk/students/training/stipend-rates/ [3]: https://jobs.accaglobal.com/job/12888611/acca-accountant-intern/?LinkSource=PremiumListing https://jobs.accaglobal.com/job/12888611/acca-accountant-int... [4]: https://cc.gov.pk/home/viewpressreleases/267 https://cc.gov.pk/home/viewpressreleases/267

Eumenes 2y ago

Working in big 4 consulting must be the worst corporate career in America. Low prestige, long hours, mediocre pay/benefits. The skills you develop are a mile long but an inch deep.

sotix 2y ago

I’m a CPA that worked in Big 4 accounting before quitting and switching into software engineering. To get my CPA, I had to obtain a master’s degree, sit for and pass all four sections of the CPA exam, and then work for roughly a year under a licensed CPA. The last requirement was easiest to fulfill at a Big 4. What I got for all of those credentials coming out of school was a starting salary of 55,000 in California and a whole lot of stress. Busy season was 80+ hour work weeks and included working on the weekends. I tried pushing back about working on Sundays, but I was the only one on the team who didn’t work. Once busy season was over, I was sold on the idea that the Summer would be easy, but that wasn’t the case. The partners took on more clients to generate more revenue for themselves, and I continued working 40+ hours during the Summer despite being told I wouldn’t. Worse, we couldn’t get newer members to join out of college and started outsourcing all of our audit work to the Philippines and India. The work from the Philippines was somewhat passable, and the work from India was unusable. So I had to do all this coordinating across time zones and a never ending amount of corrections to make the work meet the quality expected by a US-based audit firm. It wasn’t fun in the slightest. You can never have a perfect audit because there’s always more work that you can do. The system pushes you to fill every waking hour that it can get from you with work. It’s mostly meaningless busy-work that shouldn’t be ans stressful as it is. All of that for 55,000 with a graduate degree. Worse, the firm achieved record profits in 2020 yet froze salaries for those being promoted to senior (supposed to be a jump to about 100,000). I really miss the ease of interviews from having a CPA and the protections afforded by a body overseeing the industry. It was a lot better than the system we have as software engineers. But the sheer amount of work and stress was truly not worth the pay.

crmd 2y ago

The business model of every industry I look into, from electrician and carpenter shops to investment banking and management consulting, seems to run on the backs of an army of new hires who are worked to death by a small number of well paid senior people who lead very comfortable lives.

solardev 2y ago
Tis the end goal of capitalism, no?

jiggawatts 2y ago

Something I've noticed over the years based on my experience having consulted for over a hundred organisations is that skilled managers will make their employees work more efficiently, and unskilled managers can only make their employees work harder. Both methods can achieve higher output but the latter can squeeze out maybe +30% for a finite period of time until the employees burn out, but the former has no ceiling on productivity gains. You can achieve 10x, 100x, or even 1,000,000x efficiencies by not wasting time, using automation, better methods, or whatever. I've had serious discussions where the "work harder" people were suggesting 100 outsourced Indian IT techs for two years to do something I could do in a couple of weeks with some scripting. That's a 5,000x difference, in case you're counting. The inevitable consequence of this attitude is that to achieve "top performance", some orgs flog their staff like slaves to eke out +60%.

rehupaa 2y ago

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dghughes 2y ago

From my experience auditing companies seem too erratic too in their findings. At an old job we had one Auditing firm (Deloitte or KPMG??) auditor who found a lot of issues. The auditor found a single cash register receipt among a year's worth of receipts, a pile, with the login name the supervisor not the employee. The supervisor forgot to log off and an employee used the cash register for one or two sales. A new auditing firm the next year found no issues which I knew was bull since the place changed over staff a dozen times and new management was far more incompetent.

oglop 2y ago

“ there is no work life balance in corporate life, you just have to build one” Wise words.

sharpshadow 2y ago

How is the payment for this type of conditions is it worth it? Working 7 days a week for 12h is over 80h/week that’s twice as many hours than the standard in Europe does it come with double payment?