9 ms·

Accenture to 'exit' staff that cannot be retrained for age of AI

88 points by jmsflknr 1y ago

Our_Benefactors 1y ago
Paywalled
- John2022 1y ago
  in case helpful - https://on.ft.com/4mvAlfN https://on.ft.com/4mvAlfN - can only be viewed three times though
- Sheepsteak 1y ago
  https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.ft.com/content/a74f8564-ed5a-42e9-8fb3-d2bddb2b8675 https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.ft.com/...
- cmsefton 1y ago
  I posted it as a separate message before I saw yours, but you can view it here https://archive.ph/GMB11 https://archive.ph/GMB11
650 1y ago
Related to new H1B rules possibly?
- Zigurd 1y ago
  A lot of H1B visas go to people brought in to create billable hours at these consultancies.
thw_9a83c 1y ago
The core sentence from the article: “We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need,” chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call."
- mooreds 1y ago
  It's amazing what you can learn on a conference call to analysts.
- stego-tech 1y ago
  If you feed that into HR-GPT, it translates it like thus: “We’re exiting older staff as quickly as possible to avoid a sueball like IBM, because we do not feel it’s worthwhile reskilling them versus hiring cheaper, younger people.” Just my speculative translation based on prior experiences. If you use my comment in a sueball against Accenture for age discrimination, boy howdy will you be disappointed in the outcome.
- Mistletoe 1y ago
  >In 2023, Sweet's total compensation at Accenture was $31.6 million, or 1,526 times what the median employee at Accenture earned that same year without a cost-of-living adjustment.
stego-tech 1y ago
Looks like this is just an empty excuse to justify their margins at the expense of people: > The cuts allowed Accenture to say it would continue to expand operating profit margins at its historic annual rate of at least 10 basis points in the next fiscal year, a target that some analysts had worried might have to be dropped given the tough industry conditions. The company itself is doing just fine, thanks for asking. > The company said revenues grew 7 per cent to $69.7bn in the year to August, for a net income of $7.83bn, up 6 per cent. They’re citing internal data to prop-up this AI narrative, too, and claim - like everyone else doing layoffs - that headcount is expected to grow in the coming year. It’s basically a giant celebratory puff piece for Accenture. Nothing of substance in there if you’re immune to the usual corporate doublespeak.
- bArray 1y ago
  > Looks like this is just an empty excuse to justify their margins at the expense of people: All tech companies are doing layoffs [1], Accenture are just trying to sell it as a good thing. > They’re citing internal data to prop-up this AI narrative, too, and claim - like everyone else doing layoffs - that headcount is expected to grow in the coming year. As everybody who has tested this stuff knows, the AI does not lead to massive gains in productivity. They may regret getting rid of safety critical engineers, or testing engineers. [1] https://www.trueup.io/layoffs https://www.trueup.io/layoffs
  - rob74 1y ago
    > Accenture are just trying to sell it as a good thing. Layoffs to increase profits are a good thing for shareholders. Not so much for those laid off of course, but who cares about those?
    - prewett 1y ago
      That's kind of a one-sided view. Yes, you need to treat your employees honorably, but a company isn't a jobs program, either.
      - 1y ago
simonw 1y ago
"Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months [...] The IT consulting group on Thursday detailed an $865mn restructuring programme and an outlook for the year ahead that reflects continuing sluggish corporate demand for consulting projects and a clampdown on spending within the US federal government." The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
  > The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO. And from the article: > The company said revenues grew 7 per cent to $69.7bn in the year to August, for a net income of $7.83bn, up 6 per cent. Where's it talk about the TON of work they lost?
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    If I sell you a table for $100, and sell you another one later for $107, did that second table automatically take more work to make?
    - onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
      No, but if the only piece we have to go off of is that my revenue from table increased 7%, are you going to assume or believe someone that says my total table sales are WAY down?
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        But that isn't the only piece we have to go on; they're laying off 11k people.
        onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
        That has less than 0 to do with how many tables a company sells. If you can buy a table making machine and lay off 100% of your table makers, you could sell 3x as many tables, and have 20x as much profit.
dbg31415 1y ago
“Over 30? We don’t think you can be trained to use AI.” Feels like another form of age discrimination in tech. Anyone who had a good idea how to do things costs too much money, and it’s better to hire people who blindly trust the AI to do the work. If you can’t spot hallucinations or bad code, do they exist? =P
- stego-tech 1y ago
  > If you can’t spot hallucinations or bad code, do they exist? =P Literally where we’re at in the AI bubble: blind faith and willful ignorance.
  - DarkNova6 1y ago
    I think this applies to the economy at large at the moment. Get to the top, cash out and don't look down.
    - stego-tech 1y ago
      100% this. Very much a “fuck you, got mine” kind of era.
- Ancalagon 1y ago
  I Cmd-F'd that quote in the archive link but couldn't find it. Was this from the article?
righthand 1y ago
MBAs at the leadership level have no money making ideas they all just ride some trend wave until they can make an excise to fire you for it and collect your operational capital as a yearly bonus. The LLM hype wave is the perfect scape goat. We essentially are empowering small businesses to run like the Dept of Government Efficiency (which is a joke and used to shift tax payer dollars to wealthy Trump supporters).
- throwawayoldie 1y ago
  You're not wrong, but I have one nit to pick: let's not dignify what MBAs do by calling it "leadership". They're barely "management".
  - infamouscow 1y ago
    If you use MBA as anything other than a slur, it's probably incorrect.
DarkNova6 1y ago
Left Accenture this year and I don't regret it. Their leadership is non-existant, their management bloated and there is no vision whatsoever. The company just pumps back money into stock-buybacks and nobody can explain why the CEO, July Sweet, is still on top of it (spoiler, her husband works in politics). Talent is leaving the company left and right because promotions and salary adjustments just are not happening. Your achievements don't matter because they already skipped promotions for 2 years, so there are dozens of people in front of the queue. Juniors are getting fired if they don't have a project for 3 months, but once a surge of projects come around, there is not enough manpower to do staffing. Meanwhile, people in management are safe and get large severance packages. Edit: Hi to my formers colleagues. I know you are reading this, feel free to disagree ;-)
- waltbosz 1y ago
  > Juniors are getting fired if they don't have a project for 3 months When I worked for Accenture, I got benched for an entire summer. It was great. At the time the only resource to find a new project was this spreadsheet uploaded to Sharepoint, and there was 0 pressure from my HR rep to actually look for a new role. I eventually found a new job and quit, but I always wondered what would have happened if I just stayed on the bench while working at the 2nd job.
  - fhd2 1y ago
    I'm sorry, what? I run an agency (still figuring the space out), but just so I get that part: They asked a junior to "find a project" from a spreadsheet? Don't they pair juniors up with seniors in existing projects? Before I'd "bench" anyone, I'd do that without charging for them, so they learn and can do realised billable hours later down the line. I'd feel so weird getting benched. I didn't know that was a thing anyone did frankly.
    - dmoy 1y ago
      Benching is very common in any firm like Accenture, yea. It does seem weird from the outside I agree. It can also depend on the person, skillset, etc. Some people will never get benched just because they don't have any or enough other people with equivalent skills, so there's constant demand. (edit: skillset, not skillet, obviously your bench rate does not depend on your cookware)
snowwrestler 1y ago
Generative AI seems like a perfect fit for Accenture, a company whose business depends primarily on generating PowerPoint decks.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  My POV of consulting (as a former IBEW electrician) is that the consultants interview us underlings (and actually listen) and then make powerpoint slides of these communal ideas to present to executives as novel ideas. Our bosses eat this shit up shit-eating-grin-ily. But I just twisted wires for a living so what the hell could I know about white collars?
  - MattPalmer1086 1y ago
    That's about right in my experience. Except they aren't really presenting them as novel ideas. The point isn't that they are novel, merely that because they now come packaged from a big consultancy, it provides the necessary level of ass covering to senior execs to be able to action some of them.
    - smt88 1y ago
      Correct. In fact, presenting a novel idea is likely a form of failure. The execs want insurance to do something the company already knows it should do.
  - andy99 1y ago
    The fact that you think the consultants were actually listening and raising your ideas with management shows they were good at their jobs. Providing this impression is one of their core functions.
  - quickthrowman 1y ago
    The IBEW hires consultants? And then has them interview inside wiremen? Is this a local or the national organization? If you ever feel like working in the field again, I have lots of work in 110 and 292 for good electricians :) If you prefer 242, 343, or 14; that can be arranged too haha
bgwalter 1y ago
“We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need,” chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call. Julie Sweet could be replaced by an "AI", or even a 20 year old Markov chain.
QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
One of the most dramatic job effects of AI is a brutal market for lemons effect. Carl wants to buy a widget, and the going rate for a widget was 150 dollars pre ai, and carl pays someone reputablish (accenture say) 150 for a widget and gets 70 cents of tokens. Carl is not going to try another $150 with another provider, he’s just going to leave the market. The pre-ai widgeters all lose their jobs whether or not ai actually is able to solve Carl’s problem.
monkeydust 1y ago
Did my Accenture stint a long time ago, spent about a year there, was 'pimped' out to a banks at a crazy day rate and saw a tiny fraction of that. Had to build decks during lunch and evenings for the partners. It was very much about shipping more people to clients not making existing ones and capabilities more productive and in the end realized it was not for me so left. Its a dead model imho.
citizenpaul 1y ago
I'm not surprised that Accucenture is making the announcement to be the first to throw down the gauntlet on the race to the bottom.
avnfish 1y ago
I’m very bearish on Accenture for the following reason: the business model is a levered flywheel (high-paid salespeople and aggressive M&A buyouts powered by share price appreciation and low wage outsourcing). This is kicking into reverse due to revenue growth deceleration Unlike a partnerships model, Accenture taps the public markets for financing to do M&A and pays its star salespeople with stock. Declining revenue growth rerates the stock price lower, which then makes the market more competitive (can’t buyout others) and acts as a disincentive to the salespeople, which then lowers the stock price further. This alone may be survivable, but at the same time, the company has more than half a million staff (!) employed in India/Philippines/etc at exactly the time when the market wants SOTA-level AI work instead of legacy ‘managed services’, and the federal government is cutting many $B of ACN contracts Tl;dr: these guys aren’t getting IBM’d, they’re getting Xerox’d
tiahura 1y ago
Julie Sweet was on CNBC this morning. It's hard to decide whether she's particularly pointless or just the last one holding the bag.
cmsefton 1y ago
https://archive.ph/GMB11 https://archive.ph/GMB11
alecco 1y ago
Actually Indian? Sep 25, 2025 "Accenture to add 12,000 jobs with new Andhra Pradesh campus amid H-1B visa fee hike" https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/accenture-to-add-12000-jobs-with-new-andhra-pradesh-campus-amid-h-1b-visa-fee-hike/articleshow/124105905.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/acc...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

88 points by jmsflknr 1y ago

Our_Benefactors 1y ago

Paywalled

John2022 1y ago
in case helpful - https://on.ft.com/4mvAlfN https://on.ft.com/4mvAlfN - can only be viewed three times though
Sheepsteak 1y ago
https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.ft.com/content/a74f8564-ed5a-42e9-8fb3-d2bddb2b8675 https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.ft.com/...
cmsefton 1y ago
I posted it as a separate message before I saw yours, but you can view it here https://archive.ph/GMB11 https://archive.ph/GMB11

650 1y ago

Related to new H1B rules possibly?

Zigurd 1y ago
A lot of H1B visas go to people brought in to create billable hours at these consultancies.

thw_9a83c 1y ago

The core sentence from the article: “We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need,” chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call."

mooreds 1y ago
It's amazing what you can learn on a conference call to analysts.
stego-tech 1y ago
If you feed that into HR-GPT, it translates it like thus: “We’re exiting older staff as quickly as possible to avoid a sueball like IBM, because we do not feel it’s worthwhile reskilling them versus hiring cheaper, younger people.” Just my speculative translation based on prior experiences. If you use my comment in a sueball against Accenture for age discrimination, boy howdy will you be disappointed in the outcome.
Mistletoe 1y ago
>In 2023, Sweet's total compensation at Accenture was $31.6 million, or 1,526 times what the median employee at Accenture earned that same year without a cost-of-living adjustment.

stego-tech 1y ago

Looks like this is just an empty excuse to justify their margins at the expense of people: > The cuts allowed Accenture to say it would continue to expand operating profit margins at its historic annual rate of at least 10 basis points in the next fiscal year, a target that some analysts had worried might have to be dropped given the tough industry conditions. The company itself is doing just fine, thanks for asking. > The company said revenues grew 7 per cent to $69.7bn in the year to August, for a net income of $7.83bn, up 6 per cent. They’re citing internal data to prop-up this AI narrative, too, and claim - like everyone else doing layoffs - that headcount is expected to grow in the coming year. It’s basically a giant celebratory puff piece for Accenture. Nothing of substance in there if you’re immune to the usual corporate doublespeak.

bArray 1y ago
> Looks like this is just an empty excuse to justify their margins at the expense of people: All tech companies are doing layoffs [1], Accenture are just trying to sell it as a good thing. > They’re citing internal data to prop-up this AI narrative, too, and claim - like everyone else doing layoffs - that headcount is expected to grow in the coming year. As everybody who has tested this stuff knows, the AI does not lead to massive gains in productivity. They may regret getting rid of safety critical engineers, or testing engineers. [1] https://www.trueup.io/layoffs https://www.trueup.io/layoffs
- rob74 1y ago
  > Accenture are just trying to sell it as a good thing. Layoffs to increase profits are a good thing for shareholders. Not so much for those laid off of course, but who cares about those?
  - prewett 1y ago
    That's kind of a one-sided view. Yes, you need to treat your employees honorably, but a company isn't a jobs program, either.
    - 1y ago

simonw 1y ago

"Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months [...] The IT consulting group on Thursday detailed an $865mn restructuring programme and an outlook for the year ahead that reflects continuing sluggish corporate demand for consulting projects and a clampdown on spending within the US federal government." The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO.

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
> The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO. And from the article: > The company said revenues grew 7 per cent to $69.7bn in the year to August, for a net income of $7.83bn, up 6 per cent. Where's it talk about the TON of work they lost?
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  If I sell you a table for $100, and sell you another one later for $107, did that second table automatically take more work to make?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
    No, but if the only piece we have to go off of is that my revenue from table increased 7%, are you going to assume or believe someone that says my total table sales are WAY down?
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      But that isn't the only piece we have to go on; they're laying off 11k people.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
        That has less than 0 to do with how many tables a company sells. If you can buy a table making machine and lay off 100% of your table makers, you could sell 3x as many tables, and have 20x as much profit.

dbg31415 1y ago

“Over 30? We don’t think you can be trained to use AI.” Feels like another form of age discrimination in tech. Anyone who had a good idea how to do things costs too much money, and it’s better to hire people who blindly trust the AI to do the work. If you can’t spot hallucinations or bad code, do they exist? =P

stego-tech 1y ago
> If you can’t spot hallucinations or bad code, do they exist? =P Literally where we’re at in the AI bubble: blind faith and willful ignorance.
- DarkNova6 1y ago
  I think this applies to the economy at large at the moment. Get to the top, cash out and don't look down.
  - stego-tech 1y ago
    100% this. Very much a “fuck you, got mine” kind of era.
Ancalagon 1y ago
I Cmd-F'd that quote in the archive link but couldn't find it. Was this from the article?

righthand 1y ago

MBAs at the leadership level have no money making ideas they all just ride some trend wave until they can make an excise to fire you for it and collect your operational capital as a yearly bonus. The LLM hype wave is the perfect scape goat. We essentially are empowering small businesses to run like the Dept of Government Efficiency (which is a joke and used to shift tax payer dollars to wealthy Trump supporters).

throwawayoldie 1y ago
You're not wrong, but I have one nit to pick: let's not dignify what MBAs do by calling it "leadership". They're barely "management".
- infamouscow 1y ago
  If you use MBA as anything other than a slur, it's probably incorrect.

DarkNova6 1y ago

Left Accenture this year and I don't regret it. Their leadership is non-existant, their management bloated and there is no vision whatsoever. The company just pumps back money into stock-buybacks and nobody can explain why the CEO, July Sweet, is still on top of it (spoiler, her husband works in politics). Talent is leaving the company left and right because promotions and salary adjustments just are not happening. Your achievements don't matter because they already skipped promotions for 2 years, so there are dozens of people in front of the queue. Juniors are getting fired if they don't have a project for 3 months, but once a surge of projects come around, there is not enough manpower to do staffing. Meanwhile, people in management are safe and get large severance packages. Edit: Hi to my formers colleagues. I know you are reading this, feel free to disagree ;-)

waltbosz 1y ago
> Juniors are getting fired if they don't have a project for 3 months When I worked for Accenture, I got benched for an entire summer. It was great. At the time the only resource to find a new project was this spreadsheet uploaded to Sharepoint, and there was 0 pressure from my HR rep to actually look for a new role. I eventually found a new job and quit, but I always wondered what would have happened if I just stayed on the bench while working at the 2nd job.
- fhd2 1y ago
  I'm sorry, what? I run an agency (still figuring the space out), but just so I get that part: They asked a junior to "find a project" from a spreadsheet? Don't they pair juniors up with seniors in existing projects? Before I'd "bench" anyone, I'd do that without charging for them, so they learn and can do realised billable hours later down the line. I'd feel so weird getting benched. I didn't know that was a thing anyone did frankly.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    Benching is very common in any firm like Accenture, yea. It does seem weird from the outside I agree. It can also depend on the person, skillset, etc. Some people will never get benched just because they don't have any or enough other people with equivalent skills, so there's constant demand. (edit: skillset, not skillet, obviously your bench rate does not depend on your cookware)

snowwrestler 1y ago

Generative AI seems like a perfect fit for Accenture, a company whose business depends primarily on generating PowerPoint decks.

ProllyInfamous 1y ago
My POV of consulting (as a former IBEW electrician) is that the consultants interview us underlings (and actually listen) and then make powerpoint slides of these communal ideas to present to executives as novel ideas. Our bosses eat this shit up shit-eating-grin-ily. But I just twisted wires for a living so what the hell could I know about white collars?
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  That's about right in my experience. Except they aren't really presenting them as novel ideas. The point isn't that they are novel, merely that because they now come packaged from a big consultancy, it provides the necessary level of ass covering to senior execs to be able to action some of them.
  - smt88 1y ago
    Correct. In fact, presenting a novel idea is likely a form of failure. The execs want insurance to do something the company already knows it should do.
- andy99 1y ago
  The fact that you think the consultants were actually listening and raising your ideas with management shows they were good at their jobs. Providing this impression is one of their core functions.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  The IBEW hires consultants? And then has them interview inside wiremen? Is this a local or the national organization? If you ever feel like working in the field again, I have lots of work in 110 and 292 for good electricians :) If you prefer 242, 343, or 14; that can be arranged too haha

bgwalter 1y ago

“We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need,” chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call. Julie Sweet could be replaced by an "AI", or even a 20 year old Markov chain.

QuadmasterXLII 1y ago

One of the most dramatic job effects of AI is a brutal market for lemons effect. Carl wants to buy a widget, and the going rate for a widget was 150 dollars pre ai, and carl pays someone reputablish (accenture say) 150 for a widget and gets 70 cents of tokens. Carl is not going to try another $150 with another provider, he’s just going to leave the market. The pre-ai widgeters all lose their jobs whether or not ai actually is able to solve Carl’s problem.

monkeydust 1y ago

Did my Accenture stint a long time ago, spent about a year there, was 'pimped' out to a banks at a crazy day rate and saw a tiny fraction of that. Had to build decks during lunch and evenings for the partners. It was very much about shipping more people to clients not making existing ones and capabilities more productive and in the end realized it was not for me so left. Its a dead model imho.

citizenpaul 1y ago

I'm not surprised that Accucenture is making the announcement to be the first to throw down the gauntlet on the race to the bottom.

avnfish 1y ago

I’m very bearish on Accenture for the following reason: the business model is a levered flywheel (high-paid salespeople and aggressive M&A buyouts powered by share price appreciation and low wage outsourcing). This is kicking into reverse due to revenue growth deceleration Unlike a partnerships model, Accenture taps the public markets for financing to do M&A and pays its star salespeople with stock. Declining revenue growth rerates the stock price lower, which then makes the market more competitive (can’t buyout others) and acts as a disincentive to the salespeople, which then lowers the stock price further. This alone may be survivable, but at the same time, the company has more than half a million staff (!) employed in India/Philippines/etc at exactly the time when the market wants SOTA-level AI work instead of legacy ‘managed services’, and the federal government is cutting many $B of ACN contracts Tl;dr: these guys aren’t getting IBM’d, they’re getting Xerox’d

tiahura 1y ago

Julie Sweet was on CNBC this morning. It's hard to decide whether she's particularly pointless or just the last one holding the bag.

cmsefton 1y ago

https://archive.ph/GMB11 https://archive.ph/GMB11

alecco 1y ago

Actually Indian? Sep 25, 2025 "Accenture to add 12,000 jobs with new Andhra Pradesh campus amid H-1B visa fee hike" https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/accenture-to-add-12000-jobs-with-new-andhra-pradesh-campus-amid-h-1b-visa-fee-hike/articleshow/124105905.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/acc...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]