The top four multinational consulting firms in the world are home to employees who refer to their workplaces as “The Meat Grinder,” where their careers are chewed up and the scraps are spat out.
The terrible death of a senior EY colleague in Sydney over the weekend has brought attention to daily operations at the Big4, accounting giants EY, KPMG, PwC, and Deloitte.
The lady fell from the terrace on the top of the 10th story of the EY tower in the CBD into the glass awning above its entrance at approximately 12.30am on Saturday. It is now known that she was 27 and not 33 as had been earlier claimed.
Former and current employees have now revealed the difficult work atmosphere often seen at the Big4 corporations, with some suggesting most employees only stay in the “churn and burn” offices for two years at most.
On Friday, the Sydney employee worked until around 7.30 p.m., when she left her office in the golden tower and didn’t come back until after midnight.
Additionally, it was first believed that she went to work drinks between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m., but according to Daily Mail Australia, she stayed in the office until this hour.
The woman’s motions are now separated by over five hours.
The lady reportedly used her security swipe card to enter the locked open-air terrace area around 20 minutes after returning to her workplace at midnight; sadly, she subsequently plummeted to her death.
According to Daily Mail Australia, EY is planning to modify the rooftop guardrail on the terrace to build a new barrier and avoid a repetition of the tragedy.
The tragic news was delivered to the deceased woman’s husband as he got off the aircraft when he was travelling from Singapore to Sydney.
The police inquiry is ongoing, and there is no indication that Ernst & Young, doing business as EY, or the employee’s bosses, were at anyhow accountable for the worker’s passing.
Online, one former coworker wrote, “Another one for the meat grinder.”
The event has made many of the enormous international corporations’ demanding working conditions public, particularly during the auditing season from July to September.
The Big4 are often contacted to independently check the accounts of businesses for their yearly financial reports, and they predominate corporate report audits.
Former workers, however, claim that staff members are routinely pushed to their limits in order to submit the meticulously comprehensive reports in a hurried manner, necessitating hours of purportedly unpaid and unrecorded overtime.
So-called survivors have taken to social media in droves to say they routinely pushed beyond the point of exhaustion to meet deadlines.
The reality is supposedly often twice that – or worse – despite billable hours being documented at typical levels of just 41–42 hours per week.
One source said, “Partners don’t want to charge customers too much since it will incentivize them to go someplace else.”
They under-quote and overdeliver to seem nice. This implies that a Senior Analyst must spend her week producing slide presentations, waiting for data delivery from customers, travelling, leading standups, and managing juniors.
And that’s just one assignment; typically, they would conduct a series of engagements in order to meet their utilisation goal (the partner won’t let her bill for her real hours, so she seems to be underutilised while working 14-hour days).
The company plays a very infernal game of financial mathematics to seem prosperous when they are actually simply covering their actual labour expenses.
It explains why the typical tenure is roughly 2.5 years.
It’s a company that churns and burns.
“The horrible workplace culture has to be called out and make the headlines,” one person railed.
‘From my experience, working fewer than 10 hours a day at EY is career death. The truth. Not at least exaggerated.
The typical workday lasted from 8am to 7pm, but it could go as late as 9:30pm. I’ve heard that individuals stayed at other teams’ locations till two in the morning.
‘Also no one stays for the salary. All of the major 4 consulting companies’ remuneration is terrible.
According to a survey by auditing software provider Caseware, auditors may put in 12-hour days as big-name corporations prepare their annual reports for publication by September 30.
Even while one EY partner acknowledged that “occasionally work beyond the required 7.5 hours” did exist, they argued that this did not happen “throughout the full year.”
But according to a leaked EY email, one manager in Hong Kong ordered staff members to work weekends and from 9.30 am to 11.30 night.
“I suppose midnight is typical in high seasons,” it continued, “it depends on your discipline and accountability.”
They work their supervisors and those underneath them so hard, one ex-employee told.
I once mentioned to my director that I was finding it difficult to keep up with the workload since a few team members had left, and she said, “It is what it is.”
“Bad ratings” cause those who don’t stick with the late hours to be fired.
“There are a lot of individuals who play politics, kiss asses, and manage to get to the top, while everyone else, like this poor migrant worker, is exhausted and pushed to the breaking point.”
Big4 isn’t what it once was; its image has plummeted, and they really take their employees for granted.
Others said that senior management and partners overworked junior employees in order to maximise revenue returns, often adding extra work to already hectic schedules.
Another person chimed up, “Working for B4 may often seem like working in a sweat factory.” They don’t have your best interests in mind.
They only concern themselves with output, output, output.
One person said they were holding on but were soon going to give up: “I’m so psychologically weary and sick.”
However, they added several commitments to my full-time project.
“Partners won’t be concerned with you since they simply want to increase their profits and grab more money,” Disgusting. I’m so prepared to go.
Another person said, “I know how stressful year-end audits can be as an auditor myself, working for a Big 4 and having worked for two other Big 4.
“I hope that this tragedy brings some clarity to this matter and that businesses provide greater assistance to workers, particularly at this time of the year,” the author said.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, EY has pledged to conduct a “full and wide-ranging internal investigation that will encompass health and safety, security, and social events,” under the direction of their principal mental health adviser.
Workers, however, feel that the assertions of support are untrue.
One fumed, “They were constantly whining about “work life balance,” which was simply BS!
“I couldn’t believe it when a lady who had just given birth returned to the office on her way home from the hospital (her spouse had left her off and taken the infant home) so she could finish up paperwork, call clients, reschedule appointments, etc.
“I recall employees calling their children at night to wish them good night from the workplace.”
The Aussie Corporate, an Australian corporate world blogger, has previously brought attention to the difficulties many people have when they disclose to having mental health concerns because of concern that it would later ruin their jobs.
In the aftermath of the disaster, he said on social media, “The demanding work culture itself is the core issue.”
Yes, we put in long hours, but there must also be clear limits and effective warning mechanisms.
It’s a little silly that it takes horrific incidents like this to bring about change, but let’s hope that this has raised red flags among top management worldwide.
While some said that the same circumstances did not exist in other departments of the corporation, others claimed that it was easy to work around the high expectations without becoming exhausted.
One said, “My coworkers and I have been discussing how this seems like it occurred to another organisation. I work in IT consulting at EY.”
Had no clue that people were working as hard as everyone is claiming. Never had any pressure to work late hours, never had any examples of it in consulting, and never had to deal with toxic individuals. We are just in awe that this is the same business.
“I enjoy my job at EY and my team, but now I can see that things aren’t quite as rosy in other service lines.” So glad I’m not in Audit. Jeeeesus.’
Another person said, “Just want to clarify it depends on the project. Due to their workload and clientele, auditors have a difficult job.
If you take charge to manage-up with your chosen goals and manage client, director, and partner expectations, the burden for an 18-month delivery/implementation/run project may be greatly reduced.
‘That is a skill, not a given, and takes confidence through experience to work politically to set those boundaries with people you perceive as more powerful (in reality they rarely are).’
PwC, KPMG, and Deloitte have been approached by Daily Mail Australia for comment on the allegations.