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-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.
We see this here in the U.S. as well (and I’m sure in other countries, Japan’s “salaryman” culture comes to mind.). It’s far more industry-specific though.
There are two things to consider:
- when technical ability amongst competitors is high across the board those become “table stakes” and the competition shifts to social signaling, i.e. who can appear to be the most committed? Examples are: Who can show up to work earlier and leave later? Who will respond to texts the fastest? In an environment with an unrestrained management there will be no limits and can become very toxic.
- Individuals have different stress tolerance. Hyper-competitive environments weed out those who are less adept at managing the stress, meaning that new “untested” individuals learn the hard way just how bad it can be, sometimes with very bad results. While stress tolerance can be increased in individuals it’s not limitless, so ultimately responsibility lies with management to set hard limits on what is within bounds.
In my experience, "table stakes" is bizword signaling used by demanding, ahole managers use to insist on severe work-life imbalance while simultaneously waxing about work-life balance and the mission statement, making them either intentionally dishonest or willfully cognitively dissonant.
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?
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.
People usually still have bread and circuses and the circuses of today are very good. Have you tried farming or even just growing something to eat in a pot? For most people an office job is better than subsistence farming.
I grew up on a farm in the 90's in Poland (In 89' Poland dissolved PPR/PRL - basically just got rid of communism so villages were quite poor) and I did have to work in the field as that was our main source of food (honestly probably a lot of that was because of the culture, not poverty - everyone grew their own stuff and our grandparents which lived through WW2 still remembered even worse times and did not trust the economy at all).
Honestly - it was not that bad. For your own sustenance (literally when you don't sell much) you do not need that much land and the work is not 24/7 every day. There are a couple of tough weeks in the year but much more downtime than you might realize (like, you barely need to do almost anything entire winter and most of the other seasons actually. 1-2h tops to feed the livestock and bring some wood/coal to the furnace).
It would be a different story if farming was our business and we wanted to raise money for something significant - but if you don't have any ambitions like that - village life is pretty easy.
I guess it depends on the type of said office job, but currently I work as a senior dev contractor in the city and it's barely better, if it is at all (I still can't really make up my mind if I'm happier). All of my extra money goes to mortgage (I "own" an apartment, not a house) and after work I do the exact same things I did when I worked on the farm to unwind (read, play games, nap, listen to music) because that's all the energy I have. And then we need to add all of the extra stress and competitiveness that comes with this line of job, wile "on the farm" I was already "at the bottom" and didn't stress much.
There are a lot of scenarios on the farm where something is very urgent sure but they are not really stressful. If some farmer says they are - he did not experience real stress (legal threats, danger of losing not only the source of food but entire house + going into debt, long economy downturns without hope of things getting better [as compared to temporary stuff like the weather destroying the current year's crops], lots of stuff).
> Have you tried farming or even just growing something to eat in a pot?
Yes, and it’s extremely gratifying work. Much more so than sitting in front of a screen. And you can hold the result of your labor, see it, feed it to your family. It’s awesome. I wasn’t aware of how hurt I was by all my labor being abstracted away from me.
I still make my living as an information worker, but I’m actively weaning myself off the income. Less money, more happy.
I've been moving the same way, but still working so I couldn't buy 4 acres in the country (need reliable internet), but I was able to find a (somewhat expensive) half way solution where I have internet (but well and septic), a wood burning stove, and enough land for prairie, bees, chickens, and a few garden plots (adding an additional 4x8 plot each year).
We also belong to a CSA less than a mile away.
We can a bit, too. It _is_ rewarding and nothing beats a sun-warmed fresh tomato. Or cooking potatoes you grew.
It's especially stupid to work extremely hard without gaining equity and profit sharing where they can just fire you for any reason. Employee-owned consultancies would make a lot more sense for the worker.
so there's no bonding at work? is it because, those who do understand and could empthatize are incentivized to instead show no mercy and try to push out the newcomers? how come managers are not "entourage building"?
IMHO, when there are millions struggling for limited resources it creates a culture of competition. You can see this is every facet of life in India. In my time in India, I met my fair share of toxic managers (e.g. leaving at 6 PM we were asked why were we leaving for "half-day"), probably had very few genuinely nice and kind managers. See also - https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/narayana-murthys-70-hour-wor...
I was born and lived most of my life in Brazil, the same dynamics apply over there, a bit less brutal and gruesome but the competition for limited resources create a work culture of overwork, of management abuse, of constant fear of losing your job, of anxiety someone else is working longer and harder than you so you need to compensate for that.
It's also similar on the education path, there are a few of very good Brazilian public universities (usually they are much better academically than private ones), entrance is through exams and most of my education was focused on passing those exams. Curriculum is tailored for what might be asked on the entrance exams, preparation for these exams (including mock exams) start also around age 15, etc.
I venture to say this is reality in most of the developing world, even more on countries on the middle income bracket like Brazil, India, etc., which aren't so poor that there are no opportunities but are poor enough that good opportunities are few and far between, competition for those spots is insane.
I don't think anyone growing up in developed countries can emotionally understand that, even though there's high competition for great universities, top jobs, etc., you can still live a very fulfilling and decent life without getting into Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Oxford, and so on. That's not really an option in poorer places, you either make it or you will live in some limbo where you earn enough to sustain yourself but don't have access to much else, it's a constant state of surviving to work without seeing upwards mobility.
> I don't think anyone growing up in developed countries can emotionally understand that, even though there's high competition for great universities, top jobs, etc., you can still live a very fulfilling and decent life without getting into Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Oxford, and so on. That's not really an option in poorer places, you either make it or you will live in some limbo where you earn enough to sustain yourself but don't have access to much else, it's a constant state of surviving to work without seeing upwards mobility.
I'm from Poland. 20 years ago, a friend of mine went to US for the summer to do menial jobs (we were both students at the time) and came back with all sorts of stories. His biggest shock though was "OMG I lived next to this guy who was a postman, and he could live a completely decent live on just his postman salary!". Whereas, in Poland back then, with 20%+ unemployment and depressed wages that come from that, you needed to be extraordinary just to be able to afford an ordinary life.
There's a fraction of Big 4/MBB associates who dream of becoming partners and this is the hazing ritual the culture has established to select who will get to stop 3-4-5 / 80 hr work weeks and pivot into something a little less insane with more money. The problem is: there aren't that many positions for project leaders through director compared to the number of associates. They'd probably be better off winning the lottery or going to work for one of their clients so they can have a life now rather than the nebulous promise of one at some point in the future.
This reminds me of some of Alan Watts writings where he tells this story of people going through school then college thinking they have made it only to have the goal posts moved.
Some where around mid-life you start to catch on to the whole scheme.
Not all 30M of graduates attempt to get to these schools, so the ratio will be much lower.
We have a similar process in France for specific elite schools where French students go through a 2-stage exam system (first you need to get to a preparatory school, then there is a national exam). The work during these two preparation years is insane and the entrance ratio is about 3% (depends on the school).
This system is completely surreal (though the ones who go through it often like it) and different from other European systems.
As a side note, it is much easier to get to the school if you are not French, which did not help in some students relations.
For all of its warts the American system is the most forgiving and I think the best. You have many options for continuing education and it is now moving away from a filtering function. There should be a huge market for online education in India and even Europe. Or perhaps the countries should invest in higher education and build more research universities. The number one predictor of economic success is proximity to a tier 1 research university.
The Australian system is really flexible with entrance requirements, you don't need to have completed high school to get in. You can get in through a variety of alternative pathways, like professional experience, special entrance programmes, etc. Age is no particular barrier either, and it's pretty common to have older students.
It's recommended by a lot of people not to go straight into uni, especially if you're unsure what direction you want to go in. Spend a year or a few, work some hospitality jobs, and just enjoy yourself first, then go do uni in your 20s.
My dream system would be American universities (all get the same high school degree, take a test to see which uni you can join) mixed with the German trade system (proper standardized apprenticeships that are paid with further education for anybody be it plumber or electrician at Siemens, Bayer or BMW).
We have more or less this in France with all the other schools (universities, engineer schools, vocational schools, ...) where the last 2 or 3 years can be done as apprenticeship. Very sought after.
I always have 1 or 2 apprentices in my teams, at very technical and engaging positions. They are happy, I am happy.
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.
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.
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.
I saw a similar situation to the headline, where a pregnant woman working for an Indian outsourcer was worked to the point that the stress caused a miscarriage. She was forced to return back to work the same day, directly from the hospital.
The work being done by that team was utterly pointless. It was a software deployment that had failed twice already because they hadn't followed the procedure in the manual, and were trying the same guaranteed-to-fail process a third time just in case it would succeed. They all knew it would fail, but their manager insisted they go through the motions anyway, for 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. The manager knew it wouldn't work either, but his boss had signed some document that basically said that they "had to" do things this way. His boss had no idea about anything, wasn't there, and didn't care about the technical details to begin with.
It was an incredible farce, with deadly consequences, for no tangible results.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
You read these posts and realise this is what companies in the west want to feed by outsourcing. They want to hire shops in the developing world that exploit and harm people because of course someone who is forced to overwork will be cheaper than one who has a smidgen of leverage. Part of the "cheaper labour" is cost of living in other countries, sure, but a lot of it is this sort of thing.
Low cost of living leading to lower salary is one thing, but the cake is being able to exploit and overwork.
In India, almost everyone overworks. No exceptions. Even in most government positions. It is just what people are willing to go through.
No, it’s not "culture". Everyone hates it, but don't want to go hungry.
Another thing is, MNCs, both in tech and non-tech fields at least offers you a working space with AC and decoration. That's a big draw for many, if not most. As India is developing, many people are first generation white-collar job holders. They, and their parents are just happy that they don't have to do manual labor in the sun, or be subject to poor treatment by bosses in more traditional sectors. Such people will be unhappy, sad, and still accept the toil and pressure and overwork.
> In India, almost everyone overworks. No exceptions.
No offense, but the output of that "work" is generally crap. "Check the Box and March in Circles" legalism with zero thought about impact, output, or usability.
Which is why most BPO & outsourcing programs are a total shitshow.
I'd rather have 6 - 8 hours of engaged time directed towards specific outcomes, guided by effective impact measurements, than 100 hours of timecard punches.
Trade is good, because comparative advantages give us economic surplus, but we need compensatory tariffs for labor practices, just as for GHG emissions.
In short, yes. I hope the comment didn't come off as too protectionist. I'm not against collaboration or trade in general, but the "savings" companies think they reap from outsourcing to countries with much worse labour practices needs to be remedied somehow. It's a form of externality.
Then there's the whole principal-agent problem and whatever is the equivalent of that for "corporation" (or team) as an entity vs. "corporation" (or team) as people at its helm. Outsourcing could look good financially, but be disastrous long-term because of quality and reliability issues; some decision makers benefit from the short-term outcomes, but many care about long-term too - but then, corporation as an entity sees "shit but profitable" as a long-term gain, so its own incentives are structurally misaligned with that of humans that make it. Etc.
Those kinds of tactics gave me acid reflux in mid 20's. I had to re-frame how I look at work after that. Although a few years later I fell in to the trap (again) and left a very senior position to go solo (again) in order to have some agency and prioritize my health and wellness.
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.
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.)
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
Not to say overwork didn't lead to her death, but you're conflating two parts of this story - Zion (who died) wasn't the overworked medical worker, the workers being overworked led them to make poor decisions that led to her developing serotonin syndrome
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.
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.
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.
> 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
Too many variables affect this, including lifestyle, working hours, working conditions, etc. It's easy to control for them at large, but not combat one of them specifically.
For me, it's ulcers, caused by lack of a strict eating schedule and growing acidity levels due to not eating properly. Although in incidentally, during my PE days, what could've killed me was not that, but massive depression from a lack of socialization and not having someone to talk to.
For some folks I knew, it was a lifestyle of smoking and/or poor dietary habits, which led to a heart attack and an early death. For another, it was a heart attack too, caused by drinking too much energy drinks to stay awake. For still another, it was due to taking controlled medication on a slightly higher dose that landed them in the ER.
And then there's the story of that guy behind the "Impossible is Nothing" meme who suffered from massive depression after his video resume was leaked and made viral across Wall Street banks. Ended up dying from a medication overdose, although it's also alleged that it was an intentional suicide.
It's easy to figure out the warning signs early on - they stand out extremely obvious to anyone with a couple of braincells. The point is that most places, especially many Indian companies (although all of my examples were in London and NY), glorify this culture of excessive slaving for some mediocre return.
It's not a meme, it's a trivially verifiable fact. Gather a bunch of people, start poking at and hacking away their body parts, and you'll quickly discover there's a specific part that's the seat of thoughts and consciousness.
Or, if IRB doesn't approve of this study, just observe that medical practice around the world provides overwhelming empirical evidence for it every day, day in, day out. Now that we can swap almost every body part between people, it's kind of obvious which one is the one that's doing the thinking.
As much as your scientism and medical specialists may try to suppress evidence to the contrary, bodies are organic systems that amount to more than the sum of parts. And we cannot hack away at a body without disrupting its integrity--have you heard of "phantom limb syndrome"?
Did you read the linked article? The death of that woman fixed two major problems: 1) limited working hours for the physicians, not primarily for the deceased, 2) brought serotonin syndrome to light. I was shocked when I read that the physician prescribed an opioid to treat "jerking motions of the hand" to a patient that's on a serotonin active drug. With today's knowledge this just screams serotonin syndrome: check her blood pressure, temperature and cool her down if needed.
First reactions were fully in line with what you're presenting. But hard facts are that a young person doesn't just die from overwork. They may develop PTSD, or anxiety disorder, or may lose or gain weight, or a whole bunch of other things. But a death is not normal, it has to be scientifically investigated.
You can die of exhaustion though, even outside work. Some korean gamers folded after 72h of continuous gaming (IIRC it wasn't in a competition, just his habit).
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....
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Not to encourage the behavior, but it’s not simply “I was a victim” signal.
It’s abusive, but it’s also a sign you did something. You have to do the work asked of you, and the more work you do, the better for a CV. That’s why so many people tolerate this treatment, and why it’s not a negative signal for people reading a CV later.
The line between "tolerates abuse" and "persevered through legitimately hard challenges at work" is quite blurry, and the latter is a good signal on your resume.
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.
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?
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 ;)
My wife was a lawyer at a Big 4 and got fired when they suspected that she was pregnant. Even though the corporate propaganda was full of "inclusivity" and other woke bullshit.
Interestingly enough, it was during Covid, she had to work from home and their main complain was that she wasn't "bonding enough with the team". Yes no shit when everyone is buried under 12h of work and bars are closed, what was she supposed to do? Those partners will do anything, including illegal things, to get to their 3% growth target.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
> 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.
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%.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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-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.
We see this here in the U.S. as well (and I’m sure in other countries, Japan’s “salaryman” culture comes to mind.). It’s far more industry-specific though.
There are two things to consider:
- when technical ability amongst competitors is high across the board those become “table stakes” and the competition shifts to social signaling, i.e. who can appear to be the most committed? Examples are: Who can show up to work earlier and leave later? Who will respond to texts the fastest? In an environment with an unrestrained management there will be no limits and can become very toxic.
- Individuals have different stress tolerance. Hyper-competitive environments weed out those who are less adept at managing the stress, meaning that new “untested” individuals learn the hard way just how bad it can be, sometimes with very bad results. While stress tolerance can be increased in individuals it’s not limitless, so ultimately responsibility lies with management to set hard limits on what is within bounds.
In my experience, "table stakes" is bizword signaling used by demanding, ahole managers use to insist on severe work-life imbalance while simultaneously waxing about work-life balance and the mission statement, making them either intentionally dishonest or willfully cognitively dissonant.
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?
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.
People usually still have bread and circuses and the circuses of today are very good. Have you tried farming or even just growing something to eat in a pot? For most people an office job is better than subsistence farming.
I grew up on a farm in the 90's in Poland (In 89' Poland dissolved PPR/PRL - basically just got rid of communism so villages were quite poor) and I did have to work in the field as that was our main source of food (honestly probably a lot of that was because of the culture, not poverty - everyone grew their own stuff and our grandparents which lived through WW2 still remembered even worse times and did not trust the economy at all).
Honestly - it was not that bad. For your own sustenance (literally when you don't sell much) you do not need that much land and the work is not 24/7 every day. There are a couple of tough weeks in the year but much more downtime than you might realize (like, you barely need to do almost anything entire winter and most of the other seasons actually. 1-2h tops to feed the livestock and bring some wood/coal to the furnace). It would be a different story if farming was our business and we wanted to raise money for something significant - but if you don't have any ambitions like that - village life is pretty easy.
I guess it depends on the type of said office job, but currently I work as a senior dev contractor in the city and it's barely better, if it is at all (I still can't really make up my mind if I'm happier). All of my extra money goes to mortgage (I "own" an apartment, not a house) and after work I do the exact same things I did when I worked on the farm to unwind (read, play games, nap, listen to music) because that's all the energy I have. And then we need to add all of the extra stress and competitiveness that comes with this line of job, wile "on the farm" I was already "at the bottom" and didn't stress much. There are a lot of scenarios on the farm where something is very urgent sure but they are not really stressful. If some farmer says they are - he did not experience real stress (legal threats, danger of losing not only the source of food but entire house + going into debt, long economy downturns without hope of things getting better [as compared to temporary stuff like the weather destroying the current year's crops], lots of stuff).
> Have you tried farming or even just growing something to eat in a pot?
Yes, and it’s extremely gratifying work. Much more so than sitting in front of a screen. And you can hold the result of your labor, see it, feed it to your family. It’s awesome. I wasn’t aware of how hurt I was by all my labor being abstracted away from me.
I still make my living as an information worker, but I’m actively weaning myself off the income. Less money, more happy.
I've been moving the same way, but still working so I couldn't buy 4 acres in the country (need reliable internet), but I was able to find a (somewhat expensive) half way solution where I have internet (but well and septic), a wood burning stove, and enough land for prairie, bees, chickens, and a few garden plots (adding an additional 4x8 plot each year).
We also belong to a CSA less than a mile away.
We can a bit, too. It _is_ rewarding and nothing beats a sun-warmed fresh tomato. Or cooking potatoes you grew.
> I wasn't aware of how hurt I was by all my labor being abstracted away from me.
This is so fundamental, but so rarely spoken about in explicit terms. For reasons.
It's especially stupid to work extremely hard without gaining equity and profit sharing where they can just fire you for any reason. Employee-owned consultancies would make a lot more sense for the worker.
> no one can understand their situation.
so there's no bonding at work? is it because, those who do understand and could empthatize are incentivized to instead show no mercy and try to push out the newcomers? how come managers are not "entourage building"?
IMHO, when there are millions struggling for limited resources it creates a culture of competition. You can see this is every facet of life in India. In my time in India, I met my fair share of toxic managers (e.g. leaving at 6 PM we were asked why were we leaving for "half-day"), probably had very few genuinely nice and kind managers. See also - https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/narayana-murthys-70-hour-wor...
I believe this is more universal than just India.
I was born and lived most of my life in Brazil, the same dynamics apply over there, a bit less brutal and gruesome but the competition for limited resources create a work culture of overwork, of management abuse, of constant fear of losing your job, of anxiety someone else is working longer and harder than you so you need to compensate for that.
It's also similar on the education path, there are a few of very good Brazilian public universities (usually they are much better academically than private ones), entrance is through exams and most of my education was focused on passing those exams. Curriculum is tailored for what might be asked on the entrance exams, preparation for these exams (including mock exams) start also around age 15, etc.
I venture to say this is reality in most of the developing world, even more on countries on the middle income bracket like Brazil, India, etc., which aren't so poor that there are no opportunities but are poor enough that good opportunities are few and far between, competition for those spots is insane.
I don't think anyone growing up in developed countries can emotionally understand that, even though there's high competition for great universities, top jobs, etc., you can still live a very fulfilling and decent life without getting into Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Oxford, and so on. That's not really an option in poorer places, you either make it or you will live in some limbo where you earn enough to sustain yourself but don't have access to much else, it's a constant state of surviving to work without seeing upwards mobility.
> I don't think anyone growing up in developed countries can emotionally understand that, even though there's high competition for great universities, top jobs, etc., you can still live a very fulfilling and decent life without getting into Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Oxford, and so on. That's not really an option in poorer places, you either make it or you will live in some limbo where you earn enough to sustain yourself but don't have access to much else, it's a constant state of surviving to work without seeing upwards mobility.
I'm from Poland. 20 years ago, a friend of mine went to US for the summer to do menial jobs (we were both students at the time) and came back with all sorts of stories. His biggest shock though was "OMG I lived next to this guy who was a postman, and he could live a completely decent live on just his postman salary!". Whereas, in Poland back then, with 20%+ unemployment and depressed wages that come from that, you needed to be extraordinary just to be able to afford an ordinary life.
There's a fraction of Big 4/MBB associates who dream of becoming partners and this is the hazing ritual the culture has established to select who will get to stop 3-4-5 / 80 hr work weeks and pivot into something a little less insane with more money. The problem is: there aren't that many positions for project leaders through director compared to the number of associates. They'd probably be better off winning the lottery or going to work for one of their clients so they can have a life now rather than the nebulous promise of one at some point in the future.
This reminds me of some of Alan Watts writings where he tells this story of people going through school then college thinking they have made it only to have the goal posts moved.
Some where around mid-life you start to catch on to the whole scheme.
Not all 30M of graduates attempt to get to these schools, so the ratio will be much lower.
We have a similar process in France for specific elite schools where French students go through a 2-stage exam system (first you need to get to a preparatory school, then there is a national exam). The work during these two preparation years is insane and the entrance ratio is about 3% (depends on the school).
This system is completely surreal (though the ones who go through it often like it) and different from other European systems.
As a side note, it is much easier to get to the school if you are not French, which did not help in some students relations.
For all of its warts the American system is the most forgiving and I think the best. You have many options for continuing education and it is now moving away from a filtering function. There should be a huge market for online education in India and even Europe. Or perhaps the countries should invest in higher education and build more research universities. The number one predictor of economic success is proximity to a tier 1 research university.
The Australian system is really flexible with entrance requirements, you don't need to have completed high school to get in. You can get in through a variety of alternative pathways, like professional experience, special entrance programmes, etc. Age is no particular barrier either, and it's pretty common to have older students.
It's recommended by a lot of people not to go straight into uni, especially if you're unsure what direction you want to go in. Spend a year or a few, work some hospitality jobs, and just enjoy yourself first, then go do uni in your 20s.
My dream system would be American universities (all get the same high school degree, take a test to see which uni you can join) mixed with the German trade system (proper standardized apprenticeships that are paid with further education for anybody be it plumber or electrician at Siemens, Bayer or BMW).
We have more or less this in France with all the other schools (universities, engineer schools, vocational schools, ...) where the last 2 or 3 years can be done as apprenticeship. Very sought after.
I always have 1 or 2 apprentices in my teams, at very technical and engaging positions. They are happy, I am happy.
Claiming 100-200k is huge, considering even IITs and NITs together have around 40k seats, and not all branches offer good pay or job prospects.
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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.
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.
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.
I saw a similar situation to the headline, where a pregnant woman working for an Indian outsourcer was worked to the point that the stress caused a miscarriage. She was forced to return back to work the same day, directly from the hospital.
The work being done by that team was utterly pointless. It was a software deployment that had failed twice already because they hadn't followed the procedure in the manual, and were trying the same guaranteed-to-fail process a third time just in case it would succeed. They all knew it would fail, but their manager insisted they go through the motions anyway, for 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. The manager knew it wouldn't work either, but his boss had signed some document that basically said that they "had to" do things this way. His boss had no idea about anything, wasn't there, and didn't care about the technical details to begin with.
It was an incredible farce, with deadly consequences, for no tangible results.
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.
It is a tragedy for many things, economical, societal, psychological / sociological; so much human potential being wasted on "busywork".
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!
> Friday evening drinks in corney and barrow were sacred
So there was an effectively mandatory work hangout every Friday evening?
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.
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.
> back in work by 9am
Nice of you to join us.
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.
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.
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?
Incentives are against acknowledging the problem.
Work-Life Balance Is ‘Western Concept’
https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
manager and skip manager even sued this person after they left Adobe https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
You read these posts and realise this is what companies in the west want to feed by outsourcing. They want to hire shops in the developing world that exploit and harm people because of course someone who is forced to overwork will be cheaper than one who has a smidgen of leverage. Part of the "cheaper labour" is cost of living in other countries, sure, but a lot of it is this sort of thing.
Yes, spot on.
Low cost of living leading to lower salary is one thing, but the cake is being able to exploit and overwork.
In India, almost everyone overworks. No exceptions. Even in most government positions. It is just what people are willing to go through.
No, it’s not "culture". Everyone hates it, but don't want to go hungry.
Another thing is, MNCs, both in tech and non-tech fields at least offers you a working space with AC and decoration. That's a big draw for many, if not most. As India is developing, many people are first generation white-collar job holders. They, and their parents are just happy that they don't have to do manual labor in the sun, or be subject to poor treatment by bosses in more traditional sectors. Such people will be unhappy, sad, and still accept the toil and pressure and overwork.
> In India, almost everyone overworks. No exceptions.
No offense, but the output of that "work" is generally crap. "Check the Box and March in Circles" legalism with zero thought about impact, output, or usability.
Which is why most BPO & outsourcing programs are a total shitshow.
I'd rather have 6 - 8 hours of engaged time directed towards specific outcomes, guided by effective impact measurements, than 100 hours of timecard punches.
Trade is good, because comparative advantages give us economic surplus, but we need compensatory tariffs for labor practices, just as for GHG emissions.
In short, yes. I hope the comment didn't come off as too protectionist. I'm not against collaboration or trade in general, but the "savings" companies think they reap from outsourcing to countries with much worse labour practices needs to be remedied somehow. It's a form of externality.
Then there's the whole principal-agent problem and whatever is the equivalent of that for "corporation" (or team) as an entity vs. "corporation" (or team) as people at its helm. Outsourcing could look good financially, but be disastrous long-term because of quality and reliability issues; some decision makers benefit from the short-term outcomes, but many care about long-term too - but then, corporation as an entity sees "shit but profitable" as a long-term gain, so its own incentives are structurally misaligned with that of humans that make it. Etc.
It did not come off as protectionist (at least for me).
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.
yep, here's a story about exactly that at Adobe
https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
> What would reporting it to the skip level achieve?
They exist for this sole reason: if your manager is not behaving correctly.
Again, you're assuming that the organization regards this treatment as "incorrect".
Those kinds of tactics gave me acid reflux in mid 20's. I had to re-frame how I look at work after that. Although a few years later I fell in to the trap (again) and left a very senior position to go solo (again) in order to have some agency and prioritize my health and wellness.
Sounds a lot like the "weed-out" classes in first year Engineering.
yeah except it's first year at school -- not the next 5-10 years of your life, or longer
As for the lack of accountability with managers, that’s a huge issue.
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.
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.)
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
Not to say overwork didn't lead to her death, but you're conflating two parts of this story - Zion (who died) wasn't the overworked medical worker, the workers being overworked led them to make poor decisions that led to her developing serotonin syndrome
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.
To me, how work stress can kill you is the most interesting part.
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.
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.
> 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
Too many variables affect this, including lifestyle, working hours, working conditions, etc. It's easy to control for them at large, but not combat one of them specifically.
For me, it's ulcers, caused by lack of a strict eating schedule and growing acidity levels due to not eating properly. Although in incidentally, during my PE days, what could've killed me was not that, but massive depression from a lack of socialization and not having someone to talk to.
For some folks I knew, it was a lifestyle of smoking and/or poor dietary habits, which led to a heart attack and an early death. For another, it was a heart attack too, caused by drinking too much energy drinks to stay awake. For still another, it was due to taking controlled medication on a slightly higher dose that landed them in the ER.
And then there's the story of that guy behind the "Impossible is Nothing" meme who suffered from massive depression after his video resume was leaked and made viral across Wall Street banks. Ended up dying from a medication overdose, although it's also alleged that it was an intentional suicide.
It's easy to figure out the warning signs early on - they stand out extremely obvious to anyone with a couple of braincells. The point is that most places, especially many Indian companies (although all of my examples were in London and NY), glorify this culture of excessive slaving for some mediocre return.
> That reason is just a recent meme, best I can tell.
The concept of thoughts and consciousness being confined to a specific organ is a recent meme.
It's not a meme, it's a trivially verifiable fact. Gather a bunch of people, start poking at and hacking away their body parts, and you'll quickly discover there's a specific part that's the seat of thoughts and consciousness.
Or, if IRB doesn't approve of this study, just observe that medical practice around the world provides overwhelming empirical evidence for it every day, day in, day out. Now that we can swap almost every body part between people, it's kind of obvious which one is the one that's doing the thinking.
And yet, we have expressions like, "second brain", "muscle memory", "courage", "heartfelt apology", "gut feeling".
And you rephrased the premise. I did not write it the way you did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
As much as your scientism and medical specialists may try to suppress evidence to the contrary, bodies are organic systems that amount to more than the sum of parts. And we cannot hack away at a body without disrupting its integrity--have you heard of "phantom limb syndrome"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb
Was Mary Shelley the consciousness expert?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Parts_(film) [credit to Gemini AI, for correctly naming the film from my one-sentence description and incorrect "1980s" time frame.]
Work stress can kill you even if it doesn't kill you. I mean, nobody really smokes "for fun". Nobody eats themselves to death accidently.
Did you read the linked article? The death of that woman fixed two major problems: 1) limited working hours for the physicians, not primarily for the deceased, 2) brought serotonin syndrome to light. I was shocked when I read that the physician prescribed an opioid to treat "jerking motions of the hand" to a patient that's on a serotonin active drug. With today's knowledge this just screams serotonin syndrome: check her blood pressure, temperature and cool her down if needed.
First reactions were fully in line with what you're presenting. But hard facts are that a young person doesn't just die from overwork. They may develop PTSD, or anxiety disorder, or may lose or gain weight, or a whole bunch of other things. But a death is not normal, it has to be scientifically investigated.
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You can die of exhaustion though, even outside work. Some korean gamers folded after 72h of continuous gaming (IIRC it wasn't in a competition, just his habit).
Indian management in India almost always sucks.
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....
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You'd think it was a bad thing to put on your CV that you tolerate abuse :-/
Not to encourage the behavior, but it’s not simply “I was a victim” signal.
It’s abusive, but it’s also a sign you did something. You have to do the work asked of you, and the more work you do, the better for a CV. That’s why so many people tolerate this treatment, and why it’s not a negative signal for people reading a CV later.
The line between "tolerates abuse" and "persevered through legitimately hard challenges at work" is quite blurry, and the latter is a good signal on your resume.
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.
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?
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 ;)
In Australia, PWC betrayed the Australian government by leaking secrets about taxation plans to other PWC clients.
Such a lovely bunch of people :-/
My wife was a lawyer at a Big 4 and got fired when they suspected that she was pregnant. Even though the corporate propaganda was full of "inclusivity" and other woke bullshit.
Interestingly enough, it was during Covid, she had to work from home and their main complain was that she wasn't "bonding enough with the team". Yes no shit when everyone is buried under 12h of work and bars are closed, what was she supposed to do? Those partners will do anything, including illegal things, to get to their 3% growth target.
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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.
>temporarily embarassed millionaires
That's a very long spelling of HN userbase ;)
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.
I know but the mentality is the same.
France has labor rights and EY employees are still getting exploited. The DIRECCTE sieged their office on a Sunday and every employee was there.
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.
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-trav...
"What should we do if they're here voluntarily?" — EY + Deloitte Austria
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.
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.
Austria is not a model to follow here.
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.
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?
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-mini...
[2]: https://icap.org.pk/students/training/stipend-rates/
[3]: https://jobs.accaglobal.com/job/12888611/acca-accountant-int...
[4]: https://cc.gov.pk/home/viewpressreleases/267
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
> 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.
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%.
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.
Tis the end goal of capitalism, no?
This is reminiscent of the plot for Episode 1 of Season 1 of the TV Show Industry :-(
It’s crucial that companies address these toxic work cultures!
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.
> 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.
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.
“ there is no work life balance in corporate life, you just have to build one”
Wise words.
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.
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Capitalism claims one more victim.
Because famously no one has ever died from being over worked under communism
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".
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.
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.