We received a tip yesterday that seems to be confirmed based on secondary conversations we’ve had and social media posts: EY laid off hundreds of executive assistants on Monday. Our tipster calls it a “dynamic situation” as they explain the gory details in a voicemail left on the tipline:
EY did mass layoffs, almost all of their executive assistants in the United States, on Monday. They are offshoring them to Caribbean countries and South America countries where the talent works for a lot less. Very few American administrative assistants remain.
There are only a few hubs that they didn’t fire people at. All of the other admin assistant hubs have been fully transitioned to offshoring.
I believe it impacts hundreds of people. It was pretty cold and ruthless, mass Teams meetings. As you are probably well aware, this reflects the trend of [EY] doing that systematically with multiple departments.
We are also hearing whispers about further layoffs in client-facing service lines as well as EY ratcheting up performance evaluations in order to hand out more PIPs this year but nothing fully confirmed — if you have details on this, get in touch anonymously by email or text.
This is getting dark, y’all.
The America ,that I used to know was never this Brutal, I come from a family who really love and protected our country.my Grandfather’s Brother who served during World War I
,My Father served during World War II with 15teen other family members ,
My Uncle the Korean War the ,
Vietnam War my husband.the at least six family members are more, they were part of that war.
Gulf War my nephew .and distant relative
the Afghanistan War.
Regardless ,what’s your position was in our country, the United States ,we should not be thrown out as if we’re not human.
Please do not treat us the way Adolf Hitler did his people,
Thank you,
Barbara Boyd
Your post is irrelevant. The EA’s getting axed and your lineage are not comparable.
Agree. We need to stop minimizing the Holocaust. The Holocaust is nothing like what we are seeing today. Go back to the 90s with Reagan, and you will find mass layoffs.
Kind of like mass deportations of certain people groups??
If you come into our country illegally, you are invading our great nation. Ship them out, and then raise tariffs on their country of origin. Those criminals who try and establish anchor babies do not belong!
But this too is irrelevant to the EA’s getting pink slips. These EA’s were an unjustifiable expense.
The Executive Assistants are dinosaurs and aren’t worth the money. They are being replaced by more affordable talent that won’t go on social media and make racist slurs about being replaced by foreign talent. Shameful!
We aren’t a charity. Those EA’s who can reflect and retool can find a more stable profession.
What a terrible take. Grow up.
As one of the EY employees that was terminated, I find this comment insensitive and unfounded. The EAs were and are an integral part of the firm. Evidence: the firm outsourced the EAs meaning they are still needed. My assumption: This action was about money. The offshore EAs are being paid a lot less than those in America. EY has done this before however this time was insensitive and many are taking it as personal attack and not merely a business decision. As always, EY giving everyone a severance package, mental health and financial planning services. I’m grateful that this decision impacts me minimally but for many losing their job is not only a financially frightening but also a loss of friends and for some what felt like family. So whatever your baseless opinion remember there are real people on the other end.
Tanya, the person’s point of view is spot-on. These EA’s were a cancer to morale and caused leadership way too much time handing them a pacifier.
Remember the buggy-whip makers? Once a better model came in, buggys were obsolete. The onus is on you to either sulk or to reinvent yourself.
Your take is interesting. So far where I am, I am hearing that the offshored EAs are not doing close to what the in-office EAs used to do. The executives are rarely utilizing them as their tasks are either incorrect or they don’t understand what is being asked of them. We hear about the satisfaction rate there, but it is primarily due to the executives not utilizing them, so therefore there are no complaints. I have come in contact with many that don’t have access to their execs calendar, email, they don’t know anything about the exec. EAs are able to support them the best because they build relationships and are able to anticipate their needs before they are needed.
Everyone is useless, and untalented, and has no value…except you.
I am an EA at EY who is still working there, and is part of one of the remaining hubs. The EA’s that were let go are some of the wisest, most knowledgeable, and efficient task managers. They are our go-to’s on the ground when us completely virtual assistants need a woman (or man) on location where our execs are meeting with multi-million dollar clients, or working away from home. They make things run smoothly so those execs can close the deal, and deserve more respect from our core business service team leaders. Meetings have been held by upper management with condescending language for years, and touting the Firm’s generous benefits as “competitive compensation” for the c-suite level support that can be quite demanding at times. Some of us are managing up to 12 or 14 executives at a time, and while a few may need very little support, for the most part, you are supporting quite a few medium to heavy users at a time.
I have been blessed to work with wonderful executives, many of whom are quite patient when things have been busier. No matter how nice people are, work still needs to be completed efficiently and correctly, and it can be a lot of pressure for less than the national average pay supporting multiple people with often completely different support needs.
It’s disrespectful of the Firm to even pretend they care from the top down about their people over their bottom dollar. I get it, business is business, but I feel the direction EY is going is irresponsible and it has for sure upset the partners aside from the morale of the remaining EA’s. Until you have worked as an assistant or as an exec with a long-time exec assistant who has learned to anticipate your needs, and flow with your daily routines, you don’t know the value.
You raise a valid point. It’s past time for these partners to learn some basic skills so they aren’t so dependent. The Baby Boomers have mostly retired, and Gen-X leaders are much more independent-minded.
You are seriously heartless. I hope that if/when you have children that you teach them to value people, even those that write strange/unrelated emails referencing unrelated world events/family history such as Barbara above.
No one died from these layoffs. The emotional heartstrings about war has nothing whatsoever with a firm making an ethically sound but unpopular contest.
Layoffs stink, but the fact is the role of the Exec Assistant has changed dramatically and will continue to do so, fueled by AI-based tools and changes in the way people work. You’d be hard-pressed to find another company/firm that isn’t doing or contemplating something similar. And, word is EY will continue to provide on-shore support from several domestic centers, not all off-shore.
Now the partners will need to reply to their own emails, and print their own documents, and schedule their own golf outings, and get their own coffee…until AI replaces them too.
I do a lot in my office, where there are very limited EAs. For both the office, my execs, and others in the office. I don’t know how offices will function with no one on site to do these things. We like to think of these execs at the top of the food chain, but reality is, they have very little say in anything as it is all up to leadership and what they decide. I was on a call not too long ago where it was stated the reason for offshoring is because the talent pool here in the US just isn’t there. That is a load of crap! It is because these poor countries can pay pennies for someone and the exec not really having the support they need doesn’t matter to the leadership. I would take a stab and say they are getting 5-6 people for the salary of 1 EA stateside.
Crabbus checking in. Is The Horniest Partner still around and the others from the glory days?
Shame to see what the B4 have become, even saying this as someone who was around in 2014 when it was already desiccated and hollowed out.
He is! Chipman69 and Marcum Sucks show up from time to time too. Big4Veteran pops in and out.
I was just thinking that the other day, how we thought things were so bad a decade ago…little did we know how much worse it would get.
I still check in from time to time now that I was perma banned from rddit. I am getting older and not so horny anymore although I got something lined up after work today ha ha. Can’t wait to retire and get out of PA. I am sure the PE sharks will be circling my firm in the next couple years.
/tHP
What could you have possibly done to get permabanned from Reddit?
It wasn’t from r/accounting but my city’s reddit page. Saying something critical of the pronoun people on reddit is the death penalty. my filter doesn’t work like it use to.
/tHP
@Anonymous Just wondering, how big are the hats in your household?
As is the case with our current administration, which is really only a reflection of America itself, there is no bottom to the depravity you will see with the large accounting firms. The partners don’t care about the long-term future of their own firm, and they really, really don’t care about the future of the accounting profession. Their only concern is with squeezing every last drop of blood out of the turnip before their retire and/or die.
What we are seeing play out in real time (and now very fast due to AI) is why capitalism simply doesn’t work as a long-term sustainable economic system. The best you can do is highly regulate it, but our country is moving in the opposite direction. I don’t have any better ideas…I just know that unregulated, unrestrained capitalism ain’t it.
What really bothers me about the issue so eloquently described in your second paragraph is that they’re doing this on the back of more than a hundred years of “trustworthiness” attached to the CPA profession. We all know there have always been bad apples (this site was built around documenting them after all) but it’s like everyone has lost their minds and is gleefully throwing all of that out the window.
Once they’re done looting the profession the trust is gone. The fact that the gatekeepers of the profession are looking the other way — worse, participating even, depending on who you ask — is just abhorrent.
We expect firm leaders to be money-grubbing, that’s not the part I’m bitching about. They’re ultimately a business. But what’s happening now is far beyond firms just prioritizing money, it’s burning the whole thing to the ground so they can stuff as much money as possible into their pockets. Crazy to see and we’re only at the beginning.
Honestly, maybe I’m just getting old and its always been this way. But I feel like I’ve seen a significant deterioration in our society over the last 10 years. Any pretenses or pretending to care about a greater good or a long-term future has been thrown out the window and now its all about “getting mine”, sucking as much cash out of the system for yourself before it’s gone. I’m not blaming Trump for this, but I think the Trump era has created a “burn it all to the ground” atmosphere in our society, which naturally leads people to think only of themselves, since we are headed towards a society without institutions, guardrails, protections or a safety net.
There are so many examples of what I’m talking about, including the leaders of the accounting profession deciding to squeeze every ounce of blood out of the turnip while the profession burns to the ground. Another is the Supreme Court, which used to at least pretend to make decisions based on merits and precedent rather than politics. Another is the open corruption brought by this administration. There has always been corruption, but people at least tried to hide it in the past. Now they aren’t even bothering. Anyway, this isn’t just a problem with the accounting profession. It’s happening everywhere. Our society really is crumbling. People have lost faith in democracy, which is connected to a thriving, functioning and fair economy.
Trump makes a stand against woke and cancel culture. He makes unpopular decisions in the eyes of the lazy and entitled. He rewards efforts made much like our founding fathers did 250 years ago. He’s empowered companies to make financially prudent but “unpopular” decisions among the rank and file. He fights corruption and laziness. Trump will help make this country realizes its true ability. This goes against Woke Nation who cries for the incompetent while making the hard worker the enemy.
Bullseye. Not a single laid off worker was hard working. Not a single laid off worker was anti-woke. Now the real workers, the real working rank and file will be rewarded as the empowerees’ cup runneth over.
Being an EA that was laid off, I find the offshore staff have not been trained properly and not familiar with Partners needs or service lines. I was asked to train the offshore EA and refused. Why should I train when of course I’m not ‘good enough’ to keep on the payroll. I’ve given almost 20 years to their admin support and most of the partners I transitioned to offshore EAs didn’t even reach out to say farewell. I read a previous post saying EAs are dinosaurs, if so why are they replacing with lower paid EAs with probably no benefits.