E&Y’s Substitute for Pandora

Editor’s note: Francine McKenna is a regular contributor for Going Concern

We’ve gotten reports of recent layoffs of over 100 professionals in the Advisory practice and 40 in U.S. IT. The IT professionals were out of the Tampa office, including some that were Lotus Notes developers. Right. We didn’t know anyone still used Lotus Notes either.
Sources indicate that this was more “forced ranking” layoffs as many were high performers that were dismissed because of suddenly ‘less than expected’ ratings. We’ve covered PwC’s less than clear approach in the past.

PwC has not immediately responded to our requests for comment.

We reached out to Francine McKenna, of Re: The Auditors and she provided this comment:

“PwC is the biggest abuser of the “forced ranking” approach, artificially downgrading folks to make them feel lousy, alone, and uncomfortable discussing or otherwise reacting to getting let go. They refuse to admit they are overstaffed because they would view it as a direct indication of their inability to manage effectively (notice I said manage, not lead).”

If you have more details on these layoffs, send us an email to our tips address and discuss in the comments.