Houston-based Weaver (IPA Top 100 #31 with a mere $328 million in revenue) has been busy in India. According to Houston Business Journal, they’re about to get busier:
Weaver opened three offices in India in January and will open its fourth location in the country this month. The company has about 165 employees in India, representing about 10% of its current total workforce. Weaver plans to double that proportion to 20% in the coming years, CEO John Mackel said.
The Houston firm began considering an international expansion four years ago to have greater access to low-cost labor, a strategy competitors have employed for years, Mackel said.
Nice to see the real reason why firms are doing this front and center in a business publication for once. Usually there’s a paragraph or two about the so-called accountant shortage, so rarely do you see a tacit admission that they did it because it’s cheap.
The firm currently has offices in the Indian cities of Kochi, Coimbatore, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
As mentioned in the headline, Weaver is keeping the partner track open for India staff. “We feel like if people perform well, they deserve those opportunities,” said COO David Rook, the Vasco da Gama of Weaver’s India expedition. “That career path will go a long way in retaining people,” he told HBJ. “We don’t want the India team just to be doing the lower-skilled tasks; we want to develop them like we develop the U.S. employees.”
Remember just a few years ago we were all like haha wouldn’t it be WILD to have senior managers in India!? like that was the most absurd thing you could imagine? Now they’re talking about making them partners.
Good for Weaver, and it should be a wakeup call to the complacent US employees that sweat plus sacrifice equals success. Over half of the employees under the age of 40 like to be high maintenance and then pissing and moaning because their raise wasn’t big enough.
The more you whine, the more you are at risk at being replaced. Firm leadership teams across the nation realize that the current employee lacks work ethic.
Having been part of leading the outsourcing initiative for a large US firm, pissing and moaning in general and moaning because their raise wasn’t big enough perfectly describes a lot of Indian employees. The firms aren’t doing it because US CPAs are too high maintenance, they’re doing it to exploit cheap labor.
Gosh, your Nationalism sounds like you have a beef with Indians. I’ve heard the same lies…exploitation of cheap labor, they piss and moan, etc. The Indian teams are not “forced labor”…they work at will. Try again, but remind yourself to be truthful.
Yikes.
Talk is very cheap – seen this type of rhetoric before from accounting firms. “If you do well, you can succeed and be a partner.” You will “reap” the benefits of all your hard work. Yada yada yada….
Going Concern put a tickler for 5 years from now [March 14, 2029] and let’s see if this firm even has a single partner. Directors yes/maybe, partners no. Then a further follow up in 10 years.
You unwittingly proved my point. Just because you didn’t have the work ethic to make partner does not equate to that prissy phrase “talk is cheap”. Get your hands dirty…make a conscious effort to try.
I find it funny how accounting firms gave up trying to compete with talent in the US and just will outsource their labor to India.
That’s fine, but if I find out the work I give to my service provider is being outsourced to India, I expect compliance fees from my accounting firm to be slashed by a considerable percentage. Sorry that is just unacceptable that you want to raise fees year after year and your SOW is charging a US rate for the work you give to your India team.
Nothing at all unethical about making money, investing in the global economy, and providing excellent service. Besides, labor costs are only a fraction of the total costs associated with CPA firms. If you don’t believe in making money, go work for the government.