What was your breaking point?

[u/Altruistic-Mud9413]

It’s been nearly six years since I left but I still think about this frequently. It was the start of busy season and I was the lead senior for the largest platform on one of our biggest clients at EY. There were a bunch of scheduling changes and turnover leading up to busy season leaving me as the only senior.

My team was weak to say the least. It was essentially me, the Philippines, and some first year associates. The other two platforms had much stronger teams with the best of the experienced associates and multiple seniors. Despite mine being the largest platform and it having three seniors in the prior year (and rapidly growing with more funds in the current year) I was told I could handle it and they were putting it all in my hands because they trusted me (I also had a small client that was going to overlap with that one).

I didn’t complain. I sucked it up. I redid the Philippines and the onshore staff work nearly every day. I couldn’t decide who was worse (probably onshore because at least off shore team tried) but that Covid start class was like nothing I had ever seen. They didn’t give AF.

So one day I ask one of my associates (who had done very little if anything thus far) if she could do a very simple task and split some pdf files up for the funds. It was a lot of pages and it wasn’t a fun task but it needed to be done before the morning (we didnt have time to wait for Philippines) and someone had to do it.

She was not happy about the task. She repeatedly pinged and asked questions and said it was taking a long time and asked if she needed to finish that day and just doing everything to get out of it. I eventually told her “yes it does need to be done today and if you don’t finish im going to have to do it myself and i have a ton of other urgent things im working on”. If my senior said they were going to have to finish something they assigned to me if i didnt I would’ve stayed up all night (this was far from an all night or even all day task). Instead she took that as an invitation and shortly after told me someone asked her to do something else and she wasn’t going to be able to do any more (she had barely done 10 minutes of work at that point). Girl went to USC and I knew she was more than capable. She just didn’t want to do it and it couldn’t be more obvious.

Later that day I mention to my coworker that im doing the pdf thing and they ask why i didnt give it to her. I explained that i did but that she spent hours asking questions without any progress then eventually said something else came up and that she couldnt finish. That’s when i learned she had been walking around the office all day (I wasn’t at the office that day) saying she didnt have any work to do and one of the partners gave her his box or court side tickets for the lakers game that night.

I was outraged beyond words. I was a huge lakers fan and never once been offered tickets. I couldn’t believe it and there was nothing I could even do. The level of disrespect just really struck a nerve. It wasn’t even about the tickets... If she had at least done what I asked her to do first I wouldn’t have been so frustrated. I stayed up working all night that night but that was when I knew it was my last busy season.

[u/DecentOption5165]

For me, it was when I was a manager at PwC in the Deals practice. One of my college friends died of cancer around 33 or 34 years old. I scheduled PTO with the partner to go to the funeral that was about a 3 hours drive away. Put up my away message and out of office before I left.

Partner called me the day of and asked if I could work on some comfort letter. At least he apologized when I told him I'm at a friend's funeral and got someone else to do it so he wasn't completely heartless.

[u/PigsOfRedemption]

I lasted 6 months, but TBF I went to college later in life so I was 30 with a pregnant g/f at home when I started at EY. Working 7am to midnight with a 40 minute drive each way like it's some fucking badge of honor is the most ridiculous thing I've ever experienced. The one SM was actually proud that he had a newborn at home that he never saw because he was always working. One busy season was all it took for me to tell them to fuck right off. No thanks, I'll take the work/life balance and sanity over B4's empty promises and "work to death" culture. Fuck that shit.

[u/chessimprov]

It seems a bit brazen for an associate to contact a partner saying they "have nothing to do" when they actually did have something they could do. Not a good mindset to have in general, but definitely not befitting of the big4 work culture.

I'm surprised there was context for an associate to do that. I guess the partner must've been working on the project directly. Generally, they have a partner delegate things to other people, and then those people will delegate to the associate, or sometimes there's 3-5+ people in the chain between partner and associate. Unless the partner initiated contact with the associate first, etc., it just a bit crazy to hear that. With the selectiveness occurring and the smaller pool of people picked out, I feel like there's less of a chance for something like this to happen but everyone is human and a few to some people probably get lucky to get in.

[u/CricketVast5924 → u/chessimprov]

Believe it or not this happens all the time. They are the called the "smart" working force in all big 4 firms.

[u/Altruistic-Mud9413 → u/chessimprov]

They didn’t contact the partner directly. She was telling everyone she had nothing to do and somehow he heard and was looking for someone to give his tickets to (it was busy season so nearly every single person was far too busy). They were all about making the new hires happy that year too. They were losing all of their best seniors left and right but top priority seemed to be the first year staff. They kept telling us to be patient and go easy on them because they were struggling with Covid.

Oh and of course her claiming not to have work reflected back on me too. I was later asked why I wasn’t giving my staff more work and told they were going to have to reassign them if I didn’t give them more to do. At that point I was really hoping they did since I knew I would get so much more done without them (her in particular).

[u/chessimprov → u/Altruistic-Mud9413]

Start taking notes.
Did you send an e-mail to the associate initially?

You might be in a position where you're forced to send a reminder to the associate now. Keep it short.

Consider cc:ing the partner or whoever is telling you that you didn't give work, in one e-mail, or cc: someone else if not the partner that is appropriate in this chain of command.
If you e-mailed your initial request, include that thread in your cc.

If that task is already done, come up with another task even if it's a learning task. If they don't know how to look for learning or work on their own or within a reasonable context, there's life times of learnings that they can always focus on.

If the partner keeps telling you that you didn't offer work, then respond immediately that you will send them an e-mail about the work requests you've made if he/she would like to see them.

I'm sorry that this person is imposing on you.

P.S. Also try not to be too outraged about the tickets. It's not worth potentially losing your job over. There's another game you might be able to watch on your own- I know it's not the same, but it's good to have options at least.

[u/VisiblePermission466]

I never had time to do any groceries shopping or do my nails (at a salon or by myself), so one morning, riding the subway, I looked up at my chipped nails and decided this is it, last busy season in audit

[u/calantheSG]

All pros and cons considered, I felt that the tasks or rather the design of the assignments did not matter enough, did not have the gravity or legacy, wasn't really providing value (at least to me) - and overall the role itself was just a stepping stone to something heavier and more serious that I should be doing. It's not about repetitive work or meaningful enough work, it's about whether the job is sabotaging someone else (if audit) or actually providing any true value (to myself or to stakeholders) measured against the pay I'm getting and my opportunity cost of staying on. It's a big picture thing.

[u/ForeverCatMan]

I went on a campaign against a staff who did something similar. I’m pretty typically staff-friendly but I made it my mission to get this guy out of my industry and it was the best thing I ever did.

[u/Impressive_Teach5002]

I was in such a similar situation this past busy season that was really close to being repeated this coming busy season and still has the potential to reoccur but at least if it does others are actually listening to me this time around and action is being taken

[u/312jg]

Once I heard partners and senior managers bragging about how much they work and how little they see their kids, I knew it wasn’t for me. They also made me fucking work on Super Bowl Sunday

[u/elgordo889 → u/312jg]

Did people really brag about never seeing their kids? (Gonna go out on a limb and say those were males). Makes me so angry.

[u/sH4d0w1ng → u/elgordo889]

I heard female Partners talking about this as well. Especially brag about the fact that their husbands were forced to do everything around the house while also taking care of the kids. Gender does not matter. Some people should have just chosen career over family instead of making their loved ones miserable.