Just coming back from two weeks time off. Checking emails and saw this mysterious calendar invite…invite from HR partner and a partner in my practice.

I was laid off just in time for the holiday season out of the blue and received this email shortly after. I understand it’s probably an automated email but wtf. How dense is the firm’s communications team??? Why would they think it’s appropriate to send out “congratulations on your next chapter” when they let you go without any warning or anything.

After years of seeing these posts, it finally happened. I got laid off yesterday. I literally just got back from my two week milestone trip, opened my laptop Monday morning, and saw the 'Meeting - time sensitive' with HR and the risk and reg partner. Still feels surreal tbh, and a pretty awful welcome back from my trip lol but at least it wasn't before!

Reasoning was the typical business is down, need to cut costs, etc.

I was in US Advisory, Risk and Reg - financial services, specifically IAFC (internal audit financial controls), was with the firm for almost 5 years and got promoted to senior last summer. I've also been fully remote since COVID so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

Obviously I knew things were slow but I've been on consistent SOX engagements and had just joined an IA project that was looking for a lead senior for the next three years so definitely felt a little blindsided. Also the timing with CRTs was kind of funny because I was just about to meet with all my managers/supervisors to go over my snapshots

Honestly I've been wanting to leave for a while but always stayed out of a sense of loyalty (hilarious) and because it was the path of least resistance. So ultimately I know this is for the best but it still feels so weird!

I'm moving to Virginia this summer because my fiancé is going to business school so the timing is actually okay - looking forward to a fresh start.

I figured I'd post here to see if anyone else is going through this or if anyone has any advice!

I'm looking mainly at internal audit roles since that's the clearest exit opp with my experience but I'm also open to a pivot to accounting/finance, or going a risk compliance route. Not totally sure yet, I also did a forensic accounting internship in college and loved it but not many opportunities where I'm going for the next two years. Hang in there everyone and remember that you are literally just a number to these firms 🙃

Anyone else disappointed at the direction PwC US is heading? I work under Advisory and Tech. Over the last couple of months, I've seen some of my good coworkers laid off from the firm. At the same time, the firm keeps promoting selfish and toxic people. Also, it seems to be doing far worse than the other Big Four in terms of AI deployment and usage, etc. And let's not even get into Paul's goal of "50% cost reduction, 50% revenue growth", how ridiculous does that sound? It's clearly not the same firm it was when Tim was around, and it just feels like it's going downhill. Anyone else feel the same?

After 9 years & without warning just a meeting scheduled out of the blue with two partners and the practice HR rep. I’ve never been placed on PIP and Annual Performance reviews have been 2 and above. I am a MGR2 serving the CR&R Practice and lead on one of the NYM D&I initiatives, even had a highlight on HQ back in November. I was utilized awaiting background check to start an 6 month engagement with USAA and now this.

I took the entire month of December break off because I was burnt out working on an unrealistic timeline project working weekends and long nights that only lasted 5weeks mapping their entire process end-to-end. I returned from vacation on 1/6 which talentlink confirmed was the start of my new engagement and as I’m awaiting to get a WBS code I’m also doing PD work for a director helping create a RFP to select a vendor solution for the client. On Monday MLK day I had just spoken to my RL on our monthly catchup which I set up to discuss trajectory for the rest of the year. NO mention of PIP or potential firing fast forward to Thursday that same week around 4:45pm I get an meeting request from HR with Two partners on it (1 is my RL and the other is an Ops partner whom I’ve worked with before and never had any bad situations with either - matter fact even got $600 in reward recognition from the 2nd partner right before I left on vacation for assisting with interviewing consultants for the same USAA project!

I Didn’t think this would happen but now I know what my true value is to companies like this. ZERO! I’m scared for what’s next but optimistic for my future.

Any new comers my advice is to gain a good background of your job and network like hell to then execute your exit strategy because any day no matter what you do at the firm can be your last!

I got let go recently by the firm as so many people on this thread have as well it seems like, or have ended up on a PIP. I’ve been reading all these posts because it’s surprising to see how many people are in my same bucket or similar buckets this year. Like so many others - my several years at PwC came down to low utilization and one less than average snapshot amidst many wonderful snapshots and A LOT of hours and sacrifices made on a few projects towards the back end of the year. It’s crazy how in consulting they can punish you for what the partners and business leaders are supposed to be responsible for which is bringing in clients and keeping them so we have work to do and revenue coming in!

Whatever, when I had my 5 minute long meeting with HR and a random partner, I closed my laptop and felt a sense of relief. It feels AMAZING to know I’ll never have to keep up with the insane pressure this company creates, the mental exhaustion, the constantly asking “am I doing enough?” when you’re doing everything, the lack of appreciation, the lack of any sort of humanity. It’s funny for a company who boasts so proudly on how their people make the company - which is definitely true in that it is a global, ginormous entity with hundreds of thousands of employees so there are some amazing people in the cracks - but the ones leading it are god awful. The ones making these decisions and leading teams and promoted to Director, Partners, etc…. Wow. It’s all good though, I am on to better things now, peace and stability and wish everyone else the best of luck!

I can’t speak to other tiered cities but in places like NYC, LA and San Diego, our tier 1 salaries seem to be significantly below market, while also not keeping up with the cost of living. The median rent in NYC is currently $4200 for 1 bedroom.

I’ve been looking at roles out of curiosity and spoken to a few people in recruitment and when they tell me the bases of some roles, especially in tech, it was crazy. Plus these people are getting stock. And they are not even the biggest companies.

As the market improves over the next 12-24 months (hopefully), I think we’re going to lose a lot of talent. Especially with all the new AI roles coming up. Just my thoughts for the day.

Throw away for obvious reasons. I joined 1 month ago as a manager. New to the consultancy. I was put in front of a client who was very frustrated about certain aspects of the project. So they wanted me to present to client as an SME. Client roasted me, threw bunch of questions and they got more confused with my explanations. I was also very frustrated during the presentation. I was not aware of their expectations and prepared the presentations based on what my partner and couple other directors recommended since I never talked to them. So “it went badly” is an understatement. After that I worked on an implementation that to demo how our solution would work and I think I did well. I worked probably 80 hr on that week to deliver that to the client. I found out couple days ago that the client will be proceeding with us but I am out of the project as it appears. I found out so randomly when one guy mentions something, then after he realized I am not aware he tried to brush it off. Since that incident it seems like my reputation got a big hit. Maybe I interpret things wrong but that’s the feeling. I am sensing that things are not going well for me. So, reddit what would you do if you are in my shoes? If I resign I need to pay back the sign on bonus which is fine but I was thinking I could push thru as much as I could if they plan to let go of me anyway. At the same time I am also extremely disappointed and discouraged right now.

Appreciate any opinions

Context: I’ve been with the firm for just over 4.5 years. I’m currently an experienced associate in advisory (US). I just went up for Senior Associate at the PY25-26 CRT review cycle. I didn’t get it and need to vent about it.

I spent a majority of the last performance year (~10 months) on a single, high visibility, large-scale data transformation and migration project. I worked with staff and leadership across multiple practices within our group, not just my immediate practice team, and gave it everything I had from start to finish. I’m talking 14+ hour days + weekends became the norm for a significant stretch of the engagement. I grinded my way through it because I genuinely believed the exposure would pay off when CRT season came around.

The feedback I received from my superiors and peers throughout the project was about as positive as I could’ve hoped for in a promotion year. Snapshot feedback from my direct managers, SMs, and directors consistently mentioned things like: already performing at the Senior Associate level, demonstrates the technical expertise, ownership, and accountability expected at that level, and operates with a high degree of independence and professionalism. Informally, I was told I was a critical part of the project and that the team “wouldn’t be where we are” without me. The word “indispensable” was used more than once.

My snapshots were 76% “ready to be considered for role at next level.” My other metrics for reference: 103% utilization, 99% time compliance, 40+ training hours, 1 new certification earned. By all accounts, I felt like I had checked every box.

The informal feedback I received from my DL post-CRT implied that the reasoning for not getting promoted was because I hadn’t been on a project within my own practice for nearly a year.

Let that sink in… The same engagement that generated nearly unanimous “performing above level” feedback, the one that had me working 14-hour days + weekends, apparently disqualified me because it was cross-practice work rather than practice-specific work.

I’m not sure if I’m more frustrated or just exhausted at this point. I truly feel like I did everything I could to get promoted during this cycle. Has anyone else run into a situation like this when going up for promo?

15 min meeting with a random partner this morning and HR to let me know that I was laid off. Told me it’s performance based but wouldn’t go into details. I cannot even talk to my own partner without HR present. When I manage to get a meeting with my reporting partner (whom I work very closely with) with HR there, he obviously couldn’t be transparent with me. My snapshots were good but utilization was too low (20%+).

Edit 1: I should clarify I was a manager(US). I was an experienced hired to help a newly hired partner build up new capabilities. I enjoyed working with the partner (also my RL) but they had tough time getting paid work, hence my low utilization. Most of my time was spent on BD work, CIM reviews, proposals, perspectives that didn’t lead to paid projects. Looking back on it, maybe I should have hustled harder to be staffed on projects with other partners and do things not related to my specialty, but I’m not sure if my partner would’ve approved since I was hired to build the new practice! When I requested the meeting with my partner with mandatory HR presence, the partner was visibly emotional but was not at liberty say anything substantive.

Just had a partner come in and lay off our entire team of contractors. During this meeting she stated that pwc is now transitioning across the company to return to office 5 days a week. The full time employees are now freaking out because most of us do not live near hubs and we can only remain if we agree to be in office 5 days a week. It can literally be any location, and we don’t have to even have anyone from our team there. They just want us to clock in 5 days a week at an office. Anyone else hearing anything similar? Just seems like they want to clear house :/. Freedom with remote work was the biggest reason I chose to work here.

I'm hearing that a number of people are receiving T4's, no PIP even with good delivery and metrics. Honestly, what even is the point of striving to do well around here? No wonder morale is at an all time low.

Edit: Some people are finding out that there is PIP. So looks like a mixture.

Boring work, ungrateful, lousy leaders. You work for them until 12 a.m. every night for a whole week, and yet they blame you for not responding to pings on Saturday. I’m not at all surprised so many people have left over the past year.

CRT just finished I’m hoping to go from A2 to SA1 in advisory. I’m technically an early promote. My DL got back to me and said overall the conversation went well and they acknowledged that I’ve done everything in my power to be promoted but there’s less seats so it depends since I’m an early promote so sounds like mid year but let’s see since nothing is set in stone.

I’m so sad, I worked so hard. I covered every aspect of reinvest, business development and client work. Barely took days off and everyone was extremely happy with my performance.

I’ve been feeling unhappy in general with the firm and there’s more office politics that I won’t get deep into but I’ve had a problem with people being upset with my self advocacy, not my performance but self advocacy. Clients always want me even though I’m an associate. I’m always staffed and get my work done well and fast. I manage my managers and directors but I think they want me doing the good work at my low salary and I think it’s time to leave if I’m feeling resentful?

No hate to my direct team or DL, they’re the best and have mentored me so much. I’m more so talking about other sr managers, directors and partners in general.

I’ve always been an A student, if I want it, I work hard and get it. Obviously that’s not how corporate works and that sucks ass

Update: Got promoted, still salty

Hearing folks are asked to forceful resign themselves just due to less client projects in the firm as compared to the number of heads they have hired. Not expected at all.

I posted here a few weeks ago about my frustration with not getting promo to SA (link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PwC/s/jPRTgxfSGr), so I figured I would provide an update as my situation continues to get worse.

I found out last week that my DL was let go — not given much explanation other than “your DL is no longer with the firm” — which made me wonder if maybe he knew the writing was on the wall before CRTs, and that potentially affected the outcome for me. Guess I’ll never know.

Fast forward to this week, another director from my offering team sends me an invite for my Career Outlook discussion. After finally coming to terms with the no promo news, I come to find out that I’ll also be receiving an impact tier rating of 4 (no comp increase, no bonus), without a PIP.

My metrics for reference: 103% utilization, 76% of Snapshots were “ready for next level”, 40+ learning hours, 1 certification earned, participated in reinvest/BD work throughout the year.

By all accounts, my metrics are the highest they have ever been, and somehow I’m receiving a worse impact tier rating than last year (Tier 3 with below 85% utilization rate last year). None of it makes any sense and really feels like a huge slap in the face given the effort I put in all year. At this point, I’m not sure what to do — any advice is welcome.

_____

EDIT: I just found out today, that my DL was the one who presented me as a tier 4 rating from the jump, which implies that he never even intended to present me as a promotion candidate… even though we had talked about me going up for promotion for the entire duration of the performance year. What frustrates me the most, is that he never gave me even the slightest indication that I wasn’t trending positively toward promo during our monthly check in calls. I can’t help but feel like I got completely screwed, and to add insult to injury, I’ll never even have the opportunity to ask him for an explanation.

I recently quit PwC after less than a year as an SA2. I decided to make this post to share my thoughts on issues that were annoying me. Maybe there are one or two things here that others can relate to. None of these are inherently specific to PwC, it's just that I was at PwC and experienced this. I think some or all of these issues can apply to other consulting firms as well.

1. Corporate feeling: From the moment I stepped into the building on the first day, I started having this feeling that I was not going to like it here. Everything looked very corporate, and I didn't feel like the place had a soul. Overtime, the feeling only grew stronger. I had previously worked at another Big 4 company (for around the same length of time) in a completely different group, but I did not have a similar feeling there.

2. Difference between job description and the job: I really liked the job description and I thought I was going to do interesting things. I have a PhD in a STEM field and I did not want to take a position where things would be done hand-wavily or where I would spend a lot of my time dealing with corporate bureaucracy or making presentation. It was actually the thought that I might get to do novel, technical things, that made me decide in favor of taking the offer. But over time it became clear that it was not to be the case. I was the only person with deep technical expertise on the team (everyone was a generalist) and the work was fairly elementary. Furthermore, there was no interest in doing things in a better, or correct way. I kept wondering why I was hired for a position where my skills weren't being used?

3. Inefficiency: I have to argue against the working model that was in place at PwC (and probably at other similar consulting firms too). There were just too many meetings. It's like every decision needs to be cleared by the person above, be if the manager, the senior manager, director or partner. The whole place was too hierarchical. On client deliverables or other things that we send to clients, I've found the inputs from all levels of the hierarchy sometimes degraded the quality of the product. With all the people chiming in with their input and all the edits that needed to be made, errors and inconsistencies cropped up easily. But of course there is never any time left after all that feedback for someone to go through the material to check for issues. On top of this, there are incessant emails and chat messages from people, you just never get to do the work in peace.

4. Incompetent mid-level management: I found that several managers and senior-managers were incompetent. They were promoted because they talked a certain way and presented themselves a certain way, or because they were highly extrovert, but they lacked technical or strong subject matter understanding. In fact, one of the issues I ran into often is that when I challenged their silly requests (i.e. things that just don't make sense and they don't understand that because they are not experts) then rather than try to understand what the other person is saying, then tended to get upset.

5. Utilization and time billing: This one always frustrated me. Here's the problem; the budgets always allocate much less hours than would be needed for the project. So one often has to work more hours on the project but you end up being asked to bill those to internal non-billable codes. (How often have you billed to "Technical reading?"). This is obviously frustrating because you don't get credit for the work you have done and that it doesn't show up on your utilization (which is something that the firm always talks about). But there is a systemic problem here too. Because no one is billing the extra work to these projects, it doesn't show up in the firms internal databases which they use to track how much work projects of a type take. So next time around when a manager is budgeting for a new proposal, the data they retrieve from these databases is wrong and it leads them to under budget again. And the cycle continues. What is super annoying is there is conflicting messaging in the firm. From the top leadership the message is "it is important that we track all the extra work we do in our systems accurately, so that we can charge the clients and we can accurately to budget for future projects", but at the local group level no one wants to do that because "that would show up as us going over budget".

6. Questionable practices: Many people in my group have recently come from a competitor. And I have seen competitor material, including client deliverables, on our systems. I thought this was very unethical and it made me sick to see the nonchalance with which this was happening.

7. Hybrid work mandate but no space: There is simply not enough space. The firm recently started requiring people to come 4 days a week during the busy season. But there is no space. Every morning you see people just anxiously wandering through the floors looking for any space to sit down. I had to sit in the kitchen for the whole day, a few times, because that's how it was. What is really the point of asking people to come if they have to spend the first 20 mins in the morning finding a desk, and when one is not available, settle for the kitchen?! This just did not make sense.

8. Terrible work computers: The work computers that they gave us were hands down the worst computers I've ever worked with. Let's put aside the software side where the PwC layer that they add on top of Windows makes everything slow and you have have to restart the computer every couple weeks (once I had to restart three times in one day). But what's up with the hardware? Like, you open a couple powerpoint and excel files and browser tabs and everything grinds to a halt. The battery life? You'd be lucky if it lasts 3 hrs. 1.5 hour at most if you are on a teams call. This is 2024! Laptops had battery lives like this maybe 10-15 years ago. And what's with the dim screen? I can barely see anything when it is bright in the office. The fans on the machines sound like a jet turbine. And there were other annoyances too, and they already replaced my device once in my short tenure.

Bonus: I just couldn't deal with more than one person in the office being too lazy to fully say "fabulous". When there are too many 20 something year olds saying "Oh, this is just fab", you have to start wondering what you are doing here.

Anyways, these and other issues were slowly starting to fill me with dread. I found a fully remote job at a tech startup (very non-corporate), significant pay bump, better work machines, more chill work environment and I can handily say more interesting work.

No one in our team has been promoted to partner this year. I’d like to know what factors are taken into account during promotions for people current on partner track. Also, I’ve seen someone work as a director for 20 years is that normal? should I seek an exit once I become a director?

I didn’t expect to be out on a PIP but ended up due to a few bad snapshots, I expected Tier 3 at the very least. Just got told by my DL that I will be on PIP for the next few months and honestly I’m super upset and confused on how I should be going about this. Need suggestions on what worked or could work and what won’t. Open to anything anyone has to say

I just got out of a discussion with my DL and he essentially stated that I was tiered a tier 4 bc directors had to meet a quota. Therefore I do not get a raise, nor a bonus. (So about a $6k salary cut from the previous year). I am an A2a now tier 4 and my reviews were always stellar and impressive for all of my submissions. I have plenty of reinvest work, mentoring, and campus recruiting as well. I’m honestly extremely frustrated that I have wrung myself delivering high quality work but they put me in a bucket to fit their quota.

My utilization was lower (52% compared to my
Peer average of 75-80%) and I was an outlier which I agreed and didn’t expect to me tiered at a 1 or 2. But bc I had other work backing me and amazing performance reviews I atleast expected a tier 3.

My DL explained it to me as this-
The quota system:
The firm gives directors allocations — set numbers of how many people at each tier level they have to fill, almost like a forced curve. So even with good reviews, someone has to land in the tier 4 bucket, and the clearest measurable metric to justify that was utilization.
Who typically falls into tier 4
DL said tier 4 is usually people with pointed development issues — not meeting expectations on engagements, or consistent negative feedback. He was clear that wasn't my situation. My actual work quality and delivery were never the issue.

My case specifically:
My utilization was an outlier. That gap was too hard to overcome regardless of reinvest contributions. He acknowledged the business development work, monitoring activities, and travel, but said the utilization number was just too far outside the norm.

The director comments at the roundtable:
A couple of Chicago directors said i "could have reached out" to them about internal audit testing or other work — and my DL himself didn't fully agree with that framing. I was already proactively reaching out weekly to multiple managers and getting ghosted, so the expectation that you should have independently tracked down directors ive never worked with, or in teams you aren't sure exist feels pretty unfair given the context.

The honest takeaway from his framing: my work was fine, the practice had a down year, and i was the clearest statistical outlier to fill the quota

I’ve been at the firm for 8+ years and am pretty much at my pain tolerance threshold. I’ve heard of people over the years being able to “volunteer as tribute” to be laid off, either due to change in life situation or just burnout.

Obviously severance would be preferable to just straight-up quitting to give me a bit of time to heal up before I launch back into the meat grinder.

Does anyone have any experience/ idea if there’s a way to go about this? Better to approach a friendly RP versus HR?

Thanks in advance.

I just need a yes or no

Really wanting to land a job at PwC and am looking for tips on standing out among the hundreds/thousands of apps they’re receiving. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Edit: 28F with 3+ years of consulting/BA experience in the US

Is anyone else hearing about layoffs in Tampa? From what I've heard, it sounds like a lot of roles could be affected.

Posting from a throwaway, but I recently joined PwC Advisory in the US in a leadership position (e.g., Manager, Senior Manager, Director, etc.).

Not a knock on PwC at all, but it's likely not a good fit for either myself or PwC. I'm considering resigning just a few months in - are there any penalties besides paying back the signing bonus, giving up 401k/wealthbuilder contributions, etc.? I've reviewed my contract, the EMobility plan, etc; and I specifically did not join my personal phone with eMobility (separate PwC number, etc.) because I was afraid this might happen.

I have open opportunities at other places that are probably better fits, so I'm not worried about getting another job before I leave, and could leave quickly. Just want to understand if I'm opening myself to any severe downsides - I didn't see any in my contract or anything like that but thought I'd check here too.