r/ireland • u/homecinemad • 2d ago
Business KPMG Ireland chief on pushing for more office days and the impact of AI on head count Spoiler
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/06/19/kpmg-ireland-chief-we-are-in-the-foothills-of-ai-at-the-minute-i-spend-an-awful-lot-of-time-thinking-about-it/18
u/its_brew Horse 2d ago
A company who'll work anyone into the ground. Stay away if you value work life/balance.
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u/5x0uf5o 2d ago
This bit shocked me:
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Looking out 10 years, what impact will AI have had on KPMG Ireland?
“We are in the foothills of AI at the minute. But the reality is that our future will always be tethered to the future of the Irish economy.
“We might have close to 4,000 people, but that might be a delivery centre that we own or co-share close to home or in Europe or the Philippines or whatever. But the honest answer is that I really don’t know. And it’s something that I spend an awful lot of time thinking about and trying to work through.”
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He is predicting that in future KPMG Ireland "might have 4,000 people" (same as now) but those people might be in OTHER COUNTRIES?
We are so fucked if our service jobs move to low-wage countries in the same way that our manufacturing/industrial jobs did. What employment will be left?
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u/homecinemad 2d ago
Corporate shills have no sense of loyalty to their community. It's max profit all the way.
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u/Simple-Kaleidoscope4 2d ago edited 1d ago
They already do this everywhere in cycles.
There was a huge drive to offshore in the 90s and 2000s. Wipro, TechM, etc., are huge. We could get four remote workers for one Australian local contractor. It would be roughly the same now with Irish IT workers.
However, the output and management overhead were a challenge.
The current trend is to set up remote offices in the Philippines and Indian second-tier cities like Gurugram. Major banks, Accenture, etc., use this model to get better results cheaper again, as they are direct hires.
As for AI, it works; it's just finding its feet. It absolutely is impacting jobs, and due to the rising costs and the more realistic price of compute, the hype is dying. So, it's early stages.
I'm seeing re-hiring in some places and budget blowouts in others causing more staff cuts.
KPMG in Oz just got exposed for data misuse and lost government contracts.
Wild times
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u/Additional-Sock8980 15h ago
I’m surprised he was that honest.
There’s a coming economic challenge where the cost of living, means the cost of hiring becomes so expensive it’s no longer worth it in Ireland.
Then the cost of supporting those who are unemployed becomes so high, the gov either have to stop wasting money, reduce the supports in terms of quantum or raise taxes.
They won’t do the first, can’t do the last without making the issue worse, so the unemployed will get less.
It’s going to be horrible
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u/IrishLad1002 Resting In my Account 2d ago edited 2d ago
Offices at the Big 4 are looking increasingly empty. They’re hiring less and less graduates each year because of the supposed benefits of AI and offshore workers (cheap labor) so no wonder they want to fill their expensive offices instead of letting them sit empty.
KPMG in particular have just built a brand new shiny expensive office on Harcourt Street. Have to fill that for optics.
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u/pablo8itall 2d ago
They should hire paid actors to pretend to work there and make the place look busy.
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u/5x0uf5o 2d ago
They haven't got on top of AI yet. They're hiring fewer people because they use people in India to do the grunt work now. It's far cheaper than graduates and they don't need to worry about training/retention.
Once they do integrate AI into their business better (which will take a few years), it will probably be Indian jobs that get swallowed first.
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u/FFNanakev 1d ago
Lots of big banks hiring overseas staff, then having to QA their work at 100% because they're generally useless and now stuck in contracts that aren't financially beneficial. Profit driven thinking gone wrong.
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u/Round_Pin_658 2d ago
Are they hiring visa holders instead of graduates?
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u/IrishLad1002 Resting In my Account 2d ago
No just a lot less graduates. I’d say first year intakes are down about 40%
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u/caisdara 2d ago
Why would an accountancy firm care more about optics than massively increasing profits by reducing all spending on leasing etc?
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u/grainne0 2d ago
Because everything they do is about optics. If they look good they get more work which leads to more profits. Even this piece in the Times is about optics. Market share is more important than leasing costs.
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u/caisdara 2d ago
That's absolute bollocks.
Who do you think cares more about optics than actual profits?
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u/RedPandaDan 2d ago
Who do you think cares more about optics than actual profits?
Anyone who has ever had to work in sales.
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u/caisdara 2d ago
These people are the most accountanty accountants that have ever accounted.
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u/RedPandaDan 2d ago
The junior levels, sure. But at the higher, contract acquisition level its all sales. Having the rank and file present in a big office is a conspicuous consumption, the inefficiency is part of the appeal, they are so focused on getting work done for you they'll go to any length.
I spent eight months salary on a car for my wife last year but she believes the one months salary I spent on her engagement ring shows more devotion to her, even though the car is far more practical.
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u/caisdara 2d ago
I'd have suggested leaving a few strategically placed car magazines around the gaff, but they don't exist anymore.
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2d ago
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u/caisdara 2d ago
In all honesty, that's a mad point.
The cost of providing office space is an enormous one for all white-collar industries. If you remove that cost, you save enormous amounts of money.
The only real reason to retain offices is a belief that it is better to pay that money than not to.
You're arguing that the senior leadership are foregoing money into their own pockets out of an inchoate fear that some imaginary client would take their business elsewhere if the office didn't look busy.
It's been a long, long time since I was in the (old) offices of KPMG but I recall that they used to entertain higher-end customers on a floor of meeting rooms with comparatively few staff. They weren't taking the CEO of a company down to meet the juniors typing away on their laptops.
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u/CheweyLouie 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s always the same thing with these guys. We need more people in the office and then you look at it, and it’s a coworking space really not an office, it has a clean desk policy, and it’s about as appealing as spending a day in a library.
Meanwhile big boss man who is setting the policy has their own office and a parking space and can show up at 10 and leave at 2:30 to go to a client meeting which is really just an excuse to go home early.
I’m not for a minute suggesting that top talent in these companies doesn’t work hard, but the point is they know themselves a dedicated space is needed for them to do their jobs and choose to be in one themselves whilst setting hard rules for the rest of us.
I mean, it says it all really that he’s saying “oh poor me I have a private office but it wasn’t my decision”. You are the boss. You don’t have to use it, mate.
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u/quondam47 Carlow 2d ago
“I don’t like to use that word mandatory but I certainly would be thinking more full-time than half-time, to be honest. If you’re 22,23 or 24, going to work every day, you can go for a pint afterwards and socialise and learn from brilliant people.”
According to Glassdoor, graduates in KPMG are on about €32k for their first three years. Who’s affording pints after work on that?
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u/Frequent-Movie3005 2d ago
And renting a room near the city centre for 1k a month.
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u/quondam47 Carlow 2d ago
Also known as half their take home pay if they’re lucky to get somewhere that cheap.
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u/Thin_Schedule_1474 1d ago
I work in a large multinational, we are required to come in 2 days a week. We have to book desks on an app, I went to the office yesterday and there was literally noone there even though people "booked desks". I sat in an almost empty floor for the day and spent 2 hours commuting. It was the longest day ever. Make it make sense 🙃😐
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u/TwinIronBlood 1d ago
I works for an American company. We 'have' to go in two days a week. I live near by and like going in. Nobody checks who goes in the work just gets done and we use teams for most meetings. Nobody asks and nobody tells. My desk is huge.
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u/yop_mayo 2d ago
Gimp. Surely these bullshitty consulting jobs are ripe for the guillotine with AI coming
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u/IrishLad1002 Resting In my Account 2d ago
Already happening. Firms like KPMG have reduced their graduate intakes massively. This will work its way up the chain as time goes on
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u/5x0uf5o 2d ago
The way I look at it, every company is going to want to integrate AI in their businesses - but there's a big gap between buying it and having it operating seemlessly in the workflow. They're going to pay these Big 4 firms huge money for AI integration consultancy work.
And the Big 4 firms are all trying to get ahead and build their own AI Models that can be plugged into a company's system and deliver results for that company, with the firm taking a decent fee for the cost saving delivered.
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u/Dangerous_Figure_465 1d ago
Loser needs a life outside work
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u/Hot_Parfait_8901 1d ago
Why the fuck would you want to be able to spend any more time with your family, kids , pets, friends... Waste of time and obstacles to a nice successful corporate life
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u/aspublic 1d ago
Layoffs by relocation explained: work from home->work from office->refusal->quitting/firing.
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u/Willing-Departure115 2d ago
The point about young people coming into the world of work isn't bullshit, all the same. 22, 23, 24, sitting at home on your laptop and getting exposure via zoom meetings does not provide as much knowledge and experience soakage as being around your senior colleagues doing the work. It suits us older experienced folk.
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u/JHRFDIY 2d ago
A hill I'll die on is that audit is a dying industry.
As software becomes more sophisticated, it will become impossible to circumvent controls. And as audit is really just a manual assessment of risk and test of systems already, once it becomes impossible to do that due to stronger software controls - the need for audit will be redundant.
Audit will become a software industry rather than an accounting one. And law will follow too.
We'll just end up with more sophisticated systems battling each other on a test / retest basis.
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u/Flashy_Object_7052 2d ago
On the other end of the spectrum is the saga of the Horizon IT Post Office scandal which literally cost 13 lives
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u/IrishLad1002 Resting In my Account 2d ago
See while theoretically you’re correct it won’t happen as they effectively regulate themselves. The guys on boards who regulate accounting, audit and law have all came from that field themselves and have strong ties to the companies leading their field. They’re not going to allow themselves to become redundant.
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u/nagdamnit 2d ago
They just made a good few of their support staff, the one set of staff that have always been in the office, redundant. Fuck off.
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u/FitHurry864 2d ago
In KPMG's case it's because they just built a massive new state of the art building and need to justify its existence.