26-Year-Old EY Employee Succumbs to 'Work Stress' Four Months After Joining
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The story starts way back. In general the schooling syllabus in India is very broad and deep (I can say this now since I live outside India). Then due to the large population - around 30 million students complete school every year. After that there are not many good universities (you may have heard of IITs or NITs), only around 100-200K get into good unis. The competetion to get in is therefore intense. Preparation for these "entrance exams" can start at age 15 (or even earlier).
If someone makes it somehow, graduation, postgrad and MBA is another similar struggle. Now you think you surely made it. The last 7-8 years of intense work and hardship are over, this is doubly true if the person is not from a well off family in India (which is very common). Preparation schools, hostels, being away from family etc. has its mental costs.
Then you land a job and it hits you, as a new joiner in the hugely competitive Indian job market you are treated like sh* and all this while you thought "you made it" but the real struggle has just started. Long working hours, immense pressure and then the thought that all the hardwork you did in the past can come crashing down with one bad review. Combine that with the real stuggles of life as you move to a new city, manage finances, support family back home etc. it creates a huge amount of pressure. Some unfortunately are not able to handle it, they are in a position they feel that all was futile and no one can understand their situation.
Honestly - it was not that bad. For your own sustenance (literally when you don't sell much) you do not need that much land and the work is not 24/7 every day. There are a couple of tough weeks in the year but much more downtime than you might realize (like, you barely need to do almost anything entire winter and most of the other seasons actually. 1-2h tops to feed the livestock and bring some wood/coal to the furnace). It would be a different story if farming was our business and we wanted to raise money for something significant - but if you don't have any ambitions like that - village life is pretty easy.
I guess it depends on the type of said office job, but currently I work as a senior dev contractor in the city and it's barely better, if it is at all (I still can't really make up my mind if I'm happier). All of my extra money goes to mortgage (I "own" an apartment, not a house) and after work I do the exact same things I did when I worked on the farm to unwind (read, play games, nap, listen to music) because that's all the energy I have. And then we need to add all of the extra stress and competitiveness that comes with this line of job, wile "on the farm" I was already "at the bottom" and didn't stress much. There are a lot of scenarios on the farm where something is very urgent sure but they are not really stressful. If some farmer says they are - he did not experience real stress (legal threats, danger of losing not only the source of food but entire house + going into debt, long economy downturns without hope of things getting better [as compared to temporary stuff like the weather destroying the current year's crops], lots of stuff).
Yes, and it’s extremely gratifying work. Much more so than sitting in front of a screen. And you can hold the result of your labor, see it, feed it to your family. It’s awesome. I wasn’t aware of how hurt I was by all my labor being abstracted away from me.
I still make my living as an information worker, but I’m actively weaning myself off the income. Less money, more happy.
We also belong to a CSA less than a mile away.
We can a bit, too. It _is_ rewarding and nothing beats a sun-warmed fresh tomato. Or cooking potatoes you grew.
This is so fundamental, but so rarely spoken about in explicit terms. For reasons.
so there's no bonding at work? is it because, those who do understand and could empthatize are incentivized to instead show no mercy and try to push out the newcomers? how come managers are not "entourage building"?
I was born and lived most of my life in Brazil, the same dynamics apply over there, a bit less brutal and gruesome but the competition for limited resources create a work culture of overwork, of management abuse, of constant fear of losing your job, of anxiety someone else is working longer and harder than you so you need to compensate for that.
It's also similar on the education path, there are a few of very good Brazilian public universities (usually they are much better academically than private ones), entrance is through exams and most of my education was focused on passing those exams. Curriculum is tailored for what might be asked on the entrance exams, preparation for these exams (including mock exams) start also around age 15, etc.
I venture to say this is reality in most of the developing world, even more on countries on the middle income bracket like Brazil, India, etc., which aren't so poor that there are no opportunities but are poor enough that good opportunities are few and far between, competition for those spots is insane.
I don't think anyone growing up in developed countries can emotionally understand that, even though there's high competition for great universities, top jobs, etc., you can still live a very fulfilling and decent life without getting into Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Oxford, and so on. That's not really an option in poorer places, you either make it or you will live in some limbo where you earn enough to sustain yourself but don't have access to much else, it's a constant state of surviving to work without seeing upwards mobility.
I'm from Poland. 20 years ago, a friend of mine went to US for the summer to do menial jobs (we were both students at the time) and came back with all sorts of stories. His biggest shock though was "OMG I lived next to this guy who was a postman, and he could live a completely decent live on just his postman salary!". Whereas, in Poland back then, with 20%+ unemployment and depressed wages that come from that, you needed to be extraordinary just to be able to afford an ordinary life.
There are two things to consider:
- when technical ability amongst competitors is high across the board those become “table stakes” and the competition shifts to social signaling, i.e. who can appear to be the most committed? Examples are: Who can show up to work earlier and leave later? Who will respond to texts the fastest? In an environment with an unrestrained management there will be no limits and can become very toxic.
- Individuals have different stress tolerance. Hyper-competitive environments weed out those who are less adept at managing the stress, meaning that new “untested” individuals learn the hard way just how bad it can be, sometimes with very bad results. While stress tolerance can be increased in individuals it’s not limitless, so ultimately responsibility lies with management to set hard limits on what is within bounds.
We have a similar process in France for specific elite schools where French students go through a 2-stage exam system (first you need to get to a preparatory school, then there is a national exam). The work during these two preparation years is insane and the entrance ratio is about 3% (depends on the school).
This system is completely surreal (though the ones who go through it often like it) and different from other European systems.
As a side note, it is much easier to get to the school if you are not French, which did not help in some students relations.
I always have 1 or 2 apprentices in my teams, at very technical and engaging positions. They are happy, I am happy.
It's recommended by a lot of people not to go straight into uni, especially if you're unsure what direction you want to go in. Spend a year or a few, work some hospitality jobs, and just enjoy yourself first, then go do uni in your 20s.
Some where around mid-life you start to catch on to the whole scheme.
The amount of waste in human energy & effort in pointless jobs that optimise for "being busy" is, as far as 1st-world problems are concerned, a humanitarian tragedy.
You could nuke most of these organisations to dust and all that really would happen would be an adjustment as everyone realises the complicated TPS reports weren't very useful anyway and the world keeps turning.
There are some areas where there’s an argument to be made about cost effectiveness, but experience has demonstrated to me that if you’re retaining the services of groups in these firms that you realistically could afford much better service from somewhere else. Like direct hiring for the talent you need or recruiting your own contractors, working with vendors directly, etc.
I’ve never seen results from these firms that make me go “oh wow! That’s worth what was paid!”
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. For my experiences, I’ve just never seen it.
The work being done by that team was utterly pointless. It was a software deployment that had failed twice already because they hadn't followed the procedure in the manual, and were trying the same guaranteed-to-fail process a third time just in case it would succeed. They all knew it would fail, but their manager insisted they go through the motions anyway, for 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. The manager knew it wouldn't work either, but his boss had signed some document that basically said that they "had to" do things this way. His boss had no idea about anything, wasn't there, and didn't care about the technical details to begin with.
It was an incredible farce, with deadly consequences, for no tangible results.
Some people did far more hours than me but I think it was mostly self imposed. A small minority of the partners were twats but the vast majority were mindful of people’s well-being. Friday evening drinks in corney and barrow were sacred and on days I didnt want to work longer I just got up and left to the disbelief of the audit room - they got over it though!
So there was an effectively mandatory work hangout every Friday evening?
Nice of you to join us.
You and your coworkers are 'drunk', so whatever you say has an excuse now.
Because of the stiff upper lip, so to speak, culture of the normal workdays, you can't complain about workload, or that Steve is an ass, or that the project is pointless, etc. But with a 'drunk' cover, you can, and that information can get to the bosses and they can adjust things. That's why those meeting times are needed and all the folks need to be there with that excuse literally in hand.
Or, so I've been told by older functional-alcoholic consultants back in my consulting days.
Hey, at least the beer and gin were on the company card.
What I got for all of those credentials coming out of school was a starting salary of 55,000 in California and a whole lot of stress. Busy season was 80+ hour work weeks and included working on the weekends. I tried pushing back about working on Sundays, but I was the only one on the team who didn’t work.
Once busy season was over, I was sold on the idea that the Summer would be easy, but that wasn’t the case. The partners took on more clients to generate more revenue for themselves, and I continued working 40+ hours during the Summer despite being told I wouldn’t.
Worse, we couldn’t get newer members to join out of college and started outsourcing all of our audit work to the Philippines and India. The work from the Philippines was somewhat passable, and the work from India was unusable. So I had to do all this coordinating across time zones and a never ending amount of corrections to make the work meet the quality expected by a US-based audit firm. It wasn’t fun in the slightest.
You can never have a perfect audit because there’s always more work that you can do. The system pushes you to fill every waking hour that it can get from you with work. It’s mostly meaningless busy-work that shouldn’t be ans stressful as it is. All of that for 55,000 with a graduate degree. Worse, the firm achieved record profits in 2020 yet froze salaries for those being promoted to senior (supposed to be a jump to about 100,000).
I really miss the ease of interviews from having a CPA and the protections afforded by a body overseeing the industry. It was a lot better than the system we have as software engineers. But the sheer amount of work and stress was truly not worth the pay.
The people who cared for this person told her to stop, but she kept going because she believed (and this is a direct quote from the still grieving parent) that "becoming a chartered accountant involves years of toil, hardship and sacrifice". But who is telling these lies? The media, who fetishise this stuff, and the people who "made it" who, by the way, inherited their wealth, were a nepotism hire or are just more genetically gifted and/or lucky than you. Everyone will tell you their job is hard, they struggle and they deserve what they have, yet their backs are miraculously intact.
Getting to the position I'm at has involved years of work and study, but hardship and toil? You've got to be kidding. I enjoy what I do. It's not a hardship. I read books and write programs for fun. I would never tell anyone that to succeed in this field they need to lose sleep and sacrifice their health and relationships. That would be abusive. That's how this starts.
What little reputation EY had left was basically set on fire when their very-hyped "Project Everest" restructuring abysmally failed over basic issues that should have been addressed in the beginning. EY spent a fair amount to plan the restructuring and took on a fair amount of debt to pair for it (and of course it did this before bothering to make sure the stakeholders would actually go through with the plan)...
Clients began to wonder why they should trust EY with their restructuring/business planning/etc if EY couldn't even handle its own. This resulted in a pretty significant outflow of clients in the consulting and tax groups.
The debt service and loss of revenue led to several rounds of layoffs (in the U.S., and overseas), frozen promotions, etc. PwC and Deloitte were the major benefactors, but a lot of the Next 20 firms also scooped up former EY employees and clients. (Unfortunately for the remaining EY employees, like the woman in the reddit link, this led to severe overwork.)
Life gets easier once they get past this stage.
Having had abysmal managers in my past, I always ask - where was in this case the manager's managers, and why has his shitty behavior not been reported in skip level?
https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
They exist for this sole reason: if your manager is not behaving correctly.
Edit: For the people downvoting me, you have to understand that a senior in consulting is basically someone which can do the work by themselves without being babied. A junior is there to learn and hopefully help on simple things. I routinely produced more contents that some of my juniors on projects as a manager despite spending a tenth of their allocated time on it. That was fine. You don’t magically get good at consulting. You have to put in the time.
Work-Life Balance Is ‘Western Concept’
https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
manager and skip manager even sued this person after they left Adobe https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1fj597h/ey...
Low cost of living leading to lower salary is one thing, but the cake is being able to exploit and overwork.
In India, almost everyone overworks. No exceptions. Even in most government positions. It is just what people are willing to go through.
No, it’s not "culture". Everyone hates it, but don't want to go hungry.
Another thing is, MNCs, both in tech and non-tech fields at least offers you a working space with AC and decoration. That's a big draw for many, if not most. As India is developing, many people are first generation white-collar job holders. They, and their parents are just happy that they don't have to do manual labor in the sun, or be subject to poor treatment by bosses in more traditional sectors. Such people will be unhappy, sad, and still accept the toil and pressure and overwork.
No offense, but the output of that "work" is generally crap. "Check the Box and March in Circles" legalism with zero thought about impact, output, or usability.
Which is why most BPO & outsourcing programs are a total shitshow.
I'd rather have 6 - 8 hours of engaged time directed towards specific outcomes, guided by effective impact measurements, than 100 hours of timecard punches.
Working under muse on a project as a technical founder is different. But for everyone else, which is basically ~100% of the workforce with a rounding error, overwork is harmful for good work. But this is how most of India works. Every sector is like this.
And, tbh, only the lowest of lowest quality of Indian students work in BPOs, nobody does it if they have other opportunities. That is why it is shit.
Both methods can achieve higher output but the latter can squeeze out maybe +30% for a finite period of time until the employees burn out, but the former has no ceiling on productivity gains. You can achieve 10x, 100x, or even 1,000,000x efficiencies by not wasting time, using automation, better methods, or whatever. I've had serious discussions where the "work harder" people were suggesting 100 outsourced Indian IT techs for two years to do something I could do in a couple of weeks with some scripting. That's a 5,000x difference, in case you're counting.
The inevitable consequence of this attitude is that to achieve "top performance", some orgs flog their staff like slaves to eke out +60%.
It doesn't matter how she died. Put anyone with normal health under overwork and excessive stress and they'll pass away soon enough. Whether it be a burst ulcer, excessive fatigue, lack of sleep, anorexia, whatever.
From what I know, EY is using the same excuse as you are, trying to hide away under the "she had an underlying condition" excuse.
Stress has a direct effect on gut metabolism. There's a reason they call it second brain and whatnot.
> Stress has a direct effect on gut metabolism. There's a reason they call it second brain and whatnot.
That reason is just a recent meme, best I can tell.
Too many variables affect this, including lifestyle, working hours, working conditions, etc. It's easy to control for them at large, but not combat one of them specifically.
For me, it's ulcers, caused by lack of a strict eating schedule and growing acidity levels due to not eating properly. Although in incidentally, during my PE days, what could've killed me was not that, but massive depression from a lack of socialization and not having someone to talk to.
For some folks I knew, it was a lifestyle of smoking and/or poor dietary habits, which led to a heart attack and an early death. For another, it was a heart attack too, caused by drinking too much energy drinks to stay awake. For still another, it was due to taking controlled medication on a slightly higher dose that landed them in the ER.
And then there's the story of that guy behind the "Impossible is Nothing" meme who suffered from massive depression after his video resume was leaked and made viral across Wall Street banks. Ended up dying from a medication overdose, although it's also alleged that it was an intentional suicide.
It's easy to figure out the warning signs early on - they stand out extremely obvious to anyone with a couple of braincells. The point is that most places, especially many Indian companies (although all of my examples were in London and NY), glorify this culture of excessive slaving for some mediocre return.
The concept of thoughts and consciousness being confined to a specific organ is a recent meme.
Or, if IRB doesn't approve of this study, just observe that medical practice around the world provides overwhelming empirical evidence for it every day, day in, day out. Now that we can swap almost every body part between people, it's kind of obvious which one is the one that's doing the thinking.
And you rephrased the premise. I did not write it the way you did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
As much as your scientism and medical specialists may try to suppress evidence to the contrary, bodies are organic systems that amount to more than the sum of parts. And we cannot hack away at a body without disrupting its integrity--have you heard of "phantom limb syndrome"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb
Was Mary Shelley the consciousness expert?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Parts_(film) [credit to Gemini AI, for correctly naming the film from my one-sentence description and incorrect "1980s" time frame.]
First reactions were fully in line with what you're presenting. But hard facts are that a young person doesn't just die from overwork. They may develop PTSD, or anxiety disorder, or may lose or gain weight, or a whole bunch of other things. But a death is not normal, it has to be scientifically investigated.
It's the knowledge that almost none of the associates (and lower) will stay longer than 1-2 years, so you can use and exploit them as meaty calculators. You also see this in any large private law or accounting firm.
It’s abusive, but it’s also a sign you did something. You have to do the work asked of you, and the more work you do, the better for a CV. That’s why so many people tolerate this treatment, and why it’s not a negative signal for people reading a CV later.
But hey we gave up on labor rights and protections long ago, so what can be done?
So EY should explain very clearly what they do. I guess it could be somthing like "welcome at EY, we work for the greatest accounts in the world, you'll meet the top mamangement of the top management and get tons of money and an a CV worth millions. However, to get that: we will push you to your limits. That implies: you may burn out (and needs psychological assistance for years), you may be so tired that you develop illness, you will be treated like inferior humans (although we won't tell you), we won't be responsible, you will work insane hours, we won't tolerate complains and you'll be fired at will"... But now I'm reading it, it's just like pictures of dmaged lungs on packs of cigarettes... Does it really help? :-(
Companies which leads people to such extremes should be penalized.
The number of young college grads who wanted to go start their career in investment banking increased tremendously.
Years ago when my father was leading a team in a bank in Paris, he would observe that most people were at the office before he was and he was nearly always the first to leave. But once when getting back to the office 5 minutes after realizing he had forgotten something important at his desk, the whole thing was empty. He realized all his subordinates would just wait for him to go in order to not be seen as lazy workers. It was all about pretending as some might have been playing solitaire while waiting, who knows.
He had to implement a mandatory "leave before I do" rule to fight against this toxic culture.
Years later I realized one coworker in my mostly swiss team was doing the same when I went back to my desk also for a forgotten item less than 5 minutes after my departure. One of my coworker was always still at his desk when I was heading home but when I went back, he was already gone. Out of curiosity I did it a few times and could only confirm. I even rammed into him in the corridor when I turned back literally 2 minutes later. That employee was french too.
----
Different culture, but similar. There are lots of indians and people of indian origin in my company. Most are obviously living in India and some living in UK and the USA. It seems to me that those living in India are spending a lot of time at work. Since I am on the euro timezone, they are obviously online when I am starting my day, but they are also always online a long time after I have shutdown my computer according to their activity on our enterprise chat app.
I don't know the details of their local laws but this cannot be healthy in the long term.
https://www.editions-legislatives.fr/actualite/temps-de-trav...
That's a very long spelling of HN userbase ;)
in other words, actual millionaires.
Such a lovely bunch of people :-/
Interestingly enough, it was during Covid, she had to work from home and their main complain was that she wasn't "bonding enough with the team". Yes no shit when everyone is buried under 12h of work and bars are closed, what was she supposed to do? Those partners will do anything, including illegal things, to get to their 3% growth target.
At an old job we had one Auditing firm (Deloitte or KPMG??) auditor who found a lot of issues. The auditor found a single cash register receipt among a year's worth of receipts, a pile, with the login name the supervisor not the employee. The supervisor forgot to log off and an employee used the cash register for one or two sales.
A new auditing firm the next year found no issues which I knew was bull since the place changed over staff a dozen times and new management was far more incompetent.
people talk about Japan/Korea, but it's the same all over, just that other countries are not famous enough economically to count.
(basically all the hard work, none of the benefits)
____
Like I'm in Pakistan, I passed all my accountancy papers but I never went on to an audit firm because they pay below minimum wage, and they work so late that I realised I just didn't make sense, for one I'd be too late to catch the bus home. (Also another hilarious reason I'll share later.)
For context, The minimum wage in pakistan for 2024 is 37,000 PKR per month [1] (That's 132 USD per month. Yes, one hundred thirty two dollars, for a whole month) This what you would pay for manual 'un-skilled' labour.
The stipend rate for ICAP trainees depends on stage[2], but goes from PKR 19,700 ($70) to PKR 84,700 ($304) per month, but most people I knew were at the stage that pays PKR 30,700 ($110) per month. It's the same for any org hiring an ICAP trainee, be it Big4 or whatever.
They call it stipend, to imply it isn't a salary and affected by salary laws, but these are proper 9am-9pm 6 days a week jobs you have to do for atleast 3 years.
My accounting body ACCA (UK based, but works intenationally), doesn't specify a standard stipend rate, which means accounting firms are free to abuse us even below the pitiful ICAP rate.
Here is an ad[3] on their own job board, by an 'ACCA-approved' employer, offering 15-20K stipend per month. ($54-$72)
____
This leads to the other, hilarious reason why I never went into an accounting firm... because we were banned by ICAP. Since ACCA never fixed rates, accounting firms starting hiring ACCA over Pakistani CA students, because they could pay use even less.
This led to ICAP banning accounting firms from hiring non-Pakistan based accounting body students. Then ACCA had to go to the Competiton Commission of Pakistan [4] to get this ruling turned over.
But by the time the judgement came in our favour, it had been too late for people like me.
Anyhoo, I went on to other jobs, then went back to uni, currently doing my MSc (distance learning), but I do wonder sometimes what the other path would have taken me.
Maybe I'd have been dead by overwork like the poor lady in the link. I guess that ban might have saved my life.
____
[1]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1855605/govt-notifies-rs37000-mini...
[2]: https://icap.org.pk/students/training/stipend-rates/
[3]: https://jobs.accaglobal.com/job/12888611/acca-accountant-int...
Those shareholders like it because it makes more money, and they are encouraged to be the sort of people that should want more money too. Good for them, successful businesspeople!
This disgusting, inhuman pursuit "of number go up" has reached new heights because of the globalism issue. Citizens of successful, comfortable nations, instead of being economically free to pursue greater meaning and develop humanity further via the arts, and other pursuits of meaning, are instead forced to compete with millions of starved, desperate workers from developing nations, who are worked so hard they die in an accountancy job, and they are in turn pitched against the lowest bidder Why? corporate greed. How dare YOU ask for your number to go up as well, this other guy will do it for less and he has more qualifications than you!
Billionaires should not exist
> Billionaires should not exist.
This has its roots in Calvinism though, not billionaires. And once you touch things related to faith, you are out of the rational world, while simultaneously touching the egregore of a nation.
These two aspects alone mean that such issues are very difficult to change, with the current unrest and ever increasing political overbidding suggesting that the only catharsis will come from societal collapse, as there seems to be absolutely no room to discuss anything remotely linked to the identity of the nation or its citizens.
Wise words.
It took me a bit to process why I felt so uncomfortable after the interview. Then a friend made it clear to me: you weren’t interviewing for a tech company, but for a consulting company (which works on tech solutions).
I was thrown a curveball question in the partner’s domain of expertise which I managed to sort-of-answer, only to be told “Oh, I didn’t expect you to be able to answer.” Wtf? And in the end, it was made clear I wouldn’t be compensated much.
The only time ime where the interviewer failed my “interview”.
The sad thing is that these kinds of positions seem like the only viable path for some. And that this kind of grind is presented as the proper thing to engage in.
I wish the best for the bereaved and the deceased.
This is perfectly normal. I also ask candidates things I don't expect them to be able to answer, I need to see if they will be honest about it or if they will start bullshitting their way around the issue or outright lie.
It's OK to not know something, and it's very valuable (to me) if you are open about it.
But there was an air of “putting me in my place” and making it clear that this is not “fun and games”. When I mentioned my previous compensation (when I lived in a more affluent country), I was immediately made to know that this is unrealistic and even laughable for a starting position. Sprinkle in a 9h workday, in-office requirements and the fact that often people work overtime (“Though you really don’t need to do that.”), and the notion that the company cares about work-life balance rung very hollow.
The HR question at the end - what do you do in your free time? (so that they could put it as a blurb on their People page) - was just the cherry on top.
Basically I was given low expectations and I don’t recall the job ever being presented as something I’d want to do.
I appreciate the honesty, I guess. Better to know upfront than find out latter. I did end up being called back, but declined. Soon enough I was making 1.5x the minimum they weren’t happy to accept upfront (“maybe once you’ve been with us for a while - you are an expense to us in the first months”).
TBH, looking back at it, they were just predatorily looking for cheap labor in their new offices in a low-income area. Which is sad, since the interviewer came from the same country yet acted quite full of himself. I just happened to have more options than their “ideal” candidate.
A common saying that reflected the typical experience was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".
We can surely criticise one without having to immediately complain about the other, can't we?
Edit: To be clear, my problem with this is that to pretend that there is only a choice between 'capitalism' and 'communism' is a false dichotomy.
For most people a non-capitalist system is necessarily socialist/communist. So the response is apt for most situations.
> there is only a choice between 'capitalism' and 'communism' is a false dichotomy.
I fully agree, there are nuances that are not considered in what is traditionally defined as communism/socialism/capitalism.
But it's important to note that most people understand things only in black and white, and never the shades of gray.