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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

"Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months [...] The IT consulting group on Thursday detailed an $865mn restructuring programme and an outlook for the year ahead that reflects continuing sluggish corporate demand for consulting projects and a clampdown on spending within the US federal government."

The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO.

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> The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO.

And from the article:

> The company said revenues grew 7 per cent to $69.7bn in the year to August, for a net income of $7.83bn, up 6 per cent.

Where's it talk about the TON of work they lost?

If I sell you a table for $100, and sell you another one later for $107, did that second table automatically take more work to make?

No, but if the only piece we have to go off of is that my revenue from table increased 7%, are you going to assume or believe someone that says my total table sales are WAY down?

But that isn't the only piece we have to go on; they're laying off 11k people.

That has less than 0 to do with how many tables a company sells.

If you can buy a table making machine and lay off 100% of your table makers, you could sell 3x as many tables, and have 20x as much profit.

That may be. The point remains - revenue and amount of work are not necessarily directly correlated. It's not uncommon for a business that's struggling to increase prices to boost revenue short-term, but screw themselves long-term.

Is the second one Table+ or Table Pro?

Table Copilot.

Former management consultant here from a long, long time ago. It blows my mind when I see the consultancies cheer how they are adopting Gen AI to automate deck building, Excel analysis, etc.

... like, don't you see that your clients are READING your announcements and wondering "What the hell am I paying for?"

If I pay you $10K/month (let alone $100K+) and you're sending me anything AI generated, you will never work for me again.

But it's also too big a grift for them not to be a part of. There's no good move so they're just running towards the ball like everyone else is.

But do clients really care that the spreadsheets and slide decks are artisanal, hand crafted by humans? My impression, mostly from HN cynics, is that companies hire consultants as air cover to have an outside party justify business decisions they want to make. So what do they care how the supporting data was generated, as long as it comes with the Accenture logo?

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