Considering moving to Deloitte but concerned about potential layoffs as we are likely to enter a recession. There are lots of things I don’t like about accenture, but we had far less Covid related layoffs than Deloitte from what I understand (Accenture was 5%). although I’m told we are having another small unrelated round now). Thoughts?
Chief
I can’t speak to the likelihood of a recession —- but Deloitte has proven not-too-long ago that they view talent as replaceable. And treat it’s employees as such
Pro
Accenture, if you’re lucky, you’ll be 40 one day and you’ll look back at this comment and shake your head.
Risk of layoff is quite high here. It became an annual tradition except we cut too many in 2020 then a bunch of people quit. So we had to start hiring aggressively but history says we likely will have over hired and need to cut back. In general they wont lay you off until you have a year tenure so you get that grace period but after that you better have some advocates.
Honestly, any of the big consulting firms are a crap shoot when it comes to layoffs, 5% of staff is still a LOT of people when you think about it.
Life is too short to stress out about any potential recession / future lay off that is completely out of your control.
Rising Star
Smart advice. Economic uncertainty is good to plan for but trying to forecast a recession and base a career move on could definitely lead to missed opportunities.
Pro
I hate to sound like a bit of a tool, but if you're not in the bottom 25% and you stay out of trouble don't worry about it; they're not coming for you.
Pro
If you're cutting a huge chunk of an offering this can be true, but rarely are you going to cut more than 25%. Typically when someone with high pay is cut it's because they're performing poorly relative to their level, comp is a secondary factor in those discussions. I've been on the other side of this deciding who you let go and you never want to let go of the top performers (even top 50%) that you need for growth and training on the upswing. Scatterplots don't tell the whole story.
Make no mistake. There will be layoffs if there’s an economic issue. They did it without mercy in 2020 (search Deloitte at GoingConcern.com) and created USDC, a stepchild career path with lower pay, to shove tons of new people - particularly women and people of color into.
Doubt SD1 meant me. It’s all just really confusing because a claim was made, but won’t be backed up. I understand A1’s frustration.
Deloitte laid off 5% of its workforce in 2020, due to COVID, so not much better I'm afraid.
☝️this!
Just switch to restructuring