Serious question: how difficult is it to get straight up fired from big 4? Outside the layoffs last year, I have personally never seen anyone let go for any reason. There's always some PIP or transferring projects or some long review process that never goes anywhere. Anyone have any insight or stories? Just looking for some perspective.

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Reasons I've seen people get fired:
- Two people for expenses fraud
- One person for living in Canada when they were supposed to live in Detroit.
- Two people for very poor performance
- One person for harassment type behavior

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Huh interesting. I wonder why they didn't just seek approval for a long-term / monthly rental.

Know of a guy who got fired for just straight up not working, for like over a month. This was years ago pre-Covid, but he had been assigned to a client as part of staff aug, and he just never showed up to their office. I don’t know the details, but apparently he only got caught when the client asked who the hell he was after seeing him on their invoice.

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That’s amazing. I aspire to be that guy, without the getting caught or firing part.

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It's pretty rare and drawn out but I've seen it a couple of times

Pretty difficult. I've seen it once for repeated harrassment complaints but dude just went to another Big 4 and is still there.

One person for performance.
One person for not doing firm mandatory trainings.

Seems like the consensus, with some exceptions, is that it is very difficult.

Follow up to that, for people who have left for industry, do you feel less of a sense of job security for this reason?

I know a guy who was fired (from my last gig at one of the B4, not ACN) for being on the receiving end of competitor bid data in an RFP process. So the client wanted my B4 to win, shared with them via email the bids from other competitors, and they all got caught, so both the client person that sent the data AND the person on B4 side who was participating, all got fired.

But yea, this kind of stuff is rare so agree with most observations in the thread - getting straight up fired without a PIP process only happens if you egregiously F up in a very bad way.

I’ve been in professional services for over 20 years. I’ve seen a handful of firings but it’s rare.

The reality is that very often poor performers are simply pushed off to the next project/engagement team to become someone else’s problem. Human nature is to avoid difficult conversations, so it’s easier to find an excuse to roll the person off, keep one’s mouth shut not to rock the boat or deal with the fall out, and let the problem person go to another engagement.

Following. I’ve seen threads where people are on PIP. Getting a PIP means a high chance of being let go?

No it’s not bad luck. It means you suck at your job. People going through it may characterize it differently (eg somehow everyone who ever ends up on a PIP has been treated unfairly, is being set up for failure, is being targeted by a personal grudge, is is is…). In the ends it doesn’t matter because the organization (not just an individual) has decided it’s time to formalize your exit.

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Unless there's a major restructuring or M&A, lay-offs are often a kind of firing in my view .i.e. those people would most likely have ended up being fired but would have taken longer under normal circumstances. Other than that most firings are usually violation of company policy or the law.

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