Accenture to 'exit' Staff That Cannot Be Retrained for Age of AI
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Accenture plans to 'exit' staff who cannot be retrained for the age of AI, sparking concerns about age discrimination and the company's priorities.
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“We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need,” chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call."
“We’re exiting older staff as quickly as possible to avoid a sueball like IBM, because we do not feel it’s worthwhile reskilling them versus hiring cheaper, younger people.”
Just my speculative translation based on prior experiences. If you use my comment in a sueball against Accenture for age discrimination, boy howdy will you be disappointed in the outcome.
> The cuts allowed Accenture to say it would continue to expand operating profit margins at its historic annual rate of at least 10 basis points in the next fiscal year, a target that some analysts had worried might have to be dropped given the tough industry conditions.
The company itself is doing just fine, thanks for asking.
> 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.
They’re citing internal data to prop-up this AI narrative, too, and claim - like everyone else doing layoffs - that headcount is expected to grow in the coming year.
It’s basically a giant celebratory puff piece for Accenture. Nothing of substance in there if you’re immune to the usual corporate doublespeak.
All tech companies are doing layoffs [1], Accenture are just trying to sell it as a good thing.
> They’re citing internal data to prop-up this AI narrative, too, and claim - like everyone else doing layoffs - that headcount is expected to grow in the coming year.
As everybody who has tested this stuff knows, the AI does not lead to massive gains in productivity. They may regret getting rid of safety critical engineers, or testing engineers.
[1] https://www.trueup.io/layoffs
Layoffs to increase profits are a good thing for shareholders. Not so much for those laid off of course, but who cares about those?
Seriously, think about it for a moment. We have built a global society on the singular foundation that one must work to survive, yet we do not provide guarantees of work to provide the wages needed for survival of the labor class. It effectively condemns the unluckiest among us to suffering and an early death solely because they could not find gainful employment for whatever reason - disability, illness, lack of skills, insufficient wages, missing credentials, regime policies, the list goes on.
In that context, shouldn’t we be mandating companies at least abstain from layoffs when they’re posting profits or engaging in share buybacks, for a set period of time? Should we not be mandating governments provide job guarantees and minimum wages that enable every worker to have a safe, livable home and nutritious food?
Just something to chew on, because you’re right in that companies aren’t a jobs program.
But maybe they should be.
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 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.
... 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.
Feels like another form of age discrimination in tech. Anyone who had a good idea how to do things costs too much money, and it’s better to hire people who blindly trust the AI to do the work. If you can’t spot hallucinations or bad code, do they exist? =P
Literally where we’re at in the AI bubble: blind faith and willful ignorance.
We essentially are empowering small businesses to run like the Dept of Government Efficiency (which is a joke and used to shift tax payer dollars to wealthy Trump supporters).
Talent is leaving the company left and right because promotions and salary adjustments just are not happening. Your achievements don't matter because they already skipped promotions for 2 years, so there are dozens of people in front of the queue.
Juniors are getting fired if they don't have a project for 3 months, but once a surge of projects come around, there is not enough manpower to do staffing. Meanwhile, people in management are safe and get large severance packages.
Edit: Hi to my formers colleagues. I know you are reading this, feel free to disagree ;-)
When I worked for Accenture, I got benched for an entire summer. It was great. At the time the only resource to find a new project was this spreadsheet uploaded to Sharepoint, and there was 0 pressure from my HR rep to actually look for a new role.
I eventually found a new job and quit, but I always wondered what would have happened if I just stayed on the bench while working at the 2nd job.
Don't they pair juniors up with seniors in existing projects? Before I'd "bench" anyone, I'd do that without charging for them, so they learn and can do realised billable hours later down the line. I'd feel so weird getting benched. I didn't know that was a thing anyone did frankly.
Even during the dotcom crash, they didn't lay anyone off IIRC. Instead they offered up to a couple years unpaid leave with benefits and guarantees of a job afterwards.
I figured, they couldn't sign a contract without having people ready to staff it. I met a ton of people who were hired onto the bench and sat for months either without a project (just because they had skills that would be needed for future projects), or they had a project but were waiting for the project to start.
I say second to delivering a good project: My job was application support. Half of my team was offshore, and they had very little actual technical skill, they just learned the problems that may occur with the software we supported. But they couldn't go off script and debug problems that we didn't already know how to solve.
There are contracts signed and NDAs for everyone that has access to customer systems.
Although I also do conceed many offshoring companies forget about that, until someone that wasn't supposed to exist on the project does something that ends up on an escalation.
It is very common in consulting and agencies, when not getting enough projects.
It does seem weird from the outside I agree. It can also depend on the person, skillset, etc. Some people will never get benched just because they don't have any or enough other people with equivalent skills, so there's constant demand.
(edit: skillset, not skillet, obviously your bench rate does not depend on your cookware)
But the bench also provided great opportunities to do actual good trainings, certifications and upskilling of all kinds. But the company stopped investing into its future long ago. It's just about short term gains for those on top.
I've always found this part to be so crazy. It's seems like both a politically bad idea to not dogfood your own stuff and just also a bad business sense to not get "free" testers using the products.
Like, if you're buying a car and you ask the salesman which of these Subaru's they'd be and they respond with I'd go elsewhere and buy a Ford. Why would you buy one of their cars?
2009
> But the bench also provided great opportunities to do actual good trainings, certifications and upskilling of all kinds.
I did spend some of the time studying new developer skills. But on my own, Accenture didn't have any learning resources for that all they had was all management training stuff.
The only reason the current management is still in place is because the CEO's husband is in politics and institutional investors want to keep their allies in place. In turn, Accenture keeps their friends happy by syphoning money from the bottom to the top, at the cost of their own consultancy and delivery capabilities. Meanwhile, the C-suit cashes out big-time.
The CEO is fundamentally incapable of changing even a light bulb, let alone address strategic problems. As a lawyer and Harvard MBA, she provided "growth" by buying shitty IT-companies where key-experts left the company immediately. She doesn't have the knowledge or intellectual capability or create "value" or "operational efficiency". Instead, they chase trends and make one terrible decision after another. This burns money faster than a conveyor belt can transport into a furnace (like selling off most offices during covid at low prices and having to buy new ones when prices are up).
Perhaps my Google-fu is dying, but isn't this the CEO's husband?
https://ballotpedia.org/Chad_Sweet
> Chad Sweet is a Republican political consultant based in Washington, D.C., and co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a business and security consulting firm.
> Sweet was the campaign chairman for Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, several financial institutions, Department of Homeland Security, and the Texas Lyceum. In 2012, Sweet served as finance chairman for Cruz's Senate campaign.
But I just twisted wires for a living so what the hell could I know about white collars?
Except they aren't really presenting them as novel ideas. The point isn't that they are novel, merely that because they now come packaged from a big consultancy, it provides the necessary level of ass covering to senior execs to be able to action some of them.
If you ever feel like working in the field again, I have lots of work in 110 and 292 for good electricians :) If you prefer 242, 343, or 14; that can be arranged too haha
Spent most of my apprenticeship renovating data centers — yes, lots of consultants / contractors / subs.
Julie Sweet could be replaced by an "AI", or even a 20 year old Markov chain.
Carl is not going to try another $150 with another provider, he’s just going to leave the market. The pre-ai widgeters all lose their jobs whether or not ai actually is able to solve Carl’s problem.
Sep 25, 2025 "Accenture to add 12,000 jobs with new Andhra Pradesh campus amid H-1B visa fee hike" https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/acc...
Unlike a partnerships model, Accenture taps the public markets for financing to do M&A and pays its star salespeople with stock. Declining revenue growth rerates the stock price lower, which then makes the market more competitive (can’t buyout others) and acts as a disincentive to the salespeople, which then lowers the stock price further. This alone may be survivable, but at the same time, the company has more than half a million staff (!) employed in India/Philippines/etc at exactly the time when the market wants SOTA-level AI work instead of legacy ‘managed services’, and the federal government is cutting many $B of ACN contracts
Tl;dr: these guys aren’t getting IBM’d, they’re getting Xerox’d