The Reddit post of an individual who claims to have worked in EY Pune, the same office where the recently demised CA Anna Sebastian Perayil had served her short period, has taken the internet by surprise and awe.
Read More Here: Kerala-based Young CA passes away due to Work Stress at Big Four Firm EY at Pune, Mom writes to Chairman
For the unaware, Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion platform where registered members can submit content such as text posts, links, and images in anonymity.
Users can upvote or downvote submissions, influencing their visibility on the site. Reddit is organised into communities called “subreddits,” each focused on specific topics ranging from news and technology to hobbies and entertainment.
The reddit post in r/CharteredAccountants reads as follows: –
“I had a short stint in EY Pune. I could not survive for more than 2 months.
The work hours were gruelling and I was alone expected to handle the GST returns of a 9000cr + company. The owner literally shouted at partner and was about to cuss that you expect your single guy to handle our fucking 9000cr + company ? They keep themselves severely resource constrained to mint more money.
It is implied that the weekends aren’t off. If you want to go for shopping on a Saturday, make sure you inform your manager as on Friday as they call anytime and ask you to be in office on weekends. One Saturday I worked straight from 9:00 am to 10:30 pm. I was informed this on Friday night.
The politics is insane and for promotion , people tend to outweigh one another by working long. They boast of working 14 hours a day. Are they in their right minds ? Who boasts of such imbalanced life with no family time ?
Apart from all of the above, the biggest frustration point was – anytime a manager or senior from different team approaches you to assist in his work if he thinks your work is about to get over. You can’t even say no as it then leads to immense bad mouthing due to insane politics. It creates extreme demotivation as you already are working on your impossible deadline and had planned to reach home by 11:00 pm but alas, that plan is ruined at last moment.
This is not the first suicide happening there. Previously , a senior manager has committed suicide. She was the most dynamic personality I had seen there.
Don’t join a big 4 at any cost guys. I had worked previously at KPMG and it was same experience there. Even if someone will offer double salary , I won’t join any big 4.
UPDATE – EY CEO replied on LinkedIn and as always the language was corporate gibberish and vague. He didn’t responded to a single point mentioned by Anna’s mother. Only the general things were mentioned with not a single mention that we will investigate the team in which Anna worked. How foolish and douchebags these people are it shows.”
In addition, the reddit post of another individual who claims to be the colleague of Anna has statements that shake the conscience of any Big Four Aspirant young CA and forces them to rethink their priorities of career and health.
PreposterousSyndrom is the pseudonym opted by the colleague to protect his personal identity on Reddit. The comment is reproduced here : –
“As Anna’s colleague –
Bear with me till the end.
I work in the same office as Anna, EY Pune and in the same cluster.
The death of Anna was informed via a centralised mail in which they attached her linkedin picture with some standard short message like RIP. News was put in the grapevine that she was already suffering from a health condition which got worse.
Though I haven’t worked directly with her, I’ve worked with her manager, who is worse than how it’s portrayed in the letter. He actually prioritises his convenience (like cricket) and he doesn’t really care for anyone’s time or effort. He proudly bought IPL final tickets in deadline at exorbitant prices and showed off on insta. He takes all the credit himself, and blames the team for any shortfalls (classic manager behaviour). Boasts all day everyday. When he reviews your work, his focus is not on the correctness of work, he points out as many mistakes as he could, depicting how smart he is, and in other words how dumb you are.
Her assistant manager, she’s atrocious. Basically what the asst manager does is distribute work to the team and follow up from each one. Ensure no one is stress free, no one is taking time off. Basically they highlight their potential by getting work done from lesser people (like work of 5/6 resources from 2 resources) in order to get promoted. It is said in common language that you can trust and deal with a drunken man out of his mind, but not an AM. Every AM is the embodiment of this statement.
I have been working in EY for quite some time now, and I have seen people come and go. People who come here (generally) are very hardworking people who have thirst for learning and they are ready to work day and night. Australian timings, European timings, US timings, you name it. Seasoned people exploit these newcomers like anything. And these senior people have power. Good deal of power. They can make your life a living hell if you don’t co-operate with them. Try reporting to HR, then you’ll get to know he’s part of this structure too. They have the audacity to use profane language in reviews. Newly qualified CAs and articles come all the way from their states like Kashmir, Punjab, TN, sacrificing everything just to learn and get good exposure. But it’s a bloodbath. All these people are school toppers of their time. It seems apparent that years of mind numbing toil wasn’t enough.They’re humiliated to an extent where they lose their respect in their own eyes. Humiliation in the team calls is quite normal here. And these newcomers are from small families who teach them to respect elders and not react to any unreasonable behaviour, not to say NO to any work, give your heart and soul to the work you do. Everyone of us went through this thinking maybe something is wrong with me, if everyone is able to handle this pressure I should handle it too. Female employees may get some leniency but for our male colleagues it’s absolutely brutal. Everyone is tortured to hell. No social life, no personal time, no time to attend even phone calls. Most of the newcomers including articles quit, some endure the trouble for some years and then quit, remaining become managers and become trouble for others.
We average 16 hours a day in the busy season, and 12 hours a day in non busy seasons. No weekends or public holidays are off. Annually EY voluntarily announces a day off to rejuvenate their employees. And yes you guessed it right! Even that is not off. We work on that day as well – from Office! Overwork is the only way to get promoted, do and make others do it.
Top level people (Partners) don’t care about sh*t. You don’t even get to interact with partners until you’re at least an asst manager. They don’t give a f**k about any employee, they just care about getting work done. Even if you go through boiling hell and get the work done, you won’t get any acknowledgement from anyone forget about appreciation. One of my colleagues was hospitalized suffering from Dengue, and these people made him make workpapers from his hospital bed. Good for him he quit then and there. When I say these people are inhuman, they literally are.
People leaving EY are usually very happy, and their colleagues congratulate them like they are being released from prison.
It’s my request to all my colleagues reading this message – please reevaluate your priorities, see what you’re really doing to yourself. And to CAs and articles who dream to work in such an organisation – be very careful of what you wish for.
Anna’s death has impacted us all. And such letter from Augustine is a conclusive evidence that “already suffering from health issues” was an deliberately created rumour. Hope the effort behind this letter doesn’t go in vain.
Support from all suffering employees of EY.
More power to you Augustine.”
Read Also: EY responds to Demise of Young CA Employee
One of the two individuals, who have been named in the reddit comments, accused of being the cause for Anna’s demise has resigned from his position at the EY Pune Office.
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