No.

1) it is hard to “fire” someone for cuase. While we live in an “at will” employment world, the truth is that all the litigation in this country makes it really difficult to fire someone. So — when lay offs come about for economic reasons… it is a time when those that might be fired can be let go more easily. These are the people that do not do something blatent such as embezzling… it is the people who do an adequate but not good job, or people that perform OK but have attitude issues.

2) whenever there are layoffs, the decision on who to let go is ALWAYS made based on performance first. The criteria used to measure performance may be something everyone on this blog will argue about, but it is leadership’s view of performance that is used to make the decisions. Only after the poor performers are gone are other criteria brought into the picture.

It may not be that anyone deserve to be let go. But it is often (maybe usually) true that those who are let go find a better place in this world and in the end they were the right ones to let go.

Perhaps you have not read my bio or many of the posts where I discuss my experience in the Big 4. I’m about as inside as you can get for someone who actually now can talk freely on the outside. I won’t repeat it here. It’s on the “About” page as well as many other places. Suffice to say that your firm, KPMG, as well as BearingPoint and PwC are on my CV as well as senior positions at JP Morgan and Jefferson Wells. It’s rare that someone who has been a Managing Director (I made “partner” after KPMG Consulting became Bearing Point and in the Latin American practice) and has seen a firm like PwC from the highest levels inside as an “internal” internal auditor has the luxury to talk about what they saw, heard, and did in an independent fashion. I am not beholden to the firms, I will never work for them again by choice, and I have nothing to gain from seeing them fail. On the contrary. What I want is for their leadership and those who still want to work for them, to wake up, smell the coffee and recommit to their duty to the public.

Due to my years of experience and involvement in professional serivces at an executive level, I have many frineds and former colleagues who still work at these firms as partners and professionals and stil talk to me! I have obviously developed many more contacts in and out of the firms who are willing to tell their stories to me and on the blog in guest posts, privately, and in comments. Most bloggers and mainstream media who now write about these subjects get their stories and tips from me, not the other way around.

In fact, there are so many stories I can not tell on the blog because they are even more “extreme.” I will not tell them until I write the book and have the opportunity to “source” them under those standards. But many of them I experienced myself or were experienced by close friends and former colleagues. There are many more stories in this “naked city.”

Why or how have I engendered such good fortune?
By being a straight shooter.
Francine

The way you speak makes it sounds like these policies are firm-wide. In any widespread corporation, there are pockets of poor management and collusion to circumvent documented policies/corporate behavior. How can you make such accusations of firm wide collusion, especially for each and every big 4 company… especially since you are an outsider yourself? Don’t use the, “I’ve get much of my information from my bloggers” because @ Disappointed 58 is exactly right. Most of the people you read from are from Camp 3 and 4 as said so eloquently. Every partner @ big4 firms are not going to strip clubs, nor even 1% of all mangers/partners.

This is not a defense of big 4, because as with all business they surely have their prob lems… some more than others. I understand that in order to get a following you must be extreme, but really? Use such broad paint strokes to label four completely different firms over entirely different areas into the same bucket? Get serious.