Comments on: Updated: PricewaterhouseCoopers Cuts Hundreds of Internal IT Professionals

By: Follow_The_Money

Follow_The_Money — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 22:58:19 +0000

This sounds like a repeat of the failure in using PwC India to support the Data Assurance teams with C1 related work. Leadership never learns from prior mistake and just continues to copy what other big 4 firms are doing, even when it’s a failure. I remember telling R. Browning that PwC India was not ready to handle the work in 2009, but that’s not what leadership wanted to hear. A year later they have hired 20-30 US based personnel to supplement PwC India, and eventually will likely phase out India……. No one in leadership will be held accountable because they never want to hear bad news, and the bad decisions are repeated again – COPY & PASTE, repeat.

By: PWCInsider

PWCInsider — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:21:18 +0000

PWC Update:

PWC has completed the transfer of it’s IT services to TCS or TaTa consulting services. From the front line view, all I can say is it is a disaster and is not getting better as senior leadership would like for you to believe. The following is part of an email from senior leadership pertaining to the help desk operations:

“Recently we switched from an internally supported IT help desk to one managed by a third-party vendor. The switch aligns with our global sourcing strategy and supports our changing business model. With a transition like this you typically encounter some challenges and — as expected — we have.

I want to acknowledge the concerns and frustrations that some of you are experiencing. We recognize how important it is to provide you with fast, high-quality service and that’s what you’ll get once we have worked through this transition. We’re already seeing improvements each day in response times and issue resolution – this will continue to get better over the next several weeks. Changes we have already put in place, like supplementing our help desk with US based contractors and increasing our staffing levels during peak times, are working. ”

The part where it states “We recognize how important it is to provide you with fast, high-quality service and that’s what you’ll get once we have worked through this transition.” is simply nothing more than spin by the senior leadership to make it look like things are improving when they are not. The number of major outages has gone through the roof and there are problems in all areas. Are things really improving? The answer is simply NO, as there are so many major failures it is hard to keep track of them. To say they are seeing improvements each day is just not true!

By: Watching the same movie, hoping for a different ending

Watching the same movie, hoping for a different ending — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:38:25 +0000

I am exhausted and so disappointed with this firm. It has some of the smartest people I have ever met and the people are great. Somedays I wish they’d put the senior associates and managers in charge.
High performance culture but they pay average or just below average to the top talent. If you like this place but want to make more, leave and come back in 2 years. I guarantee you’ll see a HUGE upside.
Innovation yet the same people are in leadership positions with a record that shows they are anything but innovative. They keep recycling initiatives by wrapping it up in a different package when anyone who has been around for more than 4 years knows its been done and will fail again. But I guess why not try maybe the wind is blowing in a different direction this time? The worst is when they copy operating models of the firms we acquire or read about in some consulting magazine. Even if those firms failed, maybe it will work for us because we’re pwc …the advisory operations leader partner has perfected the art of recycling or borrowing. We need someone with imagination in that role. Lastly on this topic, some of these leaders haven’t had clients in 2-3 years and have the gaul to preach about the importance of selling. Frustrating.
Collaboration is a must for success…sure. Yet every metric and measure they have in place encourages anything but collaboration, it may even incentivize people to trample on each other as they begin the triathlon to partner. Poor sods, there is only room for 4 at the inn so which of you 100 will make it?
Coaching – your best shot of getting any real feedback is by putting a suggestion box and allowing people to drop anonymous notes so they can tell you what they’ve heard about you.
Leadership, some in advisory, frankly had their jobs too long. They should get clients so they have perspective…they should try to walk in the shoes of client service staff and partners who bust their tales everyday for the Firm. Dana is actually very smart, he needs to upgrade his team if he is going to be successful.
Great place to work stuff and diversity….a complete act. We are focusing on people, now we are not, we are again, no we are not, and we are again. This is the faster pendulum in this place and all driven by internal scores like a line of people waiting to resign or its that time of the year where surveys internal and external start. They especially care if we are at risk of falling off some major ranking magazine. If you’re a white male and talented with reasonable people skills you have a shot of being successful, if you’re a woman who plans of having a family…..good luck. If you’re a minority….you’ll need more than talent to be successful here, few survive.
So why am I still here….I love the people I work with. I am betting on the up and coming young partners, they’re smart and hope they survive and most important don’t conform to group think. If not that, then hoping for a different ending I guess.

By: PWCInsider

PWCInsider — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:54:31 +0000

Update on PWC offshoring to TCS.

The majority of employee’s who took positions at TaTa or TCS have now quit TCS for other oportunities. As of 12/1/2010, the turnover of IT operations to TCS has been a disaster and it is getting worse by the day. The SOCAT or South America or the Bearingpoint business that was purchased is doing poorly and Diamond has turned out to be a fake diamond. The management team stuck with this mess is having a terrible time keeping up and is falling further behind as more and more key people are leaving the firm. The interesting part is the senior leadership thought the IT positions could be easily transfered to India with few problems as these positions do not require much skill. Well it most certainly appears from the inside view they are correct and will pay the price during tax season. In fact, the offshoring by PWC could be a text book case on how not to offshore your entire IT department. Stay tuned, more to come!

By: re: The Auditors » Blog Archive » McKenna Quoted in St. Petersburg Times

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:01:24 +0000

[...] a great new update on the story of PwC’s cuts of more than 300 internal IT professionals in the Florida and Atlanta markets. It was written by Jeff Harrington at the St. Petersburg Times [...]

By: Follow_The_Money

Follow_The_Money — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:57:02 +0000

It appears to be a consistent theme that the people making the decisions are so far removed from reality of what is going on. I remember having my “talk” with a partner and I asked him if he was relying on India to replace the work we did and he acknowledged that was the plan. I asked him if he was aware of the ongoing issues even after 3 years of efforts to train them and he said does “partner x” know?…I responded that is why they are sending over a team to train them again. Needless to say, the group had such a bad experience and have decided to build a US team to do what India was supposed to do. Someone should be held accountable for all the time and money spent chasing this failed dream….but we know how things get swept under the carpet and they move on to the next hot topic.

By: burnindoublehockeystickspwc

burnindoublehockeystickspwc — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:13:23 +0000

As a recent former employee, I would like to say it is a shame that a company like PwC would dismantle a high-performance technical staff of IT People for the perceived savings of a few dollars. If your company is hiring, you will find some of the best DBAs, UNIX Admins, SAN Admins, Network and Desktop people in the business. These people are used to working 50-60 hours per week for this ungrateful company. Meanwhile, there are no cuts in the several layer deep management staff. The people making the technology decisions are completely clueless and out of touch with the functions these people are performing. All they see is (1) our person costs $$$ and the person in India (fill in the blank) costs $$. What they refuse to admit is that the person who costs $$ has 2 years experience and their people have 20-30 and an indepth knowledge of their companies systems.

Good luck when TATA screws things up. Sadly, I will be laughing when it happens. A once proud PwCer who has moved on.

BTW – thank you for exposing PwC with this article. It is about 3 years overdue.

By: best to be anonymous

best to be anonymous — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:26:16 +0000

At least the US have had the organisation chart, the UK were told 20th July and have been in limbo ever since we are expected to carry on as usual – but it is not usual as the majority of us have been told we could be for the chop and then there is NO MORE information. A terrible way to treat the very loyal, skilled and dedicated staff of the IT department

By: Outsourcing Hits Tampa « The Ramblings of a New Englander in Floriduh

Outsourcing Hits Tampa « The Ramblings of a New Englander in Floriduh — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:55:44 +0000

[...] was cruising my Google Reader feeds when I came across an article in the Tampa area about some up coming layoffs. Surprisingly this article mentioned my old [...]

By: Robert Castro

Robert Castro — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:12:22 +0000

bdo.com