“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."
Looks like this is just an empty excuse to justify their margins at the expense of people:
> 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.
"Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months [...] The IT consulting group on Thursday detailed an $865mn restructuring programme and an outlook for the year ahead that reflects continuing sluggish corporate demand for consulting projects and a clampdown on spending within the US federal government."
The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO.
“Over 30? We don’t think you can be trained to use AI.”
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
MBAs at the leadership level have no money making ideas they all just ride some trend wave until they can make an excise to fire you for it and collect your operational capital as a yearly bonus. The LLM hype wave is the perfect scape goat.
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).
Left Accenture this year and I don't regret it. Their leadership is non-existant, their management bloated and there is no vision whatsoever. The company just pumps back money into stock-buybacks and nobody can explain why the CEO, July Sweet, is still on top of it (spoiler, her husband works in politics).
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 ;-)
“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.
Julie Sweet could be replaced by an "AI", or even a 20 year old Markov chain.
One of the most dramatic job effects of AI is a brutal market for lemons effect. Carl wants to buy a widget, and the going rate for a widget was 150 dollars pre ai, and carl pays someone reputablish (accenture say) 150 for a widget and gets 70 cents of tokens.
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.
Did my Accenture stint a long time ago, spent about a year there, was 'pimped' out to a banks at a crazy day rate and saw a tiny fraction of that. Had to build decks during lunch and evenings for the partners. It was very much about shipping more people to clients not making existing ones and capabilities more productive and in the end realized it was not for me so left. Its a dead model imho.
I’m very bearish on Accenture for the following reason: the business model is a levered flywheel (high-paid salespeople and aggressive M&A buyouts powered by share price appreciation and low wage outsourcing). This is kicking into reverse due to revenue growth deceleration
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
18 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 40.6 ms ] thread“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."
> 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.
The big story here is that Accenture are losing a TON of work. The AI part of this headline isn't particularly interesting IMO.
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
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 ;-)
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.
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
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...