Afaik these sorts of consulting firms are built on the strategy of grinding people down and replacing them often. They know that having them on the CV is desirable and they deliberately burn people out with workload.
But hey we gave up on labor rights and protections long ago, so what can be done?
Hmh, I've been working for PwC Germany a decade or two ago and while I wasn't "junior" by any stretch of imagination I had my share of "crunch time". I distinctly recall that PwC was an employer that cared a lot about their people. Back then we were in the office a lot and the amenities provided were top-notch, far surpassing any startup I have seen since. Weekend work was an exception, not the rule. Of course, being huge and in Germany they had an employee council and to follow local labor laws. So, coming to think of it, it might be more a Germany thing than a PwC thing ;)
My wife was a lawyer at a Big 4 and got fired when they suspected that she was pregnant. Even though the corporate propaganda was full of "inclusivity" and other woke bullshit.
Interestingly enough, it was during Covid, she had to work from home and their main complain was that she wasn't "bonding enough with the team". Yes no shit when everyone is buried under 12h of work and bars are closed, what was she supposed to do? Those partners will do anything, including illegal things, to get to their 3% growth target.
You can give all the examples of socialism working in other first-world countries, and you still won't get through to the temporarily embarassed millionaires.
I think you underestimate the HN userbase, there are a lot of heavyweights here, ranging from big names operating with less visibility, to Principles or SWE6+ at FAANGs.
Years ago when my father was leading a team in a bank in Paris, he would observe that most people were at the office before he was and he was nearly always the first to leave. But once when getting back to the office 5 minutes after realizing he had forgotten something important at his desk, the whole thing was empty. He realized all his subordinates would just wait for him to go in order to not be seen as lazy workers. It was all about pretending as some might have been playing solitaire while waiting, who knows.
He had to implement a mandatory "leave before I do" rule to fight against this toxic culture.
Years later I realized one coworker in my mostly swiss team was doing the same when I went back to my desk also for a forgotten item less than 5 minutes after my departure. One of my coworker was always still at his desk when I was heading home but when I went back, he was already gone. Out of curiosity I did it a few times and could only confirm. I even rammed into him in the corridor when I turned back literally 2 minutes later. That employee was french too.
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Different culture, but similar. There are lots of indians and people of indian origin in my company. Most are obviously living in India and some living in UK and the USA. It seems to me that those living in India are spending a lot of time at work. Since I am on the euro timezone, they are obviously online when I am starting my day, but they are also always online a long time after I have shutdown my computer according to their activity on our enterprise chat app.
I don't know the details of their local laws but this cannot be healthy in the long term.
It's the same everywhere. In France the partners forced it through collective agreements. There is now no upper limit on what they can ask from an associate.
They are not there voluntarily. They are the product of social norms, social hierarchy, need for money, etc. If they knew exactyl what their in for they would probably change their mind.
So EY should explain very clearly what they do. I guess it could be somthing like "welcome at EY, we work for the greatest accounts in the world, you'll meet the top mamangement of the top management and get tons of money and an a CV worth millions. However, to get that: we will push you to your limits. That implies: you may burn out (and needs psychological assistance for years), you may be so tired that you develop illness, you will be treated like inferior humans (although we won't tell you), we won't be responsible, you will work insane hours, we won't tolerate complains and you'll be fired at will"... But now I'm reading it, it's just like pictures of dmaged lungs on packs of cigarettes... Does it really help? :-(
Companies which leads people to such extremes should be penalized.
In the 1980s, Michael Lewis wrote his first book, Liar's Poker, which gave a detailed, first-hand account of investment banking that was very similar to what you just described. Millions to be made, but the whole thing is absurd and everyone is treated like shit.
The number of young college grads who wanted to go start their career in investment banking increased tremendously.
But hey we gave up on labor rights and protections long ago, so what can be done?