So let me start off with three incontrovertible facts to preemptively ‘kabash’ any theories about what this post is about.
I left Deloitte on my own accord as a Managing Director in its Advisory - M&A (Turnaround & Restructuring) practice in Jan-2024 after 19+ years at the firm.
Deloitte was extremely good to me - it provided me with personal and professional growth, great friends, and a wealth of experience to leverage elsewhere.
I left out of FEAR - there was tremendous fear of becoming the many people I saw who deep-down probably wanted to leave but had no freedom to leave (financial stability, etc.) - it is a sad sad sight to see people at the end of their careers groveling for relevance wondering ‘what could have been’.
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Ok…now that I have that out of the way - on with it. The Big 4 (like many professional services firms) makes its money off of people billing hours - it is shocking (I know). Those hours could be solving complex problems to help companies improve their business performance (worthy task)…or they could be spent doing the following (just a handful of examples):
Project management (aka PMO’ing)
Sifting through data that didn't make sense when you started, didn’t make sense when you finished, and didn’t create any useful insights…it is useless in making decisions.
“Pitch-booking” generic analyses that no sophisticated buyer of services is going to take stock in. If you want a conversation starter, pick up the phone.
Hypothesizing grand thoughts that look amazing on PowerPoint slides but somehow never make it past the slides part.
Helping companies solve problems that are so elementary it makes you wonder how they remain in business.
The list of tasks that are billable to clients but virtually clerical in the ‘real world goes on-and-on…
You are paid to bill hours…if you pick up useful skills along the way, it is residual (not designed) benefit
The Big 4 experience (minus traditional audit and tax) has become greatly devalued outside the Big 4 since I started with Deloitte in 2004. Why? Read the bullet points above. People will leave the Big 4 after years and will have done nothing that the ‘outside world’ finds differentiated value worth paying a premium for. Sure, you might get hired to ‘project manage’ something, but guess what….you are now overhead - that line on a P&L called SG&A that CFOs just hate explaining the ‘puts and takes’ on quarterly earnings calls. At the Big 4, your time is a profit center, which allows you to be paid like one.
And the word is out. There was a time when 4 - 5 years at a Big 4 firm was ‘no questions asked’ experience - you were assumed to be smart, hard working, and possessing relevant skills. Those days are over because people know how much irrelevant and non-transferable work consultants are billing clients for. I kid you not - there are too many people who spend years at a Big 4 and cannot adequately analyze financial statements (in their most elementary form) when they leave. It is not just absurd…it is downright scary. But it’s not shocking. The “higher ups” (in-general) are happy with people doing whatever work they can bill for regardless of impact to the people doing it - it is called revenue and it makes their world go round.
People unknowingly seek ‘the trap’
How can this be? Easy. What does every employee want? A higher position and as a result, more money. Well, let a few years (or ten) go by and you might get married and start a family. And then people fall into this trap of dependence and comfort - they end up dependent on that higher salary to pay for the mortgage, the vacations, the kids….
In effect, all that has changed is the better title and more money. The skills did not change - you may be managing people now but you’re only overseeing people who are doing the very same non-transferable skills that you grew up doing. Take a good hard look at where the jobs are being shed in Corporate America today - “middle management” - facilitators who do nothing more than push paper, ‘oversee’ people, create layers, and take credit for other peoples’ work.
Enter 2025. You have a lot of people at these firms who have no intellectual curiosity, no ability to learn new things (it is a use-it-or-lose-it muscle), no transferrable skills, and no way out - THE VERY MONEY THEY YEARNED FOR IS NOW THE VERY DEPENDENCE THAT KEEPS THEM STAGNANT.
Did I avoid this depressing trap?
I am by no means perfect in anything - I have made many mistakes in the first half of my career - luckily I still have a second half. That being said, I do have freedom. In any case, I do think of how I spent my 19+ years and how I ‘tried’ not to fall into the trap of irrelevance:
I changed my career WITHOUT leaving my company:
I started with Deloitte in 2004 as a Forensic Accountant. I got my CPA and did a number of projects investigating fraud, dealing with SEC matters and helping with complex commercial litigation disputes. A lot of it was interesting and stimulating. However, one day it dawned on me…what can a forensic accountant do outside of Deloitte? I did not want to work for the FBI. So I was left with the same answers then as I have now, which is none.
As luck would have it, this revelation struck me in late-2008 just as Lehman fell and we entered the Great Financial Recession. Luck struck twice for me - there just so happened to be a new project to advise a struggling (already bankrupt) chain of RV dealerships in my hometown of Tucson, AZ. I jumped on that and learned the in’s-and-out’s of elementary restructuring - 13-week cash flow modeling, reporting to lenders, the rules of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and getting a Plan of Reorganization confirmed. And in that experience, I learned that restructuring might be the most practical and applicable finance paradigm out there because when everything is broken it forces you to learn an entire business in the most elementary form - cash-in and cash-out…there’s more to it, but in the end it’s all about the liquidity needed to survive (or thrive).I took advantage of firm programs and used them as intended.
6-Month Paid Sabbatical:
In 2010, I applied-for and was granted a 6-month paid sabbatical to continue building a nonprofit I had started with some other Deloitte colleagues a few years earlier. Crazy enough, I actually worked really hard at that - I learned what it meant to build a business; I learned what it takes to be a leader and try to get others to follow a vision. And yes, I failed in many ways…but the experience of building a business was invaluable - I could have never done that without that sabbatical.
2.5 Year Industry Rotation (MDP):
By mid-2014, I was burned out - I had worked crazy hours on the AMR (American Airlines) restructuring - they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November-2011 and emerged as American Airlines Group (concurrent with the US Airways merger) in December-2013. During that time, I lived in a hotel in Dallas (no joke). So, I found this industry rotation in Travel, Hospitality and Leisure (THL). I got to effectively be the ‘Chief of Staff’ for the industry sector leader (a good friend now) and travel around the country and the world learning about the sector and how Deloitte could better position itself with key industry players. I loved it because I got to learn how all of these businesses in this travel ecosystem worked and why some worked better than others. Once again, I would have NEVER been able to do that billing hours day-in-and-day-out. Clients don’t pay Deloitte for their people to explore personal intellectual curiosity. Luckily, Deloitte paid me for it.
I spent 4 - 5 weeks at a time each year in Hawaii:
I did not hold back in using my PTO in chunks. Many will question why or how that was valuable to a career. I found a lot of value in getting away. I ran a successful now-defunct blog (I actually enjoy writing) and just got to decompress. If nothing else, I got to clear my mind outside the day-to-day grind of conference calls, status updates, deliverables, and people asking, ‘how’s your bandwidth?’. Try it sometime - you might be surprised that ”being in the wilderness” allows you the clarity to ask the tough questions and hear the true answers.
Seek out opportunities that feed your curiosity and foster the lightness of mental clarity. It is one of the best parts of being at a Big 4 firm. Challenge yourself to do things less ordinary and seek ‘perspective from your mentors’ for ways to grow. When someone tells you ‘no’, is it because it is not good for them -or- is it truly not good for you (?)
Deloitte is now in my past and I am very grateful for those 19+ years. I did not do everything right, but I am confident that I did not get trapped into a narrow path that made money for the firm at the expense of my professional development. I encourage everybody at any of these firms to step back and ask themselves a simple question:
“If I want to leave, will the marketplace buy what my skills and desire for meaning is selling?”
It is not a cynical question - it is a fair challenge that you owe yourself. Nobody is going to tell you to stop making ‘them’ money at the expense of your stagnancy. The ownership resides with you.
**Please note there are a lot of generalizations in this post - it is not an indictment; it is merely 20 years of observations where I saw so many talented people never ask themselves the tough questions and ended up disheartened when they finally heard the answers from the market - it was the wasted time that they could not reconcile.**