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Retire From EY, Receive a Free Scrapbook of Career Highlights

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

EY sent out a lovely note regarding some retiring PPEDDs today, although they were so excited to say goodbye they sort of screwed up the first email:

In our enthusiasm to congratulate our retiring PPEDDs, we realized that several of the titles listed in the original communication were incorrect. Please disregard and refer to the revised message below. We apologize for the confusion and hope this makes it easier to extend your congratulatory wishes!

Oops. It happens. I mean, you would expect that after a lifetime at the firm, they'd at least be able to get your title right on your way out but whatever:

As FY14 draws to a close, I encourage you to extend your best wishes and gratitude to the FSO partners, principals and directors who have retired or will be retiring at the end of this fiscal year: Mark Freedman, Neal Finkelman, Joe Grainger, John Keller, Barry Kroeger, Don MacNeal, Ed Pisani, David Sung and Jim Van Wagner. Each has enjoyed a tremendous career at EY, and we are extremely grateful for their many years of inspiration, integrity and dedicated service to our firm, our clients and most importantly, to our people.

This year, we started a new FSO tradition: a personalized tribute book for each retiree comprised of their colleagues’ fondest memories, stories and photos. I was moved by the number of responses and the heartfelt sentiment behind all of them. In honor of our retirees, we thought we’d share some of the words that were most used to describe their careers and legacies. As you can tell, they will be sorely missed!

Although their journeys at EY will soon come to an end, this is only the beginning of their next adventure. We wish our retiring PPEDD class of 2014 much continued success, happiness and relaxation in their future endeavors!

We kind of want to make fun of this but actually, it's pretty sweet. I mean, it beats the "good luck" cake I got when I quit CPA review, which was basically a passive aggressive way to say "haha, you think you can retire from CPA review and make a decent living LOL good luck with that!"

Anyhoo, here are your retiring EY PPEDDs and their lovely legacies laid out in graphic form:

Happy trails, you guys.

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Jim Turley Explains Why You Should Work at Ernst & Young Rather Than Facebook

JT spoke to NYU students earlier this week and of course during the Q&A, Diane Brady, a senior editor at Bloomberg threw him a softie, asking if the firm was hiring, to which Diego responded, “we’re always hiring.” This, of course brought the house down (laughs, raucous applause).

Anyway, Brady decided to throw Jim a curve and asked why a young recruit would pick E&Y over Zuckerland.

“Should students ever consider starting at a big firm of yours?” Brady said. “Why not just go out there and make the billions with Facebook? What is the attraction at Ernst & Young?”

Turley responded by saying that most entrepreneurs, despite common misconceptions, are not just out to make money.

“[Entrepreneurs] go out there to find a need,” he said. “At Ernst & Young, you have opportunities to be extraordinarily mobile and move around the world.”

His advice? “First, find something that you love doing,” Turley said. “Second, align with an organization that actually thinks about where the world is going. And lastly, find an organization that wants you to change them as opposed to them to change you.”

See, if you can’t find a need then you need care about being “extraordinarly mobile.” Seems like a fair trade-off, especially since billionaires don’t travel much.

And just curious, how would the members of Ernie’s army like the firm to change? We’re assuming JT goes with the “whatever is good for the goose” mantra. Leave your suggestions below.

Ernst & Young CEO speaks at Stern [WSN]

Another Ernst & Young Employee Is Yearned for in Craigslist Missed Connections

This past summer, a comely E&Y auditor was the subject of a missed connection for “personal and professional” reasons. As disappointing as that is, we’re hopeful that we can make true Internet love happen, as another E&Y employee is the object of someone’s Craigslist Missed Connections post, which makes us wonder if the firm’s recruiting efforts have taken a turn for the superficial. Regardless, this particular encounter is of anonymous affections but is far less creepy.


I had to split up the post since our lady friend opted not to use the “Return” button. The rest of it is on the next page.

Since this was in Rutherford, we’ll go out on a limb and say that this is a Secaucus employee. If you’ve got some idea of who, what and where, help us figure out a way to get these two together. We’re trying to make some love happen, people.

[via Craigslist]