Ernst & Young Dubai: MENA Headquarters Visit

Our first official business trip in Dubai was to Ernst & Young, one of the big 4 accounting firms in the world. Their Dubai office serves as the EY headquarters for the Middle East and North Africa, and has 526 employees of which there is not a single American.

{We think we're such a valued commodity as workers in the US, but I have to tell you, there are so many talented people across the world -- don't fool yourself.}

Several EY associates met with us to share a day in their work life along with stories of client engagements. Our presenters hailed from Pakistan, India, the UK, and also included two brothers who are Palestinian in descent but were raised in Dubai and attended the American University.

Haitham El Masri was one of the brothers, and he works as an Assistant Manager in the Assurance & Advisory Services divison. This means that he runs an Auditing team. One of his favorite stories was being called outside of town for an assignment, and driving far into the desert, dodging camels to get to his destination. When he arrived, all he saw were large earthmovers and piles and piles of sand. He asked someone what he was there to audit, and they told him, "We need you to count the sand." Seriously! The land was being developed for the forthcoming new Dubai International Airport [different than the one we flew into].

Suzan Doerr, a consultant in Advisory Services who hails from the UK, also presented. Suzan shared her story of working with a hospital in Abu Dhabi with the goal of reducing patient wait times. She and a colleague visited the hospital, sitting in the waiting room timing the patients as they arrived until they were seen, and then met with healthcare workers across departments to determine what factors were impeding service. They discovered the core of the problem was that doctors were arriving late, whenever they wanted, and in order to fix the problem, the healthcare system had to change their policies for physicians. [And we thought we only had issues like this in the US!]

E&Y, as you might imagine, is incredibly hierarchial. After the presentations, Vilu Ramprasad from HR gave us a tour of their three floors of offices. Associates comprised the 26th floor, Directors resided on the 27th floor and Partners had offices on the 28th floor.

All of the desks on the 26th floor were "hot desks", meaning no one was allowed to have any personal items or leave anything on the desk at the end of the day. This was probably due to the confidentiality of working with client financial information along with the need to rotate seating based on field assignments.

The remarkable part of listening to these EY associates was that if you closed your eyes and only listened, they could just as easily have been young professionals embarking on their careers in NYC or Atlanta. They were polished, driven and excited about their work and their clients. The only exception, I believe, is that their world view far exceeds that of most young professionals in the US.

So, the moral of the story is....If you want to be competitive on a global level, get off your ass and get over to the other side of the world to see it for yourself!!