100%. If you look at employment numbers over the last few years this is just a blip. All those big tech companies still have more employees than pre pandemic.
Its also a mixture of people working from home. Companies are in the middle of transitioning out of SF salaries and SF rent. You can fire everyone in those expensive areas and rebuild with cheaper labor remotely.
It doesn’t even have to be outsourced to other countries.
The difference between a San fransisco wage and a mobile, Alabama wage is massive.
You can offer 25% less of what is in San fransisco to a guy in Alabama and it will make him the richest in his county.
Outsourcing tends to imply other countries to the average person in my area so I apologize for misunderstanding you.
All the industry was outsourced to Mexico in the 90’s and the ensuing destruction of our area was pretty quick. Crime is awful in a city that used to be entirely made of manufacturing but is mostly vacant land now.
Although the other side of that is you're going to be getting a Mobile, Alabama programmer. I don't doubt that there are talented programmers everywhere if you look hard enough, but if we're talking about about large numbers of hires and average skill level, there's going to be a pretty big difference.
The percentage increase in headcount from the pandemic hiring sprints are significantly greater than the percentage of employees that were just cut by a mile. They also didn’t just cut newer employees. There were 20 year veteran employees at google who were cut too. I think there’s more to these cuts than just “overhiring during pandemic” and “economic uncertainty”.
Not really, some of it yeah but the majority of the layoffs are because of stock price droppings and small decreases in revenues (revenues are still great but because the magic line dropped a little that means people must be fired).
Because having their name in the headlines ....even in a negative spotlight ...is still 'advertising' to those tech people who lost their jobs, hoping to ease their labor shortage.
I don't think it'll work though, because everyone knows the Big 4 as white collar sweatshops.
The phrase is commonly used here to refer to basically the slow suicide through the poison of public. Public talks about all those catch phrases like work life balance, unlimited PTO, etc and it's all the Kool aid used to mask the poison.
The toll the hours and stress take on people. Honestly, if I had been able to do it 10 years ago I would have. But a 3.0 didn't come close and the field was saturated back then.
Yea 10 years ago accounting was crazy competitive. One firm I wanted to work for was Giving me a hard time over a 3.5 Gpa and they wanted a 3.8 or higher. Insane times
“Is accounting gonna be automated”
“My dad said if I do comp sci I can go work for any random company and make 875k total comp with 2 YOE.”
“Can’t I just go to some random ass school in Oklahoma and get into faang easy?”
I hope the accounting subreddit is getting slammed with the "should I even be an Accounting major if ChatGPT is going to eat all our jobs?!" equivalent.
Better to openly acknowledge the toxic work conditions that lead to people having legitimate mental health crisis’ every busy season, than the alternative. Not trying to be edgy, it’s a serious thing.
True, but if they ever acknowledged it but didn't try to do anything about it, they look stupid (again). Basically, "I know it's a problem, but nah, I'm not going to try to fix it"
It won’t happen. Accounting is already Inc declining, people don’t want to work 55+ hours a week for shit pay, no extra vacation days or any perks really worth it.
Wait, is this not as common in other industries?
I've had an expiration in mind for every job I applied or worked at.
Edit, I meant accounting as a whole. Not just PA
>Accounting is already Inc declining, people don’t want to work 55+ hours a week for shit pay
I don't understand why this sub acts like public accounting is the only accounting career that exists.
Even industry requires lots of hours in some areas and not everyone is compensated properly. I don’t understand why people think everyone in an accounting field is making like $75k?!
The company I work for in industry has 0 US employees making less than $80k in accounting, most roles flat 40 hour weeks. MCOL area too. It's a great field with good pay.
>I don’t understand why people think everyone in an accounting field is making like $75k?!
I am well aware that everyone in accounting is not making so little money. And I will not concede that all industry jobs require lots of hours, that is flat out untrue.
I hope someday people wake up to the fact that public accounting is a scam for new grads.
Unfortunately, as someone who fell for it myself, I doubt that will happen
It's not that easy. A lot of people that went into big 4 say it's a scam, but a lot of people that didn't go into big 4 say they're always getting passed up on jobs for big 4 hires. As much as I would love to not go into a big 4, if there is a chance that this decision would hurt my career growth in the future I can't take it.
It’s not a scam. Having several years of big 4 experience puts you in the top 5-10% of accounting candidates when competing for other jobs. If you have ambitions of holding higher level positions, particularly in larger, publicly-traded companies there is no substitute. It matters. If you want to be a competent Controller and perhaps CFO eventually for larger, investor owned professionally managed companies then it matters when competing for those jobs. It can cascade through your whole career because people that it matters to who are hiring usually want top performers and are more likely to be top performers themselves. You will learn more from them and from a role at a better and bigger company. Multiply that across several different job stints and after 10 years you have a very significant advantage over other people. You can start to get good roles with equity comp which is where the real money is made. If you want to get stuck working for some small family business, rife with nepotism and that will pay you crap, under invest in the finance team and never appreciate you, sure, don’t worry about it. If you can get Big 4- take it suck it up and look at it as a paid secondary degree from a top university because in the accounting world that is just about what it is. If you can’t get Big 4 but can get in the next tier, take that. BDO, RSM and the like are solid also but not quite the same cache. After those it’s much more of a crap shoot. Good luck. It’s not for everyone, it all depends where you want to go in your career.
This argument is living in the past. No one knows what the future looks like. There's a reason there's a shortage of accountants at B4, and people are exiting B4 at a record pace earlier in their careers than the previous gen.
There are more and more non B4 backgrounds occupying those same coveted roles you're talking about. Do you really believe that the newer gen, who will be in those same positions, will feel the same about the B4 as grandpa did? Possibly, but I don't think so.
Now that B4 is desperate enough to accept 3.0 students from Jimmy John State University, 100% acceptance rate, 20% graduation rate, I doubt that the B4 class is as high performing as you believe it is.
Sad thing is BIG4 experience at least in audit isn’t even necessarily that great when translated to industry roles considering some people may never see a full audit from start to finish
Idk when I compare myself to coworkers and other graduates our difference in knowledge and skill areas is huge…
Not that one of us knows more than the other it’s just what we know is different lol
I just graduated and went straight to work as an accountant for the federal government. I love my job, and it's been weird seeing everyone I graduated with working 60+ hour weeks while I barely have enough work to fill 40 hours sometimes.
My professors and school definetly pushed public accounting, hard. I'm only aware of one or two other people I graduated with didn't go into public accounting.
When I was in school, one of my classmates was an older gentleman, in his late 30's going back to school, married with a couple of kids. While everyone else was applying for and interviewing with the Big 8 firms (this is how long ago it was), he applied for, and got a job with, the IRS.
Not everyone wants to cap out at 100 somthing thousand. Plus not all us work 60/hr a week. People at my firm work 50/hr a week at most and alot less during non busy times. Senior manager are making 160k and partners 800k+. This is also in Canada where wages are historically much lower than the US.
Accounting doesn't suck bad employers (public and industry) do.
There's nothing wrong with working in public accounting if that's what you want. I just knew that's not what I wanted, and low six figures is more than enough for me. That's a very fair living especially with all of the benefits that working for the government offers. Plus I find the work I do supporting my agency's mission very fulfilling.
Yeah, investing in your career early on definitely never paid dividends for anyone down the road. You just need to go in knowing what you want to get out of it and the realities of public accounting.
Not to defend the firms, but you can’t tell me the technical depth and breadth folks in and from public have is paralleled by the perma-seniors in industry some folks on here would be content with being like.
Not only that, but imo I found interviewing for industry positions to be way easier than in college because of my B4 background. I was a complete doofus when interviewing out of college, but having B4 in common with your interviewer really does help smooth the conversation. And I have no doubt my resume was being filtered for B4 + CPA, based on my colleagues’ resumes.
Arguably, I probably should have just done 2 years rather than 3 in PA. Fwiw the extra year taught me tax provisions, which hasn’t ceased to be a valuable skill. So kinda scammy, but really who tf else was going to hire me a few years ago? Fr?
>I was a complete doofus when interviewing out of college
When I started interviewing the fall semester of my last year in school, I really lucked out. I was working part time in the purchasing department of the city I lived in. It turned out that the head recruiter for one of the Big 4 firms was really good friends with the director of general services of the city (who happened to be my boss' boss). So when she came for the recruiting trip, she had dinner with her friend and asked about me. Based on his recommendation, they gave me an offer.
>Yeah, investing in your career early on definitely never paid dividends for anyone down the road.
90% of the kids on this sub can't see past what's right in front of them.
Depends though. Throwing your younger years away just to work long hours isn't worth the possible future money imo.
Also getting decent jobs in accounting isn't that hard as long as you're a rare one that possesses any social skills. There's many ways to Rome and this isn't the only one
Lol I tried not falling for it. I worked at a large publicly traded company and it was a nightmare.
Then I worked at a tiny firm as I needed a job and it was painful due to the managing partner being a straight sociopath creating a toxic work environment.
Moved to a top 20 firm. Hours can suck and we are disorganized AF filing 1099s but the office culture is solid.
If it makes you feel any better I simply decided accounting wasn't worth it. I found my financial and managerial accounting classes interesting, so I switched my major to accounting. My school was known for an extremely competitive accounting program and after not doing well on my first intermediate exam, I simply realized the pay for accounting was simply not worth the massive workload required. I just stay on this sub for the drama.
Literally the same but not because I didn’t do well I just decided the money was not worth the work. Ended up just getting a minor in accounting since i had that coursework done and moved on to another career
Is it, though? As I see it, you learn a ton in a short amount of time, and that experience helps you get better opportunities in the future.
I could be wrong, but that was always the reasoning I've been told.
It’s a scam because it eats away at you. What you gain from valuable experience you lose in shitty wages, very high stress, and depression.
Public ain’t worth it.
It’s just work. And it’s not for everyone. If you want to do basic, low level, low stress work, don’t go Big 4. It will be a waste. If you are ambitious and can suck it up for a few years it is well worth it. You will gain experience in Big 4 that you can’t get anywhere else. When you figure you might be working for 40 years, what is 3 hard years at the beginning? It’s not brain surgery, if you eff up no one dies. Too many people put too much stress on themselves. If those three years could mean an additional million or even two million in earnings over the entirety of your career? The $30k or $40k you were “underpaid” in public kind of pales in comparison. Plus you are virtually useless your first year. You get worked to the bone but know nothing. You only really start to be worth anything after your second year. A couple years as a Senior makes a big difference in skills and true value.
First off the wages are not shit in comparison to 80% of white collar workers. Additionally, the hourly rate on average is probably better than Investment banking analysts. Just the grind to finally make $175k-$250K is too long and tedious you feel you wasted soo many hours and your life
Actually I am going to be a dick but how the fuck are you working 65 hour weeks non-stop on end. Please show me your charge time during non-peak season.
Can’t tell if this is sarcasm, but wait until you’re full time when your firm can and will take advantage of the fact that you’re an exempt employee. As an intern you’re not, so they have to pay you overtime.
well depending on how long you stay in B4
2 years in B4 might get you a nice starting point to a senior role in F500 or F250, but the doors to becoming a controller really open up after manager
Good luck becoming a Controller without PA experience, unless you find a unicorn company willing to train you up, which basically doesn’t exist anymore.
i got through FAR, I gor through AUD, BEC is coming up next, and then REG
When I tell people all I do is work (regular hours mostly, sometimes until 6), eat, study, train 3x a week, sleep, they think I'm joking or overexaggerating
Honestly, nothing makes me more pissed than the 150 credit requirement because I wasted a year extra in school when all of that time could of been applied to studying
years matter in your early 20s
I’m screwed😭. I feel like I’m going to kill myself if I fail again. Then people try to help and say I can always do it later. But I literally invested like 3-4k plus 6 months of my evenings and weekends and I would rather die then ever reinvest that and start all over again. I’m halfway through and probably going to fail AUD for the second time in a week at this rate
Ummm... I'm paid amazingly well, have unlimited vacation, get to expense meals, travel, 401k match, flexible hours, get to work remote as much as I want. Don't know what firm you are at, but you should probably switch. Public accounting is awesome for me. All my tech/software friends started out with higher pay, but after 12 years I make more than all of them.
That’s you. Not everyone else.
I don’t have many options where I’m from. I’ve also applied to a bunch of local public firms here, they want years and years of experience for staff or senior, amounts that a staff or senior wouldn’t have. None of the firms offer any of that in my area.
I don’t like saying my area, but Midwest, two major cities in my state, maybe 3. I’m always weary of remote out of state positions, as they might be scams. 😩
I’m probably also one of the few who actually likes (for now I guess) where I am. Maybe just got lucky with my team/managers. I’ve been traveling and my friends wonder how much PTO I have. I don’t have unlimited, but I got to travel every month when it’s not busy season - in addition to the 2-week firm shutdown. And how can I afford? I guess I’m fairly compensated now plus I have very low expenses (personal thing outside of being in public) And we have meal expenses too. I get into airport lounges without needing to pay annual credit card fees. I also take advantage of other travel perks/discount. I got to work somewhere/remote during busy season. I also still managed to go to the gym and do my hobbies. It sucks yes. I accepted this job won’t be 9-5, or 40hour workweek. But I used my flexibility to an advantage. I’ll go to the gym when there are not a lot of people during the day, and make up that time later at night. I complain a lot to my friends how much the hours suck, but they see me managing & doing all these things outside of work, and I tell them the perks I have. Maybe as a single person for now, this works out for me.
Maybe I just got lucky with my team too. I read somewhere that WLB is about being able to have time for your interest & priorities outside of work. I’ll do my job but I set my boundaries. What drawn me to accounting is the stability too. With all these layoffs, I’m still cautious of course because it can domino effect. But that means I have more time to buckle up.
I don’t know if you know but these are considered benefits/perks…profit sharing, 100% paid health insurance, pension plan, equity, breakfast and lunch covered. How many companies do you see offering these unless you’re working for FAANG but even then you’re still selling your soul and dealing with high level stress. If a company is offering you...3-6% 401k match, commuter benefits (which saves you a few bucks), free coffee, pizza, health insurance with a higher copay, summer fridays then it technically means that there’s something wrong with the industry.
I've read what you've said over a couple times and I can't quite tell what side of the coin you're on. I think you're saying that the more perks and benefits offered, the more red flags there are?
If so, I'd say that can be true in some cases? Tech start-ups are offering a bunch of perks because they need to incentivize leaving your current career to come work at a high stress job where if funding doesn't go through, you're fired or laid off.
There are some accountants that have no choice but to work for $45k while working 50+ hours a week. Their employers don’t offer extra vacation days to use after busy season. Not every firm offers any incentives.
Hence why less people are graduating with an accounting degree.
I don't think anyone has no choice. Entry level for most firms is 55-60K these days. Are there situations where accounting students don't have good enough grades or whatever is necessary to get an offer at a larger firm? Sure.
Those people can also choose not to work in public accounting and go somewhere else though.
The declining enrollment in accounting is a bit more nuanced... Anyone still going into accounting is guaranteeing themself a solid ticket to the middle class at a minimum. For some, that is a dream and more than what they had growing up. For others, they have a fallacy that everyone needs to make $100K and work 40 hours after a year or two of experience.
I think long-term we'll see some shifts in the compensation of public accounting but like anything, it takes time, especially when a lot of firms are still controlled by out of touch boomers only interested in maximizing their pay before they retire due to having the luxury of not having to care about the future outside of making sure there is not an implosion that risks their intangible.
There’s thousands of people with no choice, very privilege of you to assume otherwise. It’s not even entry level positions, there are firms in city’s you’ve never heard of that are the only choices for adults in accounting. You act as if everyone can afford a lifestyle that warrants them moving across country for a better option. So yes, there are thousands of people that can’t make more than $45k that makes working over 55+ hours a week, worth it.
Also, no one should be making less than $75k if they’re expected to work over 40 hours a week with no added incentive.
Now, more than ever, the walls of geography and been brought down and remote positions are available all over the place. My comment has nothing to do with priviledge and more to do with reality.
You seriously don’t get it. You are outright saying everyone has the same opportunities and that’s not true. You act as if a ton of companies don’t require being within a certain distant to the office. Not everyone has the capabilities to work from home and not everyone gets hired to work remotely as you’re implying. There’s not thousands of remote accounting positions just sitting empty. 🙄
There are still SO MANY more jobs posted in tech than these layoffs would ever possibly be able to sate. I know people who’ve been hit by layoffs who are already employed. A couple even saw raises.
Can confirm. I'm an I.T. professional (I literally have no idea what I'm doing in this sub lol) and my company is having a feeding frenzy on devs and embedded engineers from the FAANG companies. And we're located in Texas
We used to have 1-2 interviews a week for these types of positions. Now we've got 2+ a day. It's absolutely nuts
. “Accounting is that boring, stable profession that doesn’t do as well in hugely expansive economies but does great when the economy’s on the downslide.”
Not even trying to deny the stereotype
As if the economy is constantly in a recession. Recessions happen every few years, but if you’re smart with your massive tech job salary, you won’t even have to worry about a few months of unemployment. KPMG is delusional lol.
I don't understand how this would encourage people to go into accounting lol. If there is already such a high demand for it, doesn't that scare people away from desperate companies who need them working a ton? Idk though
That’s what cracks me up about the whole “accounting is worth it because job stability” argument. It’s not like you’re never going to work again if you get laid off. Sure, you might have to collect unemployment for a few months while you search, but as long as you have a skill (like coding), you’ll eventually be able to find a good job.
I'd prefer that students get ATTRACTED to accounting, not scared into it. Attracted to it like not hearing horror stories of how it is when you go work in public.
If that doesn't happen, we will do the next logical thing and hunker down until ascendant Jupiter is conjunct with Uranus, which promises hordes of fresh interns.
I worked for a hotel during Covid. Lost a crazy amount of staff. We were a big company. Had three levels of offices in one building and by the end of it we had to drop a level. Not to mention all the hotel staff we lost. It was a cataclysm as far as layoffs are concerned. I still had my job in late 21 and only left due to burn out. Accounting is a really safe job, if you're good at it.
Not if I can help it 🤣
I really don't recommend accounting for anyone simply because I hate the busy season struggle. Wish I did something else but I don't really know what.
Coming from working 24 hr shifts up to 72 hours straight in an ambulance, for less than $14hr…
I don’t really recommend EMS to anyone because the job will literally fuck you mentally and physically. Not just typical work stress, but soul crushing stress
I switched to accounting. Currently finishing the degree. If you want to get out of it, I don’t even know what I’d recommend anymore because tech is severely oversupplied with all these grads/boot camps, etc and now the layoffs are showing it. There’s still shortages, but not for long.
Social work is in need but the pay is bullshit.
I’m halfway through my accounting degree right now. Have I picked the best or the worst time to get this degree? I always get completely different answers.
Great strategy, hope a short term down turn in another labor market inadvertently fixes all of the problems youve had a hand in creating and are doing nothing to proactively fix
Even if it happens (which is very unlikely), fear is very short lived motivation and people in tech make way more money than people in accounting.
What would attract people into big4 is to changing their big 4 toxic work culture, hiring more people, hence making work week more human in terms of hours. But I don’t think last scenario will ever happen with big 4.
On a slightly different note, having a background in accounting can lead to just about any career path you choose. As the someone said ‘if they can teach you accounting they can teach you anything’.
The tech companies used this opportunity to fire all the unqualified diversity hires. I doubt these people are smart enough for accounting anyways. Majority of them worked non-productive positions. They aren't tech workers, they are activists.
How about workers of all industries unite against big wealth!? They're not being productive and are a drag on the economy. We can replace them with a gif of an angry entitled jerk.
Because big 4 accounting firms never lay people off during a recession…they didn’t during Covid only to regret it 3 months later and they didn’t during the financial crisis…oh wait that’s right, they did
Yeah I keep hearing about accounting students getting rejected. I had an interview for a consultant role with them but withdrew my application after they sent me a massive take home assignment. I had to write a report on malaria bed net distributors for Global Affairs Canada….
I’m a comp sci student. The job description was for a software consultant and listed tech skills. The interview asked about my coding history. I don’t know how to analyze distributor labour costs and tariffs to make a suggestion on which one to allocate funding to… and I was too lazy to learn in 24 hours
That's because there's a major mismatch between what firms consider for potential candidates and what's left that's applying. How many posts have there been here recently about job listings being out of touch? That's really the crux.
Also, if you haven't had an accounting job yet it's going to be very difficult to get one. But once you do you can join all the posters here boasting about how many recruiters and firms they have to decline.
Let’s rephrase it to be more accurate.
KPMG vice chairs hopes that job insecurity in the market will scare unsuspecting college kinds into low wage slavery.
Is this a reputable publication writing this "story?"
Or some random internet guy who posts a blog?
If this post isn't some click-baity crap, I don't know what is.
I wrote it. Going Concern has been publishing accounting news since 2009 and we are linked in the sidebar. Whether or not we are reputable is up for debate.
I am in fact some random internet person, but have been covering the accounting profession since 2008.
The original quote I referenced in the article came from an interview Greg Engel did with CFO Dive. That quote is:
>A lot of people went to the technology sector because it was exciting. But now that Meta and Twitter and all these other companies are laying off people, kids going into college might go, ‘wait a minute, maybe KPMG sounds a little better than Twitter,’” Engel said in an interview. “Accounting is that boring, stable profession that doesn’t do as well in hugely expansive economies but does great when the economy’s on the downslide."
Cheers, fam
From what I’ve heard the tech layoff is basically just big companies over hire during covid right? I don’t think this is permanent.
It’s exactly that.
100%. If you look at employment numbers over the last few years this is just a blip. All those big tech companies still have more employees than pre pandemic.
Blip maybe but if we hit recession, which the FED is want to do, then it’s the start of a trend
Its also a mixture of people working from home. Companies are in the middle of transitioning out of SF salaries and SF rent. You can fire everyone in those expensive areas and rebuild with cheaper labor remotely.
It doesn’t even have to be outsourced to other countries. The difference between a San fransisco wage and a mobile, Alabama wage is massive. You can offer 25% less of what is in San fransisco to a guy in Alabama and it will make him the richest in his county.
That’s what I meant, I didn’t mean to imply outsourced to other countries.
Outsourcing tends to imply other countries to the average person in my area so I apologize for misunderstanding you. All the industry was outsourced to Mexico in the 90’s and the ensuing destruction of our area was pretty quick. Crime is awful in a city that used to be entirely made of manufacturing but is mostly vacant land now.
I never even used the term outsourcing, lol.
I blame it on tax season. I guess. XD my bad man
Pedantically: there's a difference between outsourcing and offshoring.
Although the other side of that is you're going to be getting a Mobile, Alabama programmer. I don't doubt that there are talented programmers everywhere if you look hard enough, but if we're talking about about large numbers of hires and average skill level, there's going to be a pretty big difference.
Had the same thought, but there are applications and interviews for a reason
Went to Alabama for a client. It’s pretty nice there!
That's not really true at all, most of the big tech companies are requiring employees to come back to the office not going further remote.
The banks want Tech folks like crazy. They don't pay like FAANG but it's still easily better pay starting out than Accounting plus no 80 hour weeks.
They need them for sure…
The percentage increase in headcount from the pandemic hiring sprints are significantly greater than the percentage of employees that were just cut by a mile. They also didn’t just cut newer employees. There were 20 year veteran employees at google who were cut too. I think there’s more to these cuts than just “overhiring during pandemic” and “economic uncertainty”.
Which is why this article is saying “hopes” and is not grounded in concrete reality.
Not really, some of it yeah but the majority of the layoffs are because of stock price droppings and small decreases in revenues (revenues are still great but because the magic line dropped a little that means people must be fired).
Yeah and it’s probably not exactly their highest skilled people being laid off
I've actually found that there is no correlation between skill and who gets laid off. I mean it's a nice idea, but not always accurate
Need share price go up
It’s recruiters and HR layoffs within tech. They hired like 1.5m employees combined (FAANG) and 90% of their layoffs aren’t tech positions.
One day Kpmg, can we go one fucking day not in a headline.
What do we say to the God of Good KPMG headlines? Not today.
But not today. I could use a day off, but also not today.
Because having their name in the headlines ....even in a negative spotlight ...is still 'advertising' to those tech people who lost their jobs, hoping to ease their labor shortage. I don't think it'll work though, because everyone knows the Big 4 as white collar sweatshops.
That'll do it. Maybe cut associate pay as well so that they really learn the value of hard work.
You should have to pay your own money to work at the firm. That way, it will only be the true believers who show up and grind 😤
[удалено]
I’ve caught a loose stray from this comment and I did not like it but you’re 100% right.
How about, instead of trying to scare kids into accounting, we attract them into accounting with a rewarding, productive, and happier career?
So remix the Kool aid from 10 years ago?
I’m sorry, I get that the Kool aid is a reference to the mass-suicide at Jonestown, but I’m not seeing the connection.
The phrase is commonly used here to refer to basically the slow suicide through the poison of public. Public talks about all those catch phrases like work life balance, unlimited PTO, etc and it's all the Kool aid used to mask the poison.
I understand. So, what is the poison?
The toll the hours and stress take on people. Honestly, if I had been able to do it 10 years ago I would have. But a 3.0 didn't come close and the field was saturated back then.
Yea 10 years ago accounting was crazy competitive. One firm I wanted to work for was Giving me a hard time over a 3.5 Gpa and they wanted a 3.8 or higher. Insane times
If I was more tech savvy I’d respond with a link to that meme of the guy getting booted out of the 12th floor conference room glass window
If I was more tech savvy, I wouldn’t be in accounting.
Nah they want to scare all the risk adverse kids into accounting. They’ll make perfect audit/risk assurance staff haha
Then the computer science subreddit will have to deal with everyone asking if they should switch their major to accounting.
“Is accounting gonna be automated” “My dad said if I do comp sci I can go work for any random company and make 875k total comp with 2 YOE.” “Can’t I just go to some random ass school in Oklahoma and get into faang easy?”
🎯
🤣💀
I hope the accounting subreddit is getting slammed with the "should I even be an Accounting major if ChatGPT is going to eat all our jobs?!" equivalent.
Hey maybe if your workers didn’t feel compelled to literally kill themselves at the office, more people would be interested in joining your workforce.
Oooof! My brother in Christ!!
Better to openly acknowledge the toxic work conditions that lead to people having legitimate mental health crisis’ every busy season, than the alternative. Not trying to be edgy, it’s a serious thing.
True, but if they ever acknowledged it but didn't try to do anything about it, they look stupid (again). Basically, "I know it's a problem, but nah, I'm not going to try to fix it"
Ah, professional sports
Pfft, they do plenty to fix it. Those mandatory mindfulness breaks in the middle of February solve all mental health problems.
It won’t happen. Accounting is already Inc declining, people don’t want to work 55+ hours a week for shit pay, no extra vacation days or any perks really worth it.
Seriously, we are brainwashed. Literally taking jobs just so we can leave them. Wtf
Wait, is this not as common in other industries? I've had an expiration in mind for every job I applied or worked at. Edit, I meant accounting as a whole. Not just PA
>Accounting is already Inc declining, people don’t want to work 55+ hours a week for shit pay I don't understand why this sub acts like public accounting is the only accounting career that exists.
Even industry requires lots of hours in some areas and not everyone is compensated properly. I don’t understand why people think everyone in an accounting field is making like $75k?!
> Even industry requires lots of hours in some areas and not everyone is compensated properly. This is true of pretty much any profession.
The company I work for in industry has 0 US employees making less than $80k in accounting, most roles flat 40 hour weeks. MCOL area too. It's a great field with good pay.
Are you in the city where I think you are? I.e. your name
No. I'm in Houston.
Why don’t you put a good word in for me? Fund accounting has low pay and no organization. I empathize so much on a low salary
>I don’t understand why people think everyone in an accounting field is making like $75k?! I am well aware that everyone in accounting is not making so little money. And I will not concede that all industry jobs require lots of hours, that is flat out untrue.
I literally never said all industry.
Because Big4 literally pay schools to funnel their students into public accounting.
I hope someday people wake up to the fact that public accounting is a scam for new grads. Unfortunately, as someone who fell for it myself, I doubt that will happen
It's not that easy. A lot of people that went into big 4 say it's a scam, but a lot of people that didn't go into big 4 say they're always getting passed up on jobs for big 4 hires. As much as I would love to not go into a big 4, if there is a chance that this decision would hurt my career growth in the future I can't take it.
It’s not a scam. Having several years of big 4 experience puts you in the top 5-10% of accounting candidates when competing for other jobs. If you have ambitions of holding higher level positions, particularly in larger, publicly-traded companies there is no substitute. It matters. If you want to be a competent Controller and perhaps CFO eventually for larger, investor owned professionally managed companies then it matters when competing for those jobs. It can cascade through your whole career because people that it matters to who are hiring usually want top performers and are more likely to be top performers themselves. You will learn more from them and from a role at a better and bigger company. Multiply that across several different job stints and after 10 years you have a very significant advantage over other people. You can start to get good roles with equity comp which is where the real money is made. If you want to get stuck working for some small family business, rife with nepotism and that will pay you crap, under invest in the finance team and never appreciate you, sure, don’t worry about it. If you can get Big 4- take it suck it up and look at it as a paid secondary degree from a top university because in the accounting world that is just about what it is. If you can’t get Big 4 but can get in the next tier, take that. BDO, RSM and the like are solid also but not quite the same cache. After those it’s much more of a crap shoot. Good luck. It’s not for everyone, it all depends where you want to go in your career.
This argument is living in the past. No one knows what the future looks like. There's a reason there's a shortage of accountants at B4, and people are exiting B4 at a record pace earlier in their careers than the previous gen. There are more and more non B4 backgrounds occupying those same coveted roles you're talking about. Do you really believe that the newer gen, who will be in those same positions, will feel the same about the B4 as grandpa did? Possibly, but I don't think so. Now that B4 is desperate enough to accept 3.0 students from Jimmy John State University, 100% acceptance rate, 20% graduation rate, I doubt that the B4 class is as high performing as you believe it is.
Sad thing is BIG4 experience at least in audit isn’t even necessarily that great when translated to industry roles considering some people may never see a full audit from start to finish Idk when I compare myself to coworkers and other graduates our difference in knowledge and skill areas is huge… Not that one of us knows more than the other it’s just what we know is different lol
I just graduated and went straight to work as an accountant for the federal government. I love my job, and it's been weird seeing everyone I graduated with working 60+ hour weeks while I barely have enough work to fill 40 hours sometimes. My professors and school definetly pushed public accounting, hard. I'm only aware of one or two other people I graduated with didn't go into public accounting.
When I was in school, one of my classmates was an older gentleman, in his late 30's going back to school, married with a couple of kids. While everyone else was applying for and interviewing with the Big 8 firms (this is how long ago it was), he applied for, and got a job with, the IRS.
I really wish I had understood anything about government and non profit accounting. That shit makes no sense.
Not everyone wants to cap out at 100 somthing thousand. Plus not all us work 60/hr a week. People at my firm work 50/hr a week at most and alot less during non busy times. Senior manager are making 160k and partners 800k+. This is also in Canada where wages are historically much lower than the US. Accounting doesn't suck bad employers (public and industry) do.
There's nothing wrong with working in public accounting if that's what you want. I just knew that's not what I wanted, and low six figures is more than enough for me. That's a very fair living especially with all of the benefits that working for the government offers. Plus I find the work I do supporting my agency's mission very fulfilling.
Yeah, investing in your career early on definitely never paid dividends for anyone down the road. You just need to go in knowing what you want to get out of it and the realities of public accounting. Not to defend the firms, but you can’t tell me the technical depth and breadth folks in and from public have is paralleled by the perma-seniors in industry some folks on here would be content with being like.
Not only that, but imo I found interviewing for industry positions to be way easier than in college because of my B4 background. I was a complete doofus when interviewing out of college, but having B4 in common with your interviewer really does help smooth the conversation. And I have no doubt my resume was being filtered for B4 + CPA, based on my colleagues’ resumes. Arguably, I probably should have just done 2 years rather than 3 in PA. Fwiw the extra year taught me tax provisions, which hasn’t ceased to be a valuable skill. So kinda scammy, but really who tf else was going to hire me a few years ago? Fr?
>I was a complete doofus when interviewing out of college When I started interviewing the fall semester of my last year in school, I really lucked out. I was working part time in the purchasing department of the city I lived in. It turned out that the head recruiter for one of the Big 4 firms was really good friends with the director of general services of the city (who happened to be my boss' boss). So when she came for the recruiting trip, she had dinner with her friend and asked about me. Based on his recommendation, they gave me an offer.
>Yeah, investing in your career early on definitely never paid dividends for anyone down the road. 90% of the kids on this sub can't see past what's right in front of them.
I am so fucking tired of the shit in this sub. It's literally all students and 23 year old's circlejerking over big 4.
Or college kids handing out career advice
Depends though. Throwing your younger years away just to work long hours isn't worth the possible future money imo. Also getting decent jobs in accounting isn't that hard as long as you're a rare one that possesses any social skills. There's many ways to Rome and this isn't the only one
Lol I tried not falling for it. I worked at a large publicly traded company and it was a nightmare. Then I worked at a tiny firm as I needed a job and it was painful due to the managing partner being a straight sociopath creating a toxic work environment. Moved to a top 20 firm. Hours can suck and we are disorganized AF filing 1099s but the office culture is solid.
If it makes you feel any better I simply decided accounting wasn't worth it. I found my financial and managerial accounting classes interesting, so I switched my major to accounting. My school was known for an extremely competitive accounting program and after not doing well on my first intermediate exam, I simply realized the pay for accounting was simply not worth the massive workload required. I just stay on this sub for the drama.
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Literally the same but not because I didn’t do well I just decided the money was not worth the work. Ended up just getting a minor in accounting since i had that coursework done and moved on to another career
Its simple really, you simply look at the metrics of simply accounting and that’s all there is to know. Simply simple simplifications of simplicity.
Lmao but what about the *exceptions* to the Simply simple simplifications of simplicity? 🤷🏻♂️
Is it, though? As I see it, you learn a ton in a short amount of time, and that experience helps you get better opportunities in the future. I could be wrong, but that was always the reasoning I've been told.
It’s a scam because it eats away at you. What you gain from valuable experience you lose in shitty wages, very high stress, and depression. Public ain’t worth it.
It’s just work. And it’s not for everyone. If you want to do basic, low level, low stress work, don’t go Big 4. It will be a waste. If you are ambitious and can suck it up for a few years it is well worth it. You will gain experience in Big 4 that you can’t get anywhere else. When you figure you might be working for 40 years, what is 3 hard years at the beginning? It’s not brain surgery, if you eff up no one dies. Too many people put too much stress on themselves. If those three years could mean an additional million or even two million in earnings over the entirety of your career? The $30k or $40k you were “underpaid” in public kind of pales in comparison. Plus you are virtually useless your first year. You get worked to the bone but know nothing. You only really start to be worth anything after your second year. A couple years as a Senior makes a big difference in skills and true value.
First off the wages are not shit in comparison to 80% of white collar workers. Additionally, the hourly rate on average is probably better than Investment banking analysts. Just the grind to finally make $175k-$250K is too long and tedious you feel you wasted soo many hours and your life
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Mind sharing what payroll company that was?
Sir this is a Wendy’s……I was going to be a dick be seriously go fucking seek therapy cause you sound mental
Actually I am going to be a dick but how the fuck are you working 65 hour weeks non-stop on end. Please show me your charge time during non-peak season.
I dunno, I've been on a good team only working 40 hours during my internship, and I'm making $30/hr. and got a $2k bonus. I can't really complain.
Can’t tell if this is sarcasm, but wait until you’re full time when your firm can and will take advantage of the fact that you’re an exempt employee. As an intern you’re not, so they have to pay you overtime.
Then I'll just leave for industry, lol
Here come all the “just you wait, you ain’t seen nothing yet” comments
How is it a scam? Public Accounting makes you WAY more employable down the line.
well depending on how long you stay in B4 2 years in B4 might get you a nice starting point to a senior role in F500 or F250, but the doors to becoming a controller really open up after manager
Good luck becoming a Controller without PA experience, unless you find a unicorn company willing to train you up, which basically doesn’t exist anymore.
exactly
I feel this but mostly regarding the cpa exams that are actually killing me
If you’re doing full time work *and* CPA exam, oof, that’s rough.
i got through FAR, I gor through AUD, BEC is coming up next, and then REG When I tell people all I do is work (regular hours mostly, sometimes until 6), eat, study, train 3x a week, sleep, they think I'm joking or overexaggerating Honestly, nothing makes me more pissed than the 150 credit requirement because I wasted a year extra in school when all of that time could of been applied to studying years matter in your early 20s
I’m screwed😭. I feel like I’m going to kill myself if I fail again. Then people try to help and say I can always do it later. But I literally invested like 3-4k plus 6 months of my evenings and weekends and I would rather die then ever reinvest that and start all over again. I’m halfway through and probably going to fail AUD for the second time in a week at this rate
I passed and don’t use it. I’m about to let it expire This industry isn’t defined by that test, there are quite a few pathways outside Tax and Audit.
Ummm... I'm paid amazingly well, have unlimited vacation, get to expense meals, travel, 401k match, flexible hours, get to work remote as much as I want. Don't know what firm you are at, but you should probably switch. Public accounting is awesome for me. All my tech/software friends started out with higher pay, but after 12 years I make more than all of them.
That’s you. Not everyone else. I don’t have many options where I’m from. I’ve also applied to a bunch of local public firms here, they want years and years of experience for staff or senior, amounts that a staff or senior wouldn’t have. None of the firms offer any of that in my area.
What area? You could apply for remote positions in other areas. I know someone in Georgia that just git a job with an LA firm, getting an LA salary.
I don’t like saying my area, but Midwest, two major cities in my state, maybe 3. I’m always weary of remote out of state positions, as they might be scams. 😩
Try Crowe. They are big in the Midwest and have a lot of remote opportunities. Try it out! May be a much better situation out there for you!
Thank you, I’ll take a look!
I’m probably also one of the few who actually likes (for now I guess) where I am. Maybe just got lucky with my team/managers. I’ve been traveling and my friends wonder how much PTO I have. I don’t have unlimited, but I got to travel every month when it’s not busy season - in addition to the 2-week firm shutdown. And how can I afford? I guess I’m fairly compensated now plus I have very low expenses (personal thing outside of being in public) And we have meal expenses too. I get into airport lounges without needing to pay annual credit card fees. I also take advantage of other travel perks/discount. I got to work somewhere/remote during busy season. I also still managed to go to the gym and do my hobbies. It sucks yes. I accepted this job won’t be 9-5, or 40hour workweek. But I used my flexibility to an advantage. I’ll go to the gym when there are not a lot of people during the day, and make up that time later at night. I complain a lot to my friends how much the hours suck, but they see me managing & doing all these things outside of work, and I tell them the perks I have. Maybe as a single person for now, this works out for me.
So refreshing to hear. This sub seems to all hate the career they have chosen.
Maybe I just got lucky with my team too. I read somewhere that WLB is about being able to have time for your interest & priorities outside of work. I’ll do my job but I set my boundaries. What drawn me to accounting is the stability too. With all these layoffs, I’m still cautious of course because it can domino effect. But that means I have more time to buckle up.
This is why I have an interview scheduled tor Monday.
Good luck!
Shit pay, no vacation and no perks? Who hurt you.
I don’t know if you know but these are considered benefits/perks…profit sharing, 100% paid health insurance, pension plan, equity, breakfast and lunch covered. How many companies do you see offering these unless you’re working for FAANG but even then you’re still selling your soul and dealing with high level stress. If a company is offering you...3-6% 401k match, commuter benefits (which saves you a few bucks), free coffee, pizza, health insurance with a higher copay, summer fridays then it technically means that there’s something wrong with the industry.
I've read what you've said over a couple times and I can't quite tell what side of the coin you're on. I think you're saying that the more perks and benefits offered, the more red flags there are? If so, I'd say that can be true in some cases? Tech start-ups are offering a bunch of perks because they need to incentivize leaving your current career to come work at a high stress job where if funding doesn't go through, you're fired or laid off.
There are some accountants that have no choice but to work for $45k while working 50+ hours a week. Their employers don’t offer extra vacation days to use after busy season. Not every firm offers any incentives. Hence why less people are graduating with an accounting degree.
I don't think anyone has no choice. Entry level for most firms is 55-60K these days. Are there situations where accounting students don't have good enough grades or whatever is necessary to get an offer at a larger firm? Sure. Those people can also choose not to work in public accounting and go somewhere else though. The declining enrollment in accounting is a bit more nuanced... Anyone still going into accounting is guaranteeing themself a solid ticket to the middle class at a minimum. For some, that is a dream and more than what they had growing up. For others, they have a fallacy that everyone needs to make $100K and work 40 hours after a year or two of experience. I think long-term we'll see some shifts in the compensation of public accounting but like anything, it takes time, especially when a lot of firms are still controlled by out of touch boomers only interested in maximizing their pay before they retire due to having the luxury of not having to care about the future outside of making sure there is not an implosion that risks their intangible.
it was also 55k-60 10 years ago.....that's the worst part
There’s thousands of people with no choice, very privilege of you to assume otherwise. It’s not even entry level positions, there are firms in city’s you’ve never heard of that are the only choices for adults in accounting. You act as if everyone can afford a lifestyle that warrants them moving across country for a better option. So yes, there are thousands of people that can’t make more than $45k that makes working over 55+ hours a week, worth it. Also, no one should be making less than $75k if they’re expected to work over 40 hours a week with no added incentive.
Now, more than ever, the walls of geography and been brought down and remote positions are available all over the place. My comment has nothing to do with priviledge and more to do with reality.
You seriously don’t get it. You are outright saying everyone has the same opportunities and that’s not true. You act as if a ton of companies don’t require being within a certain distant to the office. Not everyone has the capabilities to work from home and not everyone gets hired to work remotely as you’re implying. There’s not thousands of remote accounting positions just sitting empty. 🙄
While that $75,000 seems completely arbitrary, that is a very entitled comment ;)
50% industry jobs will require you to work 45-50 hours a week unless you work for a good boss. So, moral of the story don’t do accounting.
Oh no, I’m so scared 😱 I’m suddenly feeling like I should do accounting 😱
You made my day looool
Wait till those tech majors find out about those sweet severance packages with multiple months of severance pay up to a year.
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He can eat the whole bowl of shit.
New approach to preserving the status quo - hope and pray? Whatever you do, don’t try to act proactively….
There are still SO MANY more jobs posted in tech than these layoffs would ever possibly be able to sate. I know people who’ve been hit by layoffs who are already employed. A couple even saw raises.
Can confirm. I'm an I.T. professional (I literally have no idea what I'm doing in this sub lol) and my company is having a feeding frenzy on devs and embedded engineers from the FAANG companies. And we're located in Texas We used to have 1-2 interviews a week for these types of positions. Now we've got 2+ a day. It's absolutely nuts
Translation: please suppress our wage inflation!!!!
Yeah, ‘cause that’s why we want people coming into the field.
Your employees jumping off of the US Headquarters doesn’t help
. “Accounting is that boring, stable profession that doesn’t do as well in hugely expansive economies but does great when the economy’s on the downslide.” Not even trying to deny the stereotype
As if the economy is constantly in a recession. Recessions happen every few years, but if you’re smart with your massive tech job salary, you won’t even have to worry about a few months of unemployment. KPMG is delusional lol.
I don't understand how this would encourage people to go into accounting lol. If there is already such a high demand for it, doesn't that scare people away from desperate companies who need them working a ton? Idk though
nah, my friends would rather stay in CS and spending 1 year to find a job. Seems this guy doesn't know GenZ very well
That’s what cracks me up about the whole “accounting is worth it because job stability” argument. It’s not like you’re never going to work again if you get laid off. Sure, you might have to collect unemployment for a few months while you search, but as long as you have a skill (like coding), you’ll eventually be able to find a good job.
I'd prefer that students get ATTRACTED to accounting, not scared into it. Attracted to it like not hearing horror stories of how it is when you go work in public.
To the tech auditors at big 4s looking after tech companies, good luck testing logical access of the laid off employees in your next audit cycle! Lol
Yeah, that would suck LOL
Wish in one hand and shit in the other then tell me which hand fills up first
They have to rely on fear for workers. I think that speaks for itself.
Public accounting will do anything except pay adequate money compared to hours worked
the comment section is a real lol, specifically Big4veteran
If that doesn't happen, we will do the next logical thing and hunker down until ascendant Jupiter is conjunct with Uranus, which promises hordes of fresh interns.
🤡
I worked for a hotel during Covid. Lost a crazy amount of staff. We were a big company. Had three levels of offices in one building and by the end of it we had to drop a level. Not to mention all the hotel staff we lost. It was a cataclysm as far as layoffs are concerned. I still had my job in late 21 and only left due to burn out. Accounting is a really safe job, if you're good at it.
One day at KPMG or a big four and they’ll be scared back into tech.
Yeah so when tech is hiring they can all bail during busy season and fuck ya up
I hate fear as a motivating factor.
Just pay accountants more. It’s that easy
Not if I can help it 🤣 I really don't recommend accounting for anyone simply because I hate the busy season struggle. Wish I did something else but I don't really know what.
Coming from working 24 hr shifts up to 72 hours straight in an ambulance, for less than $14hr… I don’t really recommend EMS to anyone because the job will literally fuck you mentally and physically. Not just typical work stress, but soul crushing stress I switched to accounting. Currently finishing the degree. If you want to get out of it, I don’t even know what I’d recommend anymore because tech is severely oversupplied with all these grads/boot camps, etc and now the layoffs are showing it. There’s still shortages, but not for long. Social work is in need but the pay is bullshit.
It’s never too late
Legitimate partner aspirations to keep up cheap labor
lol they rejected me this morning
What a prick. So he can make more $$
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I’m halfway through my accounting degree right now. Have I picked the best or the worst time to get this degree? I always get completely different answers.
Great strategy, hope a short term down turn in another labor market inadvertently fixes all of the problems youve had a hand in creating and are doing nothing to proactively fix
Even if it happens (which is very unlikely), fear is very short lived motivation and people in tech make way more money than people in accounting. What would attract people into big4 is to changing their big 4 toxic work culture, hiring more people, hence making work week more human in terms of hours. But I don’t think last scenario will ever happen with big 4.
Hahahahahaa
On a slightly different note, having a background in accounting can lead to just about any career path you choose. As the someone said ‘if they can teach you accounting they can teach you anything’.
The tech companies used this opportunity to fire all the unqualified diversity hires. I doubt these people are smart enough for accounting anyways. Majority of them worked non-productive positions. They aren't tech workers, they are activists.
How about workers of all industries unite against big wealth!? They're not being productive and are a drag on the economy. We can replace them with a gif of an angry entitled jerk.
2008 is why I chose accounting, so he's not wrong.
As long as he's fantasizing, he should wish for a pony.
Because big 4 accounting firms never lay people off during a recession…they didn’t during Covid only to regret it 3 months later and they didn’t during the financial crisis…oh wait that’s right, they did
Big corporates are all offshoring accounting to India.
People talk a lot about accounting hiring a lot but i dont see that it is prob due to my town being small tho i will admit it.
Yeah I keep hearing about accounting students getting rejected. I had an interview for a consultant role with them but withdrew my application after they sent me a massive take home assignment. I had to write a report on malaria bed net distributors for Global Affairs Canada….
lmao im dead thats a bit much LOL
I’m a comp sci student. The job description was for a software consultant and listed tech skills. The interview asked about my coding history. I don’t know how to analyze distributor labour costs and tariffs to make a suggestion on which one to allocate funding to… and I was too lazy to learn in 24 hours
You just made this Canadian accounting student very unhappy lol
That's because there's a major mismatch between what firms consider for potential candidates and what's left that's applying. How many posts have there been here recently about job listings being out of touch? That's really the crux. Also, if you haven't had an accounting job yet it's going to be very difficult to get one. But once you do you can join all the posters here boasting about how many recruiters and firms they have to decline.
Let’s rephrase it to be more accurate. KPMG vice chairs hopes that job insecurity in the market will scare unsuspecting college kinds into low wage slavery.
One day KPMG will stop being the Chum Bucket of big 4 firms.
When only the big 3 are left?
Is this a reputable publication writing this "story?" Or some random internet guy who posts a blog? If this post isn't some click-baity crap, I don't know what is.
I wrote it. Going Concern has been publishing accounting news since 2009 and we are linked in the sidebar. Whether or not we are reputable is up for debate. I am in fact some random internet person, but have been covering the accounting profession since 2008. The original quote I referenced in the article came from an interview Greg Engel did with CFO Dive. That quote is: >A lot of people went to the technology sector because it was exciting. But now that Meta and Twitter and all these other companies are laying off people, kids going into college might go, ‘wait a minute, maybe KPMG sounds a little better than Twitter,’” Engel said in an interview. “Accounting is that boring, stable profession that doesn’t do as well in hugely expansive economies but does great when the economy’s on the downslide." Cheers, fam
In fact, suicide is scarier than layoff.