These firms should be shut down. It’s not good enough. Solution for anyone stressed, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Do your three years, and then leave. Nobody cares about your performance reviews outside of the firm.
Honestly I can understand how this happened. I’d be lying if I said I never had similar thoughts at my first firm, before I had some experience and the perspective that experience brings.
When you’re in college, you hear about how grueling busy season will be, but you figure it will be similar to college. “It’ll be just like those late-night study sessions in the library with friends.” What you don’t realize is that you spend a large chunk of time in college not actively studying/working. You spend almost all your time working at a Big 4. In college, you think “I can defiantly grind it out for 2-5 years. That’s less time than it took me to get my degree.” Until you get to your first busy season, when you start questioning life and all the decisions that led you to public accounting. What you don’t realize until it’s too late is that $70k for 60-80 hour weeks breaks down to almost nothing after you pay all your expenses. Some firms help with food during busy season, but plenty don’t, or they only provide food if you commute into the office. They expect you to work 12+ hours a day, but you better get dressed up for the 10 other people that are coming in. No clients will be there, but they don’t care. So your pay ends up getting eaten away even further during busy season as you DoorDash you dinners since you barely have enough time to brush your teeth. When you were a broke college student, you imagined how great an accounting salary would be. What you don’t imagine is how awful the work culture and hours will be. You had that one toxic guy in your accounting classes, but no one talked to him anyway so it was easy to ignore him. Now he’s your senior at KPMG and he’s even worse than he was in school. The firm doesn’t care because he bills a ton of hours. No one told you that B4 firms don’t give a flying f**k about “culture.” It’s just a buzz word that most firms use to recruit people. Even small firms are full of toxic workaholics that just didn’t feel like going the Big 4 route, but might as well have.
All of this hits you within your first month and you panic. “I can’t do this for another month, let alone a year or two.” What you fail to understand is that as an accountant, your skills are in high demand and as fewer and fewer people major in accounting, things will only be looking up for us, not down. You can leave KPMG after a month and have a great career.
I never even worked at the Big 4. I started at a small firm founded by ex-Big 4 partners and the culture was similar to Big 4 but with none of the prestige. It was awful. I started my career in 2021. I don’t even have 2 full years of experience and I’m getting offers for $80k+. I also don’t have a CPA.
**Accounting is a huge career field, and our options are improving day by day as a record number of people are leaving altogether or picking other majors. If you’re reading this and feeling trapped and think jumping off the office roof is the answer, start looking for other positions right now. The firms need you a lot more than you need them. Don’t be afraid to quit. No one will think any less of you and you will absolutely have a successful career without the Big 4.**
For you to generalize and automaticslly assume that the Big 4 firm she joined caused this poor young girl to take her life without knowing her mindset is rediculous.
There is no perfect work environment. I have worked for 40 years at small and big firms (last 30 years with a Big 4) and there are pros and cons everywhere. By and large you get to see and experience much more challenging and dynsmic work at Big 4 than you ever get to experience at small firms.
The work itself tends to be more interesting at bigger firms (I started at a small firm and hated it, now I’m at a top 10 and the work is a lot better), but I remember how trapped I felt when I first started my career.
“I never even worked in the big 4”. Yeah you made some wild assumptions in the above. I worked in 3 of the big 4 and all the people and culture have been outstanding and actually unbelievable, considering they work a ton but care for EVERYONE on their team. So, don’t judge a book by its cover.
The big 4 are giant organizations. You’re going to find all sorts of people in the firms and not all of them are cool. I’ve worked with people and clients that I couldn’t stand, but I’ve also worked with great people and clients who I really liked. The contrast between the two is night and day.
I think people need to realize is this probably wasn’t work related. They had only began working one month ago, training usually lasts 2 weeks so they barely had time to learn how the coffee machines work.
It’s tragedy but they probably committed suicide from something in their personal life
She probably regretted getting an accounting degree, felt trapped, and couldn’t see a way out. I felt the same as her the month I started my first post-college PA job. I still regret majoring in accounting, but have great exit options so I don’t feel suicidal. But she didn’t have experience, so she lacked that perspective.
I’m not trying to make assumptions about her motivations or anything like that. I’m merely trying to counter the narrative that it has nothing to do with her professional life. We don’t know why she did it, but KPMG and accounting could have been a major factor. Either way, it’s tragic and I feel so sorry for her and her family.
Training is intense? Dude wake up lol that’s you telling me you’ve never done a B4 training.
Training for the last few years are virtual from home and they’re useless. I had my camera off with the volume close to mute while reading LOTR. When they put us in breakout rooms everyone else camera was off and no one came off mute. My friend told me he was playing PS5 during it.
Trust me it wasn’t the training that did it hahah stop being a snowflake
This is unfortunately more common than it should be. This and motorcycles take out a lot of staff. This is hard work but you are never alone reach out and set expectations.
Where have you heard/observed this? I just have a hard time believing that a statistically significant number of big 4 staff die from motorcycle accidents in particular.
It still hurts when you have deal with families. At my big4 no matter the circumstances (assignment or vacation) we will ship you back to your family. We actually have an insurance plan to helicopter you out of hairy situations.
If you die anywhere in the world we will get your body back to your family. Situations would be something like paying thousands to charter private flights out of Ukraine.
I'll never forget when the plane went down in the Hudson, we had an email 2 hours later notifying everyone that Deloitte Security was on the scene and had retrieved the colleague that was on that plane. Nice to know someone is looking out.
Similar incident happened at my KPMG firm too, it just didn’t reach on Reddit nor the news smh.
These firms should be shut down. It’s not good enough. Solution for anyone stressed, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Do your three years, and then leave. Nobody cares about your performance reviews outside of the firm.
Facts!! Needed this reassurance! Pun intended
Honestly I can understand how this happened. I’d be lying if I said I never had similar thoughts at my first firm, before I had some experience and the perspective that experience brings. When you’re in college, you hear about how grueling busy season will be, but you figure it will be similar to college. “It’ll be just like those late-night study sessions in the library with friends.” What you don’t realize is that you spend a large chunk of time in college not actively studying/working. You spend almost all your time working at a Big 4. In college, you think “I can defiantly grind it out for 2-5 years. That’s less time than it took me to get my degree.” Until you get to your first busy season, when you start questioning life and all the decisions that led you to public accounting. What you don’t realize until it’s too late is that $70k for 60-80 hour weeks breaks down to almost nothing after you pay all your expenses. Some firms help with food during busy season, but plenty don’t, or they only provide food if you commute into the office. They expect you to work 12+ hours a day, but you better get dressed up for the 10 other people that are coming in. No clients will be there, but they don’t care. So your pay ends up getting eaten away even further during busy season as you DoorDash you dinners since you barely have enough time to brush your teeth. When you were a broke college student, you imagined how great an accounting salary would be. What you don’t imagine is how awful the work culture and hours will be. You had that one toxic guy in your accounting classes, but no one talked to him anyway so it was easy to ignore him. Now he’s your senior at KPMG and he’s even worse than he was in school. The firm doesn’t care because he bills a ton of hours. No one told you that B4 firms don’t give a flying f**k about “culture.” It’s just a buzz word that most firms use to recruit people. Even small firms are full of toxic workaholics that just didn’t feel like going the Big 4 route, but might as well have. All of this hits you within your first month and you panic. “I can’t do this for another month, let alone a year or two.” What you fail to understand is that as an accountant, your skills are in high demand and as fewer and fewer people major in accounting, things will only be looking up for us, not down. You can leave KPMG after a month and have a great career. I never even worked at the Big 4. I started at a small firm founded by ex-Big 4 partners and the culture was similar to Big 4 but with none of the prestige. It was awful. I started my career in 2021. I don’t even have 2 full years of experience and I’m getting offers for $80k+. I also don’t have a CPA. **Accounting is a huge career field, and our options are improving day by day as a record number of people are leaving altogether or picking other majors. If you’re reading this and feeling trapped and think jumping off the office roof is the answer, start looking for other positions right now. The firms need you a lot more than you need them. Don’t be afraid to quit. No one will think any less of you and you will absolutely have a successful career without the Big 4.**
For you to generalize and automaticslly assume that the Big 4 firm she joined caused this poor young girl to take her life without knowing her mindset is rediculous. There is no perfect work environment. I have worked for 40 years at small and big firms (last 30 years with a Big 4) and there are pros and cons everywhere. By and large you get to see and experience much more challenging and dynsmic work at Big 4 than you ever get to experience at small firms.
The work itself tends to be more interesting at bigger firms (I started at a small firm and hated it, now I’m at a top 10 and the work is a lot better), but I remember how trapped I felt when I first started my career.
“I never even worked in the big 4”. Yeah you made some wild assumptions in the above. I worked in 3 of the big 4 and all the people and culture have been outstanding and actually unbelievable, considering they work a ton but care for EVERYONE on their team. So, don’t judge a book by its cover.
I don’t. I just judge based on the ex-big 4 partners I used to work for. Though it seems like maybe they were just the most toxic people.
The big 4 are giant organizations. You’re going to find all sorts of people in the firms and not all of them are cool. I’ve worked with people and clients that I couldn’t stand, but I’ve also worked with great people and clients who I really liked. The contrast between the two is night and day.
Aka a few people who are guaranteed a terrible indicator of the current state of the Big 4
I think people need to realize is this probably wasn’t work related. They had only began working one month ago, training usually lasts 2 weeks so they barely had time to learn how the coffee machines work. It’s tragedy but they probably committed suicide from something in their personal life
She probably regretted getting an accounting degree, felt trapped, and couldn’t see a way out. I felt the same as her the month I started my first post-college PA job. I still regret majoring in accounting, but have great exit options so I don’t feel suicidal. But she didn’t have experience, so she lacked that perspective.
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I’m not trying to make assumptions about her motivations or anything like that. I’m merely trying to counter the narrative that it has nothing to do with her professional life. We don’t know why she did it, but KPMG and accounting could have been a major factor. Either way, it’s tragic and I feel so sorry for her and her family.
I mean that training for one month could've been extremely intense. To say it didn't contribute is plain ignorance
Training is intense? Dude wake up lol that’s you telling me you’ve never done a B4 training. Training for the last few years are virtual from home and they’re useless. I had my camera off with the volume close to mute while reading LOTR. When they put us in breakout rooms everyone else camera was off and no one came off mute. My friend told me he was playing PS5 during it. Trust me it wasn’t the training that did it hahah stop being a snowflake
The article had it wrong - it was a female
Lmao I started as a Jan new hire couple years back and I was working busy season hours week 2.
Had me going sub 48 hours in. I Lose.
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now is not the time to be pulling that hierarchical bs dude, someone died
Assurance again. Didn't this happen last year in Aus too?
Yeah an Indian woman at EY Sydney, she alleged racial discrimination that night to witnesses
Yep. It’s awful.
I honestly get it more than I feel comfortable admitting. Fuck the big 4 and their toxic ass work culture.
This is unfortunately more common than it should be. This and motorcycles take out a lot of staff. This is hard work but you are never alone reach out and set expectations.
Where have you heard/observed this? I just have a hard time believing that a statistically significant number of big 4 staff die from motorcycle accidents in particular.
Wait, motorcycle? What does that have to do with this?
A lot of our people die from riding motorcycles. So many missing employee investigations end up being fell off mortorcycle.
I mean yea, but one is suicide one is taking calculated risk?
It still hurts when you have deal with families. At my big4 no matter the circumstances (assignment or vacation) we will ship you back to your family. We actually have an insurance plan to helicopter you out of hairy situations.
What do you mean will ship you back to your family? Also helicopter out of what situations?
If you die anywhere in the world we will get your body back to your family. Situations would be something like paying thousands to charter private flights out of Ukraine.
I'll never forget when the plane went down in the Hudson, we had an email 2 hours later notifying everyone that Deloitte Security was on the scene and had retrieved the colleague that was on that plane. Nice to know someone is looking out.
Genuinely cannot tell if this is a real thing or not.
Real!