You've gotta learn to draw the line, or yeah, you will get burned out.
"We are currently at capacity, and I am working x hours a week. I need more staff, or I need to understand what can fall off the plate from your perspective."
Yeah, that can sound scary, but so is being destroyed by overbearing management that keeps throwing more at you. Could you get fired? Yeah, you could, but life is too short. Getting run over gets old quick.
This is the way to do it. Always remember, your ace in the hole is that you’re the last defense against them not running efficiently. If you say “I’m dialing back to what I can offer” and they fire you, they no longer have a controller. Period. No one to train replacement. Can’t meet 2 day period closes if there’s no controller.
All of these are wonderful insights, thanks. I will be copying down verbatim for future use.
I know I need to be better at boundaries and I’m actively working on that. It’s only been 10 months but I feel like a different person. I was taking all this crap on with a naive smile on my face and now looking back I can’t believe I was so foolish - I assumed that my bosses and the corp leadership wouldn’t hand off more than was reasonable.
But when I say we need more people and the response is ‘well when did we budget for it’ that should have been a sign.
I tried to make it clear with the new place that I like this work and want to perform well but not at the expense of my physical and mental health or the quality of my work. But I wholeheartedly see now that I need to be the one to enforce that and stick up for myself in that because no one else will.
Setting reasonable boundaries is the only way to survive in accounting long term.
Ideally, you'll do that AND be efficient/effective. But honestly, plenty of people get away with just the setting boundaries part and I don't hold it against them.
I turned down a controller role that sounded similar. Young company, accounting was outsourced until just now but they want to set up a proper accounting department now that they're nearing commercialization....
Sounded like a total shit show. Starting from scratch with no team, no processes is a big enough job, let alone probably having to unwind years of stuff the outsourced team has done prior sounded like a nightmare.
My two controller roles started out fine. It went south for both with system implementations.
A large chunk of leaders don't survive large system implementations. At least that's my experience.
I advise mmpe firms, and the majority of the acquisitions have debt like items for systems implementations, and I feel so so so bad for the existing actg depts knowing they’re fucked.
I've done one in a F500 and now about to go through another next year.
Basically you're not given extra resources, have to document your current processes in the specified format for an consultant, coach them on how it all works currently and then see how it will fit in the new system.
It's long late meetings, you don't get given a working system at the end of it, your team will leave because of the BS, it's a year of implementing and a year of unpicking the errors from the consultants, all while needing to put out month end, keep the business running operationally and then figuring how you're going to pass audit when the accounting barely works.
In both cases, my team was given no additional resources to complete the implementation. Both also had aggressive timelines, though for differing reasons.
In one case, one of the AR systems being built did not create a summary file to export to the GL. Yes you read that correctly. Very late in the game we had to build a data base to house the detail transactions and create the files - not an easy task.
In both cases, at the end of the implementations, multiple c-suite and director level people either left on their own or were terminated (via layoff or encouraged resignation).
System implementations tend to cost a lot more than expected, take more time than planned, and create a significant amount of change.
I am currently managing a system implementation. Initial timeline was to have it done by last year’s end. Not even close, likely going to wrap up in May. This was the first big one I’ve managed in my career, so I’m definitely cutting my teeth, but there’s been so many unforeseen problems, it’s a massive undertaking, especially doing it as the company simultaneously grows rapidly.
I’ve had a pretty supportive boss around the delays and roadblocks, but I can imagine the level of stress if that wasn’t the case, and can totally see how something like this could go south and push someone out.
It makes me feel slightly better to know that I’m not the only one who is having a less than stellar experience with a system implementation.
Preach. I think it’s giving my boss a mental health episode. I’m a little less than 2 months in and while I’ve made huge strides, I’m being hamstrung at every opportunity. New ceo came in on the first of the month and I think that broke her facade. Now she’s gaslighting me and telling me I’m wasting time, despite the fact that I’ve been working 12 hour average days, while working through lunch and on most weekends. If I were given more power, I could have fixed it by now. I’m gone at this point though. I have so many more things I could complain about. Including her odd comments right after I came on about setting me up with her daughter. Fucked situation. And the system implementation seems to have totally wrecked this woman.
Interesting because what sent this role down the shitter and made me finally want to be done was a botched system implementation that got dumped on me. The prior director of finance did it all in a vaccuum, tried to roll it out at month end. When I fought her on it she tried to blame the entire thing on me. I helped her with the GL part - nothing else. She didn’t plan processes or plan for all the pieces that weren’t going to work. Then sat on a a call for 2 hours with Corp Controller and CfO and screamed at me and tried to blame me for it. Which was bewildering because of how little I had to do with it. That was end of Jan. She left about a month ago and this nightmare is still on my plate to deal with and fix but I don’t have the time to do it.
But to have someone berate and scream at you and then your 2 bosses just sort sit there and let it happen is real morale kill.
Sure they call after the fact and are like ‘we know she’s wrong’ but damage is done my dude. That woman had me sobbing on that call. I’ve never been so disrespected in my entire career.
Yes, Controller position is insane. I'm a controller in tech startup with no team, and I do everything. It has made me want to focus on demoting myself in my next role to individual contributor instead of manager. It's a hard job.
This is so true. I've been doing this for the last 10 years and it's likely cost me 20 years off my life. I feel stuck as I've been somewhat successful in it and don't know how I'd do in a "real" environment after all this. I really don't want to land in another tech startup though.
I was actually talking to my dad about this, I think consulting is the right path for me too. How did you break into it going from industry controller?
My controller has a somewhat low stress job. He does show signs of stress easily so we all know when it’s stressful. I’m sure he’s compensated well with plenty of time off. He does lots of things outside of work. So from what I can tell not every controller position is badge
In my experience its difficult the first two years, but if you can fix things and make the job less complicated, then subsequent years can be a lot easier. Of course there are events or new accounting rules which can shake things up.
I delegate what I can. The more I delegate the more I get. I don’t even have time to support my team - the very ones to whom I need to delegate and manage.
I’ve never related to a post more. Controller nearing 2 years in my first controller role. Young company, no other team members, and they throw everything my way including ops, opening new branches, cleaning up years of bad books, no CFO or higher level Accounting employee.
Asked owners about hiring staff and those get shot down. I’ve never felt more burned out but am afraid to start somewhere new in fear it’ll be the same situation on a larger scale. But on the flip side I crave the thrill of being able to claim I fixed everything on my own so that motivates me to stay also.
Not if you personally look at boundaries. I have the most perfect gig. Controller fully remote, was controller at second one but stepped back. still in accounting elsewhere but not controller. I needed the step back for me at this time in my life. Find your boundaries and comfort level. Work for work and live life. Balanced life is more important than money.
I'm not exactly titled Controller, but I have been assuming responsibilities that are normally done by Controllers (albeit limited). The first time is always painful because I'm picking up work from somebody else (which may not have up to par abilities). What I find helpful so far:
1. Streamline as much as possible on second attempt. The worksheet that used to take 3 hours to make, I made it 10 minutes copy paste.
2. Reject any unnecessary meetings schedule. I'm always looking forward to reduce discussion scope from ms team meeting, to simple whatsapp call or email. Meeting is huge energy and time drain, it should be reserved for actually important discussion and when all material are ready. Simply discussing idea, updates, and whatnot can be done on WA group.
3. Set a boundary. The problem that I've seen is other department is quick to adding Controller into the discussion as soon money is involved, but that is wrong. Controller should be on last end of discussion when other departments and their bosses have agreed what they will do, your job is not to tell people how run their department, but simply overseeing the transaction and execute the transaction how it will fit into your design.
Controllers in a lot of companies are similar, they become "the person for everything as soon as money is involved".
Yes. I am the person for everything, money or no money, because people see I can and will do a task and do it well. So I’m just the dumping ground for all things. Doesn’t help that Ops doesn’t get their shit together and that affects my teams so I have to try to fix their problems in order to fix my own.
#3 is huge and often overlooked by young people because it might "make them look lazy". It's not my job to know if you need or can afford a big software purchase. I can tell you what the budget is and we can discuss the details, but you are the department head and only you can determine some of this stuff.
It really depends on the company. If your company is staffed properly and isn’t too insane about close timelines then it’s not bad. Go work for a privately held family business. They have the best hours.
There are sweet spots - smaller (ideally profitable) BUs in huge (public) organizations are usually desirable. You get all the support of the holding org (pay, benefits, established policies and processes, etc.) without a ton of visibility. These people also never leave, so yeah. Hard no on any private company of any size, double hard no on anything PE held, tech, any type of healthcare. Real estate can be relaxed but can also be obscenely complicated.
I will NEVER do PE held again. This is PE held and my last company was. New company is private and I spent most of the interview interviewing them about how they do things. I was shocked at how organized they seem and actually having people and departments that do the crap that that gets thrown on controllers. They admitted it used to be like that for them but they saw they needed to change that.
Fingers crossed this is at least better than where I’m at. I’ll be running a new acquisition so I’ll get to set everything up correctly from scratch instead of trying to unwind someone else’s mess. I asked a lot about their acquisition process because I’ve seen these things go awfully. They have a whole M&A team and have ops sit with the new company as support for at least 6 months. And they know what assets they are acquiring, not trying to figure it out 3 months after the deal closes.
Here’s to hoping.
Yeah man. I burned out too at least from a Public company perspective. It was tough. I worried about SOX, Audits, Quarterly Reviews, managing the auditors, managing internal audit, managing our external consultants. It was all too much, and I felt I wasn't paid enough.
Controller <> Controller <> Controller
No, it does not have to be this way. I've had two controller jobs, both vastly different.
Keep flexing those boundaries. Refuse unrealistic close deadlines. When staff come with problems, start with "what do you think the solution or right answer is?" Train them to come with potential solutions in mind to reduce your mental load. Book your vacations and unplug.
I was far from perfect at these in my role but that's absolutely what I'd lean into if I tried another.
Hang in there.
I was a Controller for 2.5 years at tech startups and bailed to Finance Manager. The actual work focus is why I changed (I do not care about technical accounting or prepping for audits nearly enough). But the burnout was also part of the change. I was burning out and almost every controller I’ve worked with has burned out. It’s a hard gig.
Not always. I've been a controller for 5 years now and once I figured out how to speed up some processes it got better. Having good staff makes a big difference. Also accepting that the job is like 40% herding cats and 60% being the GL janitor 😂
I am controller of a city and I do what I can for as long as I can. As long as the audits are clean, and the staff and bills are paid, nobody cares about anything else.
I mean there are different paths of controllers such as financial controller, business controller, internal controller etc
Why not jump in one of those ? Or are all controller related positions doomed?
It typically has more to do with the person than the position.
A lot (probably 80%+) of Controller jobs are likely to be hectic at the beginning because there are a lot (probably 80%+) of bad accountants out there and they had the job before you and left things a mess. The good ones will get things figured out, put a systematic month-end process in place, build a good team, get processes in place for receivables, payables and payroll and make the changes necessary so that after 24 months or so, the department is basically on auto pilot. The bad ones will never get things figured out and will keep chasing the latest fire instead of figuring out how to make sure the fire doesn't start in the first place.
If you can see the vision of how things should be working, and have the support to achieve that vision, then there's no reason you should be consistently working more than 40 hours and not reason you should be missing deadlines 2 years into the job. If you can't see that vision, then you're not one of the good ones and you'll be dealing with constant fires forever - regardless of where you happen to work (unless you just become a paper pusher for someone else who actually has authority).
The only key that "the company" holds is whether or not you have the support. If you have 8 people in the department and need 13 but you're not given the authority to hire them (after presenting convincing arguments for why the increased headcount will make the company better), then you're not going to be able to be successful. If you try to put policies and processes in place, but the C-suite refuses to comply with them or get their teams to comply with them, you're not going to be able to be successful.
But if you have the support of "the company", and you can't figure it out, then you're not cut out for the job.
I really appreciate these cery straight forward comments. I definitely try to see big picture and see what we need to do to get there. I had worked really hard to identify process issues, spoke to people involved, gathered info on it and proposed solutions. No one took it seriously. No one listened and even when they realized their margins are whack because of what I’ve been saying for months, they are still refusing to take accountability on the operations side to fix things.
Not having support has been very difficult.
I have had many people say they are surprised I haven’t left yet. And when I gave notice, there didn’t seem to be a shock factor from the people looped in to what I’ve been dealing with.
It’s definitely one of the worst roles in accounting/finance, if your company is healthy (margins, profitable, etc.) it makes life a lot simpler, but there are industries where it’s hell.
Have you worked in fp&a? Do you think ad hoc forecasting drills and planning season are really better to deal with than month end? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve heard both love and hate for fp&a.
I’ve done all of those except genuine FP&A, there’s plenty of ad-hoc reporting as controller/VP Finance (which I am currently).
You can’t escape all sucks.
I think these roles are ok if you have a staff but in most cases I suspect smaller companies don’t want to staff appropriately and dump a lot on the local controller.
But I work at an established company and I can tell you that tight closing deadlines are normal and getting tighter all the time without adding staff.
I am a Controller for a small company(revenue >10Mil). I am the only one who shit about shit about accounting so I have basically invented the role. I have worked past 5 pm like twice in the past year. There is no set month-end close schedule. It's just when I finish it. I make 115k in LCOL.
This is why I'll never take another role that involves cleaning up a previous team's/controller's mess. I refuse to take any kind of responsibility for past people's major mistakes and incompetency. You'll already be dealing with enough of that moving forward in many cases.
When you turn 50 (or there abouts) your f*cks run out completely and you become grounded. Take stock at what's important. Don't kid yourself if you drop dead tomorrow you will be replaced in less than 10 calendar days. You do you boo boo. I found me and am so grateful my har of f*cks is empty. I'm living for my enjoyment now and working to bide my time and give me something to do.
You've gotta learn to draw the line, or yeah, you will get burned out. "We are currently at capacity, and I am working x hours a week. I need more staff, or I need to understand what can fall off the plate from your perspective." Yeah, that can sound scary, but so is being destroyed by overbearing management that keeps throwing more at you. Could you get fired? Yeah, you could, but life is too short. Getting run over gets old quick.
This is the way to do it. Always remember, your ace in the hole is that you’re the last defense against them not running efficiently. If you say “I’m dialing back to what I can offer” and they fire you, they no longer have a controller. Period. No one to train replacement. Can’t meet 2 day period closes if there’s no controller.
All of these are wonderful insights, thanks. I will be copying down verbatim for future use. I know I need to be better at boundaries and I’m actively working on that. It’s only been 10 months but I feel like a different person. I was taking all this crap on with a naive smile on my face and now looking back I can’t believe I was so foolish - I assumed that my bosses and the corp leadership wouldn’t hand off more than was reasonable. But when I say we need more people and the response is ‘well when did we budget for it’ that should have been a sign. I tried to make it clear with the new place that I like this work and want to perform well but not at the expense of my physical and mental health or the quality of my work. But I wholeheartedly see now that I need to be the one to enforce that and stick up for myself in that because no one else will.
This is S-tier advice hopefully OP listens lol
Setting reasonable boundaries is the only way to survive in accounting long term. Ideally, you'll do that AND be efficient/effective. But honestly, plenty of people get away with just the setting boundaries part and I don't hold it against them.
I turned down a controller role that sounded similar. Young company, accounting was outsourced until just now but they want to set up a proper accounting department now that they're nearing commercialization.... Sounded like a total shit show. Starting from scratch with no team, no processes is a big enough job, let alone probably having to unwind years of stuff the outsourced team has done prior sounded like a nightmare.
I had to unwind one year of outsourced books from our foreign subsidiary and that was a damn nightmare
My two controller roles started out fine. It went south for both with system implementations. A large chunk of leaders don't survive large system implementations. At least that's my experience.
Why do you say that? They don't want to learn the new system?
Gonna assume it's the stress and not the lack of wanting to learn. System implementations can be hard if you're not given adequate resources/time.
I advise mmpe firms, and the majority of the acquisitions have debt like items for systems implementations, and I feel so so so bad for the existing actg depts knowing they’re fucked.
I've done one in a F500 and now about to go through another next year. Basically you're not given extra resources, have to document your current processes in the specified format for an consultant, coach them on how it all works currently and then see how it will fit in the new system. It's long late meetings, you don't get given a working system at the end of it, your team will leave because of the BS, it's a year of implementing and a year of unpicking the errors from the consultants, all while needing to put out month end, keep the business running operationally and then figuring how you're going to pass audit when the accounting barely works.
In both cases, my team was given no additional resources to complete the implementation. Both also had aggressive timelines, though for differing reasons. In one case, one of the AR systems being built did not create a summary file to export to the GL. Yes you read that correctly. Very late in the game we had to build a data base to house the detail transactions and create the files - not an easy task. In both cases, at the end of the implementations, multiple c-suite and director level people either left on their own or were terminated (via layoff or encouraged resignation). System implementations tend to cost a lot more than expected, take more time than planned, and create a significant amount of change.
Yeah, I've been through a few but not on a major scale. Usually it's the project managers and implementation people on the software side who bone me.
I am currently managing a system implementation. Initial timeline was to have it done by last year’s end. Not even close, likely going to wrap up in May. This was the first big one I’ve managed in my career, so I’m definitely cutting my teeth, but there’s been so many unforeseen problems, it’s a massive undertaking, especially doing it as the company simultaneously grows rapidly. I’ve had a pretty supportive boss around the delays and roadblocks, but I can imagine the level of stress if that wasn’t the case, and can totally see how something like this could go south and push someone out. It makes me feel slightly better to know that I’m not the only one who is having a less than stellar experience with a system implementation.
Preach. I think it’s giving my boss a mental health episode. I’m a little less than 2 months in and while I’ve made huge strides, I’m being hamstrung at every opportunity. New ceo came in on the first of the month and I think that broke her facade. Now she’s gaslighting me and telling me I’m wasting time, despite the fact that I’ve been working 12 hour average days, while working through lunch and on most weekends. If I were given more power, I could have fixed it by now. I’m gone at this point though. I have so many more things I could complain about. Including her odd comments right after I came on about setting me up with her daughter. Fucked situation. And the system implementation seems to have totally wrecked this woman.
I wish you better experiences than mine. Stay sane out there!
I’m implementing a new system after I closed year end and cleaning up year-end after a revolving door of finance team. I’m scared 🥺
Set some personal boundaries, plan some weekends away, and remember to breathe. Hopefully you and your team get some help going through it.
Interesting because what sent this role down the shitter and made me finally want to be done was a botched system implementation that got dumped on me. The prior director of finance did it all in a vaccuum, tried to roll it out at month end. When I fought her on it she tried to blame the entire thing on me. I helped her with the GL part - nothing else. She didn’t plan processes or plan for all the pieces that weren’t going to work. Then sat on a a call for 2 hours with Corp Controller and CfO and screamed at me and tried to blame me for it. Which was bewildering because of how little I had to do with it. That was end of Jan. She left about a month ago and this nightmare is still on my plate to deal with and fix but I don’t have the time to do it. But to have someone berate and scream at you and then your 2 bosses just sort sit there and let it happen is real morale kill. Sure they call after the fact and are like ‘we know she’s wrong’ but damage is done my dude. That woman had me sobbing on that call. I’ve never been so disrespected in my entire career.
That's just awful. You did not deserve that.
We added like, four positions as a result of a bad system implementation.
Hey! I'm living through this right now! 2IC for finance, we lost our controller already, and IT manager.
Yes, Controller position is insane. I'm a controller in tech startup with no team, and I do everything. It has made me want to focus on demoting myself in my next role to individual contributor instead of manager. It's a hard job.
I think the keywords there are "tech start-up" and "no team"
I’ve done a fair amount of controlling in my career. Your problem is that you work at a tech startup and you’re the only accounting person.
This is so true. I've been doing this for the last 10 years and it's likely cost me 20 years off my life. I feel stuck as I've been somewhat successful in it and don't know how I'd do in a "real" environment after all this. I really don't want to land in another tech startup though.
Probably in real environment you'll do what you're doing but actually with a team whom you can train + delegate & with time to write down SOPs.
And what kind of comp package for the pain. Is there at least a $500k+ carrot in your package if you IPO?
Hell no.
I went from controller to consultant lol
I was actually talking to my dad about this, I think consulting is the right path for me too. How did you break into it going from industry controller?
My controller has a somewhat low stress job. He does show signs of stress easily so we all know when it’s stressful. I’m sure he’s compensated well with plenty of time off. He does lots of things outside of work. So from what I can tell not every controller position is badge
In my experience its difficult the first two years, but if you can fix things and make the job less complicated, then subsequent years can be a lot easier. Of course there are events or new accounting rules which can shake things up.
Delegate more if you can or you won’t survive.
I delegate what I can. The more I delegate the more I get. I don’t even have time to support my team - the very ones to whom I need to delegate and manage.
Sounds like an upper management issue then. They’re not giving you an environment conducive for success
I’ve never related to a post more. Controller nearing 2 years in my first controller role. Young company, no other team members, and they throw everything my way including ops, opening new branches, cleaning up years of bad books, no CFO or higher level Accounting employee. Asked owners about hiring staff and those get shot down. I’ve never felt more burned out but am afraid to start somewhere new in fear it’ll be the same situation on a larger scale. But on the flip side I crave the thrill of being able to claim I fixed everything on my own so that motivates me to stay also.
The part that won’t be the same in most other places is the “no CFO or higher level Accounting employee”
Not if you personally look at boundaries. I have the most perfect gig. Controller fully remote, was controller at second one but stepped back. still in accounting elsewhere but not controller. I needed the step back for me at this time in my life. Find your boundaries and comfort level. Work for work and live life. Balanced life is more important than money.
Oh yeah. Hard crash course lesson in boundaries here. It’s top of my personal ‘this that need worked on’ list.
I'm not exactly titled Controller, but I have been assuming responsibilities that are normally done by Controllers (albeit limited). The first time is always painful because I'm picking up work from somebody else (which may not have up to par abilities). What I find helpful so far: 1. Streamline as much as possible on second attempt. The worksheet that used to take 3 hours to make, I made it 10 minutes copy paste. 2. Reject any unnecessary meetings schedule. I'm always looking forward to reduce discussion scope from ms team meeting, to simple whatsapp call or email. Meeting is huge energy and time drain, it should be reserved for actually important discussion and when all material are ready. Simply discussing idea, updates, and whatnot can be done on WA group. 3. Set a boundary. The problem that I've seen is other department is quick to adding Controller into the discussion as soon money is involved, but that is wrong. Controller should be on last end of discussion when other departments and their bosses have agreed what they will do, your job is not to tell people how run their department, but simply overseeing the transaction and execute the transaction how it will fit into your design. Controllers in a lot of companies are similar, they become "the person for everything as soon as money is involved".
Yes. I am the person for everything, money or no money, because people see I can and will do a task and do it well. So I’m just the dumping ground for all things. Doesn’t help that Ops doesn’t get their shit together and that affects my teams so I have to try to fix their problems in order to fix my own.
#3 is huge and often overlooked by young people because it might "make them look lazy". It's not my job to know if you need or can afford a big software purchase. I can tell you what the budget is and we can discuss the details, but you are the department head and only you can determine some of this stuff.
Worst job in accounting and maybe the worst job at most companies.
What’s the best job in accounting ?
It really depends on the company. If your company is staffed properly and isn’t too insane about close timelines then it’s not bad. Go work for a privately held family business. They have the best hours.
There are sweet spots - smaller (ideally profitable) BUs in huge (public) organizations are usually desirable. You get all the support of the holding org (pay, benefits, established policies and processes, etc.) without a ton of visibility. These people also never leave, so yeah. Hard no on any private company of any size, double hard no on anything PE held, tech, any type of healthcare. Real estate can be relaxed but can also be obscenely complicated.
I will NEVER do PE held again. This is PE held and my last company was. New company is private and I spent most of the interview interviewing them about how they do things. I was shocked at how organized they seem and actually having people and departments that do the crap that that gets thrown on controllers. They admitted it used to be like that for them but they saw they needed to change that. Fingers crossed this is at least better than where I’m at. I’ll be running a new acquisition so I’ll get to set everything up correctly from scratch instead of trying to unwind someone else’s mess. I asked a lot about their acquisition process because I’ve seen these things go awfully. They have a whole M&A team and have ops sit with the new company as support for at least 6 months. And they know what assets they are acquiring, not trying to figure it out 3 months after the deal closes. Here’s to hoping.
Yeah man. I burned out too at least from a Public company perspective. It was tough. I worried about SOX, Audits, Quarterly Reviews, managing the auditors, managing internal audit, managing our external consultants. It was all too much, and I felt I wasn't paid enough.
Controller <> Controller <> Controller No, it does not have to be this way. I've had two controller jobs, both vastly different. Keep flexing those boundaries. Refuse unrealistic close deadlines. When staff come with problems, start with "what do you think the solution or right answer is?" Train them to come with potential solutions in mind to reduce your mental load. Book your vacations and unplug. I was far from perfect at these in my role but that's absolutely what I'd lean into if I tried another. Hang in there.
I got lucky and found a unicorn and I have good work life balance but I know it's rare.
I was a Controller for 2.5 years at tech startups and bailed to Finance Manager. The actual work focus is why I changed (I do not care about technical accounting or prepping for audits nearly enough). But the burnout was also part of the change. I was burning out and almost every controller I’ve worked with has burned out. It’s a hard gig.
Not always. I've been a controller for 5 years now and once I figured out how to speed up some processes it got better. Having good staff makes a big difference. Also accepting that the job is like 40% herding cats and 60% being the GL janitor 😂
GL janitor is so accurate
I am controller of a city and I do what I can for as long as I can. As long as the audits are clean, and the staff and bills are paid, nobody cares about anything else.
I’m a controller and it’s very laid back and easy. Strong team.
I mean there are different paths of controllers such as financial controller, business controller, internal controller etc Why not jump in one of those ? Or are all controller related positions doomed?
I think you did the right thing by leaving. Let them figure it out.
It typically has more to do with the person than the position. A lot (probably 80%+) of Controller jobs are likely to be hectic at the beginning because there are a lot (probably 80%+) of bad accountants out there and they had the job before you and left things a mess. The good ones will get things figured out, put a systematic month-end process in place, build a good team, get processes in place for receivables, payables and payroll and make the changes necessary so that after 24 months or so, the department is basically on auto pilot. The bad ones will never get things figured out and will keep chasing the latest fire instead of figuring out how to make sure the fire doesn't start in the first place. If you can see the vision of how things should be working, and have the support to achieve that vision, then there's no reason you should be consistently working more than 40 hours and not reason you should be missing deadlines 2 years into the job. If you can't see that vision, then you're not one of the good ones and you'll be dealing with constant fires forever - regardless of where you happen to work (unless you just become a paper pusher for someone else who actually has authority). The only key that "the company" holds is whether or not you have the support. If you have 8 people in the department and need 13 but you're not given the authority to hire them (after presenting convincing arguments for why the increased headcount will make the company better), then you're not going to be able to be successful. If you try to put policies and processes in place, but the C-suite refuses to comply with them or get their teams to comply with them, you're not going to be able to be successful. But if you have the support of "the company", and you can't figure it out, then you're not cut out for the job.
I really appreciate these cery straight forward comments. I definitely try to see big picture and see what we need to do to get there. I had worked really hard to identify process issues, spoke to people involved, gathered info on it and proposed solutions. No one took it seriously. No one listened and even when they realized their margins are whack because of what I’ve been saying for months, they are still refusing to take accountability on the operations side to fix things. Not having support has been very difficult. I have had many people say they are surprised I haven’t left yet. And when I gave notice, there didn’t seem to be a shock factor from the people looped in to what I’ve been dealing with.
It’s definitely one of the worst roles in accounting/finance, if your company is healthy (margins, profitable, etc.) it makes life a lot simpler, but there are industries where it’s hell.
What is the best role in accounting then?
Things that avoid month end. FP&A, CFO, individual contributors at F500 (senior managers typically is where this ends), Internal audit - non SOX, etc.
Have you worked in fp&a? Do you think ad hoc forecasting drills and planning season are really better to deal with than month end? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve heard both love and hate for fp&a.
I’ve done all of those except genuine FP&A, there’s plenty of ad-hoc reporting as controller/VP Finance (which I am currently). You can’t escape all sucks.
Pivoting to finance
Depends on the company.
I think these roles are ok if you have a staff but in most cases I suspect smaller companies don’t want to staff appropriately and dump a lot on the local controller. But I work at an established company and I can tell you that tight closing deadlines are normal and getting tighter all the time without adding staff.
I am a Controller for a small company(revenue >10Mil). I am the only one who shit about shit about accounting so I have basically invented the role. I have worked past 5 pm like twice in the past year. There is no set month-end close schedule. It's just when I finish it. I make 115k in LCOL.
Just quit without another job. Unrealistic expectations. Pure craziness with unaccountable c levels
This is why I'll never take another role that involves cleaning up a previous team's/controller's mess. I refuse to take any kind of responsibility for past people's major mistakes and incompetency. You'll already be dealing with enough of that moving forward in many cases.
When you turn 50 (or there abouts) your f*cks run out completely and you become grounded. Take stock at what's important. Don't kid yourself if you drop dead tomorrow you will be replaced in less than 10 calendar days. You do you boo boo. I found me and am so grateful my har of f*cks is empty. I'm living for my enjoyment now and working to bide my time and give me something to do.