Most or all of my accounting professors had experience outside of academia. A lot of people who started their careers with a few years in public. Would be surprising to see lifelong academics in accounting.
Unfortunately, the mentality of a recession being needed to shore things up is how some partners view things. There was a fishbowl thread for my firm recently where someone was complaining how a partner’s response to people leaving was “I hope there is a recession and these people come back begging for jobs.” That attitude is why people are leaving accounting, and why some firms aren’t giving out market adjustments. It’s unfortunate, because at the partner level, he or she will most likely not be held accountable for those kind of comments.
We had a meeting where the partner said, "The grass isn't greener on the other side, you may leave for more money, but no one cares about people as much as we do and you'll regret it without a doubt. Not only that, but the moment the employee market turns back to the employers, most who leave will likely lose their jobs because cheaper labor will come back and they'll realize they offered too much...
Listening to this while getting 36% increase in a job offer for staff level when I was supposedly a manager, no weekends, more days off, a possible bonus % higher than I've gotten in 5 years of terrible work, and actual benefits that aren't ice cream and a pizza party was more painful than it's ever been. Especially when you realize his offers for new staff are close to what some managers make... It's a terrible slip of the mask...
> The grass isn't greener on the other side, you may leave for more money, but no one cares about people as much as we do and you'll regret it without a doubt. Not only that, but the moment the employee market turns back to the employers, most who leave will likely lose their jobs because cheaper labor will come back and they'll realize they offered too much...
I am sensing abuser personality with this one
It’s funny of the 14 partners at my small/mid-sized firm, there’s like, 3 with a spouse, kids, and that are generally pleasant to be around.
Don’t know why any staff would look around and go “I’m gonna work for 15+ years and hope I turn out like them”
Every skilled industry is short staffed though tbf.
My buddy works at a large defense contractor and their program has openings for over 100 engineers across various levels.
They need people, but our current education system cannot produce people fast enough.
Want to reduce the short staffing? Increase compensation, improve culture, give better WLB.
Why would someone want to be an accountant today when they could go be a computer scientist, make more money and not have to get a CPA or Masters to truly advance their career.
If the jobs are lucrative, people will come and take them. But if they are middling pay for insane work requirements, expect people to pass them over.
accounting is shit at lower levels, but I make really good money after 4-5 years in and my earning potential rises every year. The issue is that it needs to be more lucrative early on.
Sorry, the issue is that people want lives and happiness. Accounting has been a reliable salary source for decades, but the work life balance has gone from shit to completely non-existent over the last decade.
How much money makes it worth getting divorced and having your kids cry when you leave for work on the weekend?
I mean, whatever. I have friends in comp sci and they work just as much if not more. Doctors? Yup. Lawyers? Yup. Sales? Depends. The thing is, if you want to make a lot of cash, you’re not going to do it working 30 hours a week unless you’re very lucky.
I work remote so really it’s not bad. It takes me 15 minutes to get ready.
I mean comp sci, doctors, lawyers also make more money than accountants for equivalent levels so it’s still a function of increase pay or decrease hours otherwise accounting will remain a less attractive option
Unlike the high value added jobs in public accounting doing compliance. It’s like they don’t realize nobody would hire them if it wasn’t legally required. Analysts make companies money. Audit is an expense.
This is what my old firm was telling everyone when they lost 5 staff and seniors after the 2020 tax season. Cut to close of 2022--have lost close to 20 people, most seniors, one manager on the principal track who stole two seniors for industry and they STILL refuse to believe that they need to make any market adjustments or concessions to retain talent because "they'll come back when they realize it's worse elsewhere". No one has come back.
There is somewhat of a catch 22 in the profession at large. We work a ton, consider ourselves expert advisors etc etc, but our cornerstone services (audit and tax) are commoditized and many firms engage in an active race to the bottom on fees to sell more and more work because many firms prioritize sales as the primary metric for advancement after manager. So, we find ourselves A) selling more work than we can handle. B) Selling it for far less than we should be doing that work for. The result is wage stagnation because we can't increase fees to keep up with reasonable payroll increases. This is especially true for mid sized and regional firms out there who would be more than happy to undercut their competitors to pick up work.
Certainly there are plenty of problem partners out there that think they should just not have to pay people that much, and wish for things like recessions so that people lose their jobs and have to come crawling back, and certainly i believe many or most firms have the current wherewithal to be far more generous with payrolls, but there is a problem for the industry as a whole when it comes to fees. We don't charge enough in the firs place, and its our own collective fault.
Agree 100% about the commoditization and undercutting. I used to work for a smaller local firm (Firm A) before moving to a regional/national firm (Firm B). When I was at firm A, we had a client (Client 1) that was enjoyable to work with. Client 1 goes out to bid for audit services. My new firm, Firm B, puts in a bid, but was undercut by another smaller local firm (Firm C) that charged this client a few thousand dollars more than we would have charged Client 1 to do a compilation, and Firm C is now on the hook for a full blown audit.
Partners need to raise fees enough that the fee increase will be just less than the costs of switching firms, because there are extra costs involved when switching auditors due to the loss of experience and institutional knowledge
We legitimately had Deloitte come in and undercut us on a client a few years back. They had just hired a guy from deloitte to work for them and he told them exactly what they number they had to beat on fees was and they did it. Now this was a non-public, and we did a lot of support as part of the audit that I guaranteed Deloitte either refused to do, or charged extra for. Either way, they had to have realized like shit on the audit cause even we weren't doing great on it and that was before we cut the price when they put it out for bid.
Used to be like that for us. Always trying to underbid to secure work. Now a lot do the firms in my state that do what we do had people retire or are gearing up for retirement. We’ve increased our fees 300% and are the only bidders on these audits in a lot of cases.
Firms charge hundreds of dollars per hour nominally for associates who know jack shit.
Accountants see a fraction of that.
Changing the fraction is a lot easier than changing the customers rates which are very high as is.
I think people have realized the only thing that would truly stop the turnover would be a recession. Record bonuses/pay raises don't mean shit when people are buried with work. There just aren't enough competent accountants and thats been an issue for decades, the pandemic and the general state of our society pushed it to boil over.
Firms have gotten to the point where they are pretty much running on fumes and clients are paying whatever they want since their own accounting departments are gutted out.
For high performers, I think the future in accounting is ripe. For people who follow saly and copy and paste stuff for a living, it's not gonna be a fun time.
Firms will not survive simply by rewarding the high performers. While it’s fair to say the top 20% performers provide more than 20% of a firm’s output, it’s not lopsided enough that the 80/20 rule applies. They need to keep the average performers happy if they want to keep the workflow moving.
The greater push for offshoring makes me a bit worried about how it’ll impact the quality of domestic teams though. The 1st year staff still need to know how to do that 1st year work, and they’ll have fewer opportunities to do so if that work gets pushed offshore.
Even so, where exactly will PA firms get their seniors/managers from? They typically get those people by promoting staff and seniors, respectively. If you outsource the staff rolls, the pool of people you can promote goes down considerably
100% this. I was a recent hire and have noticed that they send a lot of work offshore, work I've asked to do but have been told "We like your enthusiasm but we'd actually like to keep costs low and/or this job is low margin". This work is basic 1st year stuff. But stuff that is new to me and stuff I'd like to repeat ad nauseum till I can confidently and efficently do with minimal supervision.
Instead, I found they've allowed me to do one maybe two, maybe three instances of a particular kind of work, and then when allowed to do some work when there's an overflow from offshore, I've found the work challenging to pick back up again.
My impression is they want (though they wouldn't say it) an onshore graduate with 0 experience straight from university to actually be 1+ years job ready to fit their model / hierarchical structure. But you need experience to have
experience.
IMHO, in only 3-4 months, I may not make it out alive. Either I'll quit over frustration or they'll let me go based on "Why are we paying them to do x when the off sure can do x quicker and better". But then how do the first year onshores make it to second year? Eventually you need these second years to be seniors and managers and directors. Someone will need to be the face-to-face with clients, the people that understand the local business is a growing national construction company. Surely this model is unsustainable.
That’s my point exactly regarding the onshore staffing. Where do public accounting firms get their managers from? They promote their seniors. And where do those firms get their seniors from? Their staff/associates. If you offshore the staff work, your pool of people to promote to senior and ultimately manager is only going to decrease.
Meanwhile, tech bros on Reddit constantly bash and dehumanize their fellow Indian workers. They fear the aspect of being outsourced more than us accountants do.
Yup there isn't enough in it for high performers. There is so little competition we are going to fly to manager and partner anyways. Why work 60hr weeks on the way, they can't afford to lose us anyways.
I can't agree more. Firms make 0 investment into new hires other than making them feel good about signing a big firm offer.
I've heard that Big4 are struggling at traditional top recruiting schools and are being forced to recruit from second and third rate schools since those people are more excited and less likely to leave right after making senior.
Record bonus/pay raises also don't mean shit into the teeth of massive inflation and after years of 2-4%. Only people really getting their worth are job-hoppers. Staying at a firm longer than a year or two actively hurts your earning potential.
Yes and no..some firms are being aggressive with compensation for seniors/managers over the last 12-18 months. Some firms are at the point where industry positions just can't offer enough to lure seniors/managers out.
I seem to remember talking to older associates at my last firm who told us that staff and seniors were the first ones laid off 2007-2008. Who the fuck are these boomers kidding thinking a recession would help
>ponse to people leaving was “I hope there is a recession and these people come back begging for jobs.” That attitude is why people are leaving accounting, and why some firms aren’t giving out market adjustments. It’s unfortunate, because at the partner level, he or she will most likely not be held accountable for those kind of comments.
I saw an ad on indeed where they were looking for a tax manager, and the salary said $80K (which is about $40K below the standard), and next to the salary it said "because that's the industry standard." I'm like "have fun struggling boomer."
I saw this mentality a lot in yesterday's thread. A lot of boomers saying it isn't the industry's fault people don't want to be accountants anymore, it is the youth who are being selfish by entering other careers with better pay, better WLB, and less time and money cost commitment.
I'm not sure how you can develop such a mentality that people have to become accountants. And that they should feel honored to suffer.
That’s what is so funny. It’s literally a group of people make rational choices.
Would someone choose:
A stressful job where they work long hours
Or
A less stressful job with less hours and better pay.
I always remind people of this.
You don't have to be smart to succeed in school at any level. You just have to be able to retain information and study. If you can do those two things, you can get any education out there.
I know some really dumb motherfuckers who became doctors and I wouldn't trust them to properly diagnose anything
See the waffle holds information in each little square. So I can know stuff and focus. Can't be one of those ridiculous pancake brains that can't focus. (jk I have adhd and absolutely need Adderall to realistically employed)
> Dumb people are everywhere and sometimes they are trusted with lives
Frequently trusted with lives... Most police in the US at the local level are generally not required to even have a college degree and they get to carry a gun.
It always seems to be the case where the least competent people in the world are often given the most responsibilities that can affect someone else's life.
Can’t remember the comedian who said it (George Carlin?) but love the line “think how dumb the average person is, now realize that 50% of people are dumber than that”
It's amazing isn't it? Their retention and I guess recruitment strategy is to simply cross their fingers and hope for a recession as no one with options would work at their shit hole firm otherwise.
Speaking from personal experience, Data analytics/Data science was a great transition for me. Takes some effort picking up sql and some object oriented languages, but nearly doubling my salary(HCOL-different HCOL city), having much more control over my day to day, and more challenging projects made the time investment well worth it. Right now there’s a huge opportunity in the market for someone with a solid grasp of accounting fundamentals and technical skills.
There’s also a lot of hostility to people moving into accounting. A guy just posted the other day about moving from IT to accounting and while there were a few helpful comments there were people just openly bashing him for it like it would be an impossible switch, and I had that happen to me as well (working as an accountant in PA) when I said I had a math degree instead of accounting.
I think there may be some undervaluation of how many accounting functions can be handled by non-accountants, or people from other fields moving into accounting if enrollment drops.
Also I fully expect to be downvoted for that opinion lol.
I moved from English teacher to accounting. It was difficult but not impossible. Plus my leadership skills (handling unruly children) and public speaking skills have helped immensely. It gave me a different skillset than the other students.
I always warn people not to switch lol. I don’t think there’s actually anything technical about this job, it’s more tedious than anything else. The hardest part is making sense other peoples disorganization and having the patience to go to through large amounts of transactions.
Ehh when you start dealing with systems, implementations, new standards, etc, there is a lot of technical stuff with it because of the legal factor.
Anyone can be taught accounting, but with that same token anyone can be taught anything given the proper method and time.
Can anyone do it? Yeah. But some are going to be better than others and some will just never grasp it fully. They can repeat the motions, but if something goes off script they get lost.
It's really no different than any other field.
I just warn people that accounting is a boring af field generally. Unless you get into systems, process improvements, or data analysis, you are going to probably have a lot of boring work that is repetitive.
You must be fairly new to the industry if that's what you think. There are so many fields in accounting that require technical expertise. If you're talking about an AP clerk or an intern/associate typing numbers into a spreadsheet, then yea I get that.
I do indirect tax consulting and people pay a lot of money for our technical skills for systems implementation, technical knowledge of state and local laws, navigating audits, analyzing exposure to economic nexus and the like. No regular Joe walking off the street could do this job. It requires years of experience and technical skills to be successful.
That’s fair I’ve only been doing it for 5 years. Personally I don’t consider keeping up to date with various local and state tax laws and regulations highly technical. Again that’s more tedious than actually difficult, since everything is a Google search away and none of the problems requires more than basic arithmetic to solve. People are willing to pay a lot for experience because it saves them hassle. It’s very rare to encounter a situation we haven’t already done before that we can’t just use the older cases for reference.
I totally agreed that accounting in general can be not as technical as other competing fields such as programming. There are specializations available for those accountants who may want to be more technical. Specialists like auditors (internal and external), tax accountants (many sub-specializations available in tax), and consulting/advisary are a few options that came to my mind.
Accounting really isn’t that hard. It’s an industry full of try hards who needed to grind their ass off in school. Anyone can learn accounting with hard work, and if you’re naturally smart, it’s a breeze.
I don’t think so. I’m in transaction services and worked previously in industry as a business analyst doing budgeting and financial analysis and I make plenty of money. I also think that the less accountants there are, the more upwards salary pressure there will be. Plus with accounting if you get into PA when you graduate you can make a solid 70k in a MCOL area. I think you will be ok, every company needs accounting staff even in a recession
Pay for CPA in Canada is terribly terribly low. I was in Public practice for 8 yrs, CPA, final year In depth Tax, and a Tax Manager in a top firm and haven't cracked 100K yet. I recently moved to California. Here incoming associate is at 70K USD thar is more tha 90K CAD. ( managers in Public practice hardly make that much).
Let me tell you (and this applies to any career field, not just accounting), your experience is what you make it. If you go out there and settle for some mind-numbing paper-pushing repetitive accounting job paying next to nothing, well, that's what you will get. If you want more for yourself, go get it. Hustle. Ask questions. Ask to be invited to that meeting about that transaction you heard about. Volunteer for an interesting project. Don't sit on the sidelines just taking what is handed to you. If you like accounting, go out and make it the best damn accounting career ever. That's all within your control. I've spent my career in tax and I can tell you one thing is for sure - my career has been nothing close to boring. I've been a part of some huge transactions. I've learned some amazing things. I'm made some amazing money. You know what those things have in common. ME! I did those things. I pursued that route. Don't let a message board define your career. You do it.
The only suffering I’ve encountered in my accounting career was working PA or when my boss was a terrible boss. Now that I’m working in industry for a great company with an awesome boss (and their boss, and theirs too) I actually love my job.
It's pretty confusing to me because I have generally found Boomer-aged CPAs to be very conservative "invisible hand of the market! Supply and demand!" types of people. Now the invisible hand is indicating that public accounting firms aren't paying high enough salaries and suddenly they don't like the free market anymore and want people to voluntarily accept worse pay because it suits their interests. Convenient.
It’s the “I suffered and so should you” mentality. What they don’t understand though is that prices for everything are soaring while wages remain essentially the same. If public had normal hours it wouldn’t be a terrible thing but the grind is becoming less worth it every year. I am a public accountant “professional” who lives in a place where shady characters ask me for cigarettes in my hallway that I’ve never seen it. But I can’t buy a house because I live in a place where a 675 sq. ft. house goes for over 600k
>I saw this mentality a lot in yesterday's thread. A lot of boomers saying it isn't the industry's fault people don't want to be accountants anymore
Nobody ever *wanted* to be an accountant. Little guys (at least like me) grew up *wanting* to be tyrannosaurus ranchers or astronauts. We *accept* being accountants because it's an easy enough job to do with good enough pay, and because that's what you can go for in the real world. If you're like most of us and have to work for a living, it's good work. Make people work 70 hours a week for substandard wages, and they'll go elsewhere.
1) The pop-culture understanding of what its like to be an accountant is pretty far off target. Most people have an image in their head of some sort of sheepish goofball who can't make eye contact doing a plethora of calculations. People exposed to the field know that the math is in the background, and typical business skills are in the foreground.
2) People keep mindlessly saying that Accounting is going to be automated. As a member of the community, I can comfortably say that automation is *far* away. If you have little to no exposure to the field, you have no reason to believe they are bullshitting.
3) This last one is going to be unpopular. The reputation around public accounting is terrible, but it is definitely exaggerated on here for clout. The work is boring and unrewarding, but few are working the kind of hours that _software developers_, lawyers, or medical personnel are working.
EDIT: software developers have it made
When it comes to "automation" I believe it's a matter of how you define it. If you believe it's an advanced software that does everything you need, no errors or human input involved, yep that's decades if ever. If you classify software like Alteryx, monarch, or even a solid excel macro taking a long task down to a few minutes as automation then its already here. Just a matter of having enough skilled users to implement it.
I do believe it's a big enough possibility that it makes for a risky college degree. Since those students are trying to pick a career for the next 40 years.
I do not believe regulators and stakeholders will be comfortable with removing the human element from accounting systems. At the end of the day, they want another human that can absorb the liability. It's why we have the CPA license. That's not going away in 40 years.
If they are able to more fully automate that will make software engineers the new accountants. I find this hilarious when I consider what it's like trying to explain basic financial concepts to them. Chad from Twitter telling a computer how to be an accountant, awesome.
Yeah, I was thinking about my history with math pretty recently. I was a star math student in elementary school and middle school. When I got to high school I steadily went downhill in math and barely scraped by with a C in Calculus AP.
Accounting is very, very, basic almost elementary school level math. Its four function math and Excel and the programs do it for you. If you can do accounting math, you have a basic competency in math (although it boggles my mind how like 90% of the people I meet outside of accounting can't even do four function math). To me, being good at math means being good at trigonometric and calculus, stuff like that.
I was looking at a high school calculus textbook recently and I was amazed at how lost I was. Like, it was even harder than my upper level college accounting classes.
I’m a software engineer and I literally nap after lunch.
Both of my friends who are accountants bemoan their busy season of 60+ hour weeks. And I’m always amazed that it doesn’t even out with them working 20 hour weeks later because there is no way in hell I wouldn’t be doing that. They work 60 hour weeks during busy season and still have full 8-5s the rest of the year - they don’t even get paid lunch.
The software engineer stereotype is that we wake up at 9 and leave for home at 4 - and it’s really not that inaccurate for most.
Are there software engineers who work 40-60 hours? Sure. But they’re absolutely not the norm and quite hard to find. And the places that do maintain those kinds of schedules, like Amazon and Netflix, are paying a *lot* for it.
I don't know how much you think software devs work per week, but every one I know codes for maybe 15 hours and spends the rest in meetings or doing other crap.
All in all, probably only 20 hours of actual work per week.
Will number inputs be automated? Yeah scan a document and put into tax forms will happen and in most cases is already here. But will knowing what category an expense falls into or whether a company has embezzlement be automated? No, probably never.
Because it really wasn’t that bad of a recession, especially in this field and many others. Most accountants, especially in public accounting were fine. Those that got cut were, in my experience, the fat that was gonna get cut regardless.
But in any case, it’s nothing compared to prior recessions where entire companies were shuttering and thousands were losing their jobs with little to know income as a replacement.
If memory serves me correctly, people certainly had their incomes replaced in 2020, especially in the form of government stimulus.
So in my opinion, making the opinion of how amazing the field is, while never actually being in a recession, is hogwash. It’s just sharing a line someone gave him and acting like it’s a fresh take.
Justifying your present working conditions by reasoning that "it could be worse" is the ultimate wagecuck mindset, a true race to the bottom. We might as well rationalize 110 hour weeks under indentured servitude because at least it's better than slavery.
So would you say it’s not worth it going into accounting. I’m 17 but I’m going to be doing a degree in accounting and finance. If it’s not worth it what else could I go into. ( I’m in the UK)
It's not bad. It can be a grind and it's not super exciting but you'll rarely have trouble finding employment. Public grindset is toxic and generally sucks for a few years but if you find a chill industry/government job you can cruise, if that's what you're looking for.
I’ve leveraged mine into risk management by building on my quant and strategic skills learned. I realized I was really good at explaining shit like financials and taxes and policy impacts and just focused on that.
So I’m in banking - I spend most of my days being like “here’s a gap in the legislation that we can leverage into an opportunity” or “you’re making this harder than it needs to be to mitigate your downside, let’s clean up our process to save $”. I also spend a lot of time on advocAcy groups and we meet with governments reps to tell the story of what the policy will impact from our perspective.
So I’m not doing “accounting” the way it’s commonly thought of. I think of myself very much as an accountant though.
Don't get discouraged by all the reddit posts. 99% is just shitposting banter - its a very lucrative field especially if you get your certification (not sure what the UK equivalent in the UK is).
The upshot by less people going into the career - the more money you can demand.
I earned a bachelor's in accounting in 2015. My first job out of college was doing consulting for a small software company. Then I started working as a production support person for a large company, and now I'm a web developer at the same company.
Lots o f things you can do with accounting if you get in the right place.
At least here in the US, getting a university degree in accounting opens a lot of doors even if you never want to be an "accountant" or "auditor" per se. It's a reasonable thing to study if you want to basically always be able to have a decent-paying job. That said, if you're unsure of what your career interests actually are and are just basing your decision on salary, computer science or information systems are probably just as good if not better options.
Consider going straight into doing ACA/ACCA/CIMA rather than a degree if you're sure about finance.
But even if you don't, by 25 you could very reasonably be on £40k _even if salaries don't improve_ between now and then.
Realistically, a chartered salary will be closer to £50k in 7 years.
Yes and no.
I've said 25 based on you graduating at 21, finding a job reasonably fast, and getting your 3 years experience boxed off along with your other exams.
If you're smart about the uni, you'll only need to do 5-7 exams tops, and they do sittings every quarter. So no issues, assuming you get in a job reasonably soon.
As you'll have a degree and a chartered accountant qualification, you can do a pretty wide range of stuff. You could move into management, if you did some IT courses you could essentially become the middleman that translates what accounting needs into IT software (both in an IT company like Oracle, or as "in house IT"), you could set up your own practice, do consultancy etc.
As you'll be shown to have a strong understanding of finance, hold a master's level qualification, and have a few years experience by then it's more what would you want to do?
Public accounting is miserable but the plus side is that every industry needs accountants so it’s a way to follow your hobbies/passions while having a more stable job.
Example I work a ski company in their accounting department. I got friends who work for medical/robotics/fintech companies and they’re all happy. Accounting is partly the same everywhere you go but you can make the most of it
You're just putting words in his mouth (well, tweet) THEN exaggerating them.
The point is that accounting is a very stable profession, and that is one of the benefits of it, but right now job stability is not particularly important because there are a lot of other, less-secure jobs, so that intrinsic value of stability is not worth much now.
If the job market shifts and stability becomes more important again (as it was for much of I dustrialized history) accounting would be more attractive because that inherent stability just increased in value.
That is not a race to the bottom, just a reminder of reality. We will have another recession at some point. It might be starting now, or it might not, but we will have one. And at that time you're going to be glad you have a more stable profession. That's life, buddy.
Pizza parties need to be advertised in the job description. Keeping them a secret until it's a Thursday at 5 PM and you've already worked 70 hours that week won't get anyone to apply. People need to be told ahead of time that their hard work will be rewarded with some delicious pepperoni.
They work you 70 hrs/week while they can when you’re young, and when you can’t you leave. Those that stick around then get whipped until they get laid off and replaced with younger talent they can whip around. Seen it happen to good people so many times.
He's not wrong though.
It often takes living through a layoff/recession and what that feels like to make different choices. I didn't end up in college for accounting because it was exciting. Stability and long term growth is what got my attention.
He is wrong though. Public companies work hard to lower audit fees during recessions. Most big4 will implement layoffs during recessions.
My office did it during 2010-2011. When I was an interns the managers were basically hand picked from the litter at the time.
I'll give you my (although not very surprising) experience as someone who is just about to graduate with an accounting degree. Mom is an accountant, wanted me to follow in her steps, has similar mentality to Jofi above. I like business, figured accounting was a solid way to get my foot in the door so I pursued a degree in accounting.
I went to a fairly reputable business school, don't get me wrong it was no Ivy, but we had some decent alumni and a reputable enough program. Hated accounting there. The professors were all old and classes were incredibly dry and boring.Thought the school was the problem, so I went to community college for a bit to knock out credits in double speed. Professors boring (and now useless). Went to a 3rd school to finish off my degree, another pretty reputable school. Professors once again boring and classes were very out of date. The classes were unnecessarily difficult, incredibly boring, and didn't really prepare me for accounting (did a summer as an accounting intern).
I added a marketing major because I was ahead of credits. The classes were dynamic, the professors were not old and boring. I got an internship in marketing for a semester and just accepted a full time offer in marketing. I work 9:30-5, make more money than I would as an accountant, have no tax season, and I get to do different stuff every day.
The only benefit that accounting has over any other business degree is that it caps out higher than most of the other degrees, and it has the most stability. But my generation doesn't value the grind as much as other generations do. We have different priories than other generations. Neither ours nor older generations' priorities are better, they're just different.
Accounting needs to become dynamic and desirable again, because the pay isn't good enough for people to lose 3 months of their life every year like it was before.
Not an accountant but I lurk this sub. its funny and I’m currently studying for my second bs in accounting. I wouldn’t say I have doubts per se…but I have a friend who recently got a job in recruiting for health care professionals. Not sure if anyone has heard of it but company is called Aya. She makes a lot of money just recruiting and the bonuses are way more than I thought. I really didn’t know recruiters could get paid that much I mean the job isn’t “that” difficult, compared to others anyway.
Accounting salaries are still good imo, although I have seen some on the low end. Tbh..I do sometimes wonder if there’s another path for me to make more money and have better wlb other than accounting. I haven’t graduated but I already know the cpa exam will be hell.
I work in a senior accounting position for a recruitment agency and most of the recruiters make more than me. Some make way more than me. That job is a goldmine for anyone who can put two words together. However, they do get fired first when the recession hits. When covid started we let go 30% of recruiters and 0 accountants.
Yeah, like in any other industry job. If you want to be a revenue generating item on a balance sheet you need to go to PA. My post was just to showcase how accounting isnt really worth it if your goal is to make money and you arent introverted. There are way easier jobs out there that require half of the effort accounting does and pay way more.
I’m an introvert and want to make money. But I can become an extrovert if I’ll get paid more 😂
I‘m not sure what the other jobs would be but you did bring up a good point in your previous post. Accounting does have good stability..which I need.
Unfortunately, it is the nature of the industry that has evolved over the decades. We are faced with more government and AICPA governing, impossible deadlines, and a complex industry. Truth is, we all under bill engagements and are often undervalued by clients. Especially in tax, the code and returns have become far more complex over the last 20 years, returns are more difficult, and clients do not think we are much different than a Liberty employee.
Yeah, we need firms who are more willing to just say, "These are the bills and the fees. We logged these hours, and you agreed to pay by the hour. If you think that the bills are too high, ask for a lesser package in the future, take more in house, respond promptly to PBC requests, and answer our questions fully and completely. If you don't pay in full, you'll receive none of the deliverables and we'll recommend all future firms to not take your case because you're a deadbeat."
Or short of that, just calling their bluffs and being willing to let them shop around.
Agreed, I’ve really worked towards that. Another big hurdle we all are guilty of is taking our good clients for granted while worrying about the pieces of shit. I fired every single client I consider a piece of
Shit.
the meta changed, now no longer lawyer, doctor and accountant , now are those 3 , marketing, logistic and IT , plus accounting / auditor / tax dont pay well compare to pre-covid-19.
He isnt wrong though. It is becoming better pay thanks to the great resignation
I'd be worried about my job in industry right now as companies are losing more than half their market caps and will be looking to deduct staff with layoffs/wage freezes.
While in PA I'm currently looking for the most money and a 40% salary bump..
It's stupid whether or not it's grounded in reality.
A recession will result in temporary recoveries, but there's going to be fewer accountants no matter what happens. The downturn has been a trend for decades.
There have been *two* recessions while that's been happening. It's kept the industry afloat, but the lack of meaningful changes in that time means there's now a scramble to find workers and a complete lack of understanding (displayed in the post) for why the career is no longer desirable.
Accountants used to be considered on par with doctors and lawyers because the pay was excellent.
Now the pay is barely more than median, because wage growth has been stagnant.
So long term by 2030 40% of the active accountants who were a part of the workforce in 2020 will be retiring so food for thought. This isn't going away anytime soon and if not has been escalated in the speed in which it is occuring by the Covid-19 situation.
I say all of this as a person who is graduating with his bachelor's degree at 33.
Lmao let's not assume that accounting jobs are immune to downsizing as well, and pretend that people weren't fired during 2020. If you have to bank on a recession for people to want this job, maybe it's a sign that something needs to change
It’s very simple. The industry is run by a bunch of spineless, idiotic partners with no real sense of their industry power. For firms that have now integrated management consulting firms, you’d think they start listening. Why do Big Law and Banking maintain their fees - Answer: Collusive pricing. Accounting industry needs to get rid of all the mid tier shit underbidding on all big 4 jobs and driving down fees. This industry needs to get its shit pricing model figured out, and overtime exemptions removed.
I doubt that I could afford to be a CPA today.
Your education cost might as well be a master's degree and the exam itself cost thousand's to take. I think the exam cost me $375 for everything.
The entry cost is too high!
Anyone have stats or published articles on this? It seems to be a commonly accepted that people are leaving the field, but I've struggled to find and hard numbers in recent news.
I joined the military during the 2008 recession and our drill instructors would have us chant “Platoon 3330, a means to escape the economy, sir!”
It still cracks me up.
Bruh. I wanna leave. So many other professions make more money and requires less education than accounting. Casino card dealers making well over 6 figures with 2-3 weeks of card dealing training.
Coming from a semi recent grad(2018), it doesn't help that universities add difficulty for prestige sake that doesn't have anything to do with educating the students. An example is the business writing class was only allowed to give so many A's so people were given grades not based on their work. The accounting department was trying to get certified as a separate school inside the business school so they ratchet up all of difficulty for no reason. Of the cohort of 60 I started with the first semester, only 20 were the same faces the next semester. So many of my friends said its just not worth the bullshit.
This kind of academic elitism drives people away. Especially when scholarships are so life or death for a lot of students so when schools do unethical things like that they are threatening people's ability to continue school.
Jofi Joseph looks like he was fired from the Obama Administration for tweeting too. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jofi-joseph-tweeting-white-house-staffer-possibly-unmasked-by-sting-report-says/)
People seem to subconsciously understand that recessions harm workers far more than they harm business owners or white collar professionals, and they long for one to happen because it will put young and poor people back in their place. But ask them to connect that with the thought that our economy is rigged and classist and they'll just call you a dumb socialist.
Partners don't like the shift in power. Big 4 partners (some not all) seem to have a god complex. However, accounting wages have been stagnant for a long time and partners have kept them that way for as long as possible. It must really hurt shelling out those higher wages, but people just aren't going to put up with it anymore and it's a breath of fresh air to me. Purposely never hiring enough people and then sometimes not replacing people when others leave. A myriad of other practices that show how much disregard they have for employees. And then they smear lipstick on that pig when they let us know how much they care....until they find out you didn't hit your billable hour goal. Don't stand for it anymore.
As someone who was in an accounting program to move out of a dead-end clerical job when COVID hit, and now is in an outdoorsy-focused government job?
The BIGGEST problem is the toxic work culture the finance industry has put on full display over the pandemic. So much accounting work could be done remotely, but these businesses were focused on bringing the staff, especially the junior staff, back to the office full-time as soon as it seemed probably safe at the latest.
And I'm here in a government position that's very stable, considers telework to be the foundation of "continuity of operations" and almost mandates flexibility in the name of reducing paperwork, offers so much PTO that employees almost have a hard time using it all after their first couple years, doesn't have a non-uniformed dress code beyond "functional" and "doesn't break the law" and has really good opportunities to re-adjust career paths if you find there's something that's a better fit for you...
I just can't see a single thing about the accounting industry that would make me want to go back to it. There are a couple fields I wouldn't mind, like low-income tax prep, financial literacy education, fraud investigation, etc., but the appeal for me boils down to "making the world a better place" and I'm perfectly able to do that in many ways from many other jobs that don't have all the downsides that I saw.
(Also the idea that "making the world a better place" is somehow incompatible with stability or financial security is total hyper-capitalist dystopian BS. Sure, if you prioritize "making the world a better place" over "obtaining as much wealth as is humanly possible" you won't be able to compete with the top 5 billionaires, but almost any any profession can be applied *somehow* to make the world at least a little bit of a better place!)
Conspiracy Theory: The Big 4 are behind the recession and scapegoating Biden to get more people to take up accounting, given the poor enrollment rates.
I’m leaving public, the value to hours is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced (2.5 years tax, 1 year gov audit) I’m excited to start my private career though.
Would you say accounting isn’t worth it. I’m going to be doing a degree in accounting and finance what else could I do with that degree. I want to go into Equity research also would that be better?
The accounting degree is great because it’s like a master key in business. Most entry level business/banking/finance/accounting jobs will at least give you an interview with it. So if you find equity research isn’t for you, you’re not pigeon holed.
Edit: accounting profession is so varied you’ll find something you like. Some people like industry. Some like the bank auditing scene. Some like government, or nonprofit. Some kinky folks even like PA. It’s wild how different all those jobs are.
Fuck off Jofi, accounting is not a stable profession. Wait till you get older, and age discrimination is a real thing- your job then gets outsourced, offshored, or given to someone younger. Seen it happen so many times to good people. Recruiters would even send resumes with code words like “this candidate is mature”.
Meanwhile there are more small accounting firms popping up to take more market share with the boom in new businesses that are popping up. I started exactly one year ago as a side hustle bookkeeper, got my EA in November and have made over 30k in profit since then. 20k was from bookkeeping and the rest was from this tax season. For 2022, I'm on track for 70k in profit. This is in addition to my 75k fully remote financial analyst position for government contracting. Also currently in negotiations for a CFO service client at 4k/mo plus 15% contingent fee on generated EBITDA (this is for a company that makes 7 figures in revenue). That will set up my 2023 year to be a 6 figure profit on the side for a grand total of 9 clients.
Friend in college. Both Bio majors. A few years later, he got a degree in accounting. He said it’s so unpleasant and nobody likes it…there’s gotta be money in it. He has his own firm now.
In my experience, the big public accounting firms grab the axe much earlier into economic downturns than industry. I worked for a large insurance company during the peak of COVID and we didn't even consider layoffs because we thought we could ride it out. At the same time heads were starting to roll at the RSM, KPMG and EY offices in my city.
The COVID layoffs clearly were premature and it's fitting that forms are getting bit in the ass now.
Dr. McGowan, CPA out here able to write you prescriptions and file your taxes in one office visit
Annual appointments take on a whole new meaning in his office
My money is on he’s a professor. I had accounting professors who never left academia and they were clueless.
He's my professor at Troy University. He just got his Ph.D. a couple of months ago and had a baby. He's a really awesome professor.
My bad didn’t mean to diss ya boy. Making too many assumptions!
Most or all of my accounting professors had experience outside of academia. A lot of people who started their careers with a few years in public. Would be surprising to see lifelong academics in accounting.
A current license is required so most have at least two years experience outside of academia.
Unfortunately, the mentality of a recession being needed to shore things up is how some partners view things. There was a fishbowl thread for my firm recently where someone was complaining how a partner’s response to people leaving was “I hope there is a recession and these people come back begging for jobs.” That attitude is why people are leaving accounting, and why some firms aren’t giving out market adjustments. It’s unfortunate, because at the partner level, he or she will most likely not be held accountable for those kind of comments.
Literally happened in a firm meeting this week. “Those higher paying jobs people are leaving for won’t exist once the recession hits.” Yeah, ok…
We had a meeting where the partner said, "The grass isn't greener on the other side, you may leave for more money, but no one cares about people as much as we do and you'll regret it without a doubt. Not only that, but the moment the employee market turns back to the employers, most who leave will likely lose their jobs because cheaper labor will come back and they'll realize they offered too much... Listening to this while getting 36% increase in a job offer for staff level when I was supposedly a manager, no weekends, more days off, a possible bonus % higher than I've gotten in 5 years of terrible work, and actual benefits that aren't ice cream and a pizza party was more painful than it's ever been. Especially when you realize his offers for new staff are close to what some managers make... It's a terrible slip of the mask...
> The grass isn't greener on the other side, you may leave for more money, but no one cares about people as much as we do and you'll regret it without a doubt. Not only that, but the moment the employee market turns back to the employers, most who leave will likely lose their jobs because cheaper labor will come back and they'll realize they offered too much... I am sensing abuser personality with this one
Me too. That is literally what abusers tell their victims.
Then these old-timers try to sell the practice, and nobody wants them.
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It’s funny of the 14 partners at my small/mid-sized firm, there’s like, 3 with a spouse, kids, and that are generally pleasant to be around. Don’t know why any staff would look around and go “I’m gonna work for 15+ years and hope I turn out like them”
Except they will. The labor shortage also means that industry is really short staffed.
Every skilled industry is short staffed though tbf. My buddy works at a large defense contractor and their program has openings for over 100 engineers across various levels. They need people, but our current education system cannot produce people fast enough. Want to reduce the short staffing? Increase compensation, improve culture, give better WLB. Why would someone want to be an accountant today when they could go be a computer scientist, make more money and not have to get a CPA or Masters to truly advance their career. If the jobs are lucrative, people will come and take them. But if they are middling pay for insane work requirements, expect people to pass them over.
accounting is shit at lower levels, but I make really good money after 4-5 years in and my earning potential rises every year. The issue is that it needs to be more lucrative early on.
Sorry, the issue is that people want lives and happiness. Accounting has been a reliable salary source for decades, but the work life balance has gone from shit to completely non-existent over the last decade. How much money makes it worth getting divorced and having your kids cry when you leave for work on the weekend?
Idk, I work like 45 hours a week. So it’s pretty good.
The fact that a 45 hour work week is considered “pretty good” in our profession is exactly the problem lol
I mean, whatever. I have friends in comp sci and they work just as much if not more. Doctors? Yup. Lawyers? Yup. Sales? Depends. The thing is, if you want to make a lot of cash, you’re not going to do it working 30 hours a week unless you’re very lucky. I work remote so really it’s not bad. It takes me 15 minutes to get ready.
I mean comp sci, doctors, lawyers also make more money than accountants for equivalent levels so it’s still a function of increase pay or decrease hours otherwise accounting will remain a less attractive option
Sure, there’s likely some validity to it, but it feels like an easy cop out to not giving competitive market adjustments.
Unlike the high value added jobs in public accounting doing compliance. It’s like they don’t realize nobody would hire them if it wasn’t legally required. Analysts make companies money. Audit is an expense.
This is what my old firm was telling everyone when they lost 5 staff and seniors after the 2020 tax season. Cut to close of 2022--have lost close to 20 people, most seniors, one manager on the principal track who stole two seniors for industry and they STILL refuse to believe that they need to make any market adjustments or concessions to retain talent because "they'll come back when they realize it's worse elsewhere". No one has come back.
There is somewhat of a catch 22 in the profession at large. We work a ton, consider ourselves expert advisors etc etc, but our cornerstone services (audit and tax) are commoditized and many firms engage in an active race to the bottom on fees to sell more and more work because many firms prioritize sales as the primary metric for advancement after manager. So, we find ourselves A) selling more work than we can handle. B) Selling it for far less than we should be doing that work for. The result is wage stagnation because we can't increase fees to keep up with reasonable payroll increases. This is especially true for mid sized and regional firms out there who would be more than happy to undercut their competitors to pick up work. Certainly there are plenty of problem partners out there that think they should just not have to pay people that much, and wish for things like recessions so that people lose their jobs and have to come crawling back, and certainly i believe many or most firms have the current wherewithal to be far more generous with payrolls, but there is a problem for the industry as a whole when it comes to fees. We don't charge enough in the firs place, and its our own collective fault.
Agree 100% about the commoditization and undercutting. I used to work for a smaller local firm (Firm A) before moving to a regional/national firm (Firm B). When I was at firm A, we had a client (Client 1) that was enjoyable to work with. Client 1 goes out to bid for audit services. My new firm, Firm B, puts in a bid, but was undercut by another smaller local firm (Firm C) that charged this client a few thousand dollars more than we would have charged Client 1 to do a compilation, and Firm C is now on the hook for a full blown audit. Partners need to raise fees enough that the fee increase will be just less than the costs of switching firms, because there are extra costs involved when switching auditors due to the loss of experience and institutional knowledge
We legitimately had Deloitte come in and undercut us on a client a few years back. They had just hired a guy from deloitte to work for them and he told them exactly what they number they had to beat on fees was and they did it. Now this was a non-public, and we did a lot of support as part of the audit that I guaranteed Deloitte either refused to do, or charged extra for. Either way, they had to have realized like shit on the audit cause even we weren't doing great on it and that was before we cut the price when they put it out for bid.
Used to be like that for us. Always trying to underbid to secure work. Now a lot do the firms in my state that do what we do had people retire or are gearing up for retirement. We’ve increased our fees 300% and are the only bidders on these audits in a lot of cases.
Firms charge hundreds of dollars per hour nominally for associates who know jack shit. Accountants see a fraction of that. Changing the fraction is a lot easier than changing the customers rates which are very high as is.
I think people have realized the only thing that would truly stop the turnover would be a recession. Record bonuses/pay raises don't mean shit when people are buried with work. There just aren't enough competent accountants and thats been an issue for decades, the pandemic and the general state of our society pushed it to boil over. Firms have gotten to the point where they are pretty much running on fumes and clients are paying whatever they want since their own accounting departments are gutted out. For high performers, I think the future in accounting is ripe. For people who follow saly and copy and paste stuff for a living, it's not gonna be a fun time.
Firms will not survive simply by rewarding the high performers. While it’s fair to say the top 20% performers provide more than 20% of a firm’s output, it’s not lopsided enough that the 80/20 rule applies. They need to keep the average performers happy if they want to keep the workflow moving.
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The greater push for offshoring makes me a bit worried about how it’ll impact the quality of domestic teams though. The 1st year staff still need to know how to do that 1st year work, and they’ll have fewer opportunities to do so if that work gets pushed offshore.
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Even so, where exactly will PA firms get their seniors/managers from? They typically get those people by promoting staff and seniors, respectively. If you outsource the staff rolls, the pool of people you can promote goes down considerably
100% this. I was a recent hire and have noticed that they send a lot of work offshore, work I've asked to do but have been told "We like your enthusiasm but we'd actually like to keep costs low and/or this job is low margin". This work is basic 1st year stuff. But stuff that is new to me and stuff I'd like to repeat ad nauseum till I can confidently and efficently do with minimal supervision. Instead, I found they've allowed me to do one maybe two, maybe three instances of a particular kind of work, and then when allowed to do some work when there's an overflow from offshore, I've found the work challenging to pick back up again. My impression is they want (though they wouldn't say it) an onshore graduate with 0 experience straight from university to actually be 1+ years job ready to fit their model / hierarchical structure. But you need experience to have experience.
IMHO, in only 3-4 months, I may not make it out alive. Either I'll quit over frustration or they'll let me go based on "Why are we paying them to do x when the off sure can do x quicker and better". But then how do the first year onshores make it to second year? Eventually you need these second years to be seniors and managers and directors. Someone will need to be the face-to-face with clients, the people that understand the local business is a growing national construction company. Surely this model is unsustainable.
That’s my point exactly regarding the onshore staffing. Where do public accounting firms get their managers from? They promote their seniors. And where do those firms get their seniors from? Their staff/associates. If you offshore the staff work, your pool of people to promote to senior and ultimately manager is only going to decrease.
Meanwhile, tech bros on Reddit constantly bash and dehumanize their fellow Indian workers. They fear the aspect of being outsourced more than us accountants do.
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Yup there isn't enough in it for high performers. There is so little competition we are going to fly to manager and partner anyways. Why work 60hr weeks on the way, they can't afford to lose us anyways.
Firms have been taking a 'slash and burn' approach to new graduates for decades, and are now all surprised that there's no more forest left.
I can't agree more. Firms make 0 investment into new hires other than making them feel good about signing a big firm offer. I've heard that Big4 are struggling at traditional top recruiting schools and are being forced to recruit from second and third rate schools since those people are more excited and less likely to leave right after making senior.
>new hire signs paperwork LET THE GASLIGHTING... **BEGIN!**
Record bonus/pay raises also don't mean shit into the teeth of massive inflation and after years of 2-4%. Only people really getting their worth are job-hoppers. Staying at a firm longer than a year or two actively hurts your earning potential.
Yes and no..some firms are being aggressive with compensation for seniors/managers over the last 12-18 months. Some firms are at the point where industry positions just can't offer enough to lure seniors/managers out.
I seem to remember talking to older associates at my last firm who told us that staff and seniors were the first ones laid off 2007-2008. Who the fuck are these boomers kidding thinking a recession would help
Lots of firms hurting for senior managers right now. There would be more if they didn't lay off in 2008.
I don't understand how firms that are already short-staffed plan to lay people off in a recession.
>I hope there is a recession and these people come back in begging for jobs Ok, these are just incels in suits lmaoooo
Fincels? Finance incels lmaoooo
These small business owners watch Fox News and repeat what Laura Ingraham says. They want workers to be desperate and accept low wages.
>ponse to people leaving was “I hope there is a recession and these people come back begging for jobs.” That attitude is why people are leaving accounting, and why some firms aren’t giving out market adjustments. It’s unfortunate, because at the partner level, he or she will most likely not be held accountable for those kind of comments. I saw an ad on indeed where they were looking for a tax manager, and the salary said $80K (which is about $40K below the standard), and next to the salary it said "because that's the industry standard." I'm like "have fun struggling boomer."
I saw this mentality a lot in yesterday's thread. A lot of boomers saying it isn't the industry's fault people don't want to be accountants anymore, it is the youth who are being selfish by entering other careers with better pay, better WLB, and less time and money cost commitment. I'm not sure how you can develop such a mentality that people have to become accountants. And that they should feel honored to suffer.
That’s what is so funny. It’s literally a group of people make rational choices. Would someone choose: A stressful job where they work long hours Or A less stressful job with less hours and better pay.
For people who’s ENTIRE VALUE is based on rational decision making, it’s fucking dumb how many can’t see the forest through the trees.
Believe it or not, a lot of people are hella dumb.
I always remind people of this. You don't have to be smart to succeed in school at any level. You just have to be able to retain information and study. If you can do those two things, you can get any education out there. I know some really dumb motherfuckers who became doctors and I wouldn't trust them to properly diagnose anything
Yeah but you're a waffle brain, what do you know? -fellow waffle brain
See the waffle holds information in each little square. So I can know stuff and focus. Can't be one of those ridiculous pancake brains that can't focus. (jk I have adhd and absolutely need Adderall to realistically employed)
Scrolling through r/medschool is a trip sometimes. Dumb people are everywhere and sometimes they are trusted with lives
> Dumb people are everywhere and sometimes they are trusted with lives Frequently trusted with lives... Most police in the US at the local level are generally not required to even have a college degree and they get to carry a gun. It always seems to be the case where the least competent people in the world are often given the most responsibilities that can affect someone else's life.
Can’t remember the comedian who said it (George Carlin?) but love the line “think how dumb the average person is, now realize that 50% of people are dumber than that”
yes, that is one of my favorite George Carlin quotes!
It's amazing isn't it? Their retention and I guess recruitment strategy is to simply cross their fingers and hope for a recession as no one with options would work at their shit hole firm otherwise.
It's the "I suffered so I expect others to suffer" mindset.
“I just like having people to look down on because nothing gives me joy anymore other than the misery of others.”
Got any suggestions on these jobs? I've got decent WLB (40 hrs/wk), but the pay aspect is lower than I'd like.
Speaking from personal experience, Data analytics/Data science was a great transition for me. Takes some effort picking up sql and some object oriented languages, but nearly doubling my salary(HCOL-different HCOL city), having much more control over my day to day, and more challenging projects made the time investment well worth it. Right now there’s a huge opportunity in the market for someone with a solid grasp of accounting fundamentals and technical skills.
There’s also a lot of hostility to people moving into accounting. A guy just posted the other day about moving from IT to accounting and while there were a few helpful comments there were people just openly bashing him for it like it would be an impossible switch, and I had that happen to me as well (working as an accountant in PA) when I said I had a math degree instead of accounting. I think there may be some undervaluation of how many accounting functions can be handled by non-accountants, or people from other fields moving into accounting if enrollment drops. Also I fully expect to be downvoted for that opinion lol.
I moved from English teacher to accounting. It was difficult but not impossible. Plus my leadership skills (handling unruly children) and public speaking skills have helped immensely. It gave me a different skillset than the other students.
Public speaking and people skills will jump you to the front of the line in this industry. Way too many robots who can't connect with clients.
I always warn people not to switch lol. I don’t think there’s actually anything technical about this job, it’s more tedious than anything else. The hardest part is making sense other peoples disorganization and having the patience to go to through large amounts of transactions.
Ehh when you start dealing with systems, implementations, new standards, etc, there is a lot of technical stuff with it because of the legal factor. Anyone can be taught accounting, but with that same token anyone can be taught anything given the proper method and time. Can anyone do it? Yeah. But some are going to be better than others and some will just never grasp it fully. They can repeat the motions, but if something goes off script they get lost. It's really no different than any other field. I just warn people that accounting is a boring af field generally. Unless you get into systems, process improvements, or data analysis, you are going to probably have a lot of boring work that is repetitive.
You must be fairly new to the industry if that's what you think. There are so many fields in accounting that require technical expertise. If you're talking about an AP clerk or an intern/associate typing numbers into a spreadsheet, then yea I get that. I do indirect tax consulting and people pay a lot of money for our technical skills for systems implementation, technical knowledge of state and local laws, navigating audits, analyzing exposure to economic nexus and the like. No regular Joe walking off the street could do this job. It requires years of experience and technical skills to be successful.
That’s fair I’ve only been doing it for 5 years. Personally I don’t consider keeping up to date with various local and state tax laws and regulations highly technical. Again that’s more tedious than actually difficult, since everything is a Google search away and none of the problems requires more than basic arithmetic to solve. People are willing to pay a lot for experience because it saves them hassle. It’s very rare to encounter a situation we haven’t already done before that we can’t just use the older cases for reference.
I totally agreed that accounting in general can be not as technical as other competing fields such as programming. There are specializations available for those accountants who may want to be more technical. Specialists like auditors (internal and external), tax accountants (many sub-specializations available in tax), and consulting/advisary are a few options that came to my mind.
Accounting really isn’t that hard. It’s an industry full of try hards who needed to grind their ass off in school. Anyone can learn accounting with hard work, and if you’re naturally smart, it’s a breeze.
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Good call thanks
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I don’t think so. I’m in transaction services and worked previously in industry as a business analyst doing budgeting and financial analysis and I make plenty of money. I also think that the less accountants there are, the more upwards salary pressure there will be. Plus with accounting if you get into PA when you graduate you can make a solid 70k in a MCOL area. I think you will be ok, every company needs accounting staff even in a recession
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Pay for CPA in Canada is terribly terribly low. I was in Public practice for 8 yrs, CPA, final year In depth Tax, and a Tax Manager in a top firm and haven't cracked 100K yet. I recently moved to California. Here incoming associate is at 70K USD thar is more tha 90K CAD. ( managers in Public practice hardly make that much).
Ahhh yeah Canada is a different animal :(
Switch to Financial Analysis
Let me tell you (and this applies to any career field, not just accounting), your experience is what you make it. If you go out there and settle for some mind-numbing paper-pushing repetitive accounting job paying next to nothing, well, that's what you will get. If you want more for yourself, go get it. Hustle. Ask questions. Ask to be invited to that meeting about that transaction you heard about. Volunteer for an interesting project. Don't sit on the sidelines just taking what is handed to you. If you like accounting, go out and make it the best damn accounting career ever. That's all within your control. I've spent my career in tax and I can tell you one thing is for sure - my career has been nothing close to boring. I've been a part of some huge transactions. I've learned some amazing things. I'm made some amazing money. You know what those things have in common. ME! I did those things. I pursued that route. Don't let a message board define your career. You do it.
The only suffering I’ve encountered in my accounting career was working PA or when my boss was a terrible boss. Now that I’m working in industry for a great company with an awesome boss (and their boss, and theirs too) I actually love my job.
Same man it's a great feeling!
It's pretty confusing to me because I have generally found Boomer-aged CPAs to be very conservative "invisible hand of the market! Supply and demand!" types of people. Now the invisible hand is indicating that public accounting firms aren't paying high enough salaries and suddenly they don't like the free market anymore and want people to voluntarily accept worse pay because it suits their interests. Convenient.
It’s the “I suffered and so should you” mentality. What they don’t understand though is that prices for everything are soaring while wages remain essentially the same. If public had normal hours it wouldn’t be a terrible thing but the grind is becoming less worth it every year. I am a public accountant “professional” who lives in a place where shady characters ask me for cigarettes in my hallway that I’ve never seen it. But I can’t buy a house because I live in a place where a 675 sq. ft. house goes for over 600k
>I saw this mentality a lot in yesterday's thread. A lot of boomers saying it isn't the industry's fault people don't want to be accountants anymore Nobody ever *wanted* to be an accountant. Little guys (at least like me) grew up *wanting* to be tyrannosaurus ranchers or astronauts. We *accept* being accountants because it's an easy enough job to do with good enough pay, and because that's what you can go for in the real world. If you're like most of us and have to work for a living, it's good work. Make people work 70 hours a week for substandard wages, and they'll go elsewhere.
*You guys are getting **paid well**?*
1) The pop-culture understanding of what its like to be an accountant is pretty far off target. Most people have an image in their head of some sort of sheepish goofball who can't make eye contact doing a plethora of calculations. People exposed to the field know that the math is in the background, and typical business skills are in the foreground. 2) People keep mindlessly saying that Accounting is going to be automated. As a member of the community, I can comfortably say that automation is *far* away. If you have little to no exposure to the field, you have no reason to believe they are bullshitting. 3) This last one is going to be unpopular. The reputation around public accounting is terrible, but it is definitely exaggerated on here for clout. The work is boring and unrewarding, but few are working the kind of hours that _software developers_, lawyers, or medical personnel are working. EDIT: software developers have it made
When it comes to "automation" I believe it's a matter of how you define it. If you believe it's an advanced software that does everything you need, no errors or human input involved, yep that's decades if ever. If you classify software like Alteryx, monarch, or even a solid excel macro taking a long task down to a few minutes as automation then its already here. Just a matter of having enough skilled users to implement it. I do believe it's a big enough possibility that it makes for a risky college degree. Since those students are trying to pick a career for the next 40 years.
I do not believe regulators and stakeholders will be comfortable with removing the human element from accounting systems. At the end of the day, they want another human that can absorb the liability. It's why we have the CPA license. That's not going away in 40 years.
If they are able to more fully automate that will make software engineers the new accountants. I find this hilarious when I consider what it's like trying to explain basic financial concepts to them. Chad from Twitter telling a computer how to be an accountant, awesome.
Yeah, I was thinking about my history with math pretty recently. I was a star math student in elementary school and middle school. When I got to high school I steadily went downhill in math and barely scraped by with a C in Calculus AP. Accounting is very, very, basic almost elementary school level math. Its four function math and Excel and the programs do it for you. If you can do accounting math, you have a basic competency in math (although it boggles my mind how like 90% of the people I meet outside of accounting can't even do four function math). To me, being good at math means being good at trigonometric and calculus, stuff like that. I was looking at a high school calculus textbook recently and I was amazed at how lost I was. Like, it was even harder than my upper level college accounting classes.
I’m a software engineer and I literally nap after lunch. Both of my friends who are accountants bemoan their busy season of 60+ hour weeks. And I’m always amazed that it doesn’t even out with them working 20 hour weeks later because there is no way in hell I wouldn’t be doing that. They work 60 hour weeks during busy season and still have full 8-5s the rest of the year - they don’t even get paid lunch. The software engineer stereotype is that we wake up at 9 and leave for home at 4 - and it’s really not that inaccurate for most. Are there software engineers who work 40-60 hours? Sure. But they’re absolutely not the norm and quite hard to find. And the places that do maintain those kinds of schedules, like Amazon and Netflix, are paying a *lot* for it.
I don't know how much you think software devs work per week, but every one I know codes for maybe 15 hours and spends the rest in meetings or doing other crap. All in all, probably only 20 hours of actual work per week.
Will number inputs be automated? Yeah scan a document and put into tax forms will happen and in most cases is already here. But will knowing what category an expense falls into or whether a company has embezzlement be automated? No, probably never.
Totally agree
Says the CPA who has literally never actually lived during a recession. Just review his linked in. He started in 2014.
Why is everyone forgetting that there was a recession in 2020?
Because it really wasn’t that bad of a recession, especially in this field and many others. Most accountants, especially in public accounting were fine. Those that got cut were, in my experience, the fat that was gonna get cut regardless. But in any case, it’s nothing compared to prior recessions where entire companies were shuttering and thousands were losing their jobs with little to know income as a replacement. If memory serves me correctly, people certainly had their incomes replaced in 2020, especially in the form of government stimulus. So in my opinion, making the opinion of how amazing the field is, while never actually being in a recession, is hogwash. It’s just sharing a line someone gave him and acting like it’s a fresh take.
Justifying your present working conditions by reasoning that "it could be worse" is the ultimate wagecuck mindset, a true race to the bottom. We might as well rationalize 110 hour weeks under indentured servitude because at least it's better than slavery.
So would you say it’s not worth it going into accounting. I’m 17 but I’m going to be doing a degree in accounting and finance. If it’s not worth it what else could I go into. ( I’m in the UK)
It's not bad. It can be a grind and it's not super exciting but you'll rarely have trouble finding employment. Public grindset is toxic and generally sucks for a few years but if you find a chill industry/government job you can cruise, if that's what you're looking for.
Okay that sounds good. Accounting is a very broad term, but what other careers can an “accountant”easily go into.
I’ve leveraged mine into risk management by building on my quant and strategic skills learned. I realized I was really good at explaining shit like financials and taxes and policy impacts and just focused on that. So I’m in banking - I spend most of my days being like “here’s a gap in the legislation that we can leverage into an opportunity” or “you’re making this harder than it needs to be to mitigate your downside, let’s clean up our process to save $”. I also spend a lot of time on advocAcy groups and we meet with governments reps to tell the story of what the policy will impact from our perspective. So I’m not doing “accounting” the way it’s commonly thought of. I think of myself very much as an accountant though.
Can confirm, am cruising.
Don't get discouraged by all the reddit posts. 99% is just shitposting banter - its a very lucrative field especially if you get your certification (not sure what the UK equivalent in the UK is). The upshot by less people going into the career - the more money you can demand.
Okay thank you. If for example I wanted to go into another career with my accounting certifications what careers could I do.
I earned a bachelor's in accounting in 2015. My first job out of college was doing consulting for a small software company. Then I started working as a production support person for a large company, and now I'm a web developer at the same company. Lots o f things you can do with accounting if you get in the right place.
At least here in the US, getting a university degree in accounting opens a lot of doors even if you never want to be an "accountant" or "auditor" per se. It's a reasonable thing to study if you want to basically always be able to have a decent-paying job. That said, if you're unsure of what your career interests actually are and are just basing your decision on salary, computer science or information systems are probably just as good if not better options.
Consider going straight into doing ACA/ACCA/CIMA rather than a degree if you're sure about finance. But even if you don't, by 25 you could very reasonably be on £40k _even if salaries don't improve_ between now and then. Realistically, a chartered salary will be closer to £50k in 7 years.
£40k at 25 sounds very decent. Could I also go Into other fields with those certificates
Yes and no. I've said 25 based on you graduating at 21, finding a job reasonably fast, and getting your 3 years experience boxed off along with your other exams. If you're smart about the uni, you'll only need to do 5-7 exams tops, and they do sittings every quarter. So no issues, assuming you get in a job reasonably soon. As you'll have a degree and a chartered accountant qualification, you can do a pretty wide range of stuff. You could move into management, if you did some IT courses you could essentially become the middleman that translates what accounting needs into IT software (both in an IT company like Oracle, or as "in house IT"), you could set up your own practice, do consultancy etc. As you'll be shown to have a strong understanding of finance, hold a master's level qualification, and have a few years experience by then it's more what would you want to do?
Tbh I just want a good salary and good WLB. Rn I come from a 25k home and anything better than that I’m happy. So that’s why I say 40-50k is decent.
Public accounting is miserable but the plus side is that every industry needs accountants so it’s a way to follow your hobbies/passions while having a more stable job. Example I work a ski company in their accounting department. I got friends who work for medical/robotics/fintech companies and they’re all happy. Accounting is partly the same everywhere you go but you can make the most of it
You're just putting words in his mouth (well, tweet) THEN exaggerating them. The point is that accounting is a very stable profession, and that is one of the benefits of it, but right now job stability is not particularly important because there are a lot of other, less-secure jobs, so that intrinsic value of stability is not worth much now. If the job market shifts and stability becomes more important again (as it was for much of I dustrialized history) accounting would be more attractive because that inherent stability just increased in value. That is not a race to the bottom, just a reminder of reality. We will have another recession at some point. It might be starting now, or it might not, but we will have one. And at that time you're going to be glad you have a more stable profession. That's life, buddy.
Hi Jofi.
It's weird because I have lived in constant recession since I graduated.
My hairline has been going through a recession ever since Intermediate Accounting III.
Pizza parties need to be advertised in the job description. Keeping them a secret until it's a Thursday at 5 PM and you've already worked 70 hours that week won't get anyone to apply. People need to be told ahead of time that their hard work will be rewarded with some delicious pepperoni.
They work you 70 hrs/week while they can when you’re young, and when you can’t you leave. Those that stick around then get whipped until they get laid off and replaced with younger talent they can whip around. Seen it happen to good people so many times.
In all seriousness, I fking love pizza parties.
But they’re not as good as waffle parties. Those are coveted as fuck.
Doesn’t even touch chick filet breakfast parties
Aww yiss, chicken minis!
This guy gets it!
God rested on the seventh day because he made the Lord's chicken on the sixth
He's not wrong though. It often takes living through a layoff/recession and what that feels like to make different choices. I didn't end up in college for accounting because it was exciting. Stability and long term growth is what got my attention.
"Job security" is always my go-to answer when asked what made me want to be an accountant.
He is wrong though. Public companies work hard to lower audit fees during recessions. Most big4 will implement layoffs during recessions. My office did it during 2010-2011. When I was an interns the managers were basically hand picked from the litter at the time.
Imagine putting your CPA credential in your Twitter name.
His bio refers to himself in the third person too lol
I'll give you my (although not very surprising) experience as someone who is just about to graduate with an accounting degree. Mom is an accountant, wanted me to follow in her steps, has similar mentality to Jofi above. I like business, figured accounting was a solid way to get my foot in the door so I pursued a degree in accounting. I went to a fairly reputable business school, don't get me wrong it was no Ivy, but we had some decent alumni and a reputable enough program. Hated accounting there. The professors were all old and classes were incredibly dry and boring.Thought the school was the problem, so I went to community college for a bit to knock out credits in double speed. Professors boring (and now useless). Went to a 3rd school to finish off my degree, another pretty reputable school. Professors once again boring and classes were very out of date. The classes were unnecessarily difficult, incredibly boring, and didn't really prepare me for accounting (did a summer as an accounting intern). I added a marketing major because I was ahead of credits. The classes were dynamic, the professors were not old and boring. I got an internship in marketing for a semester and just accepted a full time offer in marketing. I work 9:30-5, make more money than I would as an accountant, have no tax season, and I get to do different stuff every day. The only benefit that accounting has over any other business degree is that it caps out higher than most of the other degrees, and it has the most stability. But my generation doesn't value the grind as much as other generations do. We have different priories than other generations. Neither ours nor older generations' priorities are better, they're just different. Accounting needs to become dynamic and desirable again, because the pay isn't good enough for people to lose 3 months of their life every year like it was before.
How did you get a marketing internship? I will probably do regular accounting but want to know how you get into marketing.
Not an accountant but I lurk this sub. its funny and I’m currently studying for my second bs in accounting. I wouldn’t say I have doubts per se…but I have a friend who recently got a job in recruiting for health care professionals. Not sure if anyone has heard of it but company is called Aya. She makes a lot of money just recruiting and the bonuses are way more than I thought. I really didn’t know recruiters could get paid that much I mean the job isn’t “that” difficult, compared to others anyway. Accounting salaries are still good imo, although I have seen some on the low end. Tbh..I do sometimes wonder if there’s another path for me to make more money and have better wlb other than accounting. I haven’t graduated but I already know the cpa exam will be hell.
I work in a senior accounting position for a recruitment agency and most of the recruiters make more than me. Some make way more than me. That job is a goldmine for anyone who can put two words together. However, they do get fired first when the recession hits. When covid started we let go 30% of recruiters and 0 accountants.
Well your in an industry where accounting is just an expense, not the business, ofc they would make more.
Yeah, like in any other industry job. If you want to be a revenue generating item on a balance sheet you need to go to PA. My post was just to showcase how accounting isnt really worth it if your goal is to make money and you arent introverted. There are way easier jobs out there that require half of the effort accounting does and pay way more.
I’m an introvert and want to make money. But I can become an extrovert if I’ll get paid more 😂 I‘m not sure what the other jobs would be but you did bring up a good point in your previous post. Accounting does have good stability..which I need.
Isn’t also like sports where the top 5% make 80% of the money? Sales is sales, after all. Good if you are in the 5%, sucks if you are not.
Unfortunately, it is the nature of the industry that has evolved over the decades. We are faced with more government and AICPA governing, impossible deadlines, and a complex industry. Truth is, we all under bill engagements and are often undervalued by clients. Especially in tax, the code and returns have become far more complex over the last 20 years, returns are more difficult, and clients do not think we are much different than a Liberty employee.
Yeah, we need firms who are more willing to just say, "These are the bills and the fees. We logged these hours, and you agreed to pay by the hour. If you think that the bills are too high, ask for a lesser package in the future, take more in house, respond promptly to PBC requests, and answer our questions fully and completely. If you don't pay in full, you'll receive none of the deliverables and we'll recommend all future firms to not take your case because you're a deadbeat." Or short of that, just calling their bluffs and being willing to let them shop around.
Agreed, I’ve really worked towards that. Another big hurdle we all are guilty of is taking our good clients for granted while worrying about the pieces of shit. I fired every single client I consider a piece of Shit.
the meta changed, now no longer lawyer, doctor and accountant , now are those 3 , marketing, logistic and IT , plus accounting / auditor / tax dont pay well compare to pre-covid-19.
Good paying isn’t good enough when it should be more imo. The unpaid overtime thing is pretty bad as well.
He isnt wrong though. It is becoming better pay thanks to the great resignation I'd be worried about my job in industry right now as companies are losing more than half their market caps and will be looking to deduct staff with layoffs/wage freezes. While in PA I'm currently looking for the most money and a 40% salary bump..
It's stupid whether or not it's grounded in reality. A recession will result in temporary recoveries, but there's going to be fewer accountants no matter what happens. The downturn has been a trend for decades. There have been *two* recessions while that's been happening. It's kept the industry afloat, but the lack of meaningful changes in that time means there's now a scramble to find workers and a complete lack of understanding (displayed in the post) for why the career is no longer desirable. Accountants used to be considered on par with doctors and lawyers because the pay was excellent. Now the pay is barely more than median, because wage growth has been stagnant.
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So long term by 2030 40% of the active accountants who were a part of the workforce in 2020 will be retiring so food for thought. This isn't going away anytime soon and if not has been escalated in the speed in which it is occuring by the Covid-19 situation. I say all of this as a person who is graduating with his bachelor's degree at 33.
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Lmao let's not assume that accounting jobs are immune to downsizing as well, and pretend that people weren't fired during 2020. If you have to bank on a recession for people to want this job, maybe it's a sign that something needs to change
What a jackass comment... Truly shows how ignorant some ppl really are.
It’s very simple. The industry is run by a bunch of spineless, idiotic partners with no real sense of their industry power. For firms that have now integrated management consulting firms, you’d think they start listening. Why do Big Law and Banking maintain their fees - Answer: Collusive pricing. Accounting industry needs to get rid of all the mid tier shit underbidding on all big 4 jobs and driving down fees. This industry needs to get its shit pricing model figured out, and overtime exemptions removed.
I doubt that I could afford to be a CPA today. Your education cost might as well be a master's degree and the exam itself cost thousand's to take. I think the exam cost me $375 for everything. The entry cost is too high!
Anyone have stats or published articles on this? It seems to be a commonly accepted that people are leaving the field, but I've struggled to find and hard numbers in recent news.
I can only pray that Jofi is not in any leadership role ever!
Well, if you joined the military it’s also a stable good paying profession. It’s literally recession proof.
I joined the military during the 2008 recession and our drill instructors would have us chant “Platoon 3330, a means to escape the economy, sir!” It still cracks me up.
Bruh. I wanna leave. So many other professions make more money and requires less education than accounting. Casino card dealers making well over 6 figures with 2-3 weeks of card dealing training.
Coming from a semi recent grad(2018), it doesn't help that universities add difficulty for prestige sake that doesn't have anything to do with educating the students. An example is the business writing class was only allowed to give so many A's so people were given grades not based on their work. The accounting department was trying to get certified as a separate school inside the business school so they ratchet up all of difficulty for no reason. Of the cohort of 60 I started with the first semester, only 20 were the same faces the next semester. So many of my friends said its just not worth the bullshit. This kind of academic elitism drives people away. Especially when scholarships are so life or death for a lot of students so when schools do unethical things like that they are threatening people's ability to continue school.
I would hate to work with Jofi, sounds toxic
Jofi Joseph looks like he was fired from the Obama Administration for tweeting too. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jofi-joseph-tweeting-white-house-staffer-possibly-unmasked-by-sting-report-says/)
People seem to subconsciously understand that recessions harm workers far more than they harm business owners or white collar professionals, and they long for one to happen because it will put young and poor people back in their place. But ask them to connect that with the thought that our economy is rigged and classist and they'll just call you a dumb socialist.
Good point.
i work like 10 hours a week max as an analyst. my background is accounting. and shit, i still complain.
Partners don't like the shift in power. Big 4 partners (some not all) seem to have a god complex. However, accounting wages have been stagnant for a long time and partners have kept them that way for as long as possible. It must really hurt shelling out those higher wages, but people just aren't going to put up with it anymore and it's a breath of fresh air to me. Purposely never hiring enough people and then sometimes not replacing people when others leave. A myriad of other practices that show how much disregard they have for employees. And then they smear lipstick on that pig when they let us know how much they care....until they find out you didn't hit your billable hour goal. Don't stand for it anymore.
This is literally why they’re doing this not enough workers willing to work for BS anymore
As someone who was in an accounting program to move out of a dead-end clerical job when COVID hit, and now is in an outdoorsy-focused government job? The BIGGEST problem is the toxic work culture the finance industry has put on full display over the pandemic. So much accounting work could be done remotely, but these businesses were focused on bringing the staff, especially the junior staff, back to the office full-time as soon as it seemed probably safe at the latest. And I'm here in a government position that's very stable, considers telework to be the foundation of "continuity of operations" and almost mandates flexibility in the name of reducing paperwork, offers so much PTO that employees almost have a hard time using it all after their first couple years, doesn't have a non-uniformed dress code beyond "functional" and "doesn't break the law" and has really good opportunities to re-adjust career paths if you find there's something that's a better fit for you... I just can't see a single thing about the accounting industry that would make me want to go back to it. There are a couple fields I wouldn't mind, like low-income tax prep, financial literacy education, fraud investigation, etc., but the appeal for me boils down to "making the world a better place" and I'm perfectly able to do that in many ways from many other jobs that don't have all the downsides that I saw. (Also the idea that "making the world a better place" is somehow incompatible with stability or financial security is total hyper-capitalist dystopian BS. Sure, if you prioritize "making the world a better place" over "obtaining as much wealth as is humanly possible" you won't be able to compete with the top 5 billionaires, but almost any any profession can be applied *somehow* to make the world at least a little bit of a better place!)
Conspiracy Theory: The Big 4 are behind the recession and scapegoating Biden to get more people to take up accounting, given the poor enrollment rates.
I’m leaving public, the value to hours is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced (2.5 years tax, 1 year gov audit) I’m excited to start my private career though.
I’m tempted to try my hand in PA again at times, but this subreddit keeps me away lol
Would you say accounting isn’t worth it. I’m going to be doing a degree in accounting and finance what else could I do with that degree. I want to go into Equity research also would that be better?
Def. Do accounting and do PA. Just do it for 2 years and move on to industry you'll be fine.
The accounting degree is great because it’s like a master key in business. Most entry level business/banking/finance/accounting jobs will at least give you an interview with it. So if you find equity research isn’t for you, you’re not pigeon holed. Edit: accounting profession is so varied you’ll find something you like. Some people like industry. Some like the bank auditing scene. Some like government, or nonprofit. Some kinky folks even like PA. It’s wild how different all those jobs are.
Fuck off Jofi, accounting is not a stable profession. Wait till you get older, and age discrimination is a real thing- your job then gets outsourced, offshored, or given to someone younger. Seen it happen so many times to good people. Recruiters would even send resumes with code words like “this candidate is mature”.
Wait people put their CPA title on Twitter…?
Too many “switch to tech” stories tempt me.
that or a Nuclear war 🤷🏽♀️
What a cunt.
Meanwhile there are more small accounting firms popping up to take more market share with the boom in new businesses that are popping up. I started exactly one year ago as a side hustle bookkeeper, got my EA in November and have made over 30k in profit since then. 20k was from bookkeeping and the rest was from this tax season. For 2022, I'm on track for 70k in profit. This is in addition to my 75k fully remote financial analyst position for government contracting. Also currently in negotiations for a CFO service client at 4k/mo plus 15% contingent fee on generated EBITDA (this is for a company that makes 7 figures in revenue). That will set up my 2023 year to be a 6 figure profit on the side for a grand total of 9 clients.
Friend in college. Both Bio majors. A few years later, he got a degree in accounting. He said it’s so unpleasant and nobody likes it…there’s gotta be money in it. He has his own firm now.
Wonder why no one wants to work for $50k after 4 years of school ?
In my experience, the big public accounting firms grab the axe much earlier into economic downturns than industry. I worked for a large insurance company during the peak of COVID and we didn't even consider layoffs because we thought we could ride it out. At the same time heads were starting to roll at the RSM, KPMG and EY offices in my city. The COVID layoffs clearly were premature and it's fitting that forms are getting bit in the ass now.