[GuitarSalad]

Background: I’m a little older than most of my coworkers since I went back to school to get into accounting. After getting my MAcc, I worked as a staff accountant in industry for two years and then jumped into big 4 accounting as a 1st year staff auditor.

My first busy season was pretty rough, but I made it out mostly unscathed. The subsequent summer was pretty nice and not at all stressful. When October rolled around, I got pulled onto a three year audit due to the sale of a division of one of our clients’. It went on through November and nearly ruined my Thanksgiving since I had to work that entire week. My office also gets tons of inventory counts, so I had to do tons of work around the Christmas holiday. No break there.

Then busy season number 2 happened, and I was part of 3 year-end audits through April. The first two went great, but the third one dragged on into my next client (we’re always scheduled back to back without time to clear comments and roll off properly), and I eventually rolled into interim work in late May for a 6/30 year-end client that is absolutely massive. I hadn’t taken a single day off since January, and I was burnt out at the time but didn’t realize it. The year-end audit for this client was pure hell. I had about a week and a half off total from January to late August, and my time off was just filled with anxiety about going back for the year-end audit. My performance on this client seems to have destroyed any goodwill that all of my other work earned me. I admit it was bad, but this is the only review I’ve had that’s been less than stellar.

Since then, I feel like I’ve lost all desire to work here. I’m out doing interim work at a client that I really like, but I still hate every day. I’m so preoccupied with the coming busy season and the performance improvements that I need to make so that I don’t get canned, that I feel really ineffective right now. When I started in big 4, I told myself that I’d ideally like to go until manager. Then I told myself that I should stay at least 3 years after I made it through my first busy season. Now I don’t know if I want to go through my third busy season. I look at my schedule for the coming year, and I just don’t see anything that excites me. The only thing that I’ve really requested is to see SOX (repeatedly) testing at a public client, and I’ve gotten nothing concrete from the firm about being able to do that.

Am I crazy to think about leaving now? I have the senior title, but it’s already almost November. I don’t want to leave my teams hanging during busy season. And I should be working instead of typing this post.

BEC 7/12/13 - 84
AUD 8/31/13 - 86
REG 4/11/14 - 84
FAR 5/30/14 - 88

Licensed AZ CPA - 10/2014

[Anonymous]

I am not in public, but from what I know, if you make it to manager and then leave to private you have a much better chances of getting a nice title and a well-paying job.

[Missy]

end your misery when you get a compelling offer. There's no hard and fast rule. If your goal is 100k in industry and you get a 95k offer in industry you're not far off. If you can't get an offer close to what your goal is, stick with public.

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Parthamis]

Instead of moving out of public, maybe you could look for another public firm. Big 4 makes a lot of people hate public accounting, but the many people I know that switched to a not as large firm love their careers and go on to continue doing really well.

[MIsconnie]

A lot of people get sucked into the appeal of big 4, only to find they don't care about you, your goals, or your personal life. My suggestion would be to look for a nice regional firm with good work life balance. However, even more people think that regional firms don't offer the same opportunities or isn't good enough experience, which is just not true. No job or amount of money is worth sacrificing your happiness.

Best of luck in whatever you decide.

[ultrarunner]

This is discouraging. A good friend of mine just got the offer from big 4. I congratulated him. Most (almost all) students in my program are interested in working for big 4 (some don't even consider regional firms). Oh, well, it seems to me that it is hard to get into big 4 and survive.

FAR 72,67,79 (Roger+Wiley test bank)11/15
AUD 80 (Roger)10/15
BEC 80 (Roger)4/16
REG 63,78 (Roger+Ninja MCQs)5/16

[mrap]

You describe the same thing I felt at my last year at public accounting (I worked 4 years, in a small European country). One Friday evening I sat down, wrote all pros/cons of staying/leaving and decided that I must update my CV & LinkedIn and started searching for a new job. I saw basically no reason why I would sacrifice my family, friends and foremost health to make it to manager. The country where I live we have a quite small market in general, and in the long run the people who hang out till manager in most cases will be losers, because:
– CFO positions usually require at least senior manager/director level experience
– Mid-management positions are usually filled by promotions within the companies, not external hires, it's a rare case when, e.g. Head of financial control, who is just below the CFO, would be hired from outside, it would be done only in exceptional cases where there are no more internal candidates left
– anything below “Head of xxxx” such as senior controllers/accountants/consultants/analysts etc would is maybe in the level that in general for a manager is below his career expectations and pay level.
But as said, this is in my country, You have to assess the market at Your side of the pond, how this would work. Don't follow blindly the “stay until manager” BS.

[AccountingisMagic]

Trust me, I feel your pain. I did 3 years at a tier 2 firm and just before I was about to enter my 4th busy season, I just knew I was burnt out so I decided to leave. I think I had a similar approach to most though. I new I wanted to be in a management position around year 5/6, depending on the job and how comfortable I was with my accounting progression, and to be making at least 90k (I'm in the southeast). I also have my CPA for what it's worth. The way I saw it was that I could stay in public for 5/6 years, make manager, and jump to private for around $100k salary as an accounting manager or something similar; or, I could leave at 3 years as a senior for a senior staff role in industry, work another 2-3 years in that role and then apply for the same management positions. As for industry, I was/am not interested in large public companies but large private ones (I currently work for a $1B construction equipment dealership) as they are more flexible, accommodating, and depending on what company, offer a lot of different position options with often easy transitions. So my 5-6 year goal of being a manager in industry had 2 roads I could take, both with pros and cons. The big pro in leaving public after 3 years was that I would split my professional experience to 50/50 in public and private prior to being a manager. Taking a manager role in industry with no experience in industry is actually quite risky depending on the company's transition methods. If you go to a company where they expect you to be a subject matter expert on ERP systems and processes within, that's a big undertaking. I've personally witnessed and have heard of 5/6 year managers leaving public for industry only to come back within the year because they quite or were fired because they had no idea what they were doing. It's not GAAP or general accounting methodologies that get you, it's the day to day processes that someone with only public experience fall victim to. That's why I saw leaving after 3 years as a huge advantage. The only disadvantage I've experienced so far is that occasionally I wish I would have had more exposure to certain areas of accounting or had done some things like transactional work. But honestly, you can play that game for your entire career as accounting is just a massive field and you're never going to be exposed to everything. I've found that if I run into something I don't know, I do the same as I did in public, research and work it out. Lastly, getting out of public has just been better for my health, marriage, and overall happiness. I was working 65 hour weeks last summer, and this summer, not one over 40. You really can't beat that. I also got about a 20% pay increase walking into the door, so my only advice in weighing job offers is to know your worth and to ask for what you think is fair. I felt I was underpaid in public, which was also a big factor in me leaving, and found that there were companies willing to value my expertise, not just interested in churning and burning.

Hope that helps

Hope

FAR - 76!
REG - 84!
AUD - 88!
BEC - 74 (ouch), 77!

[Anonymous]

I'm just curious, if you're in public, can you move away from audit and into tax or some other area that is not as grueling? I won't ever work in public, no desire to and too old.
If you're over 30, they don't want you anyway.

But, when I set out on my accounting journey (career change in 2014) I wanted to do audit. I wanted a job as an internal auditor in a financial institution. I applied for enough audit jobs. Never got an interview for one though, and went in a different direction. I now work in the real estate industry. Actually the thought of auditing still appeals to me, but I've done so much “corporate accounting” with journal entries and reconciliations and stuff that I don't know how easily I could get onto the audit track now. Much as I'd like to sometime.

OP – sounds like you've done your time in public and are ready for something new. Once again, I will agree with @Missy. If you can get a good job at the salary you want, take it.
After 3 years in public, why wouldn't you be able to get such a job?? If not, and you are earning nice money, stay where you are but keep sending out your resumes and applying online. I was in a job I detested for 7 years but the economy stunk and I was still in school. But I'd come home from work nightly and submit 10 resumes/online applications. Thankfully we're in economically much better times now than we were in 2008-2012. The good jobs were almost unheard of in those days, nobody was hiring.

[zchen42]

How did you jump into big 4 as 1st year associate? I have trouble doing that since they usually only consider graduates

[samantha]

I would not compare the work environment of a Big 4 firm to the work environment of a regular CPA firm.

[General_Ledger]

@crazyleon Switching service line (Audit – Tax – Advisory) is rare and takes a long time but possible.

FAR 73, 75*, 79! n DONE!
BEC 72, 75
AUD 64, 75
REG 43, 74, 72, 70, 88!
*Expired...FML

HELLO 300 CLUB! 6/8/13

[10yearjourney]

I think I can add some perspective on this topic. I will first agree, public accounting sucks, and sucks hard. I started my career in 2007, working for a large regional firm (250 people, now 500) in the bay area. I remember my first tax return was a 20 million dollar client with accrual to cash and 10 M-1’s, and I had no idea wtf was going on. The “budget” for most jobs was 1/4th of what it really required because every staff each year prior to me had eaten hours to look better. I was working over 100 house rs a week during busy season and posting 65 just to stay afloat and “look good” on paper. Time entry and “charge hours” caused just as much stress as the actual work, basically doubling the stress levels of a regular job. I got booted during the “great recession” because they weren’t making enough money on me, or others were faking it better. I went to another firm, about 80 people, and stayed for 5 years, promoted to tax senior, and assigned to the largest client in the office (client net worth of 3 billion with 125 tax returns). The experience and discipine I gained was well worth it in my opinion. Would I go back? Hell no! I quit that job, took 3 years off, passed my CPA exams, and just got a job as a controller for a small firm of 15 people. I took a minor pay cut due to the 3 year job gap in my resume, but could care less. There is no way I could have become a controller this quickly going to private straight out of school. Public will teach you to learn quickly or you will be fired. If you can figure out how to survive that atmosphere for at least 3-5 years and get your CPA, you will be valuable. The road is not easy, but the rewards come later if you learn how to deal with the politics and develop the strong work ethic required in public.

[Author]

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