[Anonymous]

I’ve been vaguely considering switching from public accounting to private accounting. There’s not many places around my home that would be big enough to employee an accountant – pretty much just some factories. I just saw a job posting for a cost accountant at a factory in the area, and for once, it doesn’t require prior manufacturing accounting experience, so now I’m kinda interested! But, I’m hoping there’s someone on here that works in this industry and could give me some more information about it…

My biggest hesitations are that it will be short-term, overly-performance-based, and that it will require ridiculous hours.

I am an efficient, hard-worker, so it’s not that I’m concerned that they won’t allow me to skate through being lazy. However, I know that it is common in “real” factory work to have your job cut in the blink of an eye because your line/group didn’t meet performance expectations…like could be hired today and fired next week, because the group you were in didn’t do well enough. I don’t want to leave a permanent job for a one-week stint! I’m happy to work my butt off, but don’t want a bad day to make me lose my job. And, would there be pressure to come up with ways to cut costs by a certain percentage per period or something like that? Cause from the outside, it seems like cost-saving measures won’t always be available…like at some point the process would be optimized…

The job that I work right now of course has ridiculous hours through tax season, but “normal” hours through the off season. If a factory accountant would be salaried and expected to work 60-80 hours a week, that’s probably not my ideal position. So, if you work in manufacturing, what sort of hours do you work?

I’m not sure exactly what product this factory makes. There’s a couple in the town that’s listed, and the posting is from a recruitment company. One is a cookie factory, contracting with Oreo, Chips Ahoy, etc. Another is a window factory, and I can’t remember what the third is. Not sure if that would have any effect on the job or not…

Any input would be great! 🙂 The job listing didn’t show up on Monster, so I didn’t see it till today, and it’s been posted for a week…so I’ll want to decide whether or not to pursue this pretty soon (while also taking FAR Wed…when it rains it pours, I guess!).

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P. S. I realized as I pushed the “post” button that I hadn’t selected a forum category, and I don’t see a way to select the category now. 🙁 Sorry!

[mla1169]

I've worked for multiple manufacturers. Short term is not something I've run into. Its a rare company that employs a cost accountant for one individual product line. Generally a cost accountant works with multiple product lines so the success or failure of a product line hardly ever results in job loss for the cost accountant. At my previous employer there was exceptionally low turnover in accounting…5 of the 10 people had been there over 30 years, 3 more had been there over 15 years and 2 of us were new.

Not sure what you mean by performance based, but manufacturers raises are a reflection of the company's profits for the year. Bad economy can mean lousy raises but not necessarily depending on what you make.

At my last job, month end had us working Saturday (one a month) plus the first 3 days of the month were 12 hour days. The rest of the month was 9-5. At my current job (accounting mgr for a smaller mfg) I am 9-5 even during the audit. Our auditors are apparently exceptions and leave PROMPTLY at 4pm. Period. LOL.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information mla! 🙂 It's good to get a bit more insight into the career. 🙂

[Author]

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