[unprotecteddebts]

Hi,

I work for a public accounting firm in Florida in the Tax department. When I interned I worked 60+ hours a week and they had just started outsourcing work. This busy season I am working about 40 hours a week and it seems like we are sending a lot of our work overseas. I am starting to feel like I am training my replacement and I am uncomfortable asking any of my superiors about it. All I can say is I am not the only associate who feels this way. A lot of us are starting to worry. Should I be looking for a new job / switching to audit?

Thanks,

UD

[Anonymous]

No candidate can change things as much as they say. If too much change happens at once, jobs get cut then people get loud and nothing happens.

The saddest part of this election is that it seems the best case scenario is Trump does not get elected. How sad and pitiful that is the most we can look forward to.

[mitchmatch]

deytokerjabs, lol couldnt resist a southpark reference.

FAR-76 First attempt.
AUD-79 First attempt.
REG-79 First attempt.
BEC-79 First attempt.

Done!

BECKERS

[Texan_176]

Well, there has been somewhat of a push back to outsourcing everything. A CPA of 30+ years in the industry gave a lecture I attended where he talked about this very topic. Individuals and privately held entities did not like their data going overseas where the control and confidentiality as well as laws/enforcement of these things was unknown to them. Even public firms that have to release the data worried about early leaking of information and how it would hurt them. Outsourcing has not gone away completely but it is not as much of the wild west anything goes as it once was.

The bigger threat is technology; IMHO.

What a cheap $200 computer running 1 accounting package does was the work of 10+ accountants just a generation ago with magnetic tape used to store and process data. Before them the slide and ruler accountants numbered exponentially higher. In Chicago the Sears accounting department for just that region was 3 floors of accountants in a tower. Everything was done manually, records were kept on paper, and you needed a research team to pull archive data from 5 years ago where it now takes 10 seconds to change the date in a program and hit search.

Technology is not always a good thing for this reason. In the early 1990s people used to say computers would get so powerful we would have all of this leisure time and maybe even a 20 hour work week. The exact opposite has occurred. People are now married to their smartphone and are expected to be available around the clock to work much harder for the same money or actually less money when you factor in the compensation to time they put in away from the office.

It could be argued the kinds of jobs people have change so instead of a few floors accountants you have fewer accountants but more IT and programming people. That was completely true in the 1990s when the switch to the digital age was at its peak. Now those jobs are fewer, for less wages, facing outsourcing, etc.

It's pretty tragic how people have been convinced paying the minimum the market will allow is the best thing. If we all race to the bottom with jobs/wages then who will do things like buy houses, cars, vacations, etc? Those industries will get pulled into the cycle and so forth.

I guess the political posts in this thread got me thinking about this stuff. No candidate wants to even acknowledge this fundamental truth about the economy in the aggregate. They all blather on with phrases that make for good 20 second clips on the news with things like “I will create jobs” that are totally meaningless.

BEC 11/29/14 77 (Roger)
AUD 2/23/15 60 (Roger) 4/13/2015 83 (Roger & Ninja MCQ)
REG 5/30/2015 66 (Roger & Ninja MCQ(7 hours only)) 8/23/2015 78 (Roger & Ninja MCQ)
FAR 11/23/2015 60 (Roger & NINJA MCQ) 2/24/2016 74 (Roger & NINJA MCQ) 5/25/2016 83 (Roger+Roger CRAM & NINJA MCQ/NOTES)
Texas Ethics Exam 92%

Licensed TX CPA Aug 2016

[jm962011]

I like what Texan said about technology, this is why it is important to stay up-to-date with tax technology as a professional. I would LOVE to be a in a role that understands the what you need to do for tax and how to get the technology to do it. I'd love to be on a software implementation team.

Also what Texan said about people getting worried about their information going oversees… this is something in the BEC lecture I believe about why so many places cut back on actually sending the work over because they felt the lower price paid for the work wasn't worth losing the security of the information. Also, sometimes the intellectual property is too valuable.

[Author]

Replies