[Anonymous]

Good Day,

I have been pondering for a while about entering public accounting! I currently work for a small governmental entity as a Sr. Accountant, clocking in a 40 work week, and the “once in blue moon” paid OT, and banking 44K, single with no children and CPA Exam eligible. I would like to join a second tier firm (i.e., GT, McGladrey, BDO) and specialize in their public sector audit practice (government/NPO).

That said, is it true that these firms are more forgiving in regard to the workload and busy season compared to the B4 firms? Would one travel less and have a more structured work/life balance at the middle-market firms?

Perhaps some of you may think that I am out of my mind for having a desire to enter public accounting, but I did post a thread in regard to the toxic work environment my “Controller” creates–she has a tendency to shift blame on me when something goes wrong, always. Also, I do all of her work–she does not know how to utilize our user friendly system to generate a simple budget to actual report!

Anyways, please, opine if the middle-market firms are worth a while.

Thank you for your input!

[MaLoTu]

I think it depends, but I interviewed with BDO and it seemed that they expected at least as much OT as Big 4.

Another thing to consider is there may be more travel at a firm of that size because they have far fewer offices than big 4 and a good amount of work given their size. The area I interviewed for was in audit and they were traveling out of town 50% of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anyone else?

[acamp]

The work-life balance at the Top10 firms are all similar. Probably true for the Top25 as well. I have friends who work at smaller firms and our busy seasons were similar (I'm at a Big4). If you're considering “tier two” firms, you might as well consider them all.

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[AccountingisMagic]

I work at tier 2 firm in a smaller office where the audit staff are 2 partners, 2 seniors, and 4 associates (I am one of the associates). In my neck of the woods (Northeast WI), all the firms are either tier 2 (GT, CLA, and BT) or regional (Wipfli and Schenck). I know a lot of staff at pretty much every firm size you can think of and it's pretty much all the same, the big difference is the type of clients you end up working on. I would say from my own experience my busy seasons are just a smidge less intense than B4, but my non-busy season schedule is typically 45-55 hours a week still (my average charge hours for May – October range between 130-160 hours per month). I would just keep that in mind. Also, with the public sector busy season being primarily in the summer, it can suck working long hours when everyone else is playing golf and fishing. So my 2 cents would be to apply to the firms for the type of clients you want to work on (the smaller the firm – the smaller the clients, which typically mean really messy audits!), and if the public sector group is what you want to work on, the tier 2 firms are pretty good options. CLA works a ton of gov't and NPs ranging from the small to the large (I believe the VA is one of their clients); GT is another one that I know of that has the same type of cliental.

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[Author]

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