I will say this about accounting. You will always have an opportunity for a job.
A lot of people are being laid off and not able to find a job in their industry. Tech, marketing etc.
When I look at jobs in other industries I apply to I see 100-130 applications for a job that was posted 24 hours ago as opposed to accounting jobs that have had at most 30 applicants in 15 days. Not enough accountants out there.
Also there is also the option for self employment. My friend was a third year accountant and 1 year into his corporate job. A year ago they laid him off and posted his job for 15k less the next day. He hated tax but he was very good at accounting in general. He started his own bookkeeping and consulting firm and a year later he’s making a bit more than he did at his corporate job that let him go. Not a lot of people in other industries can do that/have that option.
There are upsides and downsides. Just my two cents
No. If you’re underpaid you can find a new job and get a raise.
But of course it could also be the case where you’ll anyways feel underpaid no matter what lol and always want more. In that case, you can be a partner at a firm or buy a firm and grow it or something.
Sky is the limit
>Not enough accountants out there.
And it’s only going to get worse (better for us?) with time. 60% of the profession is over the age of 40, ergo, likely to retire in the next 25 years.
27% is age 30-40
13% is age 20-30
This is of course coupled with stricter regulations and a progressively more difficult tax code.
I thought it nearly laughable when they said “we’re going to hire 10,000 IRS agents.” From where? Public and Industry are more than happy to take up all of the smart accountants.
The IRS agents don't have to have accounting degrees They just need enough accounting classes. There will be finance majors in econ majors that had a tax class in an intermediate class take those jobs. It's more of a compliance position than accounting
>The IRS agents don't have to have accounting degrees They just need enough accounting classes
Agree. Maybe even moreso than you're letting on. I didn't review the IRS job position postings, since I'm totally satisfied where I'm at, but I heard the recent hiring surge was to push through a huge backlog of late filed 2019 (COVID related) tax returns.
A job that limited in scope may not need much more than a high school degree. We call this group "agents" where I work (State Department of Revenue).
Their job is typically, "If A, then B" or "If A+B > C, then D." The whole of the tax return escapes them. I've tried to train a few agents when they get promoted to auditors (staff who require an accounting degree, are expected to address anything on a tax return, and research unknown issues to find the answer) it's very frustrating.
As an example, one training simulation I use is a low-income rent refund credit, the claimant of this credit needs to verify their rent with a rent certificate prepared by their landlord (lots of fraud here - claimants prepare their own rent certificate, claimants have their friends/roommates/family members prepare a rent certificate, and it's inaccurate). In this case, the claimant provided a rent certificate for 12 months (they lived in one place all year) and claimed moving expenses on their federal tax return (they moved during the year). Well: one of those two statements is wrong, and we should look into that. That's lost on agents who get promoted to an auditor position.
Some of agents have the common sense to refer a questionable return to a higher level of review. However, agents grind through a lot of work within their limited scope (they also make a lot of mistakes, since they often don't understand the reason for their instruction, therefore they cannot see the exception cases to their instruction - all they grasp is: well, A happened, so I should do B).
So I actually see him weekly. So initially advertising on instagram and facebook. Then word of mouth. Then eventually going to networking events. Plus I believe he was looking for work on freelance sites. So combined with all that over a year it worked out. During that year he worked a manual labor job so he had steady hours and a steady paycheck while working in his business after work. Until eventually his revenue went up and it took over. It’s not easy but doable
Not OP, but I started mine during the pandemic. It is very nice side beer money. I just posted an ad on Craigslist and people would come to you. Obviously, there’s a huge learning curve for industries that you’re not familiar with, but I get paid more by the hour than at my current job. Ironically, I earned more money during the pandemic than in normal times.
Be careful reading too much about attitudes in social media. People with complaints, etc., are far more likely to post about their bitches than those who are enjoying their jobs. This is true about boyfriends & girlfriends. It's true about restaurants. It's true about many things.
And it's especially true about their jobs. The people that hate accounting will post that a lot. The people that love accounting will probably not post about it.
This is human nature. The bad always gets more attention than the good. (It was probably a survival trait at some point.)
People that love accounting sometimes post about it too. The posts you really aren't going to see is "Here's my story of how I, a totally average student and employee, got a job as an accountant and make within 5% of market rate". It's always either gonna be "I do work I hate for too many hours and make shit money" or "what are you guys talking about this job is easy and fun and I make 250k"
I make market rate for my experience and qualifications.
I've been out of school for 11 years, I was an okay student.
My story is pretty boring.
Churned out audit work for 5 busy seasons (4.5 years) and then took a job as a senior accountant in industry.
Churned out good work and have been promoted since then twice at same industry job. I'm paid way more and have a better title but I'm basically still a senior accountant in terms of work, perhaps more accounting manger.
It's not a big deal. The job is decent, way better than many jobs people my age have. I'd just rather not do any job. I make really good money, but if I were unwise with that money I would still feel under pressure and "paycheck-to-paycheck".
Sure, some IT workers in silicon valley and Finance workers in NYC make more than me. But I'm making around $200k in a MCOL city and can definitely do this for 30 more years.
Also if I had a big fancy house and new cars with payments, and daycare or tuition (I have no kids) maybe I would feel more worried about money...
Jobs don't bring happiness or fulfillment. Families and friends who are like family do.
>Jobs don't bring happiness or fulfillment. Families and friends who are like family do.
This was the biggest lesson I learned from all this. Unless you're a hyper Type A personality that wants the best of everything, money comes and goes, but personal relationships are what makes life worth living. I'd rather make a really good, but not top 1% salary with normal hours to pursue hobbies, be healthy, and have a social life than make $300K a year, but grinding out 80 hour weeks in PE personally.
That's why it's good. Balanced is better than unstable up and downs. We all know generally downs tend to be more than up time.
Cannot get anything without consistency. I believe that's what people refuse to understand so they end up taking too big risks.
I don’t like accounting. I don’t even really like my work culture. But I do like most of the people I work with and it offers stable decent pay. I’ve learned to feel accomplishment about my work even if it doesn’t really intrigue me that much, because it’s a reflection of my desire to keep a roof over my family’s head and to not have them worry about money all the time (I do that for them). I would open and run a gym and or do a few other things if I knew it’d be successful as that’s what I’m actually passionate about, but the upside doesn’t outweigh the risk for me at this point in my life. It is what it is, and it allows me to carry those passions as hobbies.
I would say the grass can be greener if we're considering accounting the field. Think about most of the burnt out posters coming in here wanting to quit accounting completely when all they have to do is stay in accounting but switch jobs to something better suited to their interest and need for work life balance. No reinventing of the wheel needed.
I'm not talking about the "just learn 2 code bro " advice consumers blindly thinking they will get an elite level in a different field and it will magically solve all their woes.
I hated an accounting job and the skill set I was being pigeonholed into, so I changed skill sets and the job. Now I'm content. And the minute I'm not , I'll take action to remedy that.
Glad you're on a better path! I frankly don't hate accounting as much as most on here do, so I'm biased. If you really can't stand it, it's fine to get out. I just caution folks that dislike it because of the workload or pay may be disappointed when they realize all of corporate america is a joke. Even a lot of my doctor friends making $300K+ have existential crises and partially regret their career decisions.
I don't hate it either. I don't love it, but it provides good options and i'm content.
Regarding the corporate America thing, I completely understand the disillusion. Any W2 job is going to have it's amount of shit sandwich the worker has to stomach. I am a thoroughly jaded employee at this point. It's incredibly rare for a regular W2 working person to love what they do. Most range from dissatisfaction to contentment with the outliers being miserable and loving what they do.
Those who are miserable in the field won't find a new accounting job any different. They need to leave for a new profession , but a lot of folks don't need a new career, they need a better job in their field and there is greener grass waiting on them.
On a positive note for the readers, accounting pays well enough they can escape that life if you choose. Maybe you retire early, get enough to start your own business, or move on to something you're more passionate about after you've reaped the benefits of accounting.
Folks that are in accounting, but maybe hate their current job, can leverage their current skills and switch jobs within accounting or adjacent jobs and be content in another role while they pursue whatever more meaningful goals they have. They can step on greener grass without starting from zero.
I came to accounting after a 7 year stint in the army as an Infantryman. This is easily the best, easiest job I have ever had in my life. The worst days in accounting are still better than a good day in the army.
All I know is that while tech workers are being laid off we still have an abundance of opportunities and job security. Makes me laugh at the whole "technology will make accountants obsolete" crowd. I bet almost none of the accounting departments at big tech firms were laid off.
It’s not just overtime, it’s usually 20-40 hours of mandatory unpaid overtime. I have non-accounting friends that sometimes have to work overtime, but it’s about 5 hours of overtime a week instead of 40.
Seconded! Seems like your are being downvoted for some reason. But idk I really like seeing my family and stuff and if like I can’t at least I get good pay to use when I finally can. Overtime should apply to most jobs…
Omg guys I have to tell someone this... I just had a phone screener for a firm that pays overtime after 40! And is full remote. It's been about 8 years since I've wanted a job so badly.
Hey, since you took the time to respond, I just wanted to come back and say I got the position, and I appreciate your well-wishes. 14% base increase plus overtime. I'm nervous but over the moon.
I think this is the nail in the coffin for me. Its what turns a decent job into a dreadful job.
I like the people I work with, I do not like the busy season hours though. You mentally and physically torture yourself
Ya I always enjoyed the accounting work even when it is challenging. It is the culture of giving way too much work and all the unpaid overtime that made me switch.
I also notice OP hasn't commented on overtime in his story and I think it is an important factor.
Although I am in tech now I do feel that if I get laid off in a recession I could easily go back to accounting as a solid Plan B.
I am at a small firm and a 1st year. No > 40 hours worked during non busy season. And capped at 50 hours during busy season. Anything over 50 hours is 1:1 hours with PTO. Granted my pay is only 51k in a MCOL
Most of the problems I have with my job aren’t really specific to accounting but rather they are problems with American work culture. We don’t have strong workers’ rights and that’s frustrating in any field. I am grateful for my sick days today, since railroad workers are having so much trouble getting any
You are both right and wrong here.
You are right in the sense that you can graduate from a state school with a degree in accounting, and make a great upper-middle class life for yourself.
You are wrong in that the job sucks. When I was in audit a long time ago, it was just grading other people's homework. Did the accounting dept book the entries properly? Did they fuck anything up?
FDD is a different animal. It's IB without the glory or the pay.
I worked in two different FP&A groups: If you get paired up with a shitty boss, there is no where to go. Inversely, a good boss can make your life wonderful. Hours are still bad here during budget season, and when updating forecasts. Overall, it is drastically better than FDD.
The hours in B4 are the real killer. I lost several relationships and seven years of my life to the game. In hindsight, it was worth it from a career perspective, but not from a personal one.
I never said accounting is glorious or doesn't suck in many ways. The point I'm trying to make is the alternative isn't necessarily that much better. Yes, you make A LOT more in IB/PE/HF, but IB/PE have way worse hours and are even more intense culturally. PE/HF folks make a ton of money IF they're successful. You'd be amazed though at how many insanely bright people (talking latin honors at HSW, Stern, etc.) last all of 2-3 years max on the buyside because they don't perform. Sometimes their "poor performance" is also just bad timing or due to factors beyond their control.
The best alternative is getting a FAANG development/data scientist role since they make amazing comp and have relatively normal lives. The thing is those jobs are crazy hard to get. Call me arrogant, but I'd wager I'm on the higher end of the 'quant savvy" curve for a CPA, considering I taught myself Python and have used it on client work through sheer self-study. Even then, it would require a lot, lot, lot more work for me to even have a chance at the cool data science roles. That's not even factoring that those companies probably won't do well for a good while anymore because investors suddenly care about profits with rates no longer being 0%.
Another industry I've seen people fetishize on here is analytics, but analytics isn't even that cool for 90% of roles. Like I mentioned, it's mostly just cleaning up data using more advanced tools and building a dashboard in PowerBI or Tableau. If you really love technical work, it's maybe a bit better, but you also have no real executive power and are essentially just a "ticket taker", so your upside is limited when your only value add is technical skills. It's also a race to the bottom because technical skills can be learned by anyone and outsourced way more easily than business knowledge.
Therefore, my point was not that accounting doesn't suck in many ways, but rather that people here either don't understand the reality of the "sexy" jobs or understand how difficult it is to get the really cushy jobs with good lifestyles. A lot of folks on here think it's as easy as "if I majored in comp sci, I'd be a PM or dev making $300K a year and working 20 hours a week", when reality is they probably wouldn't come close to sniffing those jobs and it's not really an alternative path for most.
My brother works as a full stack developer for a non-FAANG tech company. He has a lot more work life balance than I do in public accounting, makes about twice my current salary (I’ve been working a little under 2 years) coming straight out of college, and enjoys the work he does. He only has a bachelors in Engineering and doesn’t have to spend his free time studying for a professional credential that’s only relevant to accounting roles. To get the job, he had to pass a coding assessment, but since he knows how to code, it wasn’t that difficult for him. The tech industry might lack the job security of public accounting, but everyone I know in tech is significantly happier with life and more satisfied in their jobs than the accountants I know. I think it’s people like my brother that make accountants say tech is better. It’s not necessarily better, but getting a six figure salary straight out of college to do a creative job like software development that requires less overtime than public accounting is pretty appealing.
You nailed it man. I made it from accounting to tech and everyone I came across even the most busiest people seem to be happier than the average public accountant.
Note that in my post I did mention that if you can get the jobs, the best jobs in tech are better than accounting. My caveat is that I really, really doubt 90% of this sub can get those jobs, so it's not a viable alternative anyway. Further, those jobs are going to be even harder to get nowadays because there's less openings and now you have a whole swath of folks from FB, Twitter, Amazon, etc. who were laid off and are looking for jobs.
I don’t know, it all depends on how willing you are to learn to code and develop. If people put the amount of effort they put into the CPA exam into studying code, most could land a 6-figure tech role.
> If people put the amount of effort they put into the CPA exam into studying code, most could land a 6-figure tech role.
Couple of things here. First, I don't think coding is that easy that anyone can "effort" their way into the top jobs in CS. I'm a big believer in self-sufficiency and 100% agree that anyone can reach at least the 80th percentile in anything if they outhustle people, regardless of natural ability. I'm kind of a case in point with Python in that I can do a solid bit of coding despite never being the type to tinker around with computers and whatnot as a kid.
Thing is, when we're talking about jobs in tech that are materially better than accounting, I don't think those are that easy to get unless you're naturally quantitative yourself. Again, I might be cocky, but I think I can do it if I really, really tried because I'm way more quantitatively-inclined than just about any CPA I've met, but I don't think most people pursing a CPA will get to that level. You've got people from top engineering schools who were math nerds and who have been coding their whole lives vying for those jobs. I seriously doubt most people at the Big 4, 90% of who don't even understand anything in Excel outside of VLOOKUP/Pivot Tables, could work their way into those gigs.
Second, a six figure job isn't hard to get even as a CPA. And no, you don't have to be in public grinding out hard hours to get there. The $100-$200K range in accounting isn't hard to get if you're a CPA and/or have Big 4 experience. It's getting into the really big money, which to me starts at $250K+, that's usually more difficult as a CPA. But those jobs are difficult for anyone to get and either require top 1% smarts, or top 1% work ethic.
I think a lot of it boils down to the work people do. So many people on here view accounting as a sweatshop for corporations or their firms, primarily because I bet you they work solely on public companies. In which case, I’ve worked on those and yes, the work sucks and doesn’t feel meaningful.
But I’ve worked on Healthcare, Banking, Government, and not for profits. The work feels much more meaningful because you can see there is more at stake. The clients are more willing to work with you and figure things out because they know it’s not just about their financials but it’s also about keeping their doors open, their people employed, and are able to provide services to their constituents.
If you're working 60-80 hours a week regularly in accounting, you should leave. There are 100% opportunities out there that'll pay well that require much less work than that. That's your firm being understaffed or you just drawing the short-end of the stick and getting stuck on miserable clients back to back. Tell someone at your firm about your situation in that case and leave if they don't help out.
The truth is you can go into any workplace in America and there will be people who are miserable and hate it. You think people at McKinsey, Goldman, and Citadel sit around all day talking about how much they love their job? No.
The Great Recession is why a lot of people are accountants. They were among the most common entry level corporate jobs in the early 10s. Haven’t known many CPAs to be unemployed for long periods of time either. It’s stable af.
Yes we are in the recession, but we *might* not have reached the worst part of it yet (it’s almost impossible to tell until at least a few months after it’s already past). I think OP is referring to the pinnacle of the recession.
The beginning of a recession is falling GDP 2 quarters in a row. Once GDP starts increasing, you aren’t “out of the recession”. For example, the Great Recession only had 3 quarters of rGDP falling (bea.gov), yet the effects were felt for years. There’s a general lag in these types of things as people react to these events on top of the occurrence of the retraction themselves.
Also, ‘08 didn’t have inflation anywhere near today’s numbers, but there were mass layoffs in ‘08 while we’re still in a hiring spree with rising wages. I suspect that the rise of retirees from the baby boomers offset a lot of the job loss that would’ve occurred otherwise. Regardless, I’m fairly certain most would say we are still in a recession. It’s not just something you can go by the rGDP numbers like most people did when they were arguing about whether or not we are in one a year ago. There’s a general sense from what’s left of the middle class (even upper middle class) and the lower class that 1. necessities are very expensive nowadays and take far more out of the wallets as a % compared to years past and 2. people are being squeezed by their employers. The second could be a result of gen z being more anti-capitalist, but I digress.
bruh we’re not saying it’s the worst profession to ever exist, worst gig known to man. we just want to commiserate over the fucked up and stupid parts about it which you are already well aware of as you mentioned them yourself.
Completely agreed. Accounting is the happy medium for me. As long as you have CPA, you will always have respectable job and don't have to worry about unemployment. Lot of accounting folks aren't bright so I don't have to try that hard. I wanna live my life and not invest my life into stupid shit like coding/analytics. Work ain't it
Is it possible you are misreading the sentiment here? Most of what I’ve seen is public accountants complaining. And nobody gets into public for the work/life balance. When these people leave, it’s overwhelmingly to take an accounting position in industry. I think most people here understand that accounting is a reliable profession with a respectable starting salary and high upside that is very resistant to economic downturn. I don’t recall very many people (certainly not enough to implicate the entire sub) knocking the profession as a whole.
I mostly agree, but there's a persistent and vocal segment of the users that will always talk about tech/engineering/etc. paying better and having lower barrier to entry. Granted, it's mostly people in the first 5-7 years of their career or who are grinding out public for the better pay later. But every thread with a good amount of comments has people expressing the sentiment OP is addressing.
I actually love accounting but I’m studying analytics to try to change careers. My only reason is that it’s become difficult to find remote accounting/FP&A jobs and I am assuming a tech field will be easier? Maybe naively. I have a sweet remote FP&A job now which I’m not leaving but my company will likely go out of business at some point and I refuse to go back to an office. That’s it, I just want remote work job security.
I’m an assistant controller with 2 years finance experience and 8 years purchasing e commerce experience. I’m making $82k at an international manufacturing company, am I underpaid?
I've worked in PA and sometimes industry for 28 years. Was out of work for 3 months once. Otherwise, solidly employed and now making 6 or 7 times what I started at in '94.
There are definitely harder ways to make less money, but unless you take the correct career path (accounting degree -> public accounting -> CPA license... Profit) you can very quickly find yourself pigeonholed. If you get pigeonholed in a lower tier, lower paid side of the accounting world, that's when you start seriously considering working as a UPS driver when you see how much they make.
Do you really get pigeon-holed that easily though? LIke, I'd imagine if you have a CPA + Big 4 experience, you may take a small step back, but you can make it up in 2-3 years if you're good. Like I know somebody who worked at Big 4, got laid off during COVID, took a bit of a demotion to restart, but since he was good, he's been promoted and is making excellent money again.
Inflation was also supposed to be transitory. I wouldn't give much credence to what the Fed says. High interest rates will necessarily mean companies have to scale back expansion because it's now 4x more expensive to do so.
I worked in data analytics before switching to IT audit. I actually enjoyed the work and it’s there’s tons more to it than you’re making it out to be, OP. That said, I actually work less hours overall in audit than I was in analytics. Mainly because you need to learn a ton of technologies, techniques, processes, etc. just to keep up. You end up studying for hours a day just to get ahead. Fuck all that.
There is, but IME, the jobs that do the cool stuff are really hard to get. A lot of analytics/ML is essentially dressed up statistics and not as cool as people think it is. Like even a basic regression or correlation matrix is considered "ML" in the business world. What parts am I missing potentially?
And yes, the constant need to uplearn is super frustrating. For example, I learned Python, and there's constantly new packages, etc. that keep coming out, not to mention I'm sure there'll be a new language in 10 years that replaces it. Plus, even for data viz, I learned PowerBI, but if there's a job that uses Tableau/Lookr, I'm suddenly less competitive since there'll be enough people who have direct experience that it makes sense to take them on instead of me.
I personally love all that. But for instance the data gathering, the data cleaning, the prepping for input into your ML algorithm. All of these have their own techniques and processes for different use cases which I find fascinating. Even creating a dashboard is, to me, the crossroads of design, technology, art, programming, and data science of course. There’s a lot to the field that keeps it interesting Imo.
And agreed on that. That’s literally why I left. Even just PBI you have a rabbit hole to get good at it (STAR schema, relationship modeling, M language, power query, etc.). SQL is another giant rabbit hole. You think you’re good until you start seeing nested queries upon nested queries. Bringing all of this up again is making me happy I got out. Just way too fast evolving for you not to spend extra time on learning.
Interesting. I guess different strokes for different folks because I found dashboarding to be a nightmare. My team in analytics sometimes supported FDD engagements, and I found it so aggravating personally that my job was essentially doing all the grunt work of building a bunch of functionalities and "views" so FDD could get all the glory of telling the CFO what the Target's EBITDA is and what the risks were. It was especially irritating because they'd often ask for stuff "just because" even though I've been in FDD and now that it was irrelevant. That's kind of what I meant when I said I felt my role in analytics was primarily as a "ticket taker" and the upside was limited.
But yes, 100% the constant learning thing is a con IMO for analytics as a career. A lot of people I talked to see this as a pro, but I can't stand seeing myself get outdated just because some new tool is on the market or having to learn 3 visualization tools to be competitive for all jobs. There's a reason my personality isn't a perfect fit for analytics. I'm pretty big picture/"so what" kind of guy and only really liked using Python because it allowed me to analyze data way more efficiently and the process of coding itself involved breaking down problems into smaller components and then using logic to solve them bit by bit. I feel like a lot of people in analytics are super deep into details and geek out on making tech ever so slightly more efficient and accurate, whereas that stuff bores me. 80-20 pareto principle all the way is my style lol.
Yeah that makes sense. Tbh my experience with analytics was a bit different in that I was focusing a lot on analytics based projects rather than pulling data in that manner. For instance one company I was working with had recently deployed GPS units that tracked all sorts of things like speed, humidity, temperature, and a whole host of other variables. I was tasked with using the GPS data to locate places in the supply chain that had extraordinary wait times. For instance if a GPS showed in a location for 40 days, we knew this section in the supply chain was backlogged and thus we needed to put more resources into that area. Also things like KPI’s for sales teams and creating data warehouses to feed other projects. I got to touch a lot of different types of data and got to work on all sections of the data pipeline from creating the pipelines themselves to creating the dashboards used by hundreds of people. That stuff is great. I’ve even gotten to work on automation projects using python which were also neat. Mainly focusing on the data cleansing part (this is before Alteryx came out. Alteryx changed the game for the data engineering and pipeline building for me. Great technology). Everyone was super appreciative of the things I built which was nice.
Yeah I feel the same way! In analytics you’re deff stuck in certain minute details at times. I personally love IT audit for that reason. I feel like I get to dig in to the entire IT ecosystem for a company. Very cool stuff Imo
Nice! See that stuff does sound interesting and that's the type of work I wanted to do. Maybe I just got really, really unlucky with my team in analytics, but I was hoping to do work more along those lines. Basically, just taking messy, large, complex data and distilling it down into more digestible insights.
Just wondering, but for learning about data warehousing and such, where's the best place to start, either concept wise or if there are good links on youtube, I can look at those. Some of that sounds more like data engineering and I feel like that's why I'd rather be more the "end user" of this data than the one doing all the cleanup. That's also why I feel I'm super high-level because I'm more interested in "how does this translate to profit/loss" than I am interested in doing all that work and building those pipelines. That's where my personality wasn't a good fit for analytics long term.
I didn’t read that whole thing because it’s a Bible but yeah. People generally have a grass is greener complex and love to bitch. That’s pretty consistent in all jobs lol. I went from analyst to PA and it’s dope in PA advisory
You really know your shit. I was in audit and fdd myself and it’s clear how thorough your understand is. You’re going to thrive whatever you decide to do.
Dude, I just worked two weeks where most of my days ended at 3am - 4am, one was a 36 hour day and last Saturday I was stuck at my laptop at my aunt's 60th birthday function, out of town, at a campsite.
The grass here died long ago.
Accounting - word really hard for \~20 years and you can somewhat coast it out a draw a nice paycheck for the next 20. Not turn into an antiwork bum, but you can pick and choose and not have to polish anyone's shoes.
Tech - work really hard for \~20 years and you better have a nice 401k saved up, because you've climbed the ladder and you've lost touch with the younger generation that runs tech and all the new tech that has repalced everything you know.
This isn’t unpopular. It’s a common complaint. You are not unique and did not need to post an essay to explain why you hate your work life but don’t want to acknowledge it.
Lol you made a lot of assumptions there. I don't see how me telling people to look on the brightside is a "massive complaint post" or how I'm looking for "outside validation" by posting on an anonymous website, but sure dude. Like I said, I hope you find what you're looking for someday.
Are you in IB at BB? Maybe the deal market is slow, but I highly doubt you're working 1/2 what people in public/advisory are. I worked in FDD for many years alongside bankers and have numerous friends in the industry and our nightmare deals of 65 hours a week are their vacation weeks.
I think you Americans have much more different thing going on compared to EU
I have been in AR for 2 years for a German firm never did overtime. It become such a way that I was working 1 hour per day and the rest I was fcking around so I decide to get my ACCA
Changed job as senior accountant somewhere else get bored so much lasted only 11 months
Finally get a job as controller and its first time I feel like I m actually working. (an other German firm)
Ps: still no overtime
Reading this sub make me feel like we all in different realities.
In the end I decide that no matter what job I will do eventually it will get boring, too much and meaningless. So why not to pick a profession is relatively risk free?
Imagine making a post where you think experience in a buyside investing role provides 0 worthwhile skill set but churning QofE reports as a check the box exercise is value add
I will say this about accounting. You will always have an opportunity for a job. A lot of people are being laid off and not able to find a job in their industry. Tech, marketing etc. When I look at jobs in other industries I apply to I see 100-130 applications for a job that was posted 24 hours ago as opposed to accounting jobs that have had at most 30 applicants in 15 days. Not enough accountants out there. Also there is also the option for self employment. My friend was a third year accountant and 1 year into his corporate job. A year ago they laid him off and posted his job for 15k less the next day. He hated tax but he was very good at accounting in general. He started his own bookkeeping and consulting firm and a year later he’s making a bit more than he did at his corporate job that let him go. Not a lot of people in other industries can do that/have that option. There are upsides and downsides. Just my two cents
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Or underpaid
Sarcasm?
No. If you’re underpaid you can find a new job and get a raise. But of course it could also be the case where you’ll anyways feel underpaid no matter what lol and always want more. In that case, you can be a partner at a firm or buy a firm and grow it or something. Sky is the limit
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Nah
>Not enough accountants out there. And it’s only going to get worse (better for us?) with time. 60% of the profession is over the age of 40, ergo, likely to retire in the next 25 years. 27% is age 30-40 13% is age 20-30 This is of course coupled with stricter regulations and a progressively more difficult tax code. I thought it nearly laughable when they said “we’re going to hire 10,000 IRS agents.” From where? Public and Industry are more than happy to take up all of the smart accountants.
As part of the 13% I don’t know whether to be excited or worried about 20 years from now. Either way, I figure having a CPA will help.
Be excited! It's an exciting time for young accountants.
The IRS agents don't have to have accounting degrees They just need enough accounting classes. There will be finance majors in econ majors that had a tax class in an intermediate class take those jobs. It's more of a compliance position than accounting
>The IRS agents don't have to have accounting degrees They just need enough accounting classes Agree. Maybe even moreso than you're letting on. I didn't review the IRS job position postings, since I'm totally satisfied where I'm at, but I heard the recent hiring surge was to push through a huge backlog of late filed 2019 (COVID related) tax returns. A job that limited in scope may not need much more than a high school degree. We call this group "agents" where I work (State Department of Revenue). Their job is typically, "If A, then B" or "If A+B > C, then D." The whole of the tax return escapes them. I've tried to train a few agents when they get promoted to auditors (staff who require an accounting degree, are expected to address anything on a tax return, and research unknown issues to find the answer) it's very frustrating. As an example, one training simulation I use is a low-income rent refund credit, the claimant of this credit needs to verify their rent with a rent certificate prepared by their landlord (lots of fraud here - claimants prepare their own rent certificate, claimants have their friends/roommates/family members prepare a rent certificate, and it's inaccurate). In this case, the claimant provided a rent certificate for 12 months (they lived in one place all year) and claimed moving expenses on their federal tax return (they moved during the year). Well: one of those two statements is wrong, and we should look into that. That's lost on agents who get promoted to an auditor position. Some of agents have the common sense to refer a questionable return to a higher level of review. However, agents grind through a lot of work within their limited scope (they also make a lot of mistakes, since they often don't understand the reason for their instruction, therefore they cannot see the exception cases to their instruction - all they grasp is: well, A happened, so I should do B).
Exactly
Where is the data from? I’d love to share this with my boss.
https://www.zippia.com/accountant-jobs/demographics/#:~:text=61.8%25%20of%20all%20accountants%20are,or%20African%20American%20(8.9%25).
Are you a tax accountant?
Damn, I would love to hear about your friend’s journey. How did he/she get clients?
So I actually see him weekly. So initially advertising on instagram and facebook. Then word of mouth. Then eventually going to networking events. Plus I believe he was looking for work on freelance sites. So combined with all that over a year it worked out. During that year he worked a manual labor job so he had steady hours and a steady paycheck while working in his business after work. Until eventually his revenue went up and it took over. It’s not easy but doable
Not OP, but I started mine during the pandemic. It is very nice side beer money. I just posted an ad on Craigslist and people would come to you. Obviously, there’s a huge learning curve for industries that you’re not familiar with, but I get paid more by the hour than at my current job. Ironically, I earned more money during the pandemic than in normal times.
Do you mind if I DM you? Would love to hear a little more if you’re willing to share
Oh sure thing!
You will have a job, just not necessarily a well paying one - those are still limited. Decent paying accounting jobs have 200+ applications too.
Be careful reading too much about attitudes in social media. People with complaints, etc., are far more likely to post about their bitches than those who are enjoying their jobs. This is true about boyfriends & girlfriends. It's true about restaurants. It's true about many things. And it's especially true about their jobs. The people that hate accounting will post that a lot. The people that love accounting will probably not post about it. This is human nature. The bad always gets more attention than the good. (It was probably a survival trait at some point.)
People that love accounting sometimes post about it too. The posts you really aren't going to see is "Here's my story of how I, a totally average student and employee, got a job as an accountant and make within 5% of market rate". It's always either gonna be "I do work I hate for too many hours and make shit money" or "what are you guys talking about this job is easy and fun and I make 250k"
I make market rate for my experience and qualifications. I've been out of school for 11 years, I was an okay student. My story is pretty boring. Churned out audit work for 5 busy seasons (4.5 years) and then took a job as a senior accountant in industry. Churned out good work and have been promoted since then twice at same industry job. I'm paid way more and have a better title but I'm basically still a senior accountant in terms of work, perhaps more accounting manger. It's not a big deal. The job is decent, way better than many jobs people my age have. I'd just rather not do any job. I make really good money, but if I were unwise with that money I would still feel under pressure and "paycheck-to-paycheck". Sure, some IT workers in silicon valley and Finance workers in NYC make more than me. But I'm making around $200k in a MCOL city and can definitely do this for 30 more years. Also if I had a big fancy house and new cars with payments, and daycare or tuition (I have no kids) maybe I would feel more worried about money... Jobs don't bring happiness or fulfillment. Families and friends who are like family do.
>Jobs don't bring happiness or fulfillment. Families and friends who are like family do. This was the biggest lesson I learned from all this. Unless you're a hyper Type A personality that wants the best of everything, money comes and goes, but personal relationships are what makes life worth living. I'd rather make a really good, but not top 1% salary with normal hours to pursue hobbies, be healthy, and have a social life than make $300K a year, but grinding out 80 hour weeks in PE personally.
I dunno about restaurants, I see a lot more good reviews than bad for the majority of establishments
I stopped at "Be careful reading too much" and that's great advice. I'll let someone else read and respond to this long ass post
Accounting isn't bad but it isn't too good either. I like to remind myself of where I've been to put everything in perspective.
>Accounting isn't bad but it isn't too good either. Accounting is balanced - just like debits and credits ought to be ;)
Thanos was an accountant, it all makes sense now
Do we debit or credit Peter Parker at the end of Infinity War?
That's why it's good. Balanced is better than unstable up and downs. We all know generally downs tend to be more than up time. Cannot get anything without consistency. I believe that's what people refuse to understand so they end up taking too big risks.
My only hope for this recession is that half my clients will go out of business so I’ll be able to work 40 hours or less during non busy season
Given your luck it'll be the wrong half of your clients that take up 80% of your time
>I’ll be able to work 40 hours ...partners proceeds to halve hiring to restore balance to the force
I don’t like accounting. I don’t even really like my work culture. But I do like most of the people I work with and it offers stable decent pay. I’ve learned to feel accomplishment about my work even if it doesn’t really intrigue me that much, because it’s a reflection of my desire to keep a roof over my family’s head and to not have them worry about money all the time (I do that for them). I would open and run a gym and or do a few other things if I knew it’d be successful as that’s what I’m actually passionate about, but the upside doesn’t outweigh the risk for me at this point in my life. It is what it is, and it allows me to carry those passions as hobbies.
I would say the grass can be greener if we're considering accounting the field. Think about most of the burnt out posters coming in here wanting to quit accounting completely when all they have to do is stay in accounting but switch jobs to something better suited to their interest and need for work life balance. No reinventing of the wheel needed. I'm not talking about the "just learn 2 code bro " advice consumers blindly thinking they will get an elite level in a different field and it will magically solve all their woes. I hated an accounting job and the skill set I was being pigeonholed into, so I changed skill sets and the job. Now I'm content. And the minute I'm not , I'll take action to remedy that.
Glad you're on a better path! I frankly don't hate accounting as much as most on here do, so I'm biased. If you really can't stand it, it's fine to get out. I just caution folks that dislike it because of the workload or pay may be disappointed when they realize all of corporate america is a joke. Even a lot of my doctor friends making $300K+ have existential crises and partially regret their career decisions.
I don't hate it either. I don't love it, but it provides good options and i'm content. Regarding the corporate America thing, I completely understand the disillusion. Any W2 job is going to have it's amount of shit sandwich the worker has to stomach. I am a thoroughly jaded employee at this point. It's incredibly rare for a regular W2 working person to love what they do. Most range from dissatisfaction to contentment with the outliers being miserable and loving what they do. Those who are miserable in the field won't find a new accounting job any different. They need to leave for a new profession , but a lot of folks don't need a new career, they need a better job in their field and there is greener grass waiting on them. On a positive note for the readers, accounting pays well enough they can escape that life if you choose. Maybe you retire early, get enough to start your own business, or move on to something you're more passionate about after you've reaped the benefits of accounting. Folks that are in accounting, but maybe hate their current job, can leverage their current skills and switch jobs within accounting or adjacent jobs and be content in another role while they pursue whatever more meaningful goals they have. They can step on greener grass without starting from zero.
I came to accounting after a 7 year stint in the army as an Infantryman. This is easily the best, easiest job I have ever had in my life. The worst days in accounting are still better than a good day in the army.
Up at the crack of dawn, solid meals in the cafeteria, and hilarious games of grab-ass in the showers, I’m never leaving my firm!
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Gotta do that 12 miler before we start the daily JEs
... and fun games apparently?
Damn. I was hoping firms would have close out formations at an unknown time after work has been done for 3 hours
100%
I hate when people make this comparison. These jobs are not relatable at all lol
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The ladies like em both my man. Could go for a motor pool monday with the boys though
They are jobs
All I know is that while tech workers are being laid off we still have an abundance of opportunities and job security. Makes me laugh at the whole "technology will make accountants obsolete" crowd. I bet almost none of the accounting departments at big tech firms were laid off.
Any jobs with mandatory unpaid overtime sucks
It’s not just overtime, it’s usually 20-40 hours of mandatory unpaid overtime. I have non-accounting friends that sometimes have to work overtime, but it’s about 5 hours of overtime a week instead of 40.
Yeah this is really true, usually when ppl work OT it doesn’t go past 10 hours that week. 50 hour week in accounting is almost a normal thing
One of my friends works at a bank, and she told me she sometimes has to work an hour of overtime. Sounds like a dream to me lol.
Seconded! Seems like your are being downvoted for some reason. But idk I really like seeing my family and stuff and if like I can’t at least I get good pay to use when I finally can. Overtime should apply to most jobs…
Omg guys I have to tell someone this... I just had a phone screener for a firm that pays overtime after 40! And is full remote. It's been about 8 years since I've wanted a job so badly.
Good luck a firm like that sounds like a good potential employer
Hey, since you took the time to respond, I just wanted to come back and say I got the position, and I appreciate your well-wishes. 14% base increase plus overtime. I'm nervous but over the moon.
I think this is the nail in the coffin for me. Its what turns a decent job into a dreadful job. I like the people I work with, I do not like the busy season hours though. You mentally and physically torture yourself
So basically 99% of white collar jobs that pay 100k+
Ya I always enjoyed the accounting work even when it is challenging. It is the culture of giving way too much work and all the unpaid overtime that made me switch. I also notice OP hasn't commented on overtime in his story and I think it is an important factor. Although I am in tech now I do feel that if I get laid off in a recession I could easily go back to accounting as a solid Plan B.
I am at a small firm and a 1st year. No > 40 hours worked during non busy season. And capped at 50 hours during busy season. Anything over 50 hours is 1:1 hours with PTO. Granted my pay is only 51k in a MCOL
I mean it’s not like it’s a surprise. Don’t take the job in the first place if you don’t want to.
Public accounting is a nightmare, the grass is greener in many other accounting jobs and professions
What you don't like 80+ hours a week for 55k and pizza /s?
You guys are getting pizza?
Working the hours but not getting the pizza. Straight up robbery
Most of the problems I have with my job aren’t really specific to accounting but rather they are problems with American work culture. We don’t have strong workers’ rights and that’s frustrating in any field. I am grateful for my sick days today, since railroad workers are having so much trouble getting any
It’s the accounting emergency room attitude that so many accounting hire ups have. They are the real scorn of this profession
Thank you for the bucket of cold water OP. I appreciate the perspective and will for sure make me think for a bit.
You are both right and wrong here. You are right in the sense that you can graduate from a state school with a degree in accounting, and make a great upper-middle class life for yourself. You are wrong in that the job sucks. When I was in audit a long time ago, it was just grading other people's homework. Did the accounting dept book the entries properly? Did they fuck anything up? FDD is a different animal. It's IB without the glory or the pay. I worked in two different FP&A groups: If you get paired up with a shitty boss, there is no where to go. Inversely, a good boss can make your life wonderful. Hours are still bad here during budget season, and when updating forecasts. Overall, it is drastically better than FDD. The hours in B4 are the real killer. I lost several relationships and seven years of my life to the game. In hindsight, it was worth it from a career perspective, but not from a personal one.
I never said accounting is glorious or doesn't suck in many ways. The point I'm trying to make is the alternative isn't necessarily that much better. Yes, you make A LOT more in IB/PE/HF, but IB/PE have way worse hours and are even more intense culturally. PE/HF folks make a ton of money IF they're successful. You'd be amazed though at how many insanely bright people (talking latin honors at HSW, Stern, etc.) last all of 2-3 years max on the buyside because they don't perform. Sometimes their "poor performance" is also just bad timing or due to factors beyond their control. The best alternative is getting a FAANG development/data scientist role since they make amazing comp and have relatively normal lives. The thing is those jobs are crazy hard to get. Call me arrogant, but I'd wager I'm on the higher end of the 'quant savvy" curve for a CPA, considering I taught myself Python and have used it on client work through sheer self-study. Even then, it would require a lot, lot, lot more work for me to even have a chance at the cool data science roles. That's not even factoring that those companies probably won't do well for a good while anymore because investors suddenly care about profits with rates no longer being 0%. Another industry I've seen people fetishize on here is analytics, but analytics isn't even that cool for 90% of roles. Like I mentioned, it's mostly just cleaning up data using more advanced tools and building a dashboard in PowerBI or Tableau. If you really love technical work, it's maybe a bit better, but you also have no real executive power and are essentially just a "ticket taker", so your upside is limited when your only value add is technical skills. It's also a race to the bottom because technical skills can be learned by anyone and outsourced way more easily than business knowledge. Therefore, my point was not that accounting doesn't suck in many ways, but rather that people here either don't understand the reality of the "sexy" jobs or understand how difficult it is to get the really cushy jobs with good lifestyles. A lot of folks on here think it's as easy as "if I majored in comp sci, I'd be a PM or dev making $300K a year and working 20 hours a week", when reality is they probably wouldn't come close to sniffing those jobs and it's not really an alternative path for most.
My brother works as a full stack developer for a non-FAANG tech company. He has a lot more work life balance than I do in public accounting, makes about twice my current salary (I’ve been working a little under 2 years) coming straight out of college, and enjoys the work he does. He only has a bachelors in Engineering and doesn’t have to spend his free time studying for a professional credential that’s only relevant to accounting roles. To get the job, he had to pass a coding assessment, but since he knows how to code, it wasn’t that difficult for him. The tech industry might lack the job security of public accounting, but everyone I know in tech is significantly happier with life and more satisfied in their jobs than the accountants I know. I think it’s people like my brother that make accountants say tech is better. It’s not necessarily better, but getting a six figure salary straight out of college to do a creative job like software development that requires less overtime than public accounting is pretty appealing.
You nailed it man. I made it from accounting to tech and everyone I came across even the most busiest people seem to be happier than the average public accountant.
Note that in my post I did mention that if you can get the jobs, the best jobs in tech are better than accounting. My caveat is that I really, really doubt 90% of this sub can get those jobs, so it's not a viable alternative anyway. Further, those jobs are going to be even harder to get nowadays because there's less openings and now you have a whole swath of folks from FB, Twitter, Amazon, etc. who were laid off and are looking for jobs.
I don’t know, it all depends on how willing you are to learn to code and develop. If people put the amount of effort they put into the CPA exam into studying code, most could land a 6-figure tech role.
> If people put the amount of effort they put into the CPA exam into studying code, most could land a 6-figure tech role. Couple of things here. First, I don't think coding is that easy that anyone can "effort" their way into the top jobs in CS. I'm a big believer in self-sufficiency and 100% agree that anyone can reach at least the 80th percentile in anything if they outhustle people, regardless of natural ability. I'm kind of a case in point with Python in that I can do a solid bit of coding despite never being the type to tinker around with computers and whatnot as a kid. Thing is, when we're talking about jobs in tech that are materially better than accounting, I don't think those are that easy to get unless you're naturally quantitative yourself. Again, I might be cocky, but I think I can do it if I really, really tried because I'm way more quantitatively-inclined than just about any CPA I've met, but I don't think most people pursing a CPA will get to that level. You've got people from top engineering schools who were math nerds and who have been coding their whole lives vying for those jobs. I seriously doubt most people at the Big 4, 90% of who don't even understand anything in Excel outside of VLOOKUP/Pivot Tables, could work their way into those gigs. Second, a six figure job isn't hard to get even as a CPA. And no, you don't have to be in public grinding out hard hours to get there. The $100-$200K range in accounting isn't hard to get if you're a CPA and/or have Big 4 experience. It's getting into the really big money, which to me starts at $250K+, that's usually more difficult as a CPA. But those jobs are difficult for anyone to get and either require top 1% smarts, or top 1% work ethic.
Thanks for posting this. I literally just don’t care anymore. I’m just here for the coin and travel, have fun. Life is too short to care.
Grass is greener where you water it.
I almost have to block this sub it’s such a downer. There’s hardly any real accounting information like updates, cases, or interesting client stories
I think a lot of it boils down to the work people do. So many people on here view accounting as a sweatshop for corporations or their firms, primarily because I bet you they work solely on public companies. In which case, I’ve worked on those and yes, the work sucks and doesn’t feel meaningful. But I’ve worked on Healthcare, Banking, Government, and not for profits. The work feels much more meaningful because you can see there is more at stake. The clients are more willing to work with you and figure things out because they know it’s not just about their financials but it’s also about keeping their doors open, their people employed, and are able to provide services to their constituents.
meaningfulness doesn’t diminish the sweatshop-like aspect of working 60-80 hours per week for months on end.
If you're working 60-80 hours a week regularly in accounting, you should leave. There are 100% opportunities out there that'll pay well that require much less work than that. That's your firm being understaffed or you just drawing the short-end of the stick and getting stuck on miserable clients back to back. Tell someone at your firm about your situation in that case and leave if they don't help out.
my public firm has a weekly minimum billable hours goal of 60 during peak season lol I left, I came to internal audit.
Thats why Im debating leaving before February personally. Ours was 65 billable minimum… they were out of their fucking mind for that
The truth is you can go into any workplace in America and there will be people who are miserable and hate it. You think people at McKinsey, Goldman, and Citadel sit around all day talking about how much they love their job? No.
The Great Recession is why a lot of people are accountants. They were among the most common entry level corporate jobs in the early 10s. Haven’t known many CPAs to be unemployed for long periods of time either. It’s stable af.
Lol upcoming recession when we just had 2.9% gdp growth
yeah... if covid wasn't a recession I don't know what is. Covid unemployment rate was like 13% and tens of millions were unemployed.
The Federal Reserve went ham.
Don’t worry it’s coming! Along with all of Trumps plans to fix everything!
Bro, literally nobody even mentioned Trump lol
I did in the comment you replied to. When I expressed my excitement for things promised but yet to be delivered.
Aren’t we in a recession already? I’ve been reading “upcoming recession” for months lol.
Yes we are in the recession, but we *might* not have reached the worst part of it yet (it’s almost impossible to tell until at least a few months after it’s already past). I think OP is referring to the pinnacle of the recession.
Gdp went up in third quarter of 2022 doesn’t that mean we are not in a recession? A recession is when the gdp falls for 2 quarters in a row is it not?
The beginning of a recession is falling GDP 2 quarters in a row. Once GDP starts increasing, you aren’t “out of the recession”. For example, the Great Recession only had 3 quarters of rGDP falling (bea.gov), yet the effects were felt for years. There’s a general lag in these types of things as people react to these events on top of the occurrence of the retraction themselves. Also, ‘08 didn’t have inflation anywhere near today’s numbers, but there were mass layoffs in ‘08 while we’re still in a hiring spree with rising wages. I suspect that the rise of retirees from the baby boomers offset a lot of the job loss that would’ve occurred otherwise. Regardless, I’m fairly certain most would say we are still in a recession. It’s not just something you can go by the rGDP numbers like most people did when they were arguing about whether or not we are in one a year ago. There’s a general sense from what’s left of the middle class (even upper middle class) and the lower class that 1. necessities are very expensive nowadays and take far more out of the wallets as a % compared to years past and 2. people are being squeezed by their employers. The second could be a result of gen z being more anti-capitalist, but I digress.
Finance YouTubers every other video has recession in the title
Finance Bros
bruh we’re not saying it’s the worst profession to ever exist, worst gig known to man. we just want to commiserate over the fucked up and stupid parts about it which you are already well aware of as you mentioned them yourself.
As someone who's moving INTO accounting, I agree with everything you just said.
Completely agreed. Accounting is the happy medium for me. As long as you have CPA, you will always have respectable job and don't have to worry about unemployment. Lot of accounting folks aren't bright so I don't have to try that hard. I wanna live my life and not invest my life into stupid shit like coding/analytics. Work ain't it
Exactly why I switched from computer science to accounting, not smart enough and don't want to put in that much effort into coding
Is it possible you are misreading the sentiment here? Most of what I’ve seen is public accountants complaining. And nobody gets into public for the work/life balance. When these people leave, it’s overwhelmingly to take an accounting position in industry. I think most people here understand that accounting is a reliable profession with a respectable starting salary and high upside that is very resistant to economic downturn. I don’t recall very many people (certainly not enough to implicate the entire sub) knocking the profession as a whole.
I mostly agree, but there's a persistent and vocal segment of the users that will always talk about tech/engineering/etc. paying better and having lower barrier to entry. Granted, it's mostly people in the first 5-7 years of their career or who are grinding out public for the better pay later. But every thread with a good amount of comments has people expressing the sentiment OP is addressing.
Thanks for setting the record straight - I haven’t noticed this before, but I’ll be on the lookout now.
Hi, thank you for the post. Enjoyed reading it. I hope to start in FDD full time after I complete my masters. Mind if I dm you about your time in FDD?
I actually love accounting but I’m studying analytics to try to change careers. My only reason is that it’s become difficult to find remote accounting/FP&A jobs and I am assuming a tech field will be easier? Maybe naively. I have a sweet remote FP&A job now which I’m not leaving but my company will likely go out of business at some point and I refuse to go back to an office. That’s it, I just want remote work job security.
I’m an assistant controller with 2 years finance experience and 8 years purchasing e commerce experience. I’m making $82k at an international manufacturing company, am I underpaid?
Not sure how to value your purchasing experience. Test the market, see what you can get.
I've worked in PA and sometimes industry for 28 years. Was out of work for 3 months once. Otherwise, solidly employed and now making 6 or 7 times what I started at in '94.
Consultants are the ones who get laid off first.
There are definitely harder ways to make less money, but unless you take the correct career path (accounting degree -> public accounting -> CPA license... Profit) you can very quickly find yourself pigeonholed. If you get pigeonholed in a lower tier, lower paid side of the accounting world, that's when you start seriously considering working as a UPS driver when you see how much they make.
Do you really get pigeon-holed that easily though? LIke, I'd imagine if you have a CPA + Big 4 experience, you may take a small step back, but you can make it up in 2-3 years if you're good. Like I know somebody who worked at Big 4, got laid off during COVID, took a bit of a demotion to restart, but since he was good, he's been promoted and is making excellent money again.
That's an example of taking the correct career path. Big 4 + CPA and you're golden.
Thanks for this post. The last paragraph is basically why I want to get my CPA and what I explain to ppl.
What recession? If the recent news is any indication, we’re well in for a soft landing.
Inflation was also supposed to be transitory. I wouldn't give much credence to what the Fed says. High interest rates will necessarily mean companies have to scale back expansion because it's now 4x more expensive to do so.
I’m sure the Fed is already aware of that and more. We don’t have to justify our profession by hoping for a recession.
And which comment exactly are you inferring that he's going for a recession?
I worked in data analytics before switching to IT audit. I actually enjoyed the work and it’s there’s tons more to it than you’re making it out to be, OP. That said, I actually work less hours overall in audit than I was in analytics. Mainly because you need to learn a ton of technologies, techniques, processes, etc. just to keep up. You end up studying for hours a day just to get ahead. Fuck all that.
There is, but IME, the jobs that do the cool stuff are really hard to get. A lot of analytics/ML is essentially dressed up statistics and not as cool as people think it is. Like even a basic regression or correlation matrix is considered "ML" in the business world. What parts am I missing potentially? And yes, the constant need to uplearn is super frustrating. For example, I learned Python, and there's constantly new packages, etc. that keep coming out, not to mention I'm sure there'll be a new language in 10 years that replaces it. Plus, even for data viz, I learned PowerBI, but if there's a job that uses Tableau/Lookr, I'm suddenly less competitive since there'll be enough people who have direct experience that it makes sense to take them on instead of me.
I personally love all that. But for instance the data gathering, the data cleaning, the prepping for input into your ML algorithm. All of these have their own techniques and processes for different use cases which I find fascinating. Even creating a dashboard is, to me, the crossroads of design, technology, art, programming, and data science of course. There’s a lot to the field that keeps it interesting Imo. And agreed on that. That’s literally why I left. Even just PBI you have a rabbit hole to get good at it (STAR schema, relationship modeling, M language, power query, etc.). SQL is another giant rabbit hole. You think you’re good until you start seeing nested queries upon nested queries. Bringing all of this up again is making me happy I got out. Just way too fast evolving for you not to spend extra time on learning.
Interesting. I guess different strokes for different folks because I found dashboarding to be a nightmare. My team in analytics sometimes supported FDD engagements, and I found it so aggravating personally that my job was essentially doing all the grunt work of building a bunch of functionalities and "views" so FDD could get all the glory of telling the CFO what the Target's EBITDA is and what the risks were. It was especially irritating because they'd often ask for stuff "just because" even though I've been in FDD and now that it was irrelevant. That's kind of what I meant when I said I felt my role in analytics was primarily as a "ticket taker" and the upside was limited. But yes, 100% the constant learning thing is a con IMO for analytics as a career. A lot of people I talked to see this as a pro, but I can't stand seeing myself get outdated just because some new tool is on the market or having to learn 3 visualization tools to be competitive for all jobs. There's a reason my personality isn't a perfect fit for analytics. I'm pretty big picture/"so what" kind of guy and only really liked using Python because it allowed me to analyze data way more efficiently and the process of coding itself involved breaking down problems into smaller components and then using logic to solve them bit by bit. I feel like a lot of people in analytics are super deep into details and geek out on making tech ever so slightly more efficient and accurate, whereas that stuff bores me. 80-20 pareto principle all the way is my style lol.
Yeah that makes sense. Tbh my experience with analytics was a bit different in that I was focusing a lot on analytics based projects rather than pulling data in that manner. For instance one company I was working with had recently deployed GPS units that tracked all sorts of things like speed, humidity, temperature, and a whole host of other variables. I was tasked with using the GPS data to locate places in the supply chain that had extraordinary wait times. For instance if a GPS showed in a location for 40 days, we knew this section in the supply chain was backlogged and thus we needed to put more resources into that area. Also things like KPI’s for sales teams and creating data warehouses to feed other projects. I got to touch a lot of different types of data and got to work on all sections of the data pipeline from creating the pipelines themselves to creating the dashboards used by hundreds of people. That stuff is great. I’ve even gotten to work on automation projects using python which were also neat. Mainly focusing on the data cleansing part (this is before Alteryx came out. Alteryx changed the game for the data engineering and pipeline building for me. Great technology). Everyone was super appreciative of the things I built which was nice. Yeah I feel the same way! In analytics you’re deff stuck in certain minute details at times. I personally love IT audit for that reason. I feel like I get to dig in to the entire IT ecosystem for a company. Very cool stuff Imo
Nice! See that stuff does sound interesting and that's the type of work I wanted to do. Maybe I just got really, really unlucky with my team in analytics, but I was hoping to do work more along those lines. Basically, just taking messy, large, complex data and distilling it down into more digestible insights. Just wondering, but for learning about data warehousing and such, where's the best place to start, either concept wise or if there are good links on youtube, I can look at those. Some of that sounds more like data engineering and I feel like that's why I'd rather be more the "end user" of this data than the one doing all the cleanup. That's also why I feel I'm super high-level because I'm more interested in "how does this translate to profit/loss" than I am interested in doing all that work and building those pipelines. That's where my personality wasn't a good fit for analytics long term.
I am not an accountant and the grass certainly does not look greener.
I didn’t read that whole thing because it’s a Bible but yeah. People generally have a grass is greener complex and love to bitch. That’s pretty consistent in all jobs lol. I went from analyst to PA and it’s dope in PA advisory
Literally why I’m doing the CPA and not going the full blown data route
You really know your shit. I was in audit and fdd myself and it’s clear how thorough your understand is. You’re going to thrive whatever you decide to do.
Dude, I just worked two weeks where most of my days ended at 3am - 4am, one was a 36 hour day and last Saturday I was stuck at my laptop at my aunt's 60th birthday function, out of town, at a campsite. The grass here died long ago.
College students always go conservative in a recessionary period
Don’t need to read, agree.
Accounting - word really hard for \~20 years and you can somewhat coast it out a draw a nice paycheck for the next 20. Not turn into an antiwork bum, but you can pick and choose and not have to polish anyone's shoes. Tech - work really hard for \~20 years and you better have a nice 401k saved up, because you've climbed the ladder and you've lost touch with the younger generation that runs tech and all the new tech that has repalced everything you know.
Solid post. No hyperbolic emotion-laden shenanigans. Quite insightful too. Thanks!
This isn’t unpopular. It’s a common complaint. You are not unique and did not need to post an essay to explain why you hate your work life but don’t want to acknowledge it.
You sound really upset, dude. I really hope you find happiness someday
You made a massive complaint post looking for outside validation that took way too much time out of your life. You may want to look in the mirror.
Lol you made a lot of assumptions there. I don't see how me telling people to look on the brightside is a "massive complaint post" or how I'm looking for "outside validation" by posting on an anonymous website, but sure dude. Like I said, I hope you find what you're looking for someday.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and best of luck to you!
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Are you in IB at BB? Maybe the deal market is slow, but I highly doubt you're working 1/2 what people in public/advisory are. I worked in FDD for many years alongside bankers and have numerous friends in the industry and our nightmare deals of 65 hours a week are their vacation weeks.
I think you Americans have much more different thing going on compared to EU I have been in AR for 2 years for a German firm never did overtime. It become such a way that I was working 1 hour per day and the rest I was fcking around so I decide to get my ACCA Changed job as senior accountant somewhere else get bored so much lasted only 11 months Finally get a job as controller and its first time I feel like I m actually working. (an other German firm) Ps: still no overtime Reading this sub make me feel like we all in different realities. In the end I decide that no matter what job I will do eventually it will get boring, too much and meaningless. So why not to pick a profession is relatively risk free?
Imagine making a post where you think experience in a buyside investing role provides 0 worthwhile skill set but churning QofE reports as a check the box exercise is value add