I’m a CPA that worked in Big 4 accounting before quitting and switching into software engineering. To get my CPA, I had to obtain a master’s degree, sit for and pass all four sections of the CPA exam, and then work for roughly a year under a licensed CPA. The last requirement was easiest to fulfill at a Big 4.
What I got for all of those credentials coming out of school was a starting salary of 55,000 in California and a whole lot of stress. Busy season was 80+ hour work weeks and included working on the weekends. I tried pushing back about working on Sundays, but I was the only one on the team who didn’t work.
Once busy season was over, I was sold on the idea that the Summer would be easy, but that wasn’t the case. The partners took on more clients to generate more revenue for themselves, and I continued working 40+ hours during the Summer despite being told I wouldn’t.
Worse, we couldn’t get newer members to join out of college and started outsourcing all of our audit work to the Philippines and India. The work from the Philippines was somewhat passable, and the work from India was unusable. So I had to do all this coordinating across time zones and a never ending amount of corrections to make the work meet the quality expected by a US-based audit firm. It wasn’t fun in the slightest.
You can never have a perfect audit because there’s always more work that you can do. The system pushes you to fill every waking hour that it can get from you with work. It’s mostly meaningless busy-work that shouldn’t be ans stressful as it is. All of that for 55,000 with a graduate degree. Worse, the firm achieved record profits in 2020 yet froze salaries for those being promoted to senior (supposed to be a jump to about 100,000).
I really miss the ease of interviews from having a CPA and the protections afforded by a body overseeing the industry. It was a lot better than the system we have as software engineers. But the sheer amount of work and stress was truly not worth the pay.
What I got for all of those credentials coming out of school was a starting salary of 55,000 in California and a whole lot of stress. Busy season was 80+ hour work weeks and included working on the weekends. I tried pushing back about working on Sundays, but I was the only one on the team who didn’t work.
Once busy season was over, I was sold on the idea that the Summer would be easy, but that wasn’t the case. The partners took on more clients to generate more revenue for themselves, and I continued working 40+ hours during the Summer despite being told I wouldn’t.
Worse, we couldn’t get newer members to join out of college and started outsourcing all of our audit work to the Philippines and India. The work from the Philippines was somewhat passable, and the work from India was unusable. So I had to do all this coordinating across time zones and a never ending amount of corrections to make the work meet the quality expected by a US-based audit firm. It wasn’t fun in the slightest.
You can never have a perfect audit because there’s always more work that you can do. The system pushes you to fill every waking hour that it can get from you with work. It’s mostly meaningless busy-work that shouldn’t be ans stressful as it is. All of that for 55,000 with a graduate degree. Worse, the firm achieved record profits in 2020 yet froze salaries for those being promoted to senior (supposed to be a jump to about 100,000).
I really miss the ease of interviews from having a CPA and the protections afforded by a body overseeing the industry. It was a lot better than the system we have as software engineers. But the sheer amount of work and stress was truly not worth the pay.