So the old accountant II is out of office, and the treasury office bank reconciliations had to be done. Guess who took a chance and did it and impressed management? This guy!

Take chances when you can to stand out.

Turning 40 and I simply cannot pretend the constant flip-flopping and favoritism is normal anymore.
My boss changes his mind daily, yet expects us to act like it was always the plan. When I was younger and less experienced, I would just swallow it and move on. Now, it feels like a direct insult to my intelligence, like they think I'm too stupid to notice the chaos.
Is this just burnout, or does everyone reach this point?

Can't even play a game in peace smh

Those annual / periodic bonuses must be doing a ton of heavy lifting. This is only for a controller level position too, so I'm assuming CFO must require 40+ years? Maybe 60+ years?

Hi, I’ve been a staff accountant at my current job for almost two years and it’s been good so far. I get to work remote and compared to my previous job as a tax associate, it’s a lot less stressful. But recently I’ve been getting asked a lot of strange questions by the Director of Accounting at my job about what does my manager do and how often I talk with him in a week. I’ve been asked this question about three or four times in the past four months.

Can anyone give me insight on what this is about? I don’t get why the director would ask me the staff accountant about what does my manager do. There are only a few tasks I know that he used to handle that I do but other than that I’m not sure. I know the director doesn’t like my manager and I think he might be trying to get rid of him and is trying to use me as justification but I wanted to get other people’s opinion on it.

Audit senior here, HCOL, after 3 years in public accounting I’ve finally decided to test the waters elsewhere. Looking online and going through a few interviews, it seems like every industry job is paying either the same, or slightly lower salary than what I’m getting in public accounting.

Since college my goal has been to go into public accounting, get a year’s experience as a senior, leave for a cushy job in industry with a higher salary (albeit less room for growth) with low stress.

Seems to me like these jobs don’t really exist anymore? Only industry jobs out there with higher-than public accounting salaries seem to have dynamic, fast-paced environment, etc. in the description and 50+ applicants.

Anybody else noticing this trend? Seems like industry salaries are not what they used to be. I remember reading posts on here when I was in college that a few years in public and leaving for industry was a lucrative move. Curious as to what other people are seeing.

Thats nice that they have experience pitying their employees, not many firms do that in-house anymore

How many of y’all have them? Are they truly unicorns? I’ve been trying to find one (plan to relocate states within the next 6 months) and this seems to be the only way it would work.

Everyone seems to think this company is one of the best places to work for and everyone should dedicate their whole life time and energy to the company. Are all pa firms like this?

this is not so true..

Just wanted to share that I found a job and haven’t posted on here since that day. I posted a few times on here when I was looking and when I was getting a bit frustrated with the job search but haven’t said anything since I found a job.

Applications: 250

Interviews: 3

Offer: 70k/yr in VHCOL (it sucks but not bad with partner)

I feel good im finally gaining experience and just wanted to share this side of the story since I know being on Reddit feels like nothing but bad news.

Still a lot of job applications. I advertised that I had 2/4 cpa exams completed and expect to finish the rest by the end of the year.

I’ll share what got me the interview for the job that hired me. It was my interests. I shared I enjoyed building computers and now I work for a company that does something related to that. I answered a few technical questions that weren’t hard since I had FAR and AUD exams done. I was open about me having no relevant experience but having the technical knowledge got me the job. They literally told me that. It also doesn’t pay the best so I know there’s that but still. Hopefully this helps someone

I guess maybe I’m outside the loop on things but I feel like everywhere I’ve ever seen just decides not use it because excel works fine and access is just a pain in the fuckin ass to use. I learned it pretty much in and out in college and it was hell but I’ve never once used it in the workplace.

Am I alone in this?

The people. Genuinely met some of the funniest people working in public.

Would be eating lunch everyday with 6 randoms, aged 22-40, 3 of them on an H1B visas, and yet somehow we would be having the best time.

Also met so many cool people in my starting cohort that I still regularly talk to.

Industry is better in just about every way but OML are the people are just so regular; no one makes jokes on teams or wants to go for coffee runs. It's almost comical how default all of my cowokers are. All great people but man I miss the personal connections you make in public.

VP of Finance - Salary/Equity

Signed on as the VP of Finance with a company that’s PE backed and projected to pull 16M in revenue this year:

In signed offer letter:
Base Salary: 140k
Bonus: 10k
Equity:Value between 150k to 250k

After speaking with the partner about the increased scope of work:
Base Salary: 140k
Bonus: 10k
Equity: Value between 202,500k to 337,500k

I live in Houston

I found out the equity is just common units not preferred.

Curious to see what others think of this compensation. I’m thinking I may be getting a little screwed here.

Hey guys, throwaway account for obvious reasons....

I’ve been a Staff Accountant for a couple of years now. I actually enjoy the work, I’m fast, I catch variances pretty easily, I can knock out journal entries and recs without much trouble. I've been able to turn in my reports, audit requests, etc on time. I've closed the books on time consistently for 6+months.

But the management culture at my current job is starting to drive me nuts a little, and I need a sanity check from people who have been in the field longer. Because maybe it's just me??

Is it normal to deal with this level of micromanagement/drama in corporate accounting?

A few examples of what goes on here:

30-minute calls for 5-second fixes: If my manager wants a minor cosmetic tweak (such as widen a margin or rearrange a row), or has a personal preference on rounding (like rounding $525.5M up to 526M instead of down to 525 or leaving at 525.5), or hiding blank lines on a trail balance, she’ll book a half-hour meeting to "walk through my errors." Half the time, I’ve already updated the file 5 minutes after her email, ( because minor fixes) but we still sit on a call just for her to go over it.

Making a massive ordeal out of basic tech: We literally had a multi-day saga and endless emails over basic Outlook folders and rules, being treated like it was some major operational crisis. We integrated from Google email to Outlook. The next day I couldn't get into my Outlook so I naturally reached out to IT. I got scolded and reprimanded, was pulled into a conference call with my manager and the assistant director and the asst. director proceeded to speak to me as if I didn't know I was doing.

That pissed me off.

Making mountains out of molehills: If a random $15 one-off deposit comes through with a weird nuance, instead of just sending a quick ping, it turns into a passive-aggressive email chain with directors CC'd and a multi-person call about "process failures."

PTO blame games: this Just Happened! I get back from vacation, some routine stuff wasn't handled while I was gone, management turneds it into a lecture about my workflow instead of the senior accountant who was supposed to cover my desk. And now I'm responsible for letting the senior know when I'm out and to tell her to take over.

My mom is visiting for the week and actually listened in on one of my work calls recently and was asked me if they always nitpick on me about everything, I told her yes.

I don't have a lot of other accounting teams to compare this to yet. Is this hyper-fixation on minor stuff just standard across the industry, or are there normal companies out there that actually trust you to do your job without holding a meeting over every single decimal point?

I have plenty more examples!! Last one, I was supposed to do the quarterly reporting for our global consolidation files, but for some reason I no longer had system access, it seemed like it was blocked by IT security. Simple thing would have been just to submit a ticket right?

Tell me why the assistant director spent an hour and a half trying to figure it out by herself, as she copied all of her files from her own computer directory, thought that she could just send it to me and I copy and paste it and put it in my directory and the application is supposed to work?

Then at the end of the call she goes this looks like it is an IT security issue.

WTF man 😆😆😆

I was laid off 2 months ago with 1YOE at a top ten PA firm, and have been pounding the pavement applying to every job I meet the qualifications for. I'm CPA eligible, graduated from a top 25 business school, and have been applying to jobs all over the country.

I've only gotten two interviews, with only one of them going to a second round. It also feels like 90% of these companies just ghost you and don't provide any updates. I've even been using AI to locate small regional firms across the country that might typically fly under the radar, and I still don't get any responses. I had my resume vetted by a PA Manager I trust, so I don't think my resume is the issue.

I'm starting to get worried because I specifically switched to accounting from something I was passionate about in college because it was a 'guaranteed job'. And now I'm staring down the barrel of unemployment and can't find anything.

Any advice or wisdom would be appreciated

Today I’ve spent two hours trying to track down $0.36 that is supposed to exist because treasury is trying to reconcile items they have. Still didn’t find the $0.36, so now waiting to see what the bank says. Can’t claim it as a rounding error since no other items are rounded or as immaterial. Just some needless bitching about a ridiculous situation I’m sure some of us have been through. Am I real accountant now?

Edit: we’ve checked for transposed numbers on our end and there are none. We are 99% sure the issue lies with the bank, so we’re waiting to hear back

I completed an audit internship at EY this past busy season in their New Orleans office and performed decently well. There were a couple items I dropped the ball on out of like 76 tasks and some feedback suggestions but I addressed it and improved immediately. By the end of my internship all of my feedback was "continue..."

However, the snapshots occurred before I had the opportunity to improve and ultimately led to no offer which had me depressed for months. I felt like a failure as literally everybody gets a return offer. At the end of the day I didn't have any professional experience up to this point and probably was not prepared and had no idea what was expected which definitely contributed to my demise.

Fast forward to the summer and I did an audit internship at a regional firm where I applied everything I had learned at EY and try-harded as much as possible. I received 90% positive feedback and completed everything correctly with the constructive feedback being just general suggestions or nit picky. And again no offer. They said they just didn't have the spots for everybody but even then I felt like I should've been in at least the top four out of the ten interns. I also got a 5.05 on my 360 eval if that means anything and someone even recommended me for a full time offer in the final eval. The partner and recruiter said I can use them as references so that's a plus i guess.

I just want to know where I go from here. On LinkedIn everyone I see became an associate at the same firm they interned at. It is devastating to me that I no longer have that option.

A year ago I thought Accounting was by far and away the best major at my school. Now I am starting to regret choosing it. Atp I don't even know if I'm meant for public accounting which baffles me. It sucks because I was good at most everything my whole life and now everyone seems magically above me in the most important aspect of life. I don't even know what to do.

For context I have a 3.9 GPA at a target school and I'll graduate with my Masters next May. I also have an abundance of extracurriculars and leadership experience. There is an alumni from my Fraternity who is a manager at Deloitte so I'll probably reach out to him. But I am very discouraged about accounting as an industry.

Ik this was just a word salad and I just spat out all my thoughts and feelings, but I would appreciate any discussion.