Anyone else feel like public accounting made them lose their identity?

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Yup. Robotic hamsters on a wheel, where you have a bunch of condescending 20-something year olds with chips on their shoulders as your bosses, thinking it gives them the right to say whatever they want to your face when PA has been their only job out of college.

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I don’t understand the prestige associated with big four.. congrats, you can look at one number in a work paper and tie it out in the return & do that for 80 hours a week. 🙄🙄🙄

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Yes. It has bullied me into someone I haven’t been and, frankly, don’t like.

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Yep yep yep! I use to think we are the top performers and the best of the best. Now I feel like I am a brainless robot and turning into a grumpier old person day by day. I know why there is so many happy hours now. Get drunk and you will forget about all the problems! Good things is that if you want to move up just grind and you will get to partner.

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I think people should learn to distinguish their professional identity from their personal one. A job cannot make you lose your identity if you don't identify your success or worth with your job. I learned this the hard way in my last job. If a job is making feel as though you've lost yourself, it might be time to revisit whether this is the right job/career path for you.

likehelpful

Yep and thats why I hopped out. Was starting to not recognize myself, losing that spark. Came back within 2 weeks of leaving

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Thanks for clarifying lol glad it worked out for you!

Help me get out, I lost my way to reality.

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Not saying its PA’s fault, just being in something you really dont feel right in, feeling undercompensated, etc really takes a toll

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Yes. Everything useful and valuable about my personality atrophied. I became someone who was great at putting screenshots into excel sheets. When I 'thought outside of the box' I was actually still thinking within a slightly bigger box.

Feedback forced assimilation, ie my managers thoughts on what was professional was actually more of a reflection on how they operate and how they wanted others to operate similarly.

I've resigned with a goal to be me again.

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Yes, for a while. Then started to give less fucks so now I’m good. Trying to work to live rather than live to work.

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I used to pride myself with two things, 1. I’m a high performer who care about delivering quality work, and 2. I can empathize and be nice to people around me. Ever since I became a senior these two started to conflict a lot, if I want to be a high performer and get the audit done, I need to crack the whip sometimes on my staff. Personally I think it’s totally understandable if someone doesn’t prioritize work over life and just wants to do a 40h work week, but to do a good audit this is impossible. So in order to still live up to those two values I have, I ended up working way more to fill in for them and didn’t have any time for my life outside work...

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I used to be like you. I tied the definition of myself on what I do for work. Like when I introduce myself, I say I am a senior manager at soandso but when the work that I put my everything into did not give back all my efforts. Meaning did not get promotions and recognition due to politics. I was so devastated and lost. I left PA and realized, I am not only about my work. You are a person outside of work. Now I am much happier because I let go. I am still a high performer, but I do not anchor my happiness on that. Find that person who is not the auditor but a person who loves people or who loves to hike, sing or even a person who just love to watch youtube.

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For some reason, I read that as infidelity. Was confused for sec.

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