Anyone have thoughts on working at small accounting firm in tax? Pros/cons?

likesmart
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Drama and a lot of dramas 🙄

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I tried something smallish. Total US revenue was around $600M. It was weird because there were people who didn’t understand how to work on big accounts and others who thought they knew how to do it and failed miserably. Imagine working with a bunch of new managers with an inferiority complex who can make decisions. Then make it so they are threatened by anyone with experience at a larger firm or with larger clients.

likehelpful

I left bigger firm (not BDO size but was 1500 people, top 40 firm), to small, home town family firm. Not only bare resources like any questions go to one of two people, but technology resources were skimpy. Used free Zoom account, had one cordless office phone, everyone used the same computer and software passwords🤯🤯. It takes money to make money and sometimes smaller firm owners don’t want to part with and sees no value in something like $900/yr for Zoom in office of 5. Ideas? Lol, get ready to be tabled often. No CCH, no innovation, no collaboration or growth, no forward thinking. Good people don’t stay. So limiting to your potential.

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I was at a tax only firm much bigger than that and still dealt with software “budget” issues. This was a company that touts itself as one who serves the Fortune 500 and they fought providing licenses for OneSource. They wanted to do fixed asset tracking in excel on shared network folders (not even OneDrive/shared docs because it was too expensive).

Last straw was when a local office partner wanted to get FAS or another fixed asset software and he was told the firm was evaluating software and would implement something across the firm in the next 2-3 years after they IPO or get PE money for technology. He finally just did it out of his local office budget because he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten the compliance work. The firm told him to bill it through to the client. Anything below top 10 is probably going to have some version of that to deal with.

Everything is better than BDO

smart

lol depends on your team and client work 😊

Only if you go there to be a boss

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False. I went to be a boss and had the issues I mentioned.

It depends on the partners at the small firm. If they are talented and hard working, it can be a great experience.

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