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Hi Fishes,
Is S&P planning to open offices?
Is the SAP practice in India at PWC any good?
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Just signed the outside employment form in KPMG onboarding system. I actually wanted to start dabbling in creative writing as a potentially monetizable hobby, but I'm guessing this may pose issues.
Definitely interested in the "exception from this policy may be requested if provision of non-professional services doesn't interfere with one's duties of causes conflict of interest" clause, though. Has anyone been able to get one of those before?
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It’s difficult to see how the sausage is made at the associate level. You have to pay your dues early in your career. We don’t expect most of you to stick with it. Those who do are rewarded handsomely at the expense of those who don’t.
Reality is at a staff level, you don't know what you don't know. That's okay, I didn't either at that age. There are reasonable answers for the questions asked. I suggest sitting down with your leadership to obtain responses, as each service line is a little different.
Well, I'm not on the engagements, so I won't know for sure. But a large sample size is indicative of a poor control environment or a substantive approach based upon either audit strategy or control gaps. Without knowing whether it is a control based audit, I cannot say for sure. If your testing strategy relies upon an automated tool to determine the sample size, the reality is you do what it says.
For question 5, I assume the author is confused. It doesn't make any sense that nobody would understand how a workpaper works. It's an illogical statement as whomever designed the workpaper clearly knows what is expected to be done, and the leadership responsible for reviewing the workpaper clearly must know. You cannot effectively review what you do not understand. If I had a workpaper handed to me that I did not follow the point of, I would sit down with my team and have them explain it. You don't do work without knowing why you are doing it. The premise is ludicrous.
Those are all valid questions. Most of it stems from poor management and poor training. I left after making it to senior associate and getting my CPA license. I also took 2-3 week vacations each year and always logged off for dinner and lunch. Knowing the grind was temporary and working remotely helped.
Good for you! I left to a private equity investment firm. I didn't really care what the area specialty was, I just looked for good WLB, pay, benefits, and culture of flexibility. I highly recommend leaving after the senior associate promotion and try to get your CPA now since big 4 will pay for everything.
Get out of public ASAP. The biggest regret of my career was not leaving sooner. I make 4x what I was making 6 years ago when I left public.
I now OE and work the same amount of hours working 2 Js than I used to work in public alone.
There has been essentially no turnover at the company I work at over the last 6 years compared to the several folks that would quit every year in public. Company turnover is a great indicator of how good a company is to work for. Since public firms can’t retain, they try resorting to cult like practices to keep folks around. I have friends that been in the public game 10 years that could easily be making 100K more elsewhere but they refuse to look outside the box. I promise you most these folks will understand at some point in their careers that they should’ve left earlier. The experience you get in public is better than what you will get elsewhere but at some point it’s not worth it to continue to gain SKE for materially less than what your worth. As you all know, it’s been to earn a dollar today that you can invest than a dollar in 10 years so that concept of you will one day make good money I don’t buy either but it does help explain why partners of audit firms work into their mid 60s. They didn’t start earning real money until 40s so now they are making up for lost time. By the time it’s all said and done, they will have worked thousands of more hours than others that played the game right and made far less.