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Bowl Leader
Remote - Zapier - Accountant - Entry Level
Need to leave but no idea what I want to do
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2.5 years PA.
Left S1 for Industry job
Pros - significantly more $, work 40 hour weeks. Literally that’s it. Though those are significant items. I’d say my life has become less about work and more about life, to some degree that is an intangible positive.
Cons - my job feels significantly less important, I spend significant swaths of time with too little work, due to my workload being so simple to complete comparatively against PA. This yields one of two options, on good weeks I’m getting most/all of my workload done in a few hours a day and either spending the rest of the day overachieving or doing personal things. On bad weeks, I spend the day procrastinating and stressing over work that could be completed in 2 hours of straight focus. This is due to the work not being intellectually challenging typically and the review process being deeply less substantive, when compared against the work done in PA. Ultimately, I am significantly set up for long term success due to the work ethic instilled in me from PA, however it all feels painfully pointless. There is something to be said about the idea of a partnership model that makes you inherently feel like you have more of a dog in the fight that is your career. That’s not the same case in all the finance/accounting roles in industry. The movie Office Space is inching ever so close to my reality.
Sounds like you do control testing for blue chips. My experience in public was with micro cap NASDAQ stocks. We kept a lot of bullshit out of the market. Personally I was on an audit that led to a delisting and an audit that led to an adverse opinion. So probably not the most typical PA experience. I definitely did not feel as though our work had a predetermined conclusion. I don’t think that any audit inherently has a predetermined outcome, barring any collusion. When you work for the Big 4 and most mid level nationals you’re dealing with companys with market cap and resources where most of the time things operate effectively and are accurately stated. That’s not because your job is pointless, it’s because your clients are awesome. I’d suggest working on smaller public jobs, especially IPO’s, most of them are not big tech unicorns. You’ll see all the mistakes, fuck ups, and frauds there eventually. And the idea of a SOX control will be laughable most of the time.
I left pre Covid for a fp&a manager role. Best professional decision I’ve made. Hours are great, work is interesting and meaningful , and learning important skills all the time (wasn’t at EY audit). Actually enjoy my job now and don’t particularly care whether it’s the weekend or not. Also a 40% comp bump. Huge huge upgrade in quality of life. I would really recommend looking into fp&a as a post-PA line of work.
Not the case for me. Having an accounting background is pretty useful though.