I really like what I do, but having trouble understanding the level of compensation and the time requirements for promotions in our industry.
I keep seeing my friends that chose liberal arts taking on roles of management and landing anywhere between 50-75% higher than where I am.
Is our profession really that irrelevant or unnecessary?

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I feel like accounting doesn’t pay that great until after 5 year and then after 10-15 years the salaries are significantly higher. I guess it depends how long you are willing to wait.

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That is how accounting firm so work. You could have 10 years in industry but they can’t just slot you in as a senior manager in audit if you have not audited before

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Lol what? Most of my liberal arts friends are either unemployed or doing administrative jobs completely unrelated to their degrees making peanuts.

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All CSUs and UCs. Nothing to brag about really, so level field.

Can you be more specific on how much they’re getting paid and how much you’re getting paid and YOE?

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Also put thing in perspective- you’re likely in your early 30s making more than ~80% of everyone in this country

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Your friends with liberal arts majors are taking highly paid managerial roles straight out of college? Am surprised.

Not straight out of college. These are people with 4-6 years out of college.

Liberal arts does a better job teaching critical thinking and problem solving. This makes sense to me.

Roles of management in what?

Tech, NFP, investment, Gov.

I second this. I love what I do at my job, the firm I work for and my team. But watching my friends make well into the 6 figure range (in sales/tech roles) who work half as much as me is discouraging. The knowledge and mental capacity for public accounting is high level but the pay just doesn’t add up.

My point exactly.
We had a get together recently. We're all very open about where we're at professionally (comp, benefits, exit ops). There were about 8 people there, and combined income was well over 1M; mine being the lowest. It's been the lowest of the group for probably three years now.

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