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food for thought: I interview interns, new hire associates, experienced hires, and partner transfers, I sell/ win new work so our people ha e jobs, I negotiate fees, I follow up on unpaid invoices, when our teams make a mistake/make the client mad I get to get yelled at by the client, I review everyone’s performance, I help create staffing opportunities so people get the chance to learn and progress, succession planning, assist in development of content for all out L&D programming, teach at all those trainings, am personally $$ responsible for the quality of our work/technical conclusions, I study the new law to identify new services/opportunities that could help our clients, I help train/teach client personnel, I work with audit and advisory to make sure all PwC teams are coordinated
Partner 1 thanks for doing what you do! That helps explain things quite a bit, many of us honestly just don’t know yet (or we are starting to understand). At first it all just looks like “client/practice magic” haha
Just to name a few examples . Then I spend a huge amount of time communicating with staff, helping them understand strategy, correcting misinterpretations, drying the tears of the overwhelmed, helping them thru work/life challenges, and celebrating their successes
This is it. Definitely the answer you are looking for. I figure the responsibilities on the throne are great. How could they not be?
Open tabs at happy hours
I mean this is a pretty important responsibility haha
Kick off conference calls
Harass people about getting their billing done.
Interfere and or otherwise get in the way of efficiently getting the work done. Also meddle and run the project astray.
Review stuff last minute and freak out about why we did certain things and other misc things that should have been asked months earlier.
Pay your salary
D2 - I think you missed the point in my sarcasm. Best of luck to you and congratulations on your new role.
In addition to TP1’s response above, don’t forget that they make partner after 20-ish years of doing what you are doing right now. They don’t just get parachuted into the role out of nowhere - they are pretty skilled at almost everything (few caveats) you are doing and finding hard at the moment. They just have bigger picture responsibilities. As an SM I often miss the grind of being a senior associate, where you could just get lost in execution and delivery for days. I can only imagine what P’s work is like.
Certainly in audit it’s not unusual to be 15+ years. 12 very rarely happens anymore.
Sometimes they think they are professional entertainers.
I do the same things Tax Partner 1 does. And it’s not an easy or cushy job. At least not if you’re doing it right and doing right by the firm’s employees. Counseling people out is also not easy or fun. Sometimes it’s downright heartbreaking.
As you move up the chain, you start to realize everything that partners do behind the scenes. I’m a manager now and really have had my eyes opened the last couple years.
Pretty sure they also review and supervise the audit work... and closely from my experience
I can understand why OP is asking. I've been here 3 + years and have only talked to 1 partner on 1 project.
I have never done any work for a partner in my office. I have talked to them here and there, like on connect day, but I have never talked to them for client work.
They go golfing
A wise man once told me, “You will spend 90% of your coaching/managing time on 10% of your people.” I find these words ring true.
Deal with PCAOB
In our latest quality report partners have on average 412 hours of OT a year, the highest of all the staff classes so clearly a busy challenging career path from time put in sdpt
I guarantee that is only a portion of the OT many work.
My interpretation is adult babysitting
Depends on the partner. For some, they don’t interact much with their teams below manager. For others, they make it a point to meet at least once a month with every member of their team, especially those at the lower levels, since they wouldn’t normally interact much. For me, it’s being in the weeds to make sure things are done right, and being accessible to anyone whenever they need help.