Working with the Big 4 – What I Miss

I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic here. Christmas season is just around the corner. And no, I’m not nostalgic because of the coming holidays. It’s what comes afterwards that I’m remembering – the busy season. With the 8 years I spent in an auditing firm, the season kind of grew on me and even though I’ve been gone for over two years now, there are still a lot of things I miss working for the auditing firm. Let me just list some of them.

I miss…the food. A lot of my clients actually give us free food for lunch or dinner, or even both! One even served buffet lunch or dinner. In the office, the last month or so before the actual deadline, dinner is also free. No wonder a lot of us grow bigger during the busy season. All those food and no time to exercise...

I miss…the coffee. There were times when we were working until the early hours of the morning and we need something to keep us awake. Our solution? Go out and buy brewed coffee from Starbucks (which is just a few blocks away from the office / client). There was even a time when my boss brought in a coffee maker in the office so that we can brew coffee anytime we want. Sure the office smelled like coffee but for us, coffee lovers, that smell was great. So brewed coffee at 1:00 am in the morning, anyone?

I miss…my friends. Working in an auditing firm during the tax busy season can leave you little time to socialize with your friends outside the firm. But take heart. You can find good friends even inside the auditing firm. Sure you don’t see each other during the day because you’re too busy in the client’s office. But after 5 pm, some of us go back to the office, which meant we saw each other more frequently. I met some of my very close friends during my stint in the auditing firm. Oh and, by the way, that coffee-break will not be complete if you don’t share it with friends.

I miss…my boss. Now I know there are a lot of auditors out there who complain that their boss is a complete @ss, but my boss is not like that. Sure he loves to pressure us to finish the audit on time and to produce what he wants us to produce but what is a boss for right? But the knowledge I gained from my boss plus those times when I butted heads with him because we disagreed on something – these are the things I miss.

I miss…my clients. Who value what we do for them. Sometimes I have clients who think of me as just “another auditor”. But there are some who show how they appreciate what we do and these are the clients I really miss.

I miss…gaining knowledge from the firm. When you’re in a Big 4 or even a medium-size auditing firm, their knowledge base on GAAP / IFRS, auditing standards, ethics, etc. is really huge. You might take it for granted when you’re still inside the firm (especially since it is available at the click of your mouse) but once you get out, you’ll appreciate it and even miss it. Now that I’m out of the firm, I do everything – my own research, my own consultation, my own interpretation, etc. If I can just tap into that knowledge base…oh well, wishful thinking on my part.

I miss…the pressure and the adrenaline rush! Let’s face it. Some of us can really get addicted to working very hard, facing enormous pressure and the adrenaline rush. Call me a workaholic if you like but admit it. There’s nothing more satisfying than finishing your audit work and the audit report on time every time. And it’s not the same every year. Above everything else, auditing and working inside an auditing firm is not a boring job. Huge pressure, late nights, week-end work – YES, but boring? Definitely, no!

Working for the Big 4 (and even other auditing firms) during the busy season can really be a pain in the @ss and you have to face a lot of cr@p along the way. But hey, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get anything good from working as an auditor. There are a lot of good things inside the Big 4 and if you just think about it, there are a lot of things you will miss when you go out. So tell me again that you don’t miss anything when you worked for the Big 4?

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To Return or Not to Return – That is the Question

This week I got a call from one of my former officemates in the auditing firm I used to work with. She is actually a close friend of mine and I still keep in touch with her (just so I can get the latest scoop on my former employer LOL). She was actually asking me when I will return to that firm. Apparently, some of our former (experienced) officemates (who were working in other countries or companies hit by the financial crisis) have already returned, giving them the hope that I would do the same.

First stop, I told her my answer is still no (hell, no!), same answer I always gave whenever I’m asked the same thing for the last two years now.

Second, I was surprised with what I’ve heard (although, come to think of it, I don’t think I should be). Yeah, I know we have the crisis right now and the auditing firms (especially the Big 4) have been letting go of juniors or offering flexi-time or shorter working days, etc. But from experience, I should have seen this coming.

Auditing firms almost always welcome ‘returnees’ or what they call ‘experienced hires’. My boss – partner is one example. He left the firm two times, the last time he was gone for almost 10 years, working as an operations manager in a private company. When he returned, he became a partner in less than 5 years! I, myself, was also a ‘returnee’ like 10 years ago and so are some of my former officemates in the same firm. So I know it happens.

This brings me back to those who returned. Why would they return? I mean, if you have already experienced what it’s like outside, have gone through less (even no) overtime hours, have more time for yourself and for your family and, generally, have more money, why would you want to return and to work for the Big 4 or for an auditing firm where the opposite of these may become true?

Unfortunately, I do not know how to get in touch with these former officemates of mine so I can just speculate why they returned (you’re welcome to add on to my speculations).

For one, the crisis is so severe that they could not find any other work so they chose to return (back to the fold, so to speak). Anyway, they know that the firm will always welcome them because they are experienced auditors and will just fit right in.

Or, for those who are working in other countries, the crisis is so severe in that country and they were the first to be laid off so they have no choice but to come home. Since they don’t want to go through all the trouble to look for another local job, it’s easier for them to contact our former employer and to return to the firm. These may be the people who will just bide their time when they will get another (more lucrative) jobs, either here or in other countries. Doesn’t paint a nice picture, does it?

Or, now here’s the catch, they truly miss working for the firm and they found out that this is where they really want to stay. I know, I know, this begs the question of why again (why would you want to work in the firm?). But then again, these are the people who became so immersed in the auditing firm’s culture and the kind of life they led when they were still there that, honestly speaking; they can no longer imagine their lives outside of the firm (we have a term for this – FF or For the Firm)! They already ‘escaped’ from that kind of life but in the end, they didn’t really want to ‘escape’ so they returned. And mind you, these are the people who said they will never (ever!) return to the firm.

Or, some really persuasive people managed to convince them to return to the firm, even though they already swore to high heavens that this is something they will never (ever!) do.

Whatever their reasons are for returning, there’s always the thought that they will not really stay for good. I mean, they already left, so there’s a possibility that they will leave again. But since the firm lacks experienced auditors, the firm is always after these experienced hires. Now, if you are in the place of these former auditors, will you still return to your former auditing firm?

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A Balanced Life in a Big 4 / Auditing Firm – Is it Possible?

I got a comment from one of my previous posts on Skills You Need When Working for the Big 4. It’s all about sacrificing some (okay, most) things in life just to make it as a CA or an auditor. The list seems simple enough – watch TV, play computer, clean the house – all normal things. What bothered me is that the commenter thinks he needs to give these up to be a CA and an auditor. Is this what it takes to succeed in the field of auditing?

I’ve often heard this before (and I’ve often said it before also) that working for a Big 4 or for an auditing firm (for that matter) may mean a not-so-balanced life.

But then again, really, what is a balanced life? To the one who commented, I can see it is experiencing the simple joys in life. What about to those that are in audit (or were in audit), what is a balanced life? Is it being able to leave your job and go home at exactly 5 p.m. every day and not work during the week-ends? Is it being able to go and watch your favorite movie whenever you want to (and not when you can)? Is it being able to go to all the parties and social gatherings and all those cool vacation places every year? Or is it just being able to leave your job and go and watch your daughter’s school play or organize and go to your son’s birthday party or be with your parents and siblings?

So what is really a balanced life? I’ve heard this question a lot even up to now but I still don’t have a clear answer nor do I have a clear definition of a “balanced life”.

When I was a junior in the 90’s, I have a manager who was already 8 years in the firm. He wasn’t just working in the firm; his whole life is his work in the firm. I asked him about his life and he told me that he’s contented. All he asked was that he’ll be able to go home to celebrate his or a family member’s birthday, anniversary and holiday. Pretty simple huh? Yet for him that is a balanced life.

Or let’s take for example some of my (previous) juniors. They work their @ss off, especially during the busy season. Even going to the extent of renting out a unit nearer to their clients’ offices (yes, they were that ‘devoted’ to the firm). But they also know how to party, to go out during week-ends and when busy season is over, man, they do know how to take a vacation (other local places, other countries, different one every year, etc.). And I never hear them complain that they don’t have a balanced life.

Or what about my previous boss? He’s a busy-body during the weekdays but he has a ‘policy’ that he will go home at exactly 10 p.m. every day (no matter if it’s busy season or not) and that, as much as possible, he will not go to the office during week-ends. He also takes his vacation time very (very!) seriously (we’re not allowed to call him even during emergencies). And yes, he is happy with his life.

So again (for the last time!), what makes a balanced life, especially when you’re working for the Big 4? I’d say it’s simple. A balanced life is relative. What may be balanced for one may not be balanced for another. Only the individual can tell if his life is balanced or not.

Knowing what you want and going for it, but at the same, knowing how to compromise when called upon to do so is also another way to look at a balanced life. It is knowing when you will do something that you will really want to do and when you will have to forego something because duty calls (and there is no way you can do both at the same time).

Meaning, when you have free time (read: not a busy season), you enjoy yourselves, go home early, stay home during week-ends, go to parties, vacations, etc. But when the busy season arrives, you also know how to work your butt off to finish everything on time. It’s a compromise – this balanced life. Don’t you think so?

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How to Look Good…Even During the Busy Season

Uhm, don’t get this blog wrong. It’s not about looking ‘good’ per se. It’s about how to maintain the appearance that you’re still a human being even when you’re already working 80 to 100 hours a week.

Have you ever noticed that during busy season, physical appearances change? I mean you can easily tell if an accountant or a CA (or a Certified Public Accountant in other countries) is working for an auditing firm and it is busy season just by looking at him or her. 

Dark shadows under the eyes (that get darker as the deadline approaches); puffy, sleepless eyes; the haggard pale look (because you’re cooped all day long inside the office) and the general appearance of busy-ness, tension and pressure – do all these sound (er look) familiar to you?

When I was working in a big auditing firm, it always amazes me that every time I see somebody who resigned from the firm, he or she looks so d@mn good. This former officemate looks younger, fresher, well-rested and happier. When I resigned from the firm, I heard the same comments just after a few months! Did we really look different (terrible even) during the time we’re working with an auditing firm?

Okay, just in case you’re wondering if I’m trying to scare you away from working with the Big 4 (again), wonder no more. This blog is not about ‘scaring’ you away. Rather, I just want to share some tips in how to still look good even when you are already deep into the busy season.

Get Some Sleep. I mean it, man, GET SOME SLEEP. Two hours a day, three hours a day, four hours a day, some even six hours a day! Whatever works for you, do it. Please don’t go 48 hours without sleeping for even an hour during all those hours. I know, I know, you have a deadline, a meeting, a report due, etc. but believe me; not sleeping is tantamount to ensuring that you will look like a robot, and a ‘dead’ one at that.

Get a Power Nap. This may not be the thing right? But I swear by this tip. 30 minutes to 1 hour tops. This will especially do you wonders if you do it after lunch. Rather than grabbing a cup of coffee to wake you up, find a quiet place (I usually go for conference rooms), close your eyes and snooze (uhm, make sure you set your alarm first). Believe me when I say that when you wake up, you’ll be ready to face the world, notwithstanding the fact that you got only a 2-hour sleep last night.

Eat Right. Okay, am I starting to sound like your mother here? Mother or no mother, skipping meals I don’t really advice, especially breakfast. Believe me when I say I saw a lot of auditors (myself included) who get cranky when they skipped lunch or dinner. The results? Disastrous if you get cranky in front of your boss. Bad rep if you get cranky in front of your junior. So grab something to eat and save yourself (and your boss or your junior) the bad mood.

Learn to Let Go. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t be too tense. Don’t worry about the little things. Don’t take it into heart when your partner yells at you or your client swears at you or your junior walks out on you. Repeat after me…business only, nothing personal…business only, nothing personal…etc., etc.

Go Out. For God’s sake, don’t make your office your home (I also saw some auditors do this). Go out. Stretch your legs, take a walk. Go out on a dinner date. Go out with your friends for lunch or for dinner. Or just go out, go to the nearest mall and take time out to look at what you want (but can’t buy because you haven’t received that overtime pay yet). If you feel you don’t have the time to do these things, squeeze in the time to do them.

Get Your Hair Cut Before and After the Busy Season. Look good before the start of the busy season by getting that hair cut that you want. Then schedule a hair cut after the busy season so that you’ll have something to look forward to. Better yet, schedule a visit to the spa right after the busy season. Knowing that you have something this enjoyable after the busy season will make the days go by really, really fast.

Lastly, Don’t be a Super Human Being. Don’t try to do everything yourself. Delegate. Prioritize. Learn to say ‘no’. Learn to let small stuff go. You’re only human after all. You have your limits. When you feel your body is already telling you that it needs to rest, heed it.

Hmmmm, serious stuff you think? Well, busy season is serious stuff. Ensuring that you still look good even during the busy season is more serious, especially for some auditors :). Hope the above tips help. Good luck with the busy season!

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Skills You Need When Working for the Big 4 (Part I)

What are the skills that you need to be an auditor? A new way to look at these skills.

For those who already have their careers or those who are still applying for a job (whether in the Big 4 or in private companies), I’m pretty sure you have encountered phrases like “must possess the following skills” or “skills required for the jobs”, etc. Well, working for the Big 4 and becoming an external auditor is no exception.

Let me just tick off some of these skills based on what I have learned in an auditing firm – people skills, leadership skills, technical skills, communication skills and time management skills. Nice set of skills, right? Admit it; they sound nice. But then again, if you’re working for the Big 4, what do they really mean exactly? Here’s a new way to look at these skills.

People skills means you have to handle a lot of people, from different ages, with different personalities. It also means that you must NOT (in fact NEVER) talk back to your senior / manager / partner when he or she is reprimanding you for not doing something he or she should have done in the first place (makes sense?). 

Good people skills entail learning how to nod your head meekly when your manager says you have to work overtime during the week-end (even though you secretly know that the reason why he is telling you that is because he will be on a week-end getaway with his family and just wants you to cover his @ss when the partner comes looking for him). 

Lastly, possessing good people skills also means that you stay patient and try to look cool (if you can manage it, smile) at 2:00 AM while you are discussing accounting issues with an insomniac client who is insisting that his or her accounting / disclosure is correct and who does not want to listen to you when you say he or she is wrong.

Leadership skills - one of my worst (if not the worst) busy season was when I was a new senior, with a new partner, with new juniors working for a new client and the only one who has experience with that client is my new manager. And then the manager up and left all of us with barely two months before the busy season! And they didn’t think to replace her, leaving me to handle the whole team and the new client (that happens to be a small publicly-listed company). Aarrrrghhh!

So what about leadership skills (and no, I’m not going to say I acquired the skills during that time, on the contrary, I nearly blew the whole thing up!)? It means you are ready to handle new juniors (even though you’re still in your second year with that firm) and their endless questions / queries / worries / mistakes / errors. And no, you can’t brush them off as easily as you want to. 

If you’re a senior, this skill means you can make your junior follow you while you are also (blindly?) following your manager and partner. 

If you’re a manager, it means you know how to delegate all the work to your senior and junior while you just sit back and wait for them to give you the working papers for your review (nice one!). And then you meet with the partner and impress him or her because he or she thinks you are doing all the hard work (believe me when I say there are managers who are like that)! 

Part II (see below)

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Skills You Need When Working for the Big 4 (Part II)

Technical skills – Of course, you must have this. I mean you can’t get into the Big 4 if you do not know what you are doing. In fact, they (especially the clients) will think you know everything (or at least, know where you can find the right answer). You are NOT allowed to make any mistakes or say a wrong thing. You are EXPECTED to be able to answer all your client’s / boss’ queries at the drop of the hat. If you do not, they will ask you “What the….? Why the hell did you graduate and got accepted here? You should know this!”


Communication Skills – both spoken and written. Let’s go to the spoken word first. You have to know how to talk to people. Even when you are dead tired or you do not want to talk to somebody, you manage to get yourself up, meet your client and talk your way through the meeting. The finest measure of your communication skills (at least one of them) is that you are able to convince the client that the accounting treatment is correct (even though they may end up recognizing huge paper losses because of it, thereby making them see red when they think about it). Another fine measure is when you are able to take a purely technical standard (like IFRS or the current GAAP) and translate it into layman’s terms to get your client (who is a non-accountant) to understand it and thereby, saving your head from his wrath.

Okay, so that’s the spoken part. What about the writing skills? Ever heard of the phrase – “your working papers should stand up for themselves”? Meaning, even when you are long gone from the firm, the one who will read your memo or your working papers should still be able to understand them without the need to hunt you down to explain what you wrote. So, you must know how to write. And I don’t even mean “grammer and speling” here. I mean, you must know how to write down as clearly and as concisely as you can the story behind your audit, without going through lots and lots of explanations and lots and lots of papers to get your point across. Now this is a writing skill.

Lastly, your time management skills a.k.a. multi-tasking. I know, I know, multi-tasking may not result to quality work but heck, at least, you’re getting some work done here. So, if you have this skill, you know how to juggle the following: talking on the phone with another client, while answering or clearing the review points of your partner / manager, while reviewing your junior’s work, while researching a particularly difficult accounting issue and while scheduling a meeting with your partner, with your team and with other concerned partners for your planning session. Need I say more?

As usual, I managed to write up a storm (oooppps, I guess I flunked the written communication skills). So tell me, which skills did you possess when you went in the Big 4? And which did you develop when you resigned from the Big 4?

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Why Do We Have the Busy(!) Season?

Barely two months before Christmas, a lot of the Big 4 offices around the world are preparing for the busy (tax) season.

 

It’s always the same year in and year out. Planning starts middle of the year, then interim work, then finalization of interim work (going to the year-end audit) and then, the busy season. And then the late nights, overnights, week-end work starts. After the tax deadline, the cycle starts all over again.

It's always the same every year for the 8 years I worked in the auditing firm. And every year I also hear the same things: (1) that we’re going to start planning early to finish the audit early; (2) that we’re going to prepare everything during the interim so that during the busy season, we’ll just plug in everything; (3) that we are targeting an early deadline for all our clients so that we will not have to work late nights or even overnights when the deadline draws near; and (4) that we’re going to be more efficient this year and reduce our overtime hours to the ‘minimum’ (yeah, right). And these things are coming from the mouth of my partner – boss!

So, we start early. Planning, preparing, interim reporting, interim auditing – all these are done early. But what the heck! Once the busy season starts, our nose are still on the grind from 8 am up to whatever time we can still keep our eyes open! Darn it! Everything that should be done was done early on, everything worked as planned. Correction, everything worked as planned, EXCEPT, for the busy season.

Why is this happening? Why do we always have to work double time during the busy season? Why do we have to come in on week-ends to do our jobs? Why, why, why?

This was the question that always plagued my mind. It got to the point when a lot of us no longer believed the promises that the next busy season will be a much better one than before (actually it got worse!).

What do I think could be the reason? Let’s see.

One, there’s just too many things to do, too many stuff to document, too many things to consider during the audit that everything just get clogged towards the end.

Two, even if you did your interim work diligently, there are just some things you could not capture during your interim work and you have to play catch-up towards the end. I’m being nice here. On to the next reason.

Three, your juniors resigned at the end of the interim work and all your subsequent juniors are new to the team! So you have they have to spend more time familiarizing themselves about the client (and the audit, as a whole) and you (as their senior or manager) have to spend time cleaning up their mess (I mean work) before your partner finds out about the mess.

Four, you did not really do the job well during the interim audit, resulting to a lot of audit notes from your partner and manager, resulting to more work for you during the busy season because other than the year-end audit you have to do, you also need to clear their notes! Or you procrastinated during the interim work (because well, there’s just no pressure then) and you left out a lot of things that your manager or partner actually wanted you to do! So, to get back at their good sides, you are now working double-time (during the busy season) to finish all your year-end work plus all the interim work you failed to do!

Five, if you are the senior, your manager suddenly resigns before the busy season started and you ended up suddenly becoming designated as the senior in-charge or a super-senior because it’s already too late to find a replacement for your resigned manager. So now you are wearing two hats, a go-to senior for your juniors and a go-to manager for your partner. This happened to me during my first year as a senior (and it was a public company!) and that was one of the worst busy seasons I ever had.

Sixth, there was an audit issue that you consulted with expert partners during the interim but the issue was not immediately resolved. It was resolved only during the busy season and your client no longer wants to accept the resolution and blames you for your lateness! So you scramble to get everything fixed before the deadline, which means more meetings, more conference calls, more consultations and more documentation.

Seventh, your client suddenly changes their internal deadline before the busy season started and you have already scheduled all your juniors for the original deadline! So you scramble to re-schedule them (good luck) or, failing that, getting new juniors to fill in for the new time frame. And you go back to number three up there (and no, you can’t blame your client, customer is always right, right?).

Eight, you’re already finished with substantially all your year-end work. And then suddenly, the firm’s top management released memos on stuff that you still need to do before you can finalize everything. And you have no choice but to do all of them because failing to do so will mean no sign-offs on the financial statements! Gggrrrr. This is rare but it happens.

What’s my point then? Well, if you hear promises of no overtime / overnights / week-end work during the busy season, don’t believe them. Even if you do everything humanely possible to avoid those overtime and overnights,  busy season has already become a fact of life for the auditor (whether in the Big 4 or not). The only way to avoid all these things during the busy season is to resign from the auditing firm and live a quieter (less busy) life. And that's a fact.

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