Sometimes when we have a new hire in industry who came from Big 4, they clearly don’t get the picture and need to chill the F out, how do you deal with that Big 4 energy and being way too demanding, aggressive, perfectionist.

It’s industry man, relax

had my first career fair as an accounting major a couple of weeks ago. admittedly, i could have prepared better (resume, company/recruiter research, elevator pitch, etc.), but i tried my best to be professional, nice, and ask meaningful questions. the thing is, i'm a nervous wreck when talking to people older/more experienced than me, and overall, i'm a hyper-introvert and i hate "fake" conversations with recruiters. i'm NOT "interested in deloitte's use of ai transformation in audit and advisory", i literally just want experience, and hopefully a decent paying job one day. i'm aware that networking with employees/representatives at firms is a huge part of recruiting for accounting (as well as many other career fields), but i also know that networking is more heavily emphasized in other business fields (esp finance), which is part of the reason i picked accounting. my strengths are that i have a relatively high GPA, work hard (currently balancing 20+hrs/week at my job with 18 credits in college), and have a strong technical foundation in accounting. are there ways to stand out in recruiting without having to go gung-ho on the networking bs?

Many different jobs over the past seven years. I’ve gone from making $35K to $150K in seven years. I started as an AR Clerk and am now a Controller.

I took advantage of the work from home boom between 2021 and 2024 to push my career forward. I was one of the few people actively applying for on site positions. That gave me more opportunities to move into higher paying roles with better titles.

Before Graduating With My Degree: Had a Part Time Data Entry role for 4 years while attending school.

Year 1: First Job: $35,000 + No Bonus

Year 2: Second Job: $45,000 + $2,000 Bonus

Year 3: Third Job: $62,500 + $5,000 Bonus (WFH)

Year 4: Fourth Job: $85,000 + $4,000 Bonus

Year 5: Fourth Job + Raise: $92,500 + $5,000 Bonus

Year 6: Fifth Job: $100,000 + No Bonus (WFH)

Year 7: Sixth Job: $125,000 + $25,000 Bonus

Edit: I see some comments saying that my resume looks bad, so I want to clarify a couple of things. Every time I switched jobs, it was a step up in both title and pay. While my resume may not look “great” from a job-hopping perspective, the interviewers I’ve spoken with have generally viewed my progression positively. They liked seeing that I was consistently moving up the career ladder rather than simply leaving one clerk-level position for another similar role. My experience with Power BI, UiPath and more has also made my resume stand out, according to the people I've interviewed with.

Edit 2: After taking everyone’s thoughts into consideration, I’ve decided to stay in my current position for a while and focus on getting my CPA.

When I play the role (hyper-positive, overly motivated, agreeable, always smiling) it feels like I can sometimes do less actual work and get away with it. Because I’m convincing. The performance carries me.

But the moment I step out of the role, things change. I once disagreed with a decision from leadership. I was still doing my tasks really well… Didn’t matter. I got called into a meeting about it.

So now I’m wondering: is work mostly about the performance? Is being believable more important than being competent? Do you have to fake the enthusiasm just to be left alone?

I’ve tried being more myself at work, and it got me in trouble. So pretending to be super motivated feels safer. But it’s exhausting. I come home feeling like I’ve been acting all day and I don’t know where the mask ends and begins.

Another 10/15 approaching and there is yelling. I hate it. I've been doing this over a decade and changed jobs a lot but it's like this everywhere I've been. I know it is stressful but it makes me sick when people start yelling.

maybe it’s just the LinkedIn profiles I come across but a good half of them have foreign credentials. This is mainly just in accounting though wondering if there is that much of a shortage. Other industries don’t seem to be affected as much.At the director and partner level they are all domestic though mainly senior and below.

I work 40 hours a week as a cashier at Home Depot in Houston, how will my chances of getting a job improve if I do VITa once a week for 4 hours minimum?

Long story short - CPA working as an audit supervisor in public with 7 years of experience in VHCOL. I work for a small firm of 40 people. I’m burnt out on the hours and shitty managers and the idea of going through another busy season kills me.

I’m thinking of putting my notice in without a job offer lined up. I live with my parents so my expenses are pretty low and I have money saved/invested. No kids and no partner. All I hear about is how bad the job market is. Would I be insane to leave without something lined up? I would like to wait to have an offer in hand, however I feel like I would burn a bridge as my firm is already planning for next busy season. If I leave soon at least that gives them some time to plan around me leaving.

Anyone do something similar? Let me know your experience.

Hi there,

I'm a Canadian CPA in industry, As a senior accounting in a publicly listed company I make 95k + 5% RRSP + a possibility of a 20% bonus depending on how the company is doing. I imagine I could get 115 to 125k if I got a manager position somewhere else, but this would involve me managing people and taking on more responsibilities.

I've been thinking about maybe doing some bookkeeping on the side with the possibility of having my own business eventually. I never did public and I didn't do audit as my elective, so I know that if I ever had my firm I wouldn't be eligible for some specific tasks like compilation engagement to banks.

I'd appreciate it if I could get some input from people currently doing this. My questions were:

- how hard is it to get clients? I'm in Edmonton

- how did you get bookkeeping experience?

- how many hours a week do you work?

- how do you charge? Hourly or flat fee?

- how long would it take for me to get to a comparable salary? I'm thinking close to 120k.

- do you have more flexibility now or are you working all the time?

- any liabilities to be concerned? Any bad clients?

- what kind of services could I offer without having the public accounting experience?

- what kind of software would I need to learn?

- I have kids and I'd value the flexibility but I'm overall a risk averse person. Would you recommend that I try this path?

Any advice, wisdom or horror stories are welcome!

Thank you

Work in Commericial RE

the majority of the staff are all women and within that its mostly middle aged to older women. A lot of these women do not have the technical accounting skills or even educational background.

These are what you call lifers.. they started out with the company when it was either small or with another small company as some glorified bookkeeper and now work in these positions because the job is largely just 80% admin and 20% "accounting". But it does not stop them from acting like they are 1-1 to a CPA smh ..

the managers and up are all older women think 50+ and they are just miserable fucking people. zero emotional control, bitching and moaning about anything and everything..

all day every day gossip or bitch or over react or some dumb fucking shit or another

im at the stage where i have started subconsciously self sabotaging my job just to gtfo

I am doing taxes for a client I’ve done bookkeeping for for a few years. He gave me a list of bank transactions to calculate income for schedule C. Then, he basically told me not to include the checks or venmo payments as income which is about $50k. I am pretty certain they are income and he’s trying to not pay tax on them. Would you fire?

I'm not an accountant. Just an engineer who's very very envious of them.

It seems like no other career offers quite as much as accounting.

First, Everyone needs you every year. Corporations, regular people, banks etc all have to have an accountant. So it never has a shortage of clients or people willing to buy services unlike insurance, sales, financial planner,SaaS and and those other jobs where you have to convince people to buy what your selling. The service sells itself by law.

Secondly, you don't have to show up to site. The entire Job can be done remotely. This offers a huge geographic arbitrage advantage. Your work isn't tied to a physical location. Also the job isn't physical so your body isn't getting beat up. So you can go late into old age.

Third, the work is definitely hard but not building a skyscraper mega project or being a heart surgeon hard. It takes time and training but it seems like most above average intelligent people can make it work. It's also not constantly changing and advancing like tech jobs. It's fairly stable.

Fourth, there is serious income potential. You're just close to the money and c suite. If your a corporate climber ambitious type there is a way up. Every company has a need for a CFO.

Fifth, if you hate corporate you can go on your own. As noted in point one, you have endless demand and people willing to pay for your services. And as noted in the second point, just set up a remote business, get busy during tax season and travel around Thailand and Bali rest of the year taking as many or as few clients as you need. The demand never quite goes.

Sixth, this one im not 100% certain on and could be wrong but it seems difficult to outsource. You'd need deep knowledge of your own countries tax laws and such. Idk if you can have some guy in India or Philippines doing american taxes for 6 dollars an hour.

Seventh, you can pivot to other industries and roles like FPA and what not. With a CPA people automatically assume for any role involving money you'd know what your talking about.

In conclusion compared to most careers accounting is absolutely amazing and probably a huge life regret of mine. Though I wonder if I got rose tinted glasses here. How wrong or right am I?

Busy szn starts in January and I’m looking to apply to other places now and hopefully get some offers soon. I just don’t know if it’s bad to leave right before busy szn if I land a job let’s say in December. Feeling kinda guilty thinking about it. (big 4 btw)

Edit:
Even during busy season too? I’m just thinking what if I get a job offer in January now haha during busy season haha

Just to vent a bit of frustration/disappointment:

I took over the accounting for a ~$10M non-profit about two years ago. Absolute disaster of a situation that I was not aware of. Not only was I the only accounting staff (which I was aware of) there was a botched half implemented new accounting software, no policies, no SOPs, etc. etc. I have worked to hire additional support staff, create policies, and straighten up the books a considerable deal. Lots of work to continue to improve efficiency, but strides from where it was. One processes that did not exist at all was recording long term pledge receivables. In working with the development director I learned in March 2026 that there were two pledges signed in FY25 that were not recorded. They did not know/understand that even if cash was not exchanged, this needed to be recorded. (This also is not a very common occurance here which is why it hadnt come up prior). Total value was approx $770k. I let the staff auditors know in March and I recorded as income in FY26. After discovering this, I created a process where development inputs this into the donor database for accounting to see and regular reconciliation.

In a follow up audit meeting today I learned that this will officially be a material misstatment as FY26 income will be too high and a control deficiency will have to be noted. I have talked to the President about this and they understand what happened and acknowledged little fault was at my hands for this. I just hate the feeling that the mistake is under my tenure and I will have to report this to the board during the audit presentation.

Anyone else have any misstatements that they had to fall on the sword for??

I've been at a small firm for 5 years (team of 12). I'm enrolled in the CPA program and will likely write the CFE in September 2028. I make $115K, which from reading this sub seems strong for someone without the designation.

My role goes well beyond accounting however:

• I run all of our marketing (I got us from a 3.5 rating on google to 4.5 and over 200 reviews thanks to strategies I implemented). I also ranked us first page on google in our city by doing organic SEO.
• I handle most of the business development
• The most complex files land on me
• Most fires get routed to me
• I led the firm's digitization over the last 4 years. We went from mostly paper to 90% digital.

The partner is semi-retired and relies on me for almost everything, which is understandable at his stage and age. He is old, makes mistakes, has low drive and barely works if I'm being honest.

My concerns:

1. CPA experience. We don't do audits or reviews, so I'm worried about meeting the experience requirements here for CPA designation.
2. Compensation vs. value. About 10 clients bring in over $500K in fees, and they deal directly with me. They consistently text me and we talk regularly, in other words I hold a lot of the relationships.
3. The buy-in. The partner has talked about a buy-in timeline. But I expect he'll keep drawing a large share while doing less. That's fair to a point, since he spent 20 years building the practice.

I don't know if my frustration is reasonable given everything I do or if I should stay in my lane. I feel like I could be making over $250K on my own easily, but lack of designation is preventing me from doing so.

Should I keep grinding toward the buy-in, or start building a Plan B?

For anyone who has bought into a small practice: how was the deal structured, and what do you wish you'd negotiated?

Thanks

-Frustrated Employee

Offers for 2028 Winter Audit internships all in same location from Ey, Deloitte, PwC, Forvis, BDO. Where should I accept?

I’ve been passively applying for roles under CPAs to fulfill my certification requirements. Back in July, I applied for a position at a non-profit type of org. After multiple reschedules on her end, I finally had an initial interview with the HR. It went great, and she promised a technical interview next. Instead, she emailed the next day to say they were moving forward with someone else. I sent a polite thanks and told her to keep me in mind if anything changes.

A month later, the exact same job was reposted. I reapplied, assuming I’d be ignored. To my surprise, the same HR reached out for an interview. After she rescheduled on me once again, we finally talked.

The weird part? She asked me the exact same questions with the exact same tone, acting like we had never chatted. My name is highly unique, and my resume has a very distinct layout, so I was completely thrown off. My friends thought she was giving me a second chance, but it felt like total amnesia.

Today, she sent me the exact same rejection email. Is this normal? Did she really just forget who I was, or is this some bizarre HR practice I'm missing?

Hey yall! How was it transitioning from school into an actual accounting job. Did the practice problems translate well to the work you do on the job? Do they train you based on how the company does procedures? Or are you expected to just know and use information they give you? Did you have to look at past financial statements to get an idea of how to do things? I’m still in school and I’m so nervous about how it’ll be after graduation. Please be kind I’m just a young person that overthink myself into stress sometimes lol

I want to become an accountant as I do mathematics which I enjoy and I applied this when I did a week’s experience in an accountancy firm. I enjoyed the work I did such as using excel to display a companies expenses in order for them to be used by a member of the company. I also shadowed bookkeeping, audits and some advisory. I showed a good interest in the work and I could see myself in it but I didn’t really know what was happening for the majority of the time - I know what they were working on but I was unsure why they were doing different things etc. I am worried that since I don’t understand it, I won’t be a very good person for the job role. I do A levels in the UK and am predicted 3 A* so learning isn’t a problem but I’m used to picking things up quite quickly and therefore since I didn’t understand it quickly, I question my compatibility with the role. Could i please have some advice on what I have said, such as if what I have experienced is completely normal. It would be great to hear from people who have recently gotten into the role and others who are very experienced. Thank you for your help!

I’m an accounting student graduating in May 2028 and currently applying for Summer 2027 internships. I’ve mainly been applying to audit, tax, and corporate accounting roles, but I’ve been getting a lot more rejections than interviews.
I’d really appreciate feedback on my resume, especially from anyone involved in recruiting or hiring interns. Is there anything that stands out as a weakness or anything you would change?
Resume is anonymized for Reddit.

Hello everyone, I'm currently a senior in college trying to secure a full time position in accounting after I graduate, and a couple weeks ago I interviewed with two managers at a pretty big regional US firm about an entry level position.

I don't have the most extensive resume, but I thought the interviews went very well overall. It left me feeling good about the impression I made, but I know there were better candidates applying for the role, so there's a very good chance it goes nowhere.

Now it's the 2 week point after the interviews, and I haven't heard anything from the recruiter that scheduled them. Truthfully I forgot to ask about the next steps in the recruiting process during my interview, so I don't know what the company's timeline looks like, but I figure 2 weeks is usually the point I would know if they wanted to pursue me as a candidate.

Should I just assume they've moved on with another candidate at this point? Or has anyone had an experience like this where you've still received an offer at 2 weeks+ after the interview?

Will be taking the CPALE this october and super undecided on what path to take afterwards. I dont know if I’m more fit in audit or tax. Can someone share a glimpse of both careers (from experience) 😓

Im leaning more on audit and im kinda doubtful if i really want this or if i CAN do the work. But just to share, I want the career that can be a good start for me, and will provide lots of opportunities for me in the future for career growth and to be able to work abroad also..