Ed. Note: DWB was sober long enough today to pen this post for the Friday edition of Accounting Career Couch. If you’ve got a question for us email us at advice@goingconcern.com. We’ll dispense with further pleasantries and get right to it.
I just received three offers from two Big 4 firms in San Francisco (Deloitte and KPMG) for audit and one Big 4 firm for advisory internal audit in San Jose. I really like the idea of going into advisory but the problem is that I live in San Francisco and the advisory clients for this firm are all located around San Jose and the Silicon Valley. This would likely mean at least a one hour and 15 minute commute every day each way from SF to SJ and back again lients I would likely be working on from SF are all located within 20 minutes of my apartment in the city. Moving to San Jose is out of the question for me because my wife works in SF and I’m not ready for a divorce just yet. My question to you and Going Concern readers is should I take the advisory job despite the crazy commute or should I take one of the audit positions?
I’d still be very happy taking one of the audit positions but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the more consistent working hours of advisory internal audit didn’t appeal to me much more than audit (no insane busy season in advisory). Much of this benefit would be negated by my much longer commute though. Also, if I choose advisory I would be likely getting reimbursed $0 for my commute since the job is based out of the SJ office and I am based in SF. Although $0.50 a mile doesn’t sound like a lot, it really does add up to several thousand dollars in missed reimbursement expenses for such a long commute (assuming 80 miles a day in reimbursable driving). Also, the advisory position pay is slightly less to begin with (approximately $1,500 less) than my audit offers. Other considerations that I am thinking about are that many people from the Deloitte office (mostly associates) have said that the Deloitte SF office is understaffed. To me this means more opportunity for advancement but also more hours of work. Also, I feel that if I started in audit I could do two years of audit and if I didn’t like it then could jump ship to advisory in SF rather than having to start at advisory in SJ and beg to get a transfer to the SF advisory practice in a year or two. So what should I do? Should the lengthy and costly commute for advisory versus audit be a deal breaker? Will I struggle to break into advisory after two years in audit if I decide to make the switch?
Hopefully I’ve given enough info about my choices so that DWBraddock will stop complaining about us not saying enough in our requests for advice.
Kudos to you and your detailed email. Peons of the accounting world – take note [Ed. note: but there is something to be said for brevity. Yeesh.].
First off, my advice is from the “this is usually how it works” camp. Are there exceptions? Of course, and I’m sure that commenters will point them out.
Are you sure you will be reimbursed for every single mile that you travel? The HR policy is typically the net difference between your home to the office and your home to the client site. For example if you live 50 miles from the office and the client site is 53 miles from your home, you are reimbursed for the three mile difference. I strongly encourage you to consult HR before you go re-adjusting the all-in value of the advisory offer with thousands of dollars of mileage.
Now that I crushed your dream of banking $1,000’s, let’s discuss the audit vs. internal audit battle. You make a lot of assumptions in your email, but I think these bullets cover everything you discussed:
• Internal audit should not be looked at as a green-lighted pass to jump around the advisory practice. Many advisory roles are target recruited and are very specialized from a work capacity point of view. The name “advisory” doesn’t mean the roles are similar; it’s simply a nicer way of saying “everything that’s not audit and tax.”
• You will not be fast-tracked at Deloitte just because they’re short staffed. You will work your ass off.
• It’s easier to go from internal audit to external audit, not the other way around (the way you mentioned).
• Don’t think a transfer is a simple process. There has to be a need in the office you want to transfer to, and considering you’re contemplating and office and practice switch-a-roo in one swift motion…really? This is not a game – this is business and not everyone gets what they want.
• PS – I forwarded this to your wife. She said you’re sleeping on the couch for the next week.
This is just a fancy way of saying that the senile CEOs surveyed here royally screwed up by being over leveraged in legacy commercial real estate and are forcing workers back into the office to save face to their own stakeholders.
At the same time these truant “leaders” are announcing these decisions from the comfort of their vacation homes on the other side of the country that everyone else must return to the office, they’re also talking out of the other side of their mouth when it comes time to exploit workers in the developing world for outsourced office jobs.
Remember, these are not serious people being surveyed. They’re just trying to coast to their bonsues on short-sighted decisions with long term consequences they themselves will never face because the silver wave is about to waah them all away in a few years.
I am somewhat on track with you, but I am trying to see it from both sides of the coin. It is a little hard to support the CEO’s and their careless remarks that the employee’s no longer have any power, I think if every one of them walked out on you right now you would see things in a different light. These remote employee’s are happy and enjoy their job’s and do not mind working long hours that is required during tax time because they can see their children and spouse and not feel disconnected from their families due to the long hours required by the job. My wife is one of these remote workers and she said as long as I can see all of you, it put things into perspective for her, she could see the reasons she works so hard and it gave her more focus and more drive to work as hard as she could to ensure the ones she loves are taken care, she gives her all so the company will see how hard she is working for them so that she can continue to work remotely.
At my company, the CEO has been on a jihad for close to two years now to get everyone back in the office, despite the fact that less than half of the employees now live in the same city as the office. There is absolutely no evidence that working in the office results in higher productivity, greater quality, more revenues, etc., but that doesn’t stop these CEOs from making declarations that its necessary for everyone to be in the office. Amazon has had record growth, revenues and profits over the last few years, and yet they still feel the need to force everyone back into the office for some reason. Seems like its more about power than collaboration/teamwork, doesn’t it?
But back to my CEO. Dude is almost never in the office, which all of the employees definitely notice. The vast majority of his time is spent either at one of his homes in a different state than the office, or on vacation. So, yeah.