For you viewing pleasure, FT Alphaville has provided some illustrations so that we might better conceptualize Matt Taibbi’s labeling of Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”, which still makes us wince.
All we’ll say is that includes Darth Vader so that makes it worth a look.
Vampire squid, illustrated edition [FT Alphaville]
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Going Concern Weekend: Your Weekend Plans
The summer weekends are running out people. So what are you up to? BBQ? Beach? Baseball?
10-Q’s? TAX RETURNS?
Here’s an email we received late last night:
Check out one accountant’s plans, after the jump
I am working both days this weekend. On top of that, I had to work (although not explicitly enforced) on a holiday. The problem is upper management says all these things about maintaining a healthy balance at work but in reality it can never be realized. They say to eat your lunch in peace but they also say do a boat load of work by the end of the day. No sane human can even take an hour in the middle of a day to do such a thing. The duplicity is beyond annoying. Shitty management across the board. Nothing is sacred to these people except for the revenue generated from a bunch of stupid clients.
Sounds like a party. Are you working this weekend? Let us know what’s going on at tips@goingconcern.com. If you know someone that is working this weekend, pass this along so we can get the scoop on how much fun they’re having.
10-Q’s are due Monday, Corporate tax deadline is just a month away, sleep is becoming optional but GC is here for you. Let it out. You’ll feel better.
Busy Season Outlook: Open Thread
You may have noticed that the posting schedule here at GC has ran a bit longer the past few days. This is no accident. We were given a friendly reminder on Monday:
Caleb, this is busy season, I expect review comments an hour later for the next few months. That is all.
Well! Since we’re always with you in spirit, we’ll be happy to oblige this request.
We failed to mention it in our outlook on Tuesday since we figured it was understood that the new year marks the beginning of the end of your lives for the next 3ish months.
Then we remembered that it has been prophesied by many of you that this particular busy season will be the worst in recent memory due to layoffs and the ongoing (?) exodus.
So we present you with our busy season open thread. Discuss whatever you like. Will it indeed be the worst ever or will you dominate as usual? For some of you, it’s your first busy season. Are you soiling yourself from all the horror stories or have you found the right drug cocktail to keep you both focused on your work and oblivious to time passing? Go.
What Say You? Are Early Promotions a Crock?
It’s about the time of year where the Big 4 start announcing promotions and with promotions come the inevitable debate about who got promoted, who didn’t, hating on some, congratulating others, and ugly debates over those that were promoted early.
Early or skip promotions are never short on controversy. As one source put it “[early promotions] are completely arbitrary and situational, merit generally doesn’t play into it”.
The claim will often be made that someone needs to fill an empty role on a team. Sometimes it is a purely bullshit political situation and there have even been cases where older associates are promoted early based on their age and other work experience regardless of their performance with the current firm.
In one case, another source told us about an associate that was promoted to manager in three years (i.e. promoted early twice) but it was pretty clear to the most of team (i.e. staff) that the person was hardly ready for the pressures and responsibilities of being a manager.
The other side of this debate are the professionals that are actually performing at a high enough level to warrant the early promotion (no, really). Granted the situation has to arise where the individual has the opportunity to take on greater responsibility and thus proves him or herself but if someone does step up (read: working 24/7) to the plate on several occasions, maybe the promotion is warranted.
Because of the hierarchal nature of accounting firms, this may not even be an issue in your office but it does happen with freakish regularity at other offices. Let’s us know what your office has done in the past and what is going on this summer now that were in swing of promotion season. Feel free to discuss in the comments or email us your inside info to tips@goingconcern.com.