Some of you may have heard enough KPMG compensation news but judging by traffic patterns, most of you have not. And reports are still coming in, so it’d be a disservice to keep you in the dark.
The latest news out of Chicago:
This info is for Chicago, Audit. Most of us had our talks Thursday or Friday, however I hear that some are still continuing into Monday.
A2 to SA1, SP+ rating, received 10% raise and 2% bonus. Same level, EP rating, received 13% raise and 5% bonus. I am also finding out that SP vs. SP+ has no difference at all. This is based on a salary of $56,000 which was our original starting salary (also included a $5000 sign on bonus) as we received no raise last year. This is pretty much in line with what the now S2’s received over the past couple years, as they got 5% raise after their first year and 5% raise for being promoted to senior last year when everyone’s salaries “stayed flat” as my partner put it. What I would really like to know is what A1’s to A2’s received, as last year they had the same starting salary and bonus as what I began with, so they were essentially making more than A2’s for an entire year due to the bonus.
SA 2 to SA3, EP rating, 8% raise and 5% bonus. My managers also don’t seem to excited, but I obviously did not ask them what their actual numbers are.
I believe everyone on my team feels this is what they expected raise wise, but are rather disappointed with the bonuses. Some additional information, raise numbers are consistent across all business units within the office.
It’s also our understanding that convos are still going on in New York this week, so continue to keep us updated.
I think we’d need to be starting our people around $75K / $85K / $100K / $120K in LCOL -> VHCOL respectively to be attracting good candidates and remaining competitive.
I think the key here is that starting salaries need to increase similar to average of increases across the levels each year, not based on inflation or any other statistic.
Public accounting is meant to be a training ground for 90% of those who enter. Much like legal/medical and other professional training, the idea is to get the training from the big 4 (best training in the world) and leave for the private sector. That’s the real payoff!
Yeah, but public pays so much lower now why even both starting at a public? and I’m saying this as someone who spent 7 years in audit, when I left earlier this year, there were entire classes below me who are just 100% gone, my office didn’t even have anyone they can promote to manager, meanwhile managers and senior managers are quitting at record levels. Public accounting sure wants to weed people out, but never at this 100% level, to the point where we’re having partners who are acting as in charges on jobs, because they don’t have SM, managers, or even a proper senior on a job, just a second year staff leading a couple interns and off shore staffs. That’s the reality, it’s long past the ‘people who want to make partner stay and put in the work for a future payoff, and everyone else fucks off after a few years for a better job in private’, it’s everyone is gone, let’s have this random person from India do some opening balance sheet testing by themselves 🙂
Salary compression is going to start to be a thing … it’s one thing to try to attract new entrants … but, as the salary increases at the lowest level start to bump up against the Seniors -> Managers -> Sr Mgrs/Directors -> it’ll start to get untenable for partner profitability … it’s not a problem until it is …
We’re long overdue for increases across the board in accounting. Its not right that I started at $55k back in 2010 and many firms aren’t much higher than that 12 years (and lots of inflation) later.
Its not like the partners at these firms couldn’t eat some of the cost too. They’ve been making out like bandits for years.
We should be more like commercial banks. Entry level is $40k per year, but they get a VP title.