Welcome to the at-least-you’re-not-John-Edwards edition of Accounting Career Emergencies. In today’s edition, a first-year auditor has an opportunity to do a rotation with Transaction Services but feels that his senior manager has taken an aggressive cock-block position. Will our hero have to get their performance manager involved or resort to thinly-veiled threats?
Looking for new endeavors? Are the men in your office giving you a hard time? Is your job making you ill? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll give you a remedy for your troubles.
Meanwhile:
Caleb,
I am a long time GC reader, and I usually only read the career advice postings to feel slightly better about my own situation. Now, however, I find myself with a question that I would love to put before the GC readership. I am a first year at a B4. I enjoy my job, but am always interested in a new opportunity. Recently, I was offered a rotation in transaction services that will last a few months. I accepted the opportunity, but the timing of the rotation was not set in stone. I just found out that a sr. mgr. on my biggest client is trying to keep me staffed on that engagement at the expense of the opportunity of taking the rotation.
I have made my interest in taking a TS rotation since day one, and my performance manager supports it 100%. He knows that I was offered the rotation, but not that the sr mgr is standing in the way. I would like to know how to proceed. Should I go over the sr mgr? Should I forget the rotation? I enjoy my audit clients and don’t want to be seen as someone who will leave as soon as a better opportunity comes along, but this is a particular interest of mine that I made know upfront.
Please help!
Dear Cock-blocked Auditor,
Sounds like your senior manager has a non-sexual, professional crush on you. That can be a good thing but in your case, it’s a very bad thing. Your senior manager probably wants the best team possible and it sounds like that would involve you but you’ve got your own ambitions and those need to be respected. This especially true because TS has already offer has been extended to you. It’s not for someone else (senior manager or not) to stick their beak in your business and prevent you from following the career path you choose.
Having said all that, I suggest that you first talk to the senior manager on your audit engagement. You say that they are blocking the rotation but how do you know? Nothing in your email indicates that (s)he walked straight up to you, pointed a finger in your chest and said, “You’re mine, bitch!” It’s entirely possible that the SM kept you on to prevent you from getting picked up by anyone else. This will allow you to get the story straight before running off to your performance manager. If your suspicions are true (or you did experience a finger pointing incident), then it’s time to get your PM involved. If he is “100%” behind this opportunity like you say, then this should get resolved rather quickly. Transaction Services obviously wants you to work with them and it’s something you’re interested in doing. That isn’t complicated but these things do take time and that may be the hold-up.
So be patient but be direct. Until your rotation’s timing is finalized, there’s no need to get anxious but confirm the motivation behind the scheduling before you have to pull out the big guns. Good luck.
I’ve noticed teens of all origins, sexualities, creeds, races, and religions have one thing in common: they don’t want to grow up to be accountants. It sounds lame.
Many boards of accountancy do not record race information. I am sure the percentage is low but I believe there are more than 6,300 black CPAs in this country.
Right, and there are approx. 658,000 CPAs in the U.S. 1% like she said.
So what? Let’s lower the standards for black people..of they know what cash and expenses are let’s make them cpas..
You people are a joke..the test is the same for everyone, if they arent smart enough to pass that’s on them..I mean you do have to study and bot just spit rhymes or ball.
Lower the standards?….so lame for you to even think that way. There are systemic issues that they have to overcome even before sitting for the exam. Everyone can’t afford to get both a bachelors and masters in order to get licensed. That’s $100k for most people.
Poor people are among all races- it’s not just the black community that needs assistance financially, if that’s what you are referring to.
As a black CPA. I can attest that no standards were lowered for me to get my license. This is a common misconception perpetrated by idiots that diversity and inclusion means “lowering standards”. The reason I passed had a lot to do with having access to resources, like study materials, that would have cost me at the most over 2k. Additionally, being in a position where I can dedicate a lot of unpaid time to study without having to worry about paying bills. So to your point maybe increasing the number of black CPAs has absolutely nothing to do with “lowering standards” and more to do with providing resources.