Work Is Destroying Tax and Accounting Professionals’ Mental Health Much Less Than You’d Think
Thomson Reuters recently spit out its Future of Professionals special report, a survey of more than 1,200 professionals working in the legal, tax & accounting, global trade, risk, and compliance fields who are employed at firms, corporate in-house departments, and government agencies based in North America, South America, and the United Kingdom. The report’s main […]
Working 60-70 Hours a Week is ‘Fine’ Says Underpaid Big 4 Auditor Skilled in the Art of Minimizing
Check out this Big 4 auditor recently profiled on eFinancialCareers. Blink twice if you need work-life balance, buddy. I’m an auditor for a Big Four firm. Audit jobs don’t always have a good reputation: they pay less than some other Big Four jobs and offer less chance of making partner. But this is fine because […]
Australian Senator Understands Big 4 Working Conditions Better Than a PwC Partner
“I’m not talking about billing hours, actual hours of work were 80 to 120 hours. There were people that were substantially underpaid. Wouldn’t you call that a sweatshop?” — Tony Sheldon, Labor senator and former union boss, asked PwC Australia partner Catherine Walsh during a Senate hearing on job security Dec. 8. Walsh was there […]
Your Suffering Is Not Noble So Let That Sh*t Go
Before I get into this, I feel it’s important to explain where I’m coming from. You see, I had a turbulent childhood. Not “damn, my mom won’t buy me a Power Pad!” turbulent, I only wish that had been the extent of my troubles growing up. I won’t get into too much detail as I’m […]
You Can Easily Replace ‘Investment Banking’ with ‘Public Accounting’ In These Reactions to the Goldman Sachs Workplace Abuse Claims
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or neck deep in tax returns, you probably heard about the recent allegations from 13 first-year analysts who work at Goldman Sachs that their employer is actually a sweatshop disguised as an investment bank. In a Working Conditions Survey created and only answered by those 13 GS analysts, […]
#BusySeasonProblems: Missing Deodorant, Headaches, Camping Out at the Office
It's the last Wednesday in February, so busy season is moving right along. #BusySeasonProblems, on the other hand, seem to be picking up the pace in recent days: I'm 85% sure I forgot deodorant this morning. I'm also about 95% sure I tweeted this exact thing this time last year. #busyseasonproblems — Notorious CPA (@thenotoriouscpa) […]
Study: Faking Long Hours Is Just As Good As Working Long Hours
Long Hours Are the Root of All Your Busy Season Problems
Perhaps you gleaned this from the exhaustive tournament we hosted recently, but we'll bring it up again: working a lot of hours causes a lot of problems. Among these problems: drinking. Harvard Business Review has the latest scientific research: Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and colleagues found that people who log […]
Reminder for Public Accounting Professionals: Working Long Hours Is Dumb
Fall is a quiet time of year for most capital market servants, and with the holidays coming up, it's about to get quieter. That will all change in early months of 2014 when working long days, nights, and weekends will become the norm at firms around the country. It's a depressing thought for many. […]
Five Things That Make Busy Season Suck
Here it is the second week of February and we’re concerned that many of you are working too hard. We’re guessing that many of you are already having nightmares about your senior/manager/partner putting condiments all over your work and then eating them while you watch in horror.
However your busy season is going, we here at GC decided to put our heads together to give you a list of some of the things about busy season that make it such a bitch; not to remind you of them but to let you know that we feel your pain. These appear in no particular order and were created by our own sick minds so if anything is missing you’ll have to point out the omissions.
• Gaining weight – Unless you’re a die-hard gym rat, your exercise regiment has probably been paired back significantly. Combine that with the all the cheap soda and takeout you’re eating on a nightly basis, that button on your pants is hanging on for dear life.
• Losing sleep – As we mentioned, work dreams seem to be part of many accountant’s busy season routine. Maybe it isn’t dreams for you; maybe you just wake up at 3 am thinking about the meeting you have coming up that day and you can’t get back to sleep so you throw on the business casual uniform and get to the office at 4 am to start your day. OR maybe you’re just working so many hours that the time between your departure and arrival times at work have shortened precipitously.
• Your busy season plan has been completely shot to hell – There’s a some saying about a road, intentions and Hell or something that we can’t remember but it basically means however good your plans were they probably hit a snag somewhere along the way and now you’re scrambling. When we asked our Tweeps about their busy seasons we got one response “it’s all about planning and execution.” Right. That execution is the tricky part.
• You’ve somehow ended up in an unexpected relationship – The busy season bitch if you will. Let’s not pretend it’s not happening people. One of you made an awkward advance and now you’ve got a situation on your hands. Whether it’s someone on your team or a client contact, more often than not, this ends badly. A band aid breakup is needed.
• Hours – Face it; this is the cause of all your pain. Regardless of what your teams do to make things bearable, the hours are just a bitch. Sitting on your ass, in front of that computer, listening to the person next to attempting to burp quietly while sucking down five sodas a day is about to drive you postal. Of course there are the sickos out there that somehow gear up every day to put in another 14 hours but those demented bastards plug in when they go home.
In Case You Need Another Reason to Hate the French
Walking around the PwC office in Midtown Manhattan, our blogospondent in the field happened across a couple of young ladies having the picture taken in front of the P Dubya sign out front, proudly posing as if it was their names on the building at 300 Madison.
Said blogospondent approached the young ladies and asked if they worked at the P Dub and they responded in heavily French accents, “yes”. As result of further prying, it was revealed that the ladies do work a lot during “busy times”, sometimes between 50 and 60 hours a week!
This compared to an American tax associate who we spoke to just a couple days before who, in the last fifteen days, had worked 185 hours.
Let’s recap: America – 185 hours in 15 days in the middle of June vs. France – 50-60 hours in one week during the “busy time”.
American vitriol towards the French may now ensue.