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Former Deloitte Employee Wants to Know If Returning to Public Accounting Is a Good Idea

Back with more from the accounting career mailbag: a former Deloitte employee left the firm recently only to discover that life outside public accounting isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Should they return to the Greed Dot???

Have a question about your career? Looking for guidance on how to give your firm some honest feedback? Need some pointers on Twitter etiquette? Email us at advice@goingconcern.com and will whip something up for you.

Back to our ex-Del

Caleb,

I am writing to you in the hopes that you can provide some insight. Here is my situation, I worked at Deloitte for about four years now in the Pacific Southwest region of the US. I recently quit and took a job at one of the big public Companies in my city. After being there for a couple of months I’ve realized that I am kind of bored and am considering going back to public accounting.

The partner I worked for at DT told me to call him anytime. Before I make that call I wanted to get some input. If I go back I’ll be a manager within a year, does the job function change that much like they are telling me? I’m single and in the long term I’m not sure what I want, for now I just want to work get some more experience and then figure it out.

Considering Going Back

Dear Considering,

Your problem is not an uncommon one. Many people have spent their entire careers bitching about life inside public accounting only once they leave, they come to the conclusion that they never had it so good. There are a couple of ways to interpret this:

1. You really do love public accounting and you truly believe it is your calling in life.

Of course every situation is different and in your case, you’re looking at a promotion to manager in a year. Let’s give the partner the benefit of the doubt here and consider your question about life as a manager. Personally, we didn’t have the pleasure of reaching the rank but know plenty of friends and colleagues who did and many, many, many of them said it was their toughest year of their career to date.

What happens is that your auditing skills become less important and your time management and people skills begin to take center stage. Can you handle staffing issues? Prepare a presentation for a RFP? Convince a partner that a client really isn’t that pissed and you’re not getting fired (when, in fact, the opposite is true)? This is just a taste of your responsibilities. OH! And do you like reviewing other people’s work? Because you’ll have to squeeze that in as well.

Now that we’ve scared the living daylights out of you – it sounds like you’re more concerned with enjoying your job and getting good experience rather than money. That’s rare around these parts, so good for you.

Bottom line is this – if you’re not happy at your current job and think that career bliss awaits you back at the Green Dot with Sharon and the Costanza Twins, you should go back.

Peanut gallery – what do we think here? Back into the belly of the beast or is it a huge mistake? Fire away.

KPMG Advises Tulsa Police to Get into Arms Dealing

The strangest thing about this story is that KPMG had to tell the City of Tulsa, OKLAHOMA that, you know, maybe they could sell some of these guns to OKLAHOMANS for money.

Selling the hundreds of guns that Tulsa police confiscate each year instead of melting them down is one of several revenue-generating ideas included in the KPMG efficiency report.

But city and police officials said that would have to be done cautiously, if the idea makes it past the evaluation process.

“What (KPMG) is essentially saying is that we are destroying assets that could bring us revenue,” Mayoral Chief of Staff Terry Simonson said.

The report recommends the firearms be sold to certified dealers through the already-established city auction process, rather than incurring $80,000 per year in costs to dispose of them.

Once you’re able to get the idea of Oklahoma actually having firearm dealers around your skull, we will admit that we’re being a tad harsh on Tulsa.

You see, they used to sell confiscated guns until some freedom-hating police chief decided that occasionally these guns end up in the hands of bad people and that destroying them was a better solution. The fact that this even occurred in the Sooner State without a populist uproar and nightly vigils for all the destroyed Smith & Wessons is beyond comprehension.

But never mind that. Here we are, 20 years later and KPMG suggests they get back in the gun trade. God knows municipalities need the money these days and spending $80k melting down perfectly fine weapons is just silly. Sadly, not all guns are created equal:

If the city began selling guns again, [Capt. Jonathan] Brooks said, there are still many of the confiscated weapons that would have to be destroyed.

“Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sell guns that have been modified or altered from the original manufacturer’s specifications, such as sawed-off shotguns,” he said.

“We also wouldn’t want to be selling any assault-type weapons.”

This guy also probably voted for Obama.

KPMG finds asset in guns [Tulsa World]