Pros
- Depending on the pod you are in, managers and seniors are very helpful. - That's all I can think of!! - Free beer and pizza in busy season (not necessarily a pro, because it doesn't contribute towards my career growth...but some ppl like it)
Cons
- I won't talk about long hours, that's expected in all public accounting. - For some reason they have 2 levels of intermediate, which is unheard of in the industry, so essentially you are promoted later than any other firm, probably the biggest disadvantage - For some reason staff was expected to deliver impeccable file/product without any mistakes at an unreasonable time. They even wanted us to put hyperlinks for wp in excel lol. I mean that's a sign of laziness on managers part. No offense - Benefits are only 1500 spending account, RRSP after a year. No pension. 3 weeks of vacation. - Smaller private groups are not that organized so watch out for that. - Some of the clients are really bad, we end up doing the accounting and assurance work on that and therefore there is alot of time-eating involved in that. Which i never understood why do we even do that. Have CFO services and offer your clients bookkeeping support so you have less effort. - Some clients still hand write working papers (I know...lol) and that becomes frustrating. - I know clients who don't know how to get the GL in excel (I know...lol) that also becomes very painful because now you are at clients mercy. - Time budgets are unrealistic given the messy clients that we serve. Which is the biggest reason people quit. - Unusually high turnover, in my term of about 1 years, I saw almost 10 - 15 seniors/intermediates, 4 managers, and 2 partners left the firm. Everything is fine but partner leaving is unheard of. - No sense of "time = money'. What I mean is that if a file is for 10 hours, you do a job that reflects 10 hours, not that reflects 11 hours or 20 hours. Your job should reflect 10 hours, but the management expect you to spend 20 hours and eat the 10 hours basically...not sure whats so hard to understand, if a file budget is 10 hours, you get 10 hours of likewise work, obviously if I am given 20 hours on the same file, the work/product would reflect 20 hours and it would be much nicer. Let me clarify, if I was 5 days to do my UFE, I would kill it, but that didn't happen, there was limited time and we trained/taught to pick and prioritize, and we passed lol. Same should apply when doing a file!! dont you think??