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do you work there? what kind of clients do you have there?
my brother used to be an accountant there. The only thing good among big 4 is the name recognition. Most Big 4s in the area deal with federal consulting.
my brother used to be an accountant there. The only thing good among big 4 is the name recognition. Most Big 4s in the area deal with federal consulting.
When I worked for the Big 4, I worked 70+ hours a week constantly for about 2.5 months out of the year and then averaged about 40 to 55 hours a week the rest of the year. It wasn't that bad considering. Yeah, winter was terrible, but the summer and early spring I barely worked unless some unexpected transaction or project came up.
I know that Tyson's audit practice does a lot of gov't contractors, technology firms, government agencies, non profits, and financial institutions. Since there isn't a lot of traditional manufacturing clients in this area, the work is probably spread out more evenly throughout the year. The area also does do a lot of consulting work, particularly related to technology and systems.
My guess is that Tyson's probably pays senior audit associates similar to other big cities, maybe $75K to $85K + modest bonus.
I don't know anything specific about the Tyson's office in terms of culture, but I know the DC office has a huge national tax practice that has a lot of lawyers and ex IRS officials so pay isn't quit the same there.
Good luck, life at a Big 4 is what it is. You work a lot of hours early in your career, but you get a wide variety of experience and responsibility early on in your career that takes much longer in companies and way longer in the government.
One word of advice is that you should probably volunteer to do as many nonprofit audits as possible during your slow season. This area has an absolute ton of nonprofits and well funded associations where you can transition into a controller, director of finance, or CFO jobs very easily after you make manager or senior manager if you ever want to leave public accounting. They are always looking if you want a slower pace lifestyle.
+1 - brutal work place that treats its employees like robots
My wife used to work there and it was awful. She would get dirty looks if she took off an hour to go to church on Sundays - Sunday, what should typically be a weekend
thank goodness she got out of that there....
I never worked on a Sunday because we worked at our client's office and they were never open on Sunday. We could go to our office, but it was more efficient to work longer hours M-Sa at the client because that is where the records were located. After busy season, the clients wouldn't even be open on Saturday (a client staff typically had to be there and only worked Saturdays to help finish the audit).
Honestly, I can't imagine anyone treating a team member that way and they should be ashamed of themselves. I've never seen that type of behavior, though I admit I felt an internal pressure to keep up with the Joneses and put in the hours to meet our obscene deadlines. However, if someone needed time off to attend to personal matters, it was never a problem because we'd pick up the slack and they would do it for us. When you spend so much time together working long hours in a cramped, ugly windowless room, you look out for each other.
At least in audit, we were all friends and even hung out with each other outside of work all the time. It just wasn't that nasty of an environment. However, life was totally chaotic and it eventually burned people out, especially when you were constantly offered good jobs at more stable hours.
If you can handle it for a few years, your opportunities as a manager are much better than as a senior. So I disagree, and think it is a good gig if you can get it, but it isn't for everyone. (Accounting, as I have no idea for consulting).
BTW guys dont scare me like that! haha..cmon now, has to have some positives right? BTW what would be an average salary for an experienced Senior associate there (tysons office)? a year or two out from Manager promotion.
There are positives. Public accounting looks really good on your resume, and especially when it's Big 4. I worked at a large regional public accounting firm and I can tell you busy season is very tough, but I would hope you expect that. Big 4 busy season's can be tougher from what I hear, but I do think it depends on the management team you work with. I would recommend every accountant do public accounting for at least a year or two right after college. It's great experience and looks very attractive on your resume. You can always move on to the private sector like I did but it's much easier to work in public accounting when you're young as opposed to when you have a family.
In other words, if you are young take the job and suck it up for a year or two. Your career will thank you later.
more confirmation that this job may not have been for me at this point in my career (mid-career) with a family.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FCNova
There are positives. Public accounting looks really good on your resume, and especially when it's Big 4. I worked at a large regional public accounting firm and I can tell you busy season is very tough, but I would hope you expect that. Big 4 busy season's can be tougher from what I hear, but I do think it depends on the management team you work with. I would recommend every accountant do public accounting for at least a year or two right after college. It's great experience and looks very attractive on your resume. You can always move on to the private sector like I did but it's much easier to work in public accounting when you're young as opposed to when you have a family.
In other words, if you are young take the job and suck it up for a year or two. Your career will thank you later.
I never worked on a Sunday because we worked at our client's office and they were never open on Sunday. We could go to our office, but it was more efficient to work longer hours M-Sa at the client because that is where the records were located. After busy season, the clients wouldn't even be open on Saturday (a client staff typically had to be there and only worked Saturdays to help finish the audit).
Honestly, I can't imagine anyone treating a team member that way and they should be ashamed of themselves. I've never seen that type of behavior, though I admit I felt an internal pressure to keep up with the Joneses and put in the hours to meet our obscene deadlines. However, if someone needed time off to attend to personal matters, it was never a problem because we'd pick up the slack and they would do it for us. When you spend so much time together working long hours in a cramped, ugly windowless room, you look out for each other.
At least in audit, we were all friends and even hung out with each other outside of work all the time. It just wasn't that nasty of an environment. However, life was totally chaotic and it eventually burned people out, especially when you were constantly offered good jobs at more stable hours.
If you can handle it for a few years, your opportunities as a manager are much better than as a senior. So I disagree, and think it is a good gig if you can get it, but it isn't for everyone. (Accounting, as I have no idea for consulting).
My wife constantly had to work both saturday and sunday during busy season for Tax, and routinely put in 12-15 hours a day during that span. And it did slow down a little outside of tax season and second filing times (not sure what it's really called, I'm an engineer, but the september deadline) to roughly ~50-60 hrs/week. It sure made planning our wedding way more challenging that necessary.
She hated it there and couldn't wait to get out. We also hung out with a lot of her coworkers and I was always amazed that a group of people could complain sooo much about their jobs! Nearly all of those people have moved on to other companies by now, coincidentally.
But that is a big huge positive to it - it looks fantastic to have a Big 4 firm on your resume, and opens a lot of doors. My wife is now doing something that she enjoys a lot, and it probably helped a lot to have a few years of big 4 experience on the resume. She'll still cringe at the letters "PwC", but it is great at setting you up for a good job down the road.
I work for PWC, but in advisory and it's totally not bad at all. People slamming it were either (1) in audit, or (2) don't know what they're talking about. I work about 40 hours per week. Technically, you're only required to only work 36 hour weeks (as billable clien hours) but since you're encouraged to do extra curricular activities, my total firm activity is around 45 hours/week. Maybe it's my project, or my supervisors, but it's not bad at all.
Oh by the way, that nice paid Christmas vacation the firm gave us from Dec 23-Jan 4th (without having to use any personal vacation time) was pretty nice if you ask me.
My old roommate worked at PwC. She and her coworkers joked that it stood for People Working Constantly.
I think everyone says that about every job that isnt a complete joke. I have heard horror stories from employees at certain companies, and PWC was not one of those, so anecdotally I have no evidence to think that this wasn't just a hyperbole.
One word of advice is that you should probably volunteer to do as many nonprofit audits as possible during your slow season. This area has an absolute ton of nonprofits and well funded associations where you can transition into a controller, director of finance, or CFO jobs very easily after you make manager or senior manager if you ever want to leave public accounting. They are always looking if you want a slower pace lifestyle.
At roughly what salary do these NFPs bring you in if you leave big4 as a manager?
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