- Regarding Vacation -
1. In 7 years I have never had an uninterrupted vacation, despite vacation being booked months in advance and going through extensive socialization with my team. Nevertheless I always seem to get voicemails that start with “I know you’re on vacation but…” I once took vacation in South America, and received a call from one of my partners who asked me “you brought your laptop right?” Sometimes these calls come from my clients, and they almost always end the conversation as soon as they find out I’m on PTO. I hear 3 words time and time again from clients but never from my partners – “it can wait.”

2. For my firm, PTO is included in the denominator for utilization calculations, meaning PTO counts against my utilization. This seems at odds with my firm’s “worklife commitment.” If we are encouraged to take vacation, why does it damage our most significant individual performance metric? Wouldn’t it make sense to remove this from utilization entirely and impose sanctions on people who go over their PTO balance?

3. I can cite (but will not do so publicly) numerous instances where either myself, or my entire team have been asked to forego vacation to meet client needs. One instance, our entire team worked over Christmas through the new year…

4. I have heard from one of my superiors “if worklife balance really existed, then we wouldn’t be profitable.” If this is really the case, then we have far more serious issues than what Truman discussed above.

- Regarding Eating Hours -
1. Eating hours happens all the time, though I have never been directly asked to eat hours from a Partner. I have had partners tell me “we bill hours by the budget.” Most of the pressure to eat hours is indirect, leaving the partner with plausible deniability – “this engagement must be profitable,” for example.

2. We sell our projects way under budget (usually due to a combination of lack of skilled people and price competition from smaller firms who bill out at less than half of what we do).

3. I have never had a project with hours budgeted for the internal mess of red tape, and no client wants to pay for our internal overhead, especially at our rates….

The only interesting thing I got out of this letter is the McDonalds comparison. I think that is a good analogy to say that the B4 are all providing the exact same product… and that quality isn’t really the issue. I believe I can agree that there is a problem because the product is a check-the-box, meet the regulation thing, and the client gets no real value over that. So, there is no real distinguisher between the B4 and quality isn’t what the client is really buying… they are all the same and the provide a mechanical solution that meets the regulations.

With 750 posts and more than 5,000,000 words, there’s always something you haven’t read yet.
Glad I could point you to it. He’s too modest.
Francine

*I think that creates a completely different beast, which is quite capable of causing just as much havoc (if not more). You’re just switching partner greed with staff\manager greed. If we are going to pretend like public auditors (again, my background is auditing, sorry to the advisory and tax professionals) are actually serving the public rather than their own wallets, then there needs to be (shudder) more regulations on them. Things have gone too far, as you illustrated in your article. Take out the problems from the top down. Empower the staff with regards to compensation and you’ll have a GM on your hands.

I also agree with TTs points being another with over a decade in a big four….most of them are sad but true.

“how does one start the collective bargaining process?” That’s an excellent question and one to which I don’t have the answer, having never participated in a union movement before. I’m sure that there IS a process, I just know don’t what it would be. I’m also not a labor attorney but what I think I know is that once a workforce files the appropriate paperwork, then there are certain Federal laws that kick in to protect invidual workers from any reprisals the firm might undertake.

It seems logical that one would contact one of the existing unions and discuss representation. I’m sure that they understand the process and can knowledgeably discuss pros and cons.

Finally, despite certain aspersions cast my way, I’m not especially pro union. But I am pro collective bargaining to offset the power that the partnership has over the individual employee. The partnership’s power comes from a lack of transparency, implied threats (“rock the boat over your compensationa and you’ll never make partner”), a guild requirement to put into two (or whatever amount) years as an apprentice before being allowed to practice, and an oligopoly position in the market to reduce market pressures. I’m carefully NOT alleging anti-trust activities (e.g., collusion between firms regarding setting compensation levels) because I have no evidence such activities are taking place.

Also to Anonymous of 12/10 @ 12:08 PM — very nice post. I’m glad my post could spark such an insightful reply. Students entering the Big Accounting profession would do well to read your post to properly set expectations.

Regards!

Tenacious T.