Comments on: Prospects For Audit/Accounting Professionals – Ants Keep Marching

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:47:00 +0000

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Dear Francine,
Thank you so much for all you put in this blog. I too worked for D&T and have been reading this blog and sharing it with my colleagues. For those that said they don't believe Fran for the email that she posted but she must have been confused. It was sent by a Senior Consultant (my level) and was mistaken it to be a Senior Manager. Her source might have just said "senior" and thus the confusion. Anyways I can validate each and every word in that paragraph. But thanks to your post, it prepared me for the most recent lay off last week – which is why I am now jobless.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Anyone notice that PWC Tax’s recruiters are actively “recruiting” candidates from all levels at other Big 4 and regional firms, under the pretense that they are doing fine and still hiring? Watch out, as they just want to hear you complain and seek competitive intelligence against your firm, while your guard is down. Slimy!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:36:00 +0000

and the shareholder system has been so much more successful for the big 4 spinoffs?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Anyone notice the announcement that one of KPMG’s member firms is offering 4 day work weeks or sabbaticals in order to try to fight off layoffs? I would hesitate to take a 4 day work week as I suspect it will mean 5 days (or more) of work for 4 days pay but I guess that is better than no job at all.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:03:00 +0000

In fairness to the public accounting firms (former big 4 employee here), what they are doing is not all that different than what a lot of their clients are doing. You can’t open up a business section of any paper without lots of headlines of jobs being cut. I think the bigger issue is that jobs are being cut while offshore jobs are being added. That does not sit right with me (but again, don’t think this is unique to the big 4).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:07:00 +0000

Ants Marching. I love some DMB…but I never considered how ‘ants marching’ is relevant to the life of an auditor… until now…and I got a good laugh. I love your blog. I do enjoy the shorter more concise posts, some have been rather linky lately. And I continue to read your blog because I work for a mid-tier firm and I want to know what is going on at the ‘real firms’ and in anticipation of another round of ‘experienced hires’ that will be joining my firm and will need retaining to do auditing (the part where you dive in and see WTF is really going on at the client) instead of as*kissing. I respect the Big4 – never want to work for them – but they have some smart folks. Oh, and Francine, my favorite mid-tier firm story this week, as I caught up on my state-to-state registration readings was from the NC Board of Accountancy telling Crowe Horwath (or Crowe Chizek…. depending on the state) that their firm NAME was absolute crap. http://www.nccpaboard.gov/Clients/NCBOA/Public/Static/September2008.pdf

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:21:00 +0000

Thank you for the post, Francine. The ERS Northeast just had a layoff on Thursday and Friday. Some of my buddies who were "good performers" were also cut. Obviously, this was the result of the latest “mid year evaluation”. It was not pretty and the morale there was very low. Based on my understanding, this was the forth layoff since January last year. Rumours are there will be more layoffs either in March or May. The funny thing is that a leader still called the latest layoff as “cut to the muscle”. Obviously, he did not think it was to the bone yet…

As far as the leadership, ERS is going through reorganization now. To a lot of people in ERS, the new organization chart looks so complex. No one knows how it will help the business. We all think that the senior partners have spent the past 6 months creating all the new positions for themselves.

I agree with every single thing you said about Big 4 partners in the article. From time to time, it really makes me sick when partners who spent a lot of time and energy on audit, technical issues, and training staff get “demoted” to directors or “early retirement”. For those “successful” ones, all they talked about were “exciting wins”. And they are the ones running the “Audit” firms.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:14:00 +0000

Interesting read above. Sorry to say but the blog is becoming nothing more than a platform for whiners complaining about the audacity of the big 4 and others not handing out all that is possible without realizing that maybe you are NOT qualified to move up. Get over it fools. This is a business and every business requires SALES. So if sales is not a forte for you—do something else. There are ample of opportunities for you to spend rest of your miserable life making consolidating journal entries. Stop making complaints and realize what you are good at and then work in that environment. Professional services business is not for you. Now as far as Francine is concerned, kudos to you for having a blog where things like these can be debated—but your comments and insights are hearsay to be best. Can a doctor without appropriate training and being in trenches fly a commercial jet liner?? So what is your training in audit and how much you know about the parameters we need to work in? I would say not much. So perhaps you can qualify your statements “as I am not an expert, but I heard this”. You are misleading people. If there is a fight that needs to be taken up is against the regulators. You should focus on that if you have any clout and know that all big 4 and others are working with the same bullcrap of rules. And NO iam not in big 4 and neither I am a partner. But would like to replace some of the losers here if they are not already.

By: Boom!

Boom! — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Great, timely post. I feel that even in tough economic times leaving or losing a job is a great opportunity to redefine and change your life. So even if there isn't a lot of employment opportunities there is still a lot of ways to enact positive change.

@ClownCollege; It occurs to me that the you can cash in a whole bunch of ways on being a senior manager/director of a big 4 firm (in good economic times, at least). I feel like greed can't be the only reason to want to be a partner.

... I'll let you know when I think of another