Leave Public Accounting Today

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” - Steve Jobs

Honestly, do you love accounting? Cash Reconciliations, Financial Statement Tie-Outs, Month End Closes, Year End Closes, Audits, Journal Entries, Ledgers? Debits and Credits? 

Are you passionate, or are you comfortable? Does your psychological need for comfort and stability outweigh your need to feel fulfilled and satisfied? 

Are you settling?  If you don't love accounting, get the fuck out. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Lets be honest though, most of you are going to get back to your tie-outs and checklists like the fucking Melvins you all are.  Make sure you eat lunch at your desk, stay past dinner, and come in early to that windowless conference room next to the copier. Fucking back office monkey. Enjoy your year end bonuses and working all that unpaid overtime 4 months a year.

Life is pledging. The shitty parts don't end until you decide to grow a pair and you end it yourself.  Be a man. Take control of your career and your life.

Don't settle.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is an amazing dude, but not for the reasons you might think. Sure he is the greatest golfer to ever live, and he's such a boss that even a supermodel wife can't satisfy his sexual appetite. He is a black man dominating the white man's country club game, and banging-out their blondes.

Beyond the golfing, I think Tiger is amazing for his self awareness(which is actually a part of the golf game). After winning The Players Championship this weekend, Tiger completed his contractual obligation: the post win press conference. His recall of each and every shot of the day, hole locations, wind direction, standings, etc. is unreal. What is most impressive I think is the way he thinks about himself.  He constantly refers to himself in the 3rd person, and even when he speaks in the first person, its as if the 'I' he is referencing is the golfer/athlete, and the person speaking is his manager.

He knows that when he did mishit the ball this weekend it was always fat, so he made sure that whenever his lie was not perfect, he hit in a direction that gave him some margin on the long side. Fascinating that he makes a study of himself. Its not that 'he personally' mishit the ball, its that his 'athlete self' was a little off this weekend, and in order to compensate, his logical self needed to adjust for this issue. Its fascinating to see an interview with someone who's job is to be an expert on himself, his body and his emotions, who is required keep his emotions and nerves in check, and stay in the moment while under the tremendous pressure of million dollar prizes, and golfing legacy. Amazing.

My Deepest Darkest Fear

Everything anyone says or does is a result of some underlying psychological reason.

What if the reason I write these ridiculous blog posts is because I'm afraid of facing the truth: that I actually enjoy accounting.

What if accounting's trade-off of medium hours and moderate career risk is actually just right for me. What if I made the right decision in college and pursued accounting because I find it interesting, challenging and dynamic? What if I am where I'm supposed to be? Can I accept myself as an accountant, or do I need to feed my ego with a 'front office' job title somewhere? 

The shittiest parts of auditing are: (1) dealing with 'bosses' who are 25-30 years old who were promoted based on seniority, (2) doing tedious bitch work for seemingly no purpose, (3) working long hours for the sake of face-time,(4) mind numbing and tedious checklists, (5) .  All of these shitty parts are not applicable to a job in industry where you can manage the accounting for an actual firm, make decisions and have input into the business operations of the firm. 

Stepping out on the 'career risk curve' a little bit and looking at assistant controller spots at smaller hedge funds might actually be what I need right now.  Equity research sounds intriguing and fascinating, but really, what I hate the most about my job is the tedious detail work.  Equity research is 100% detail work. Equity research gives you no operational experience  Accounting puts you in the trenches, at the office, managing the business day to day.  

I want to manage high level.  Manage a process, build a team, provide strategic input, and be involved in the operations. Maybe I am on the career path I want. I used to be so excited about starting this job, and then they slam you with two years of staff work. Now that the staff work is over, I can start focusing on the parts of the job I actually enjoy. Maybe? 

I'm thinking I might interview for some hedge fund assistant controller spots. See what's out there.

Auditors' Colored Pencils

Fuck Colored Pencils.

Colored Pencils are the pledge pins of public accounting. They are the wooden rifles of boot camp. They are the tell tale sign of the rookie office bitch.

I'm currently sitting next to a staff who is relentlessly documenting a stack of work papers(read: adding marks in different colors, showing where numbers agree to each other across documents). Every three seconds, she slams down the red pencil, picks up the blue pencil, then the normal pencil. Its funny how tedious her work is, but its also sad, because that is my job too. The only difference is that I graduated to double checking her colored pencil marks, and using pdf editor instead of paper.

Thinking about color pencils and tick-marks makes me sick. Why am I doing this job? What the fuck am I doing here?

Public Accounting Hazing

Fixed Asset Testing
I need you to go test the coy pond in the lobby. The fish will swim around, but you need to count exactly how many fish there are in the tank, and make an assessment of any impairment the client should book against the fish. Do they look malnourished or sick? Are they too fat? Each healthy fish is worth approximately $200. So put together a Coy Pond Fixed Asset schedule, and also try to prepare an impairment checklist that we can roll forward to improve the efficiency of the testing for next year. Thanks.

Please go verify the existence of the parking spaces in the lot downstairs. We need a count of how many spaces there are for our depreciation schedule. Thanks

The un-footable schedule
Have the staff/intern/general office bitch try to re-foot a hard copy schedule that doesn't actually foot. They will spend hours doing manual data entry into excel, and checking and rechecking their input to make sure they didn't mess it up. This is a humorous and cruel prank.

I Hate Public Accounting

By far, the very worst part of the job is dealing with incompetent people. People who's highest achievement in life is getting passing scores of 75 on the CPA exam after multiple attempts. They haven't the brains or ambition to do anything other than back-office monkey work. They are terrible at their jobs, lack the high level understanding of the auditing business, let alone their client's business. All they care about is checklists and balancing the debits and credits.  They are miserable managers.

Being a Senior in a public accounting firm is typically the first, and last, time a lot of these accountants will ever have any supervisory responsibility. 95% of them will not handle it, and leave the firm to be staff accountants in their client's industry. But for the time they are they 'boss', they are miserable people. Imagine having a boss that knows less than you do, just shit all over you and take all the credit when something gets done. Not for nothing, the female seniors are the worst. Its actually a knock against our western culture in general, that girls never get supervisory or leadership positions very often, before they are thrown into corporate america.

ACTUAL QUOTES FROM AN INCOMPETENT SENIOR:

"I totally forgot to email you this document yesterday. Sorry, but you should have reminded me. I forget things."

"I'm going to let you run with this project on your own, but make sure that you ask me any questions you might have if you don't get something within the first ten minutes, and we can figure it out together."

"We have a call at 10.
Staff-Do you want me to dial in?
No, its more for the client than for us.
Staff-Ok, so no then?
Just send me the updated outstanding items list asap so I know whats going on for the call."

"Is project X done?
Staff-No, I was working on project Y for the last 3 days because our manager told me to prioritize it.
If you needed help, you should have communicated that to me
Staff-I don't need help, I just didn't do X because your boss gave me higher priority work. Isn't the communication issue more between you and the manager? "