Life of an auditor

So a co-worker started applying for jobs ONLINE, and one of the jobs he applied to, was for a premier corporation. He applied for a finance job, a completely seperate field from accounting. He had the typical accounting background - masters in accounting, CPA, big 4 experience. Gets a call back from the HEAD recruiter the NEXT day. The recruiter tells him that they're in dire need of people in their accounting department, and also essentially tells him that he has no shot of getting into finance and that it is pretty competitive. We realized that the more time we spend at this job, the more pigeon-holed we get in our careers. Just felt a punch to my stomach...make that 10 punches.

For those of you who are entering into your first busy season next year, or just finished busy season, take a vacation. I need one right now to recharge my batteries, can hopefully take one soon. At least we have the spring going for us. Here's a little article of interest ...can we say oligopoly... British Business Monitor 30 April 2008 (ADP) - Apr 30, 2008 - The four big audit firms' domination has caused an average rise of 2.4% in their fees not taking into account other factors like regulation changes, London School of Economics' study shows, the Financial Times reported. PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young audit all companies listed on the FTSE 100 index and almost all on the FTSE 350 after the collapse of Arthur Andersen in 2002. Although the fees' rise might seem insignificant, the fact that the rise could have resulted from a market dominance reinforces the debate about the risks of just four firms auditing the accounts of all largest businesses. The Big F...

Currently in that post busy-season slump period where I'm about ready for a vacation, except the wonderful folk over at scheduling and upper management have pretty much taken over my schedule for quite a while, so i guess i have to be vacationing mentally while working. Just wanted to share this article that harps on the movement of companies towards smaller accounting firms and away from the big 4. I'm all for it for two reasons - a) it frees up resources for the big 4 so they can focus on other clients and not crunch five clients with resources only available for 3. b) I feel for startups and other small companies with cash crunches to keep paying high audit fees to the big 4 when they can get an attestation from the smaller companies, as long as the banks don't require a big 4 auditor. In most cases, banks want established independent auditors. Last I checked, there were more than 4. And it's not like we offer anything special that the smaller firms don't (outsi...