"Since 'busy season' seems to span about half or more of the year, how does the rest of the year look like? Do you get any slack time during the summer and use comp time or are the extra hours a gift to the company from the grateful employees?"
From what I've heard, prior to the implementation of sox 404, summers were pretty lax and casual. Since the inception of 404, a lot of work's done around the summer and fall periods. Then there's the 3/30, 6/30, 8/30 and 9/30 year-end clients that make you essentially work busy season hours if you get stuck on them. To put in a pictorial form, our work is somewhat like this...
the double hump camel...starts off real high, and painful..tapers off a bit..and there's a bit of a bump in the fall.
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