Life of an auditor

It's that time of year...when we start getting a flurry of goodbye emails. Headhunters are aggressively filling up our mailboxes. This time, with $ included in the voicemails too. We are initially surprised by our friends/co-workers leaving, then filled with curiosity to try and find out where these folk are heading. A little later, it sets in, another one of us is leaving, our class is dwindling. We're still here. Why? Because - a) We think it's ideal to stay until a certain level and then leave b) We don't mind this job and will see where it takes us c) We just don't know what else to do. I'll be honest, when people leaving for normal jobs that may pay more but are pretty boring (Controller, etc.), I couldn't care less...but when they leave for bigger and better jobs (in my opinion at least)...I just think..shit! And apparently, from talks with my co-workers, I'm not alone. A manager once told me that during his training a few years ago, everyone was a...

I was conversing with a co-worker the other day and we realized that the public accounting was a well-oiled machine, a factory of sorts. Our reasoning was this - the firms go out and pick up as many clients as they can, without thinking too much about their resources to handle an abundance of clients. Why? Since they know they can just beat their current resources to death. The seniors and above on these jobs somehow end up feeling morally obligated to stay on at least until the completion of the audit in question. If they leave after that, that's okay, they'll just give the person one level below them additional responsibilities, albeit at the same pay rate. Now, to replenish the bottom of the resource pool, they go out to colleges and woo them with their reputations and with carrots that look good to college students. PWC and Ernst & Young have been hiring around a hundred plus entry-level staffers a year in recent years. Now, 80% of them become disgruntled in their first...