Life of an auditor

What's with these public service ads on the blog? Anyway, wanted to touch on the comfort zone that people get into at work. I've been railing against people drinking the kool-aid ever since I began working at my firm. Now, I'm dangerously close to getting into a comfort zone. This is one step before drinking the kool-aid myself. I still have a long ways to go before I do that. It kinda reminds of the stockholm syndrome (wikipedia definition: Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger (or at least risk) in which they have been placed ) I've getting used to my clients, learning the system, not fighting against it like i used to. Not complaining as much as I used to. I'm like an aged boxer, I took so many swings against a wall, that I'm tired, weak, so I've just decided to sit back and waive the white flag. Given the current st

And down goes the market. Again, and again, and again. Stocks are getting pulverized in the US and abroad. 401ks are going down, the populace is cutting down on spending, and retailers are closing down. So how's everything in the big 4 world? Not so good. Not bad, but not good. A lot of clients are cutting back on fees, when at the same time, the SEC wants more auditing done around the effect of the credit crisis on companies. (Translated: More hours, less $$. ) The big 4 then turned around and laid off/counseled out/fired quite a few employees, even in the audit practice. A partner told me that the reason for this was not enough people left this year, and so the factory model was thrown out of whack (Not in those words, but that's the essence of it). This made a lot of sense to me, and further legitimizes my audit factory theory . I noticed during the summer/early fall that not too many people left this year, and it was really intriguing given that the last few years had a dec