Life of an auditor

With Christmas and new year's around the bend, the office turns into a ghost town. Last minute financial statement wrap-ups before the 12/31 deadlines, planning work, archiving. You can roll a chair down the hallways and nobody will notice. Most people are on vacation this time of year, taking that one week off before you lose your vacation time forever. Everyone's mentally preparing for and dreading busy season. Kinda like the calm before the storm.

In honor of thanksgiving day, I thought it was time to dole out some thanks - a) Thank you Firms, for not giving us raises this year b) Thank you Firms, for explaining to us that our survival was enough to be thankful for c) Thank you Firms, for laying off some of our closest friends d) Thank you Firms, for telling us to be more efficient due to budget cuts and also telling us to do more at the same time due to the current environment e) Thank you Firms, for creating a culture of nervousness by laying off people in random stages instead of one fell swoop f) Thank you Firms, for creating a ridiculous number of useless but required checklists g) Thank you Firms, for picking up certain clients who you know will never go public, but are yet losing money hoping that it does. h) Thank you Firms, for being constantly recognized in magazines as being amongst the best, and yet those who get surveyed never happens to be employees in the audit practices i) Thank you Firms, for nothing.

So a reader pointed out this article on the American Music Awards... Why am I linking to an article on the AMAs? Well, guess who got awarded 'best dressed'? At least one of the big 4 is getting recognized for something ummm..positive?

So a ton of a companies are trying to get some public financing going. What does this mean for the accounting firms? Increased revenues for 2009-2010. What does this also mean? Well, with all these layoffs we've been having over the past year, we do not have enough resources for these financings. Kinda ironic. And now, in addition to the layoffs, a few employees have begun to leave voluntarily. Now, this is good for the firms in the long run since it would reduce the need for more layoffs. But busy season could be absolutely painful. Sounds like old times.

Better paydays ahead Source: The Wall Street Journal According to a survey by Hewitt Associates, many employers are planning to reinstate merit increases in 2010, but some compensation experts say base salaries are unlikely to return to pre-recession levels anytime soon. Of the 555 large US employers polled in October, 83% have said that they will give out raises next year, while only about half did so in 2009. None anticipate pay reductions after 10% cut in salaries this year. I really doubt that some of the big 4 who pulled off a "no raise across the board" tactic this year can do so two years in a row...but you never know.

So Yahoo! has this story up on the "stressful jobs that pay badly" - 1) social worker 2) special events coordinator 3) probation officer 4) news reporter 5) music ministry director 6) membership mgr 7) fundraiser 8) commercial photographer 9) assisted living director Okay, so I'd probably rather be an auditor than any of the ones above...and the pay for these jobs suck. But can we at least get an honorable mention?

Ever notice the trending noise quotient, i.e. the noise graph from associates to partners. It's one of those unique aspects of our profession. What do I mean by this? Well, let's break it down: Staff associates: Loud. Always talking, no regard for the people they're talking to. Why? Because they spend most of their time doing work that doesn't require the use of brain cells. To keep them active, they talk, and talk,and talk. Noise quotient: High Senior associates: Not as talkative. More time is spent on planning audits, reviewing workpapers and writing summaries. Noise quotient: Low Managers: Trying to increase rapport with the team since people skills are key for managers, the conversation levels increase. Only deal with high level issues, take up a lot of the senior's time. Noise quotient: Medium Partners: The big dogs, when they're in, the team gets really quiet. Conversation levels automatically go down. Staff associates go into their shell. Partners make a...