<p>i love you dawgie</p>
<p>A couple of things:</p>
<p>I don’t think you can talk about a person’s health/stress/lifestyle/etc without knowing much more about their own job.</p>
<p>No, he is being paid 50+k with a small raise and bonus at the end of the year. Breaking a salaried job down into an hourly one is laughable. Very few jobs actually work a 40 hour week, especially at the entry stage. If the person working the job thinks the labor/leisure payoff results in more benefits than costs than that is all that matters. How you value your leisure time and labor time changes drastically from person to person. I personally would hate to do what investment bankers do…so I chose not to go down that path. There is nothing right or wrong about those decisions. </p>
<p>Passing all four parts of the exam in the first year is not “unlikely.” If anything, it is the norm. It might take sittings in excess of the 4 minimum, but there are multiple opportunities to finish in a year. </p>
<p>Regarding travel, I never once said that the employee should cover the costs. Instead, there are some benefits of travel. I evidently value those benefits more than you–as mentioned before, we each have our reasons.</p>
<p>I call total BS on your “PTO is quite standard” comment. PTO is typically 2 weeks which sometimes has a 12-month vesting period before it can be taken for an entry level associate. 20-25 days is terrific PTO plus another 8 days for company holidays…a full month of PTO is better than almost anyone in the world experiences (other than teachers getting summers). Most of the Big 4 offer flexible work hours if you want them. I personally know a Manager who works from home most of the time. You have no clue what you are talking about.</p>
<p>I do not know what your profession is or why you dislike the accounting field, but you should at least have a firmer grasp on why it is considered one of the best entry level jobs in the entire business world. </p>
<p>Please enlighten us on the entry level jobs that compare to or surpass the Big 4 for someone graduating from undergraduate.</p>
<p>Here is a quick list I can come up with:
Engineering (just about every discipline)
Investment Banking
Hedge Funds
Hedge Fund of Funds
Private Equity
Fortune 500 Accounting/Finance
Consulting? (B4 has its own…so I don’t think this is truly a separate branch)</p>
<p>All of which are just as hard if not harder to get into as Public accounting, but (PE, HF, IB) there are a lot less of the jobs actually available. Many require graduate degrees, previous work experience, an Ivy caliber degree or a combination of all three. </p>
<p>I’ll hang up and listen.</p>
<p>As usual, Dawgie and Goose are making great points. No one is claiming that Big 4 accounting is a dream job, but the point is, jello cancer, name another entry level job that offers better options to springboard into better career roles, better pay, and better experience, all with NO EXPERIENCE.</p>
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<p>Like I said before, my older son, who’s been out in the working world for 2 years after college graduation would love to be getting that salary - even with the mandatory “overtime”. So would many of his and younger son’s friends who are struggling to even find a job, much less one with a decent starting salary! </p>
<p>I know many kids who graduated with older son who couldn’t find a job, so went back to grad school, graduated, and STILL don’t have a job in their field - try teaching in Indonesia for a year to pay back some law school debt on for size!</p>
<p>So, my younger son was dancing in the streets when he got the offer he did! :)</p>
<p>Another thing, I work in the oil industry, and cannont tell you how many people are routinely working 60 to 70 hours a week - this goes for the in-office accountants, the geophysicists, the petroleum engineeers, etc. During forecast time, all of the accountants, plus the Controller are there when I arrive and LONG after I am gone. I work in logistics, and am sometimes on the phone or online at 2:00 am - 5:00 since these are working hours in Japan or Indonesia, where we currently have projects going - add this to my regular 8-5 hours, and I’m putting in a TON of time. I happen to love my job (thank heavens), and wouldn’t trade it for some boring 8-5 grind that assured me to walk out the door at 5 and go sit in front of the television to veg.</p>
<p>In fact, the only people around here at my company who truly only work 40 hours a week are the “temp to hire” schlubs who are typing, filing, or working the warehouse, and even they get called up to work more hours, albeit at 1.5X, but I bet if you asked them if they’d rather be permanent employees in order to get access to all of the fabulous benefits, they’d give that 1.5X up in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>Anyway, my point is, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, be happy if you have a job in a secure field, and be elated if it is in something you actually want to do. If not, quit and try to find something that you do want to do - Good luck!</p>
<p>goose7856, domrom1
all things being equal, i’d say a person who works closer to 40 hrs/wk will be less stressful than one who works closer to 70 hrs/wk.</p>
<p>I disagree w/your second paragraph especially when the cost of salaried workers is the loss of their job as opposed to one who works 40 hrs and is compensated for overtime. </p>
<p>Do you have any statistics of first years employees passing all 4 sections in the first year? Considering the first time pass rate is less than 50% for each part. .50x.50x.50x.50 = .0625 it seems far from norm especially when there are only 8 testing months open per year (plus you can’t take the same exam in the same testing window plus the fact that each exam cost $300+)</p>
<p>W/ travel, the firm is not providing the benefits, but it is the benefit of the cardholder. Your statement of “jumping on the plane at the firm’s cost is quite” incorrect. And my statement that PTO is standard was in the context of industry and not as a comparison of one company to the other.</p>
<p>There are so many entry level jobs that surpass the big 4, but I think it’s unfair to restrict it to the undergraduate level since the CPA examination requires 150 hrs which is more hours than a typical undergraduate degree. To name a few: Librarians, Engineers, Respiratory Therapist, Sonographers, Radiation Therapists, Statastician…Engineers usually earn $10-20k more and typically work 9 hr days far less than 14hrs for an accountant on a 5 day work week)</p>
<p>[PwC</a>, Deloitte, E&Y, and KPMG: Big 4 employees modern indentured servants - National Life in the Cubicle | Examiner.com](<a href=“http://www.examiner.com/life-the-cubicle-in-national/pwc-deloitte-e-y-and-kpmg-big-4-employees-modern-indentured-servants]PwC”>http://www.examiner.com/life-the-cubicle-in-national/pwc-deloitte-e-y-and-kpmg-big-4-employees-modern-indentured-servants)</p>
<p>ag54
what do you do?</p>
<p>I’m extremely curious as to what your career is, or what your major is, or what your career goals are. Clearly, you’ve found the secret to happiness in the work place. Care to share with us lost souls?</p>
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</p>
<p>Our engineers that are currently out of the country on projects work 12 hours on/12 hours off with 24 hour operations, 7 days a week, so you either work the day shift and sleep at night, or vice-versa. They typically are on a project for 2 weeks, but in the case of our Indonesia project, they have been there since mid - December and will likely return to US beginning of April. They are not paid overtime, but they are paid a bonus based on the revenue from the project, so it behooves them to work diligently, 24 hours a day to ensure the highest revenue. These are typically either electrical engineers or geophysicists. They also are young and hungry and are loving the $$$ they are making, but forget having a life outside of work.</p>
<p>as to “What do you do?” - I am a logistics coordinator for operations for an international oil services company, and Yes, I had better quit posting and get back to work - although I have been using my time while on hold with Int’l FedEx Freight in Japan to post- speaking of which - NIGHTMARE right now to try to get equipt out of Japan! Not to mention our crew who are holed up trying to find alternate flights besides Narita. It is tragic - Pray for Japan!</p>
<p>Jeeellllllllooooooooooooooooo!!! Where art thou? I await your career plans!!</p>
<p>Funny he’s not responding when the question of what his great plan is comes up</p>
<p>Jello = unemployed 3.0 GPA student.</p>
<p>Just came back from vacation. Will be busy this week.</p>
<p>domrom1
I am in graduate school for public policy. I also have a masters in accounting.</p>
<p>dawgie
why are you here? you’ve already graduate and you apparently don’t have any kids old enough to start college.</p>
<p>If accounting is so awful then why do you have a Macc? Slightly confused…</p>
<p>^ Just a theory… Went for MAcc, got no offers, now back in school for public policy</p>
<p>One word, FAIL.</p>
<p>I think jello is the same person as “Smart” on cpanet…they share quite the resemblances. I think Dawgie posts over on cpanet, so he should know what I am talking about.</p>