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Do you remember the moment you decided what you were going to be?
Somewhere down the line, whether it was at age 8 or 18, you made a series of choices and have subsequently found yourself in a job.
Now if you’re lucky, you love that job! Or maybe if you’re like me, you don’t.
Maybe once you saw how the sausage was made you realized that this industry isn’t for you after all. This particular realization can be hard to stomach and is often accompanied by a side of bitterness and resentment.
What is harder, however, is deciding what is next.
At a certain point in my career path pivot (after I confirmed that “inheritor of a small island with unimaginable riches” was unavailable), I had to confront the inevitable question: “If not this, then what?”
What is it that I want to do? What do I like? What am I good at? Can I make those things a job?
After I decided to pull a professional audible I realized quickly that I don’t actually understand a) all of the different types of jobs that are out there, and b) what said jobs actually entail.
Moving forward, how am I supposed to know what I want and what I don’t want if I don’t even know what’s out there or what it all means?
In order to figure it out I’ve been asking around. I’ve quite literally been accosting strangers, friends, role models and anyone else that will listen (including the lady that provides me my Brazilian Wax) to answer age the old question: “What the fuck do you actually do?!”.
Below I have transcribed the first of my interviews (which I recorded, so maybe “bad ass journalist” isn’t out of the question?). If it tickles your fancy, I implore you to read on!
Leah: Hi
Victoria: Hi
Victoria: Oh shit this is an interview. Let’s restart.
Okay, so maybe we cross “bad ass journalist” off the list?
Victoria: Hi Leah. Let’s start with the basics: what is your job title and how did you end up in that industry? Also, isn’t it cool that I actually prepared questions for this?
FYI – Leah is my best friend from college and does not really think anything I do is cool.
Leah: I am not really impressed you prepared questions, no. You take this blog more seriously than your real job.
Victoria: Hmmm…
Leah: Anyways, I am a Federal Audit Associate. I got here because I went to college, hit up a career fair, dabbled with an internship, and banged out the CPA. Now I’m here, at a Big 4. Oh, I’m 23 and live in Washington, D.C. where rent is very expensive and people fucking love brunch.
I’ve known this girl for 6 years and still her syntax never ceases to amaze me.
Victoria: What does your day to day look like? Don’t bullshit me, I want the truth.
Leah: I grind a lot and put in my time. It’s a fuck ton of hours when we’re in busy season because the government is demanding.
My day starts around 7AM. I wake up, chug a pitcher of water, and go to whatever client site I’m on. Most of my work is out of D.C., but sometimes I’m at corporate clients, so I have a lot of hotel points and often drink in bars alone.
When I get to the office I scroll through Outlook (I’m a year and a half in and I still get giddy every time an email comes in), and then I audit.
What auditing means is this: I look at a company’s numbers from last year and then do it again with this years numbers and pray that everything balances out. If it doesn’t, it’s like a puzzle I need to figure out. Luckily, I’m a big fan of puzzles. It’s a fuck ton of spreadsheets and even more PDFs. I sit at a desk all day and my eyes get very very tired.
Victoria: How is work-life balance?
Leah: It’s extremely seasonal. Busy season is busy as hell. That means no weekends, no nights off, and no sleep because you’re stress dreaming about work. Slow season is SO slow, though. In my opinion it balances out, but that’s because I like the grind of the busy season. When you’re not busy, all you’ve got is free time, so that’s cool too. I usually take PTO and travel places.
Victoria: So you wouldn’t really call it your traditional 9-5?
Leah: No, if you want like a clock-in, clock-out 9-5 this isn’t for you.
Victoria: What do you hate about your job?
Leah: I hate that I’m just a goddamn number. As long as I’m chargeable, they don’t care where I have to be or how long I have to be there. I see the benefits of working at a smaller firm, they probably care about you more. But at the Big Four we get good training and they have solid on-boarding programs, so I guess that’s the trade off?
Victoria: Is the money good?
Leah: Not too shabby, but there is always more somewhere else. People are constantly trying to seduce me into more money at another firm on LinkedIn. I’m playing the game by staying, so I can be strategic when I leave.
Victoria: Do you feel fulfilled in your job?
Leah: No. But I never cared about feeling fulfilled. I want to work hard, make money, and have experiences outside of work. People that want to feel passionate about the cause they work for should not do this.
Victoria: Where do you see yourself in 5 years professionally?
Leah: Not at this company. Abroad maybe? In a new city for sure. I think of this job as the launching pad for me to have the opportunity to do more cool stuff. I know some people that want to stay in audit forever, which blows my mind. I’m super antsy, so every day I think I want to do something new.
Victoria: Ya, you’re not alone in that. I think our friends that have seen us go into super corporate jobs assume we’re going to be in them forever.
Leah: They don’t realize that we are being smart now so we can mess around later.
Victoria: Is that what we are doing?
Leah: I think so. Aren’t you and I going to buy a bar one day with all the consulting money we make?
Victoria: Yes, when we are millionaires. Okay next question. Have you ever dipped your pen in the company ink?
Leah: Ya, last holiday party. You hate to see it, but hey…open bar. I see him every once in a while and ignore him. It’s dope.
Victoria: What do you wear to work?
Leah: Business professional. I wear a lot of pencil skirts and blazers. The associate guys wear business professional too. In the government it’s all very stuffy and best to just blend in. We all look like a less attractive J. Crew catalogue if I’m honest.
Victoria: I despise pencil skirts on a deep, personal level.
Leah: I know.
Victoria: Okay, last question – if someone came up to you on the street and told you they wanted to be in Federal Audit, what are 3 tips you would give them?
Leah: 1) If the people you end up working with suck, get out of the project ASAP, 2) If you don’t like socializing, the Big 4 is probably not for you because you often have to share desks and sit at really tiny conference tables with a lot of other associates, 3) If you hate travel, don’t audit, do taxes or something else.
Victoria: Okay, this is the real last question. Do you think I would be good in your job? Should I look into accounting?
Leah: I think you would be good, for sure. You are bright and have social skills…you would be baffled by how many accountants don’t.
I swear I didn’t pay her to say that.
BUT, do I recommend it for you? Absolutely not my friend. You are an ideas girl (I am not FYI), and here, nobody gives a shit about your ideas, wants to hear about your ideas, or has any intention of implementing your ideas (although they say that they do).
Like I said, this is a place where you grind. If you do it well then people love you, but if you try and fuck with the gears as a low level staff, people won’t have it. Wait until you’re manager to change the game, for now just play the one that is already there. Therefore, don’t go into accounting. You would be suffocated here, and we can’t have that.
Victoria: Any last thoughts?
Leah: Going down this track is safe, but it’s also smart. You have to be willing to take a certain amount of corporate bullshit. If you’re in this job, the best thing to do is make your life outside of work fun. Go out, join sports leagues, do whatever you can to make yourself happy, then go sit behind your desk and get paid. Also, go to networking events – always go to networking events.
So there you have it folks, the life of a 23 year old Federal Audit Associate. Special thanks to Leah in D.C. (She’s single, by the way.)
I don’t know why, but somehow this conversation was fun. Not as fun as my interview with the waxer that rips the pubic hair from my body once a month, but close.
I don’t think I want to be an accountant, but I do think I’m one step closer to whittling down the list, and that’s something – isn’t it?
I think I’ll interview a pastry chef next..
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CallMeVictoria
Life is messy, let's get dirty. itwasvictoria@gmail.com
@callmevictoria
@itwasvictoria
My favorite big 4 audit story is from a friend of mind. A few years back during busy season, mid afternoon, and associate just slowly closed his laptop, put his work issued cell phone on the desk, and walked out never to be heard from again. Just a complete mental shut down.
My roommate works at another Big 4 than me and last week he worked on a report for 4 hours only to have his laptop crash. All that work gone. Pro tip: Always save every 30 minutes
I literally do not understand these people.. I literally save my work every 5 minutes if not more
I find myself hitting Ctrl + S almost constantly when I’m in excel.
Software dev here; I hit CTRL+S about every three lines or ever paragraph when I’m writing normal human correspondence.
This is Scaries inducing.
Ever since I spent hours on outlines in law school, I developed a habit of hitting ctrl + s after every sentence or pause in typing. It’s second nature at this point and it’s saved my ass a few times now.
I need background on this, that’s legendary.
Had a first year associate decide that he was quitting over the weekend and had his mom come to the office to drop off his laptop and blackberry (this was several years ago) because he was a coward. I bet he still lives at home.
Step one to being an accountant: have an accounting degree. Hard to just slide into it.
Was about to say that’s one of those jobs where you kind of need to know how to do it before they hire you. You can get into internal audit without an accounting degree though. Source: guy with a history degree who worked in internal audit this one time.
Work at a Big 4, no accounting degree. Although, I work in Advisory and my team has 0 accounting degrees.
I’ve been wanting to do that with a law degree. Possible?
Former Big 4 Advisory here, yes totally possible. Advisory will take any degree as long as you can demonstrate value to the firm. (Was a poli-sci degree myself and knew a guy at the firm who had his JD).
Accountant checking in… upon graduation I’m under the depressing realization that you don’t really need a degree for this. Everything I do can learn on fly, sure having some point of reference makes life easier but all in all, pretty standard.
That is pretty much 90% of degrees. Your major is really just used to focus and improve the launching point of your career.
“It’s a fuck ton of spreadsheets and even more PDFs”. Hit way too close to home.
It amazes me how many times I’m asked to convert an excel to a PDF because “I like the formatting better as PDF”
Username checks out
When are they gonna start auditing the black budget of the Pentagon? I want to make sure that the weaponized space station/satellite program that uses Tungsten rails that are dropped into Earth’s gravitational field and then heated up when falling through the atmosphere in order to perform Kinetic Bombardment on strategic land masses is properly funded and allocating the assets to resources properly because i’m fucking sick of going to work ever day and we all need a change lol
That’s how you reveal the secret Batman Budget
You just described the plot of a call of duty game… come on
That call of duty plot was written by real life things that I just wrote about back during the Cold War, now called Project Thor or “Rods From God” which would be a good Brazzers title
Great brazzers title. Laughed out loud, you never cease to amaze.
“What auditing means is this: I look at a company’s numbers from last year and then do it again with this years numbers and pray that everything balances out.”
That…that is absolutely not what auditing is. Your friend is just a second year so what she said described is a typical first/second year task (analytical procedures), but it’s not what audit really is.
Auditing is basically ensuring that whatever financial presentation a client is providing (financial statements to its investors, compliance statement to a lender, etc.) is reasonably accurate. I say “reasonable” because you’re usually not expected to provide absolute assurance on accuracy.
Source: worked at a Big 4 for three busy season, now in my third busy season in private industry and work closely with auditors.
In the middle of my 4th busy season
Just let it go. No one really understands audit nor cares
Source: My wife telling people I do accounting stuff but not taxes
“You’re a CPA, can you do my taxes?”
The worst…I always respond telling them my bill rate and telling them I’d gladly input their W2s into turbo tax for $230 an hour
Having to explain to my idiot friends that “bill rate” isn’t my “hourly pay”. I would cry tears of joy if that was the case
As a recent grad, seeing my client charge out rate (all be it a very different industry) has made me very nervous to ever have a lapse in judgement.
On busy season #4, and concur with Mr. Nye’s assessment of what audit is.
Uh oh the accountants are triggered!
As a non-accountant, it seems she pretty much said that. Checking that all their numbers are right = ensuring reasonable financial presentation accuracy in layman’s terms.
I was just getting at the fact that there’s a lot more than just checking prior year to current year numbers in audit. It’s kind of like someone asking what an engineer does and him saying “I do math” as a response. Well yeah…but there’s also much more than that.
Engineer here. We pretty much just do math.
Alright, I’ll take the L on this.
“I am a master of the custodial art. Or a janitor, if you wanna be a dick about it.”
I always love when the guy from Deloitte hits me with the “close enough for me” line
I work tangentially with the Big 4 and provide competing solutions in some areas, and given a cursory understanding of corporate accounting, it sounds like the interviewee simplified the explanation to her friend and the friend provided a summary that further simplified it, not that either party are oblivious to the job basics.
I have been a global mobility software developer for close to ten years and my parents still don’t know what the hell I do despite me trying to explain it every single time I visit.
Sup Leah?
I think that is a big misconception about accounting is people think it is just the most boring 9-5 job out there. It’s more like whenever the need you to come in to whenever they have mercy and let you go home. Getting a “We’ll discuss tomorrow” email is a saving grace.
If you don’t end every single work conversation with a “Calc you later!”, I have no idea what the hell you’re doing with your life, man.
This series is hitting home for me. Just left financial advising after 6 years hoping to find a corporate opportunity. Not going well. Currently experiencing Sunday Scaries on a daily basis.
Used to work Operations at Ameriprise, they’re always looking for licensed individuals at the HQ. Granted you’ll have to move to Minneapolis, but the building is nice.
My boyfriend currently works for an Ameriprise branch but we want to move to Minne so he can work at HQ or close to it.
Thanks for the good info, Minneapolis is a great city as well.
Make this an ongoing series for sure
Drinks at reliable tavern, Leah?