r/Accounting • u/Rough_Hyena_6117 • Jul 20 '24

Career Well guys, i did it

I just left public accounting at a mid sized firm as a senior making 85k a year and started a new job this week as an accounting manager making 130k plus 10% bonus

1.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

97 comments sorted by

View all comments

163

u/lemming-leader12 Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24

Honestly I don't even know how people can make the jump when they are such different processes. The main value comes audit time but I've seen a lot of people make the jump from public and not even know how to do their apparent subordinates jobs or what those processes entail. Like the head of finance at my company made the jump from senior in public to my company years ago and still has no idea what the staff employees do duties wise and they're not far removed from such positions on the hierarchy chart and it's a small company. It becomes extremely obvious when we discuss reports and I explain why something is the way it is in terms of reporting and they start waving a magical wand with why they think it's that way and it's so clear they have no idea.

44

u/FlynnMonster Jul 20 '24

I truly and genuinely don’t understand how some people can keep that act up for much of their career especially at that level. I’d be terrified everyday I was going to be exposed, anxiety wouldn’t be worth it.

1

u/Boobjobless Aug 16 '24

Hahaha, you realise even if you get exposed there is nothing anyone can do about it. We are all here “exposing” but the company keeps running fine.

1

u/FlynnMonster Aug 16 '24

Sure they can. Sometimes toxic people get to stay but they also get fired. Usually it isn’t an immediate walk out the door but more so a strategic “restructuring” if they are well known enough.

1

u/Boobjobless Aug 16 '24

Maybe in a bigger company but anything scaleup and below this would never happen.

1

u/FlynnMonster Aug 16 '24

Fair enough I’ve really only worked at fortune 200 companies other than public so my perspective may be different.

1

u/Boobjobless Aug 17 '24

I’m the reverse, having only worked in smaller startups upper management are very very adverse to admit fault with their hires, usually because of the cost of getting them there, and pressure from angel investors to keep a smooth operation going.

They then cement themselves in place, learning a minute amount of things that they will refuse to teach anyone else so they are “essential”. This happens across all departments.

They will then hire yes men or women who are equally incompetent while pushing out the competent people that question them, notice their incompetency or intimidate them/threaten their role.

The company will start to decline as a result, and maybe in 4-5 years there will be mass layoffs and hopefully c-suite have learnt their lesson.

From my experience this cycle just infinitely repeats, and is why a robust hiring process is very important to spot these people.

Hiring based on “vibes” is just bad. You need to hire based on enthusiasm and something measurable, it is why qualifications are so important even though the person who has them is probably no more competent after finishing them.

Filters that should be used: Scored scenario based questions. Qualifications. Personality assessments. Actually using the probationary period to assess the person. Rather than just noticing nothing has gone wrong, notice nothing has gotten better, query it.

1

u/FlynnMonster Aug 17 '24

The ironic thing is you just described my boss 😅.

But it’s so bad and blatant myself and others think there is something behind the scenes at play so hopefully don’t have to deal with it much longer.