I would not be shocked at all. PM and their client base are deeply entrenched with PE. Partners are building their entire book with PE firms and believe in the business model.

The amount of education and maintenance for the CPA is ridiculous.

I really wonder how the powers at be determined the value of the CPA to be XYZ when everyone else has value the CPA at ABC. Thus the ROI just isn’t there for a majority of students…change the equation and maybe students/people will come back to accounting…but I’m sure no one is doing anything because they hoping the economy tumbles and accounting will become attractive because it is a “safe” job LOL.

Back in my day, it was much simpler. I got the BS, took the exam, got the (IL) CPA certificate (but not the license). Then they went and complicated everything by adding the ethics exam, the extra 30 credits, and the work experience requirement. Then there’s the ridiculous CPE. No wonder fewer people want to go that route. You might as well go to law school instead.

Today’s students have access to a level of information unlike any generation before and are using that to determine what to do with their lives. No amount of charity, positive news, or other hair brained ideas will convince the next generation to come back to accounting when they can read the overwhelming amount of negative posts/comments on Reddit. Good luck to this endeavor and every other hair brained idea.

Did you reach out to the Taxpayer Advocte?

I would be super shocked if Plante goes the PE route. Then again, everyone else is doing it soooo 🤷🏻‍♀️

Clients will enjoy that some of the billable hours charged to them will be from trash runs’ or, at the very least, incorporated into part of the overhead cost in their billing rates. Maybe the firms can start charging like hotels with utility, parking rate, etc surcharges

I think there’s two pieces to this. The first piece is the one you mentioned and the second piece is that all these clients are probably former “possibly bitter” employees of these PA firms.

I’m sure everyone in industry knows how much their tax team loves to rip apart the invoice from a PA because they know how it was drafted and they ultimately know who gets a lion’s share of the increase…so it’s another issue with the profession eating it’s own tail…

The majority of entry level audit and tax work is one step above data entry, and yes staff need to do that to learn how to do more complex tasks, but it doesn’t take 150 GD credit hours!

Yes, that’s it! Thank you

You’re thinking of this I think: https://www.goingconcern.com/just-how-much-have-accounting-salaries-increased-in-the-last-five-years/

I’m also curious how much the gap in percentage increase of staff versus partners pay in the last 4 years will increase. I think the last time someone did the analysis it showed staff pay actually went negative(or low single digits) and partner pay went up 25-33%….

Did the same at KPMG, it was rather annoying.

so sad but true. i realized what the big 4 model entailed early in my career and ran. either you give your life in hopes to become a partner or you are a worthless worker bee that they will work to you burn out. then go grab new 21 year old grads to replace you.

totally agree with you on the requirements. And this is just the partners being greedy. low attrition rates cited as the issue? shouldnt that be a good thing? what a great message they are sending about the firm. shame on them for not creating opportunities or channels for the staff to grow. maybe with the increased flexibility the employees are taking longer to burnout now which used to work perfect for them.

I mean, naturally, you can’t cut any of the people actually responsible for making the mess in the first place.

I think it’s more accurate to say there is a shortage of “talented” accountants and there is no shortage of accountants.

The issue with this is that everyone wants the perfect accountant…this itself is highly subjective due to the breadth of the profession…but no one wants to pay them what it costs to get that accountant to spend the time and years to get to that point.

So the profession seems happy to eat its own tail to survive…but this is not and has not been a viable long-term solution.

Lots of talk re lowering education requirements – no talk re making salaries more competitive with other college majors, such as engineering.

And the fact they laid off hundreds of people 90 days ahead of time to pump revenue while delivering bad product with new hires that directors were delivering previously

I was one of the hundreds of employees laid off a month after receiving a 5/5 performance review and promotion

Had to clear the books to pump revenue and get the highest valuation possible lol

Saying reading Deloitte press releases is like watching a guy try to suck his own dick is favorable bias?

Most of the claim is he was promised a conversion from FSP to VSP and it never came. If he was a VSP, he would have gotten close to $1mill in the conversion to ESOP.

Honestly, sort of cringe to read and makes the overall “news” section of this site lack independent credibility.

There was that Doeren Mayhew drama recently: https://www.goingconcern.com/a-bottom-100-firm-signed-a-private-equity-deal-were-told-some-people-arent-happy/

Not to mention the tens of thousands of CPAs who are multitasking doing their job and raise their volume in their headphones to hear the “ding” every time the BIG 4 presentation needs you to click for CPE. Let’s be honest here CPE is a government moneymaking sham and a complete waste of time.

It’s clearly a flawed profession with a questionable model- but the same way that junior doctors wade through sh%t until they make it to the big bucks, that’s how this worked. If you swallowed the crap, liked it (or maybe tolerated it) and were good at it then one day you’d maybe have a chance to get into the big pool.

That’s what each of the Partners here went through to get to the point they’re at. They have taken from the generation (s) below them to make their partner dough now, but have now double dipped and taken from the future generations.

I’m not sure how those Partners can look in the eye of their staff but I suppose they don’t care because they have the cash. Some PE crowd who have run out of other industries to vaporise will pick up the tab. Who can blame the Partners really, we’d all do it.

The AICPA has lost it’s way the last few years, hopefully Mark can bring it back.

Especially if Trump wins. Deloitte is going to have blow Trump even more enthusiastically than normal if he wins this election.

Given the quality of the audits being performed by these firms, I’d venture to guess that material fraud is going undetected every day.

Oh for sure. Think he’s going to get quietly nudged out of the firm or just put on an ice floe for a bit until it all blows over?

I guarantee you that no one in leadership at Deloitte is happy about this right now, least of all the people in communications and risk who have to clean this up. Government contracts are Deloitte’s golden goose. This is not going to do any favors for his units for sure.

Guess the PPMDs have special rules.

It’s UNC chapel hill. I’m in the program and received the email.

They may be the least “social” but they were raised on the internet and know how to get more accurate information/intel on anything.

The only thing that may not be true is that this information was shared during an all hands call with the ENTIRE firm.

I can’t remember if it was an industry/service line/other group specific all hands but it indeed was mentioned…it might’ve been hard to pick up in between all the dialogue saturated with buzzwords.

Possibly UNC Chapel Hill but unconfirmed.

Please tell me you’re being facetious and that didn’t actually happen.

I was really looking forward to hearing the latest hot air balloon accessory that partner purchased on our next all hands call 🙁

The Fortune 500 is littered with high level executives who know how to run a large organization.

I am somewhat on track with you, but I am trying to see it from both sides of the coin. It is a little hard to support the CEO’s and their careless remarks that the employee’s no longer have any power, I think if every one of them walked out on you right now you would see things in a different light. These remote employee’s are happy and enjoy their job’s and do not mind working long hours that is required during tax time because they can see their children and spouse and not feel disconnected from their families due to the long hours required by the job. My wife is one of these remote workers and she said as long as I can see all of you, it put things into perspective for her, she could see the reasons she works so hard and it gave her more focus and more drive to work as hard as she could to ensure the ones she loves are taken care, she gives her all so the company will see how hard she is working for them so that she can continue to work remotely.

B4V, who would you describe as being good at running a business? If accountants are so bad at this, would private equity actually be an improvement?

But back to my CEO. Dude is almost never in the office, which all of the employees definitely notice. The vast majority of his time is spent either at one of his homes in a different state than the office, or on vacation. So, yeah.

It has always amazed me that companies pay millions of dollars to these accounting firms for advice and help with running their business, while at the same time the accounting firms can’t manage their own business.

I’d like for the author of the above post to explain why its “unprofessional” to share salary information.

Its possible they audit employee benefit plans. The data provided to firms during an audit of an EBP can include PII of tens of thousands of participants and employees of the plan sponsor. And even small firms can perform dozens or hundreds of EBP audits.

In Brisbane, Australia they’re so ratchet they pay law partners 25 years in less than a first year counsel at a NY city firm (roughly 250,000 Australian pesos)

No Sharing. No complaining, just work in absolute silence…no wonder students are not enrolling like they used because the accounting profession is such a bad deal for the first 5-10 years…I give that timeframe because maybe it gets better but for how many people?