well i'm been in the big 4 for almost 7 years. don't know why views have changed drastically over the years. But from what i remember, it always has been fairly prestigious to enter a big 4. I think that as a friesh uni grad, you are there to learn, no such thing as a stupid question. I think the right question is whether you have the tenacity to go through tough times. The hours are grueling and it takes a certain type of person to go through such rigor

When is the best time to exit big 4?

yes it is still consider prestigious ONLY for accounting grad...

but not for the advisory team... they cant attract the right talent to join their advisory practices.

pay too low for advisory.

not surprising, got see managers earning less than 6k in advisory with wage freezes

Nowadays the top accountancy grads don't even want to go big 4, most if not all would have done a double degree in biz (finance) and aim to enter banks or funds.

Does the Big 4 in Singapore have Q-pay?

i'm in one of the advisory dept in the big 4 and i can tell you, most of the managers and above are msians willing to still be here. sgporeans will jump to the boutique firms/banks to get the better pay.

pay in big 4 advisory is not competitive to market, but mgmt will like to argue to say that advisory profit margin is not better than audit/tax. so dunno how come other non-accounting firms can pay their employees better?

the nature of the work def require more thinking than audit/tax, and hours not necessary lesser. at the end of the day, you can say big 4 give good exp, but if you dun pay ppl reasonable, you can't expect them to stay forever.

Well I graduated with second class upper honours degree in accountancy but was only given interviews by two firms. I ended up with a front office role in a BB which I then accepted.

Any increment updates

being told to look for other places