Q: Big4 - Yearly salary increment

Originally Posted by Unregistered

you go big 4 for branding, and then what?

I tell you, when you come out, your options are accountant (90% is JHK inside) and u post double entry all your life, every month you have to deal with closing, every year you have to deal with auditors. And if your company poor internal controls, your closing will be more difficult because those AR/ AP executive (100% is JHK or auntie) with no degree or half acca, anyhow post one. You think u can become FM if you stay long? It is traumatizing, especially if the CFO is incompetent.

Don't tell me you suddenly can become consultant or what ****, it doesn't work that way. Audit is low value. Just because you get to see the whole financial chain, doesn't mean it justifies your high salary as an accountant. Those companies would rather hire a cheap SME JHK accountant and not you. You don't have commercial experience, you don't know how to use accounting system.

You can try farm your way to be audit manager, and you leave then what?
You think every company need how many FM? even if you become FM, that is where sh1t begins. You have to deal with incompetent JHK in commercial. Culture is toxic as small firm people less educated and think you owe them money. They don't take pride in their work.

Don't make the same mistake as me.
Local students, think twice before you join the big 4. There is no more prestige as it used to be. Exit opportunities are less, especially since the previous batch of JHK have filled those exiting places by now. Salary have been low balled all the way from audit to commercial.

The only way you can fix that is to not join a big 4. Your life gets worst as you promote.
Dont waste your life away like i did. Watching as my parents grow older while I OT everyday from 9 to 2am. And mind you, there is no difference between peak and off peak period now as manpower shortage can change your off peak to a peak. If u care about your own mental health and body, dont start at a big 4. If you care about getting married or have a love life, dont start at a big 4. If you spend your youth grinding for little gains since exit opportunities are low now, you will never meet your significant other.

What about fp&a, IA, or transactions advisory and other more desired exit options from audit? Not true that only exit option is accounting

Originally Posted by Unregistered

What about fp&a, IA, or transactions advisory and other more desired exit options from audit? Not true that only exit option is accounting

you can go straight into them instead of going into audit, it's better to do so in fact.

IA is not exactly desired, it's a dead end job in the sense that you can never pivot into anything else. If you end up not liking it, you gotta start from the bottom again.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

who ask you so kumgong never hop out earlier? Best time to hop out is after promotion to S1. The firm will just hire jhk to replace those local seniors who resigned. let the jhk suffer while you enjoy your banking, fp&a job with better work life balance.Those who stay until s3 usually have difficulty hopping out cause your pay is too high and hiring managers think you stay too long in Audit and have zero commercial experience

how possible is it to jump into fp&a after promotion to s1? need to take pay cut? do most firms still need prior commercial experience if jump out at this relatively junior level?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

you go big 4 for branding, and then what?

I tell you, when you come out, your options are accountant (90% is JHK inside) and u post double entry all your life, every month you have to deal with closing, every year you have to deal with auditors. And if your company poor internal controls, your closing will be more difficult because those AR/ AP executive (100% is JHK or auntie) with no degree or half acca, anyhow post one. You think u can become FM if you stay long? It is traumatizing, especially if the CFO is incompetent.

Don't tell me you suddenly can become consultant or what ****, it doesn't work that way. Audit is low value. Just because you get to see the whole financial chain, doesn't mean it justifies your high salary as an accountant. Those companies would rather hire a cheap SME JHK accountant and not you. You don't have commercial experience, you don't know how to use accounting system.

You can try farm your way to be audit manager, and you leave then what?
You think every company need how many FM? even if you become FM, that is where sh1t begins. You have to deal with incompetent JHK in commercial. Culture is toxic as small firm people less educated and think you owe them money. They don't take pride in their work.

Don't make the same mistake as me.
Local students, think twice before you join the big 4. There is no more prestige as it used to be. Exit opportunities are less, especially since the previous batch of JHK have filled those exiting places by now. Salary have been low balled all the way from audit to commercial.

The only way you can fix that is to not join a big 4. Your life gets worst as you promote.
Dont waste your life away like i did. Watching as my parents grow older while I OT everyday from 9 to 2am. And mind you, there is no difference between peak and off peak period now as manpower shortage can change your off peak to a peak. If u care about your own mental health and body, dont start at a big 4. If you care about getting married or have a love life, dont start at a big 4. If you spend your youth grinding for little gains since exit opportunities are low now, you will never meet your significant other.

The last paragraph is totally me too... It really hurts not being able to see your parents as they get older because you're OTing on weekends and nights and public holidays or too tired from OTing.

For the students, this is how my schedule is like these days. FYI I'm still working this week because our reporting for Sep is end-Dec (but no replacement leave allowed):
Jan - Mar: Listco peak / group reporting peak
Apr - Jun: Subsi peak / delayed Dec YE peak / Mar or quarterly peak
Jul - Sep: Jun or quarterly peak / if lucky can go on leave
Oct - Dec: Sep or quarterly peak / interim peak

Because I'm constantly working from peak to peak, there's nothing to learn but firefighting. I don't even have time to properly learn auditing standards and IFRS. 4 years of ********ting back-to-back jobs and hoping no one picks it up. Don't believe the old coots who tell you that audit is a good job, maybe it is 20 years ago when they actually have off peak and you can get a job with just a degree. SG clients are so **** that listings often don't even tie to the TB and they don't know why but you have to firefight somehow because it's a "me" problem when I'm delayed.

Also, timelines are always delayed and you have to follow up on your own after hours since "job ownership", so you're essentially working on multiple projects at one time. Planned breaks are often disrupted due to this when things suddenly pop up. Your juniors won't be of help either because the new batch doesn't know accounting, don't know how to use Excel, don't know how to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, cannot understand how to vouch, don't know how to refer to past year, takes 2 days to complete cash section, will never update PBC list and status updates so you have to do it yourself, and need extreme handholding so your working hours are doubled to coach. Apparently there's such an extreme shortage of grads wanting to do audit that we're taking the people who failed classes or something.

Please just don't join audit. Do you know that hiring managers these days explicitly filter out auditors even for accounting roles (because you don't have ERP experience) and FP&A (because you don't have forecasting, analytics experience)? Please read anonymous posts and have more coffee chats with actual hiring managers elsewhere instead of audit campus recruiters before you decide on your first job. There are politically incorrect things that people can't tell you in an official capacity or when there's other people around to judge them. Audit experience hurts you unless the company wants a workaholic (yes, this is what they explicitly say, we like auditors because they are used to OTing).

You have wasted your time if you did not manage to get chio xmm in big 4 during your 20s. Once you are 30s, you are behind in money and looks due to being underpaid, bald, fat and ugly virus

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You have wasted your time if you did not manage to get chio xmm in big 4 during your 20s. Once you are 30s, you are behind in money and looks due to being underpaid, bald, fat and ugly virus

chio xmm jhb quite easy to up. but i think merry cannot la every cny need to go to ipoh attend their their 50 60+ relatives gathering v tiring one

Originally Posted by Unregistered

how possible is it to jump into fp&a after promotion to s1? need to take pay cut? do most firms still need prior commercial experience if jump out at this relatively junior level?

not possible anymore unless you take the $3k salary ones. they'd rather take accountants.

source: me and my batchmates' own experience in jobhunting. that's why we jumped to business development (aka ****ing sales). this is the kind of exits auditors get these days.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You have wasted your time if you did not manage to get chio xmm in big 4 during your 20s. Once you are 30s, you are behind in money and looks due to being underpaid, bald, fat and ugly virus

why would you go for a xmm from big 4 who is constantly OTing and gonna go bald? just get one from a bank or elsewhere with wlb. even hr or admin staff looks better.

there's a reason why auditors are all single or dating their classmates. auditors dating each other is a meme.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

U started stuyung already or not? Not yet then dont choose accounting. If 2nd year then change course bah if final year then go crash course some tech and do ERP or DA.

Why? Because niw is supposed tj be offpeaj and hols but i an still workjng. Cautionary tale.

Ex auditor, now in technical dept. Already M but looking to join other function
Kp have audit quality role. Not sure how meaningful this role is. Wont want to go back audit.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

then I must say you lack foresight. girls who managed to become partner / SM one day will have the financial ability to reverse their looks through cosmetics and skincare products.

those that are youthful in your opinion now, may not have the financial ability to do so when their biological age catch up on that.

jokes on you

you sound like a HR marketing piece convincing kids to be auditors lol

there are no good looking auditors. whether men or women, all look like crap. the people complaining about baldies are all equally pimply and ugly. ugly people complain about ugly people too