Q: Big4 - Yearly salary increment

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Actually does anyone know why the first few years audit pay is so low? Is it because audit engagement charge too little, so can’t pay the assocs and managers too high?

You're asking the obvious, but let's go through them.

1) Margins management - Big bosses want to make profit right?
2) Supply/demand - There is never a business reason to pay more than what the counter party can accept. In this case, if fresh graduates can accept, why adjust?
3) The firm sponsors your professional paper, tutition, and membership fees. Although not everyone chooses to take, it's still a cost to the firm. You take the cost of 2 papers plus tuition then divide by 12, add that to your monthly pay.
4) The work you do at first two years level before becoming qualified is important to the audit, but not perceived as value adding by most clients and can't be billed at a high rate.
5) Since a long long long long time ago, the wage model is based on delayed gratification where you get low pay + work very hard for 2 years, and the pay spikes when you get to manager.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Anyone seen the news on the new 4 year accountancy programme at NTU?

Lol trying their best to milk students

4 years who wanna study?
lose out on 1 year work experience
come out still get 3.6k salary and no wlb
colleagues all still bloody malaysians

why study 4 years when your competitors are from unknown malaysian uni like sunway, tunku, multimedia..

study hard to never enter accountancy
so u never have to be compared to these malaysian l0sers

Originally Posted by Unregistered

But then now is the peak period if don’t quit how to find job?

Why do you think productivity is extremely low these 2 months? Your associates and seniors are interviewing and answering case studies during working hours. Keep in mind each of these take an average of 1 hour each round... The more honest ones just quit without a job to focus on job search full time instead of forcing others to pick up their slack.

Anyway recoverability rate in B4 is usually around 30%-40% but it's higher in small firms. Go figure. Or just grab a desk at the internal support team floors and you'll see why.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Curious about this too

You're not gonna get any useful insights here. Unlike 5 years ago, these days this thread is just full of fresh grads going 'have you noticed <insert completely wrong statement here>...?'

I don't have much to contribute myself but back then I jumped to advisory which served as springboard to somewhere better. These days it's not possible for auditors anymore. My previous team just lost 2 high-performing secondees who wanted to transfer because audit refused to release them due to "lack of staff" (they're locals, I guess that's why), now they're gone from the firm but headcount is still frozen so no experienced advisory staff is being hired, let alone auditors.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Actually does anyone know why the first few years audit pay is so low? Is it because audit engagement charge too little, so can’t pay the assocs and managers too high?

audit fee 100k
take 2 months to complete
you do the maths

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You're not gonna get any useful insights here. Unlike 5 years ago, these days this thread is just full of fresh grads going 'have you noticed <insert completely wrong statement here>...?'

I don't have much to contribute myself but back then I jumped to advisory which served as springboard to somewhere better. These days it's not possible for auditors anymore. My previous team just lost 2 high-performing secondees who wanted to transfer because audit refused to release them due to "lack of staff" (they're locals, I guess that's why), now they're gone from the firm but headcount is still frozen so no experienced advisory staff is being hired, let alone auditors.

To change dept, you need your current dept to let you go, and the new dept to take you in.

both boss must agree.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You're not gonna get any useful insights here. Unlike 5 years ago, these days this thread is just full of fresh grads going 'have you noticed <insert completely wrong statement here>...?'

I don't have much to contribute myself but back then I jumped to advisory which served as springboard to somewhere better. These days it's not possible for auditors anymore. My previous team just lost 2 high-performing secondees who wanted to transfer because audit refused to release them due to "lack of staff" (they're locals, I guess that's why), now they're gone from the firm but headcount is still frozen so no experienced advisory staff is being hired, let alone auditors.

there are old folks still around but their info is too outdated to be helpful

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Because we realize others get better pay and better wlb than us, why kill ourselves for a **** job?

Anyway it's clear it's a self inflicted problem too. If you have staff shortage, why hand out PIP like candy and do hiring freeze last yr? These two are the biggest reason why everyone, including seniors and managers, started lying flat in freaking audit from last year. So the "not enough staff" excuse seems real hollow now, fkers just firing and not hiring ofc not enough people lah thats why we have to OT, cannot get talent my foot

Is there still PIP and hiring freeze this year?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

To change dept, you need your current dept to let you go, and the new dept to take you in.

both boss must agree.

This. Advice from online forums always talk about how all you need is just to get new partner's approval but that's not true. No matter how much they want to pull you, if your old partner doesn't want to let you go, it's not gonna happen.

I just got asked to work while on MC. I can see why the audit dept refused to let those people leave.

Anyone still in Tuas doing vouching work?

Have the night shift team took over day shift team?