Q: Big4 - Yearly salary increment

Originally Posted by Unregistered

For poly graduates, it's a very good springboard if can use it to jump out to 4k.

For a local degree holder with 3 years or more of audit experience, no one is aiming for an AP or AR accounting function role. lol It would be a downgrade.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

For a local degree holder with 3 years or more of audit experience, no one is aiming for an AP or AR accounting function role. lol It would be a downgrade.

Anyone can do the AP AR skillset

Its like operating a carousell account

You dont need accounting skills for that lol

These are the CFO tier skills i currently have

1. Raising capital and managing investors

2. Investment strategy

3. Financial and Tax Strategy

4. Organisation efficiency streamlining

5. Financial and non financial performance analytics

6. Digital transformation

7. Revenue revolution

Never heard of AP and AR…once go down that route = set as $50 book keeper for life and eat cai png everyday even after retirement

Originally Posted by Unregistered

For poly graduates, it's a very good springboard if can use it to jump out to 4k.

Accounting got commissioned officer pathway and WOSE pathway

WOSE warrant officer pathway = AP AR, full sets, bao sua bao hai from other departments, handle useless interns with no common sense, do payroll , adjust bookkeeping errors, maintain schedule, do abit internal audit, GST and tax

Originally Posted by Unregistered

For a local degree holder with 3 years or more of audit experience, no one is aiming for an AP or AR accounting function role. lol It would be a downgrade.

Your non AR AP role is only 4k to 5k. Im refering to GL accountant role.
Is that a downgrade?

Pls dont tell me there is any higher role other than group accountant. Even finance managers do accountant level work

why some big companies have so many AR and AP contract staff?

I see this big company, finance department already got 40 x AR contract staff.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Here's a refined version of your text with improved clarity, grammar, and tone while preserving the essence of your message:

What transferable skills are we talking about? Vouching? Analytical reviews? Issue resolution? Managing both senior and junior staff? Wait, now managers are doing fieldwork because there’s no manpower.

You leave audit without any commercial knowledge, no understanding of accounting systems, and the only skill you have is picking samples and checking financial statements. Honestly, the quality of audits has declined so much that I think there’s a problem even with reviewing financial statements, let alone preparing them. There’s a reason locals don’t want to stay in audit—it’s because it takes away your life. Next thing you know, you’re in your mid-30s with nothing but a decent paycheck and feeling like a shell of your former self. You forget what having hobbies even feels like.

You think the commercial sector will hire you as a Financial Manager? You’re expensive but lack the necessary skills. You can’t leave audit because you’re too costly, and so you continue this life, year after year, until you’re in your mid-40s, realizing you missed your kids' birthdays and your parents' funerals.

Is it worth it to trade your life just to grow your salary to 8–9k? You stagnate unless you become partner. You can't leave—your skills are too generic and not specialized. Your day consists of trying to book staff, but no one joins, and all the competent seniors quit, assuming there even are any.

You look around and realize there are hardly any Singaporeans left—just Malaysians who speak broken Chinese, and you end up working just as many overtime hours because they're motivated by a 3:1 exchange rate, while your own is 1:1 at best. Eventually, you marry a Malaysian girl and pick up their strange Chinese accent.

What branding does Big 4 actually provide? Just leave as a senior if branding is that important. Whether you leave as a senior or manager, your branding is the same. And once you reach the senior level, your knowledge is on par with that of your managers, if you know what I mean.

As a manager, your skills start to deteriorate because you’ve lost touch with the technical work—you're too busy reviewing working papers all day. When you finally leave for a commercial role, you struggle to keep up because you haven't used Excel in so long. Your accountants and senior accountants look down on you—they don’t respect you as just a people manager who never contributes to the work itself.

The Big 4 doesn't pay you enough for the amount of hours you put in. Just do the math. Aren't accountants and auditors supposed to be good with numbers? Should I hire a McDonald's worker to do your job instead?

There’s a reason why seniors handle senior-level tasks and juniors handle junior-level ones. The speed at which you comprehend, the level of technical competency, your efficiency in testing, and the time spent on documentation all play a role in how late you work at night.

At this point, there’s no distinction between peak and off-peak periods—it's peak season all year unless you're underperforming. When manpower is low, peak season is permanent.

Clients have an entire year to manipulate their financials, but auditors have less than a month to review them.

Have you ever gone without sleep for days on end? Spent a whole week doing nothing but working and catching up on rest? Your weekends are consumed by catch-up work, and you take sick leave just to manage your backlog. Try doing that for months. Are you really willing to sacrifice your life just for "branding"? Branding for what? Commercial roles? The industry is flooded with Malaysians now, and salaries are being driven down.

You can’t apply for leave during peak periods. In fact, nowadays, you can’t apply for leave at all unless you get explicit approval from your manager. Are you okay with taking your laptop overseas? When you’re sick and on MC, does your workload shrink? The peers I worked with would spend their sick days working because clients and partners won’t wait for you to recover. There are statutory deadlines, group auditors to report to, and no one will wait for your health to catch up.

Want to guess what happens if you miss those deadlines? Your entire year’s work could be undone during promotions. You’ll be left behind while some Malaysian with broken English gets promoted, not because he worked harder, but because his rented room in Woodlands is too small to even turn on the air conditioning before 10 PM.

Are Singaporean students so naive to think they can compete with these people? These Malaysians have left their families behind to compete with us locals, driven by a 3.5 exchange rate. Do you think it’s worth competing with them? They won’t bother mentoring you—they’d rather side with their own and dump all the heavy work onto you.

Now, let’s say you’re promoted to manager and decide to leave for a commercial role. You join an SME or an MNC as a Financial Manager. Here's the issue: competency is a problem. Your AR/AP executive is probably halfway through an ACCA, holds a diploma, or has some Malaysian certification. You can't expect them to handle heavy lifting because their exposure to auditing and accounting is limited.

Your accountant will always be missing, especially before the year-end audit. They’re underpaid, have no growth opportunities, and face immense stress with a heavy workload. As a Financial Manager, you’ll struggle to find replacements unless you join an MNC with a strong reputation that attracts talent. You’ll be living on borrowed time—your performance as an FM will depend on how smoothly the audit goes. From March to December, you might experience work-life balance, but come January and February, when audits kick in, you’ll realize that your balance was just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

There’s no future in this industry. Malaysians have flooded the market by taking advantage of low entry barriers, and partners are too focused on maximizing returns. Now they’re panicking because the government is raising EP requirements. Do auditors really think their salaries should be determined by the whim of the government?

Don’t buy into the growth hype that people in Big 4 love to peddle. As long as you’re trading time for money, your hourly rate will be low. The long hours, lack of work-life balance, and high stress are simply not worth it. Just look at your managers—they’re stuck. Ask them why they haven’t left, and they’ll tell you they’re stuck.

What’s the point of a 1-month or 1.5-month bonus for "great performance"? How many jobs do you need to close for that bonus? Does the math add up? You could probably earn more doing GrabFood on weekends and ignoring your work—assuming, of course, you can even meet the bare minimum requirements to get promoted.

Why don’t you stop whining about problems that have always been there? The audit industry isn’t changing overnight and complaining won’t get you anywhere.

Maybe instead of overthinking every little thing, you should focus on getting your own job done since none of this is new and it’s not going away anytime soon.

You are acting like thinking so far ahead is going to solve anything. Just deal with what’s in front of you because nothing’s going to magically change by itself.

For those who are already out of audit, they're safe. They'll get the best of both worlds - the reputation from audit's good old days + industry experience, which is very valuable.

For those still in audit, they really need to gtfo asap before it's too late. companies are increasingly offshoring junior roles which don't need relevant experience so go get your inhouse experience asap before you're stuck in audit for life.

For those who haven't join audit, just don't join it. that's all.

That's all everyone needs to know.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

For those still in audit, they really need to gtfo asap before it's too late. companies are increasingly offshoring junior roles which don't need relevant experience so go get your inhouse experience asap before you're stuck in audit for life.

Forgot to add, this is genuine non-trolling advice. that is literally what is happening in the last 2 years where me and my friends are working at, the big MNCs where life is good and not Tan Ah Kow Pte Ltd sweatshop. the only roles kept in singapore are those requiring minimum 3 years of direct work experience because they need more than just "decent" talent. it's stupid how the news isn't reporting any of these but it's seriously happening in lots of companies now. who cares about dyson's low-paid blue collar jobs being retrenched when the seriously valuable white collar jobs are getting sent off to other countries? who wants to keep headcount in singapore when tax is high now and rent is even higher?

Hi everyone! Given that the starting salary has increased for the Big 4, does anyone know how is the salary like if you start as a direct year 2 in Big 4?

A2 - $4500 (Year 1)
S1 -
S2 -
AM -
M -

In addition, are there any bonus? Thank you in advance!