Many are still fooled and are staying on for long term. Friends shared with me that upon leaving Big 4 their salary has gone up by 25%-50% after 1 year. Their colleagues are still toiling on inside thinking Big 4 is the best.

Nowadays they no longer meet up as by the time they are done with work, my friends are already home and finished eating dinner. When meeting old time friends, those in Big 4 always come after dinner is over and the group has moved on to a new place for drinks. They will have to settle their own dinner by tabaoing something along or eating snacks at the pub. Of course, nobody ever expects them to treat drinks on their meagre salary...

While I am no big fan of big 4, let's not exaggerate the situation. An accountant or finance reporting on corporate side does not necessarily give better work life balance either. Many have tight monthly, quarterly and annual deadlines and working long hours is pretty common as well.

Give & take my assessment is a typical average Big 4 employee's progression in terms of pay & promotion is roughly similar to corporate finance in a large local company. Not too bad, but neither is it like what most fresh grads fantasize about rubbing shoulders with high flyers and elites.

i dont seriously think anyone who enters Big 4 expects to rub shoulders with high fliers and the financial elite except for the most wide eyed biz school student/grad

it is the safe and dependable path. the more ambitious or unrealistic ones depending on how you look at it would have set their eyes on banking or other sectors since early on in their freshman days. no matter how you spin it, Big 4 work is your run of the mill white collar work. essential but not terribly exciting

the kids who are enamoured by the supposedly prestigious name soon learn that it is not exactly the case

yup, better ones go out after 6-8 years and get a nice increment. only left those who dream of becoming partner, but not everyone can get that spot. leftovers get stuck inside as their salary is too high for other companies to afford. just like big 4, other companies also prefer to promote their own hires to better positions rather than hire from outside.

big 4 progression similar to large local company? like the saying goes, a frog in a well will always see a small patch of sky. some hop from one well to another while others hop straight into the fields.

Some posters here seem to have personal vendetta against Big 4. Sure Big 4 don't pay big bucks and not many make it to partner level in the end.

But there are lots of lower level ranks at senior managers and directors who are doing relatively ok drawing 6-12k a month. You can argue they can find better pay or slacker work somewhere, but there are also lots of other PMEs who are doing worse in SG. They are happy and it seems to work for them, not sure why some here are trying to make it sound like they are dumb losers for choosing to stay with Big 4.

depends on what u want in life, big 4 also got some good things. now everyday i take taxi from home to client place, then after work take taxi back home. can claim from company, transport totally free. better than take bus/mrt to work, train fault all the time.

recently checked out the market, 2 companies offered me 15% and 20% increment from my current pay, plus bonus at least 1 month more than current. thought of jumping but then 1 more year to manager then i can have my own team, so decided to stay on.

as long as the expectation of big4 is to treat it like a normal office job then should be fine. those who join keep thinking they are meant for bigger things, want to promote fast, massive pay increments every year then will be unhappy lor.

big 4 increment is not bad actually.

first 5 years during associate / snr associate quite good, then it slow down to the normal 4-5% every year which is good enough. but if u the kind every year must get 8-10%, every 2 years promote and get another 20-30% then big 4 not suitable.

It helps that they lowball you from the start, hence giving them allowance to give you "massive" increments of 500 and 1000.

If you start off at a 4k job, how to give you 1k increment after 2 years?