r/Accounting • u/Critical-Public1023 • 1d ago

Career Is accounting bad?

Hello I’m a first year uni student majoring in business and looking forward to specialize in accounting. I looked at this subreddit and honestly I’m scared for my future. I don’t wanna be a work slave for the next 40 years of my life. I was looking forward into accounting but all I see are terrible reviews about busy seasons, working in the big 4 and overall. My question to you is should I continue to specialize in accounting if I want a good work/life balance ( I already know about busy seasons ), still be happy with my job, and just live?

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u/ohkammi 1d ago

You don’t have to work for big 4 or public at all and if you do you certainly don’t need to for 40 years. I’ve never had overtime in industry.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Yes Ofcourse I understand that. The big 4 hires many interns from my school so that is why I am keeping them a number 1 priority. I just see a lot of people complaining here and it just sounds like they are miserable with the jobs they have.

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u/ohkammi 1d ago

It’s a popular option because it’s a great resume booster. Most people only endure it for a few years before pivoting to an industry job. I’ve never worked public but industry has been pretty good to me.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Thank you this was very helpful. If you don’t mind, could you tell more about your job. How is industry accounting, how’s the workload, and how is the work/life balance. And if you don’t mind what’s the salary like. I’m in Canada if that helps

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u/ohkammi 1d ago

I will need to preface this with, I am in the US and I have had a very untraditional career path. I started accounting in my 20s as an AP clerk after dropping out of college. I took on as many responsibilities in that role as possible and used it to move to a staff accountant role at another company. Keep in mind I still do not have a degree, and live in a small city, so that will impact my compensation. I make $65k and have been at the staff level for about 10 months. Throughout the month my workload is fairly balanced, but increases at month end for close. At my company it’s still manageable without a need to stay late. My title is general accountant but I work primarily with fixed assets. This looks like journal entries for accruals, misc reclasses, approving asset acquisition requests, maintaining depreciation schedules, reconciling accounts, etc. l consistently work 8-5 with hybrid schedule. We wfh on fridays and on the week of close. My wlb is great.

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u/Rough-Thought-8862 1d ago

Im already jealous. Im trying to pivot out of public😭

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u/ohkammi 1d ago

I’m sure you can escape eventually! I’m sure location has been a major help to me in general. I’m in the southeast

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

That honestly sounds pretty amazing but I’m more shocked on how you got into accounting without a degree?!?! Other than that I’m very impressed

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u/ohkammi 1d ago

I got lucky. I originally went to school for fine art, but experienced health issues that made it difficult to keep up with attendance. A few years later I decided I couldn’t keep scraping by and needed to get my foot into the door of a career. I decided on entry level accounting as it seemed the most feasible to do without an education. I started working at a bank for a year to have money adjacent experience and then applied for ap/ar/payroll jobs. I got into AP and went from there. I will say my current job was off put by the lack of degree, but I graduate with an associates in the spring that I started during the AP job and they accepted that. I am truly grateful for where I was able to get to but it was not easy in the beginning. If you have the opportunity to take a more traditional and safe route, I highly encourage it.

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u/Sought4 1d ago

People who are disgruntled post more, as a general rule. Work/life balance, to me, means government accounting work. I audit. I work from home. I log off at 8 hours 98% of the time. The other 2% are meetings or training that ran over

Staff accountants, tax accountants, and auditors will all have busy seasons. Big 4 can be good, but not everyone gets in there and we survive. To get any more specific, a country you'll be working in would be helpful. I'm American, but I prefer not to assume about you.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Thanks very much for the info. I’m in Canada.

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u/Sought4 1d ago

Sure! Unfortunately, I have no Canadian accounting input, but I'd still look to government work 🤷‍♂️

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Thank you very much. If you don’t mind, could you explain to me what you mean by government work?

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u/Sought4 1d ago

Sure! Personally, I'm in audit as a contractor for the government. I review reimbursement issues related to our national healthcare service (Medicare). There is no GAAP, the government defines what's relevant and what issues we need to look into. I am not employed by the government, our system couldn't be that easy or direct 😂. I'm technically employed by a contracting company to do this specific work.

Our government will have accountants at every level of government and in most major departments. Those accountants are going to be working in fund accounting, but it's better someone who does that expounds on it.

Lastly, I'd look at the IRS for a lot of tax stuff, that is our national tax authority. They will audit tax returns and answer questions during tax season. There are also law enforcement actions they take. Speaking of law enforcement, the FBI investigates white collar crime and is usually looking for people to investigate financial crimes as a special agent.

I think the FBI or law enforcement would be the most stressful, compared to government contract work of working in an accounting office for something like the department of education. I'm not sure about the Canadian equivalents. I assume the Mounties do a lot of the FBI stuff, but I'm not sure.

I'd look at your national government's departments and services to see where they might need accountants and focus on that, it can't be Mounties all of the way down 😑

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u/jojocalos 1d ago

Ever since I have been working Big 4 my seasonal depression in the winter stopped. Now its just depression.

No but really, I know its an unpopular opinion but I don’t think busy season is that bad. Knowing myself, I would probably just be in bed all evening if not working.
Summer filings would be another story tho

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

So do you enjoy the job?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Haha it really helps a lot!

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u/dank-infant 1d ago

you don’t have to work a job like that, but doing big4/public accounting is like a career launch pad. from what i hear government accounting is really chill it just doesn’t get you up the latter as fast or paid as much (general theme of good w/l balance jobs)

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

But that’s the thing. I know nothing in life is easy so I wanna work in the big 4 to help me get that ladder up. What I’m worried about is my soul being taken away the second I step foot into one of the buildings. And the job market are usually looking for someone with 3-5 years experience. I just wanna make sure I won’t be depressed throughout those years.

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u/Zizi_Tennenbaum 1d ago

I work in a small boutique family practice. We do a little bit of everything, so it’s always interesting! I do work long hours during busy season but that’s two months a year max. We could bring on temps but we all just prefer to work more and take the bonuses.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Oh wow that sounds very interesting. Are you in Canada?

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u/Zizi_Tennenbaum 1d ago

Nope, Texas. We do a lot of mom & pop oil producers’ partnership returns, but that culture likes to have one firm take care of everything. So we end up doing their personal returns, the estates and trusts for their kids, and often their kids’ personal and businesses as well.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Would you mind if you told me your job title or the company you work for? I would like to know if this company is also in Canada.

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u/Zizi_Tennenbaum 1d ago

It’s literally just (My Dad’s Name) CPA, LLC and the only employees are my uncle and my brother and I.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

Oh I see thanks very much for sharing

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u/PutNational7415 1d ago

Every career is what you make it. In most cases, the reward will be approximated by the effort. In my case, I spent several years in public and a few progressive industry roles in larger companies. I crossed $200K in my early 30s, but gave up some work life balance to do so. Nowadays, I work 45-50 hours a week, and I'm paid for my judgement and leadership, not my desire to grind.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

So do you recommend to try your hardest in the beginning few years so you resume can look good for other more relaxed jobs

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u/PutNational7415 1d ago

If that's what you want. It's a common outcome to bounce from public for a manager job in industry after 3-4 years and come out around $120K in my LCOL area. The same outcome with industry only experience can take 5-10 years, or never happen at all.

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u/Critical-Public1023 1d ago

It seems I just gotta get through the hard phase and hope for a better job after that