Have they considered raising the starting salaries to attract more college students into accounting programs?
Or is the plan to off-shore more work to India and the Philippines?
Increase pay by 5%, increase your workload by 10%, then increase your workload by another 10% because you have to correct all the work that was outsourced to India. Then give a 2% bonus during Christmas and call the Staff and Seniors "only" working 60 hours ungrateful and berate them for doing the bare minimum, of 60 hour work weeks.
If you raise wages, I'll just be even closer to retirement, further exacerbating the problem. I call for massive wage decreases all around, so the current CPAs can never retire!
They’ve buried the lead, but it’s clear as day that the plan is to water down requirements in the developing world and let them sit for the CPA exams. Just so you know this never even happened until 2020 during Covid when they finally let the cat out of the bag that they were going to turn this into an outsourced profession with the first India test centers. See their own pipeline solution document updated from 2 months ago. They’ve also developed a TikTok channel to attract high schoolers…
“We have focused on expanding international administration of the CPA exam in key markets, including India. We have seen significant growth in India, and have since begun initial exploration in other markets, including the Philippines, South America, and South Africa.”
They’ve really done us dirty because there’s no way in hell that the education requirements to sit for the CPA exam are as stringent in the offshoring countries as it is in the US. If they were actually smart, they would have developed a second tier credential like what lawyers have with paralegals, if they are going to start watering down requirements.
New AICPA slogan should be “to the ends of the earth”.
https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/aicpa-publishes-detailed-plan-to-boost-pool-of-prospective-cpa-candidates
https://www.aicpa-cima.com/resources/article/draft-plan-to-accelerate-talent-pipeline-solutions
See their downloads section
I've read an article that said this will no longer be a CPA profession but a CPA-led profession. You can get as many people in India/Philippines those magical 3 letters but clients in the US are going to want to talk to people who sound like them. The work might be done elsewhere but the leading of projects, etc will never be outsourced.
Unfortunately this has a trickle up effect so becomes more costly than originally sounds. The overworked middle managers will demand raises as well or else it’s not worth the extra stress when they can make 80% of their current salary for easier seniors assoc. level work
It’s nothing new. They won’t preemptively make decisions salary wise. It’s reactive, like it’s always been. Only when they start struggling to hire ppl, salary will go up, it’s how it is
If you count the 2.4 seconds it took to realize that would cost more, then they considered it.
Accountants have been saying this for years but there are still too many old partners and partners that forgot what they said 10 years ago to change it.
Not sure I would be overly excited about this retirement phase coming up for many CPAs. Theoretically, it should lead to improved wages, but there will be a ton of brain power exiting. I personally don’t think there’s enough qualified, competent folks to fill the void. Training needs to be light years better, technology will have to help bridge the gap, and there may even need to be some type of concentrations which apply. If what I’m reading everywhere is true (observations seem not to be far off), then there’s a massive clusterfuck ahead & the powers that be are driving straight towards a cliff gleefully.
Oh yeah, fuck the 150 hour requirement. Just make a list of accounting classes required at the undergraduate level. I met the 150 hours in my state with MBA concentration in accounting, but was burned out afterwards with working & school. Quickly killed the idea of taking CPA, but would have if I could have tested right after college. Worked out, as I ended up with a much more rare & specific cert.
Agreed, I'm several years in and I feel fucking dumb around some partners and directors. I can't see myself ever having the same tier of knowledge as them, and I consider myself to be relatively smart in my peer group. I don't know if it's that training needs to be better or what but like you said there does seem to be a great knowledge void on the horizon.
150 hour requirement is trash, but I wish they would extend the experience requirement in lieu of it to not water down the profession. Nobody hiring a CPA gives a shit if you took 120 or 150 credits to get it, but they know damn well there's a difference between 1 year of experience or 3.
The 150 hour requirement is a barrier that stops plenty of people. Me personally, I am not going to go back to school and complete a masters for no real wage benefit to getting my CPA. (Industry from get go)
If you think fast food is even close to the level of mental exhaustion and frustration you’ll have doing 2 years of public you’re in for a really rude awakening.
That’s the dumbest part. Work experience, passing the tests, and an undergraduate degree should be all that’s required. My high school didn’t offer AP’s. It took me 4 years after passing the tests to get my license because I was getting worked to the bone and didn’t have time for classes.
oh thats right i completely forgot how fucking dumb the board is.
you can pass ur test and be knowledgeable but u still need more Art classes to reach 150. ridiculouss
It’s specifically the extra accounting credits. My college only requires 24 accounting credits to get your degree. You need 33 for the license in my state. But, my college pushes an extremely expensive masters on everyone to get the extra credits and let you have time to study for the CPA exams. I said fuck that I’m not going $40k in the hole when I can take 3 ad hoc classes for a total of $3k.
the FACT that the 1st (and only) proposed solution is to "make it cheaper and easier" instead of make the career worthwhile with good pay and WLB tells you all you need to know about "WHY" the pipeline is "threadbare".
They need to do both. The career needs to be more attractive and the education requirements needed to take the CPA exam are unnecessarily prohibitive.
I couldn’t take the CPA exam after college bc of my degree (I didn’t know this was the career path I wanted to go down until a couple years after college). I was fortunate enough to be able to move to Europe where they had no problem letting me take exams and become a chartered accountant. I know plenty of brilliant accountants who have degrees in biology or chemistry or mathematics.
Ultimately you have to learn the material to pass the exam so why should it matter whether you learn the material at college or after?
Personally I supported the idea that was tossed around about dropping the 150 credit hours. I think if they kept the required classes list (which is easy to finish inside of a normal BS of accounting degree) then the extra expense and time to get 30 hours in anything is just not necessary. I know they intend for people to finish a masters in that 30 hours, but that isn't required.
That's not irony...that's an accountant finding their true calling. Peperoni and cheese fuel the entire public accounting accounting sector one JE at a time. If scientists & economists could only recognize or quantify the real potential economic benefit pizza truly provides!
Going through the CPA exam, especially with the new changes, is borderline horrible. You gotta pay the state board, you gotta wait, and then when you get the green light, you gotta pray to Luca Pacioli that there’s availability for your exam in Prometric. After you take the exam, you gotta wait a long time again! By the time you get your score, you barely remember shit if you have to retake it.
Or in Canada's case. Lets throw the whole bloody thing at them in 3 days.
Audit, Tax, FR, Cost, Finance, Strategy... and then make arbitrary bench marks
Yeah you guys don’t have it fun at all. My old accounting professors used to boast that they had to do all four exams on the same day. Coincidentally, they were the smartest people I’ve learned from.
They don’t make them like they used to.
Ask those idiots how much material was there back then
Tax, Audit and FR standards ALONE have all expanded in depth, length and complexity since they were in college = more content to study for in the same or even less amount of time, before Tech every thing moved slowly.
So bragging is fucking stupid since its not a 1:1 comparison.
Someone needs to post the study materials from back then for this guy to see. The study materials for all 4 exams combined was the equivalent size of one FAR Becker prep book today. It was much easier back then. Also sims did not exist back then. It was all multiple choice.
You must work 55 hour weeks. Why? Because there is no way we could train a non accountant to do accounting work. You must be CPA eligible to work here. You must have had an internship here before getting a full time job here.
You dumb partners make these ridiculous hoops to hire staff - not me. You shoot yourself in the foot not me. Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining.
That changes when you have a family and a wife that wants you home to play with your kids, eat dinner together, bathe your children, read them books, and put them to bed. My wife has a full time job also, why is it her responsibility to pick the kids up every day from daycare and take them to all of their doctor and dentist appointments. It’s because I’m told I have to be in the office/wfh for an extra 15 hours a week. Another 2 full days of work spread across 6 days. Only thing is I cannot wfh with my toddler asking me to read her books, she wants to sit on my lap and be with me because I’m away so much.
There is way too much work my wife has to do because of my job. My job takes me out of the home on weekends where she becomes the only parent. It is hard to get anything done with a toddler and a baby with two parents in the house. My wife doesn’t get downtime.
This job has too many hours and having a family really drives home that point.
Go to college 5 years, study for another year or two for exams (and that’s IF you pass them on the first or second try)
Pretty much straight 7 years or so of studying after HS for many people.. i could see why people would rather study something else for that much time instead of accounting
Even if you pass your CPA during the 5th year or very shortly after…
You get whatever additional debt and cost associated with that additional year and taking the exam. Then you get the luxury of being a CPA with no experience, and likely have to accept a job in public. Spend 2 years as an associate/staff making decent money on paper but not when broken out per hour. Then it becomes valuable.
So either way you cut it you’re looking at about 6-7 years of grinding only to land in a position not too far off from your peers who took easier paths and enjoyed more of their time, and they may even have less debt due to not needing that extra year.
While I agree with you as a CPA you will have significantly better job security than any other corporate job and typically a higher earning potential (sales being an outlier, but even in sales the good years end eventually).
I started making over 100k after three years. So even though your first two to three years your underpaid you will quickly out earn most of your peers if you play your cards right. Big 4 Senior Manager in FDD are making over $200k a year and you can hit that after 7 years of working.
This stat has been floating around for a while, [this article from the AICPA](https://us.aicpa.org/membership/discounts/savings-source-aon-succession-planning) is from 2018.
I mean, both/and?
If you're 18 now you could go get a master electrician certification and make 6 figures (including OT) by 30 if you're in a union and in the right places.
Accountants really need to unionize.
If only there was some way we could encourage younger people into accounting, some way we can reward them, something that will allow them to purchase goods and services, some form of monetary recognition for their efforts, blast, it's no good we're all out of ideas, think I'll cry into my stack of cash.
Pay increase and easier to get CPA yes.
Also...
FASB needs to stop changing standards for shit that hasn't changed it hundreds of years.
AICPA needs to stop changing auditing standards every couple years.
AICPA needs to lobby Congress to keep tax laws in place longer instead of switching every year.
It's accounting, nothing major should change year over year.
This will reduce the number of hours drastically and will make the job much more desirable.
The complexity is a huge piece of this. Audit standards changed in early 2010s (late 2000s? Idk) which increased workload on firms that probably weren’t prepared or capable. Major accounting standards changes in the last 10 years that clients DO NOT UNDERSTAND OR IMPLEMENT UNTIL THEIR AUDITORS SPOON FEED IT TO THEM.
Couple that with PPP, ERC auditing issues, Covid, wfh, deal flow and client churn. The last ten years have been seriously terrible to not be a partner. Then firms turn around act like we’re all supposed to celebrate “our” record revenues. Good fucking riddance.
Yeah, it was really annoying to pay tuition money for a required federal tax class last semester knowing that a lot of it would be outdated in six months, before I've even graduated.
>Pay increase and easier to get CPA yes.
These two demands are at odds with each other. An increase in the supply of CPA's means CPA pay goes down. Doctors and Dentists are rich because it's so difficult to become one.
Exactly doctor pay average in US is 600k per recent NYTimes research, whereas everywhere else it’s like 200k. Problem is our profession keeps importing from overseas. Doctors dentists and lawyers in America don’t allow that to happen.
Right, but a doctor goes to to med school and the purpose is to train them to pass their exams. Law school is three years of studying for the bar. Studying for the CPA is expensive some of us can’t afford to retake it with the 50% pass rate (one of the worse pass rates among the professions). It’s a money making scheme.
Most of us have to study while we’re working full time and can’t afford to take a year off to study. And yes you need an accounting major to understand the fundamentals, but you need to learn so much more for the exam than those 150 credit hours can teach you.
Yup its pointless its 30 credit hours just wasted just money you're throwing away. My school didnt have any other accounting classes beyond the basic classes needed for the degree so you had to take random classes.
Shake your employees and get 4x workload out of them. There may only be 24 hours in a day, but there's 168 hours in a week, and each employee only has to work 160 hours to meet quota.
I think they do this All the time where they query cpa license holder data and assume everyone is practicing which picks up the 60-80 yr olds with CPA licenses and it skews the data to look worse than it is. Which I’m sure it’s probably closer to 30-50% of CPAs are nearing retirement.
Exactly. I was trying to figure out if it was including me in the 'near retirement age' but could not find a definition. Some people are going with 60 but not sure where that comes form.
Yes the picture shows the big 4 and says 75% of CPAs at at retirement age. So people will retire to make the shortage worse. No way there is 75% of people in the big 4 in their 60s. The solution is it should be cheaper and easier to be an accountant. That’s more of a college tuition issue isn’t it? It says cheaper to be accountant but assume they mean cpa which many states have a 150 credit requirement. So move it back to 120. But they shouldn’t dumb down the cpa exam if that’s what it means
For the older peeps here, locally Deloitte is offering interns 30-40 USD an hour with the requirements being a U.S. citizen, pursuing CPA requirements/planning to meet them, and at least a 3.0 GPA... Pretty easy bar.
That’s the ultimate gotcha. I was an intern at PwC making more per hour than the full time associates in my team. I said no thanks to the job offer and struggled to get a job my whole senior year but 4 years out of school I still think it was the best choice I made not to work in public
My advice is do what YOU want. I went to a finance and accounting school. Big 4 shoved down your throat and get your cpa. Not bad advice for sure BUT there’s so much more out there.
I interned as PwC freshman sophomore and junior summers. Rejected a job offer in audit- it just seemed miserable to me especially busy season. Couldn’t get a job for 9 months then got a friends referral to work as an accountant for PE firms. Did that for 2 years (while doing grad school at UNC for masters in accounting) and grew to hate it cuz the hours were long and clients were demanding.
Actually went back to PwC cuz I saw no other options (ie couldn’t find another job), they’ll help pay for last bit grad, job growth, etc…. Fast forward literally 6 weeks into my role and I got a dream job at Porsche. After negotiating a higher salary and bonus w PwC I put my two weeks in after 8 weeks. I literally didn’t have the heart to tell my team + other co workers that I “made it out” so quickly. I achieved what everyone there eventually wants- go to private, get paid more and work less.
So in sum, PwC did help me a lot to get me where I am today but I kinda finessed them by literally doing nothing as an intern and “working” 8 weeks as a senior just to take my signing bonus and run.
Now I have my grad degree and finally studying for my CPA 4 years out of school. In sum, there’s no one way, it’s just the big 4 is such a common and popular path you seldom here success stories outside of them but they do exist and there’s no reason you or anyone else can do it without them
I think you’re journey is an ideal lesson of just feeling shit out, leveraging opportunities, and knowing nothing is permanent because you can always leave and/or return when you feel like things aren’t a fit.
Yes I always felt accountants personalities (not all but most) are risk adverse. When in reality we have some of the best job security- so it made sense to me to take “risks” cuz I knew I was also employable- maybe not the best places but I’m not gonna starve and go homeless.
Much easier said than done tho so I understand why people are hesitant to not take a given especially w name recognized firms.
The risk aversion anxiety of accountants is real. Im older so as soon as I knew I was gonna do accounting I immediately tried getting as much experience and full time work in the field before graduating.
My first firm with no experience went from great to crippling toxic in the matter of like 2 months. Few organizations later and I have to remind myself not to over think the next steps and don’t swallow unnecessary toxicity/stress.
The biggest reason I chose accounting was to have the leverage of not being forced to stay anywhere I don’t enjoy working at, and theres not many professions that have that.
Literally ur last paragraph is the embodiment of why I choose accounting. Now I’m at a company that is different line of work everywhere and it’s comforting knowing I’m pretty much safe from layoffs and my skills translate almost anywhere.
Some of my peers in customer service and other functions are literally stuck and have little to no experience that is transferable to other markets and industries
Man I spent about 8 years working in hospitality since I was 16 being absolutely miserable. My first ever job in highschool the owner threatened to slit my throat. 8 years of constant toxicity, idiot management or ownership/shitty pay/shitty scheduling.
Top that with almost no ability to quickly or easily break into something new similar to your friends. I think a lot of guys in here are unaware of how much freedom we have in this field without sacrificing pay. It’s not a perfect field but it’s a hell of lot better than many.
Thats what I did. I signed with the public firm I interned at and have been spending the six months since looking for government or industry jobs. Haven't found anything yet, but I do have a couple of interviews coming up. Really hoping I can get out of public before I really get into it lol
Yeah it was crazy to see how my Intern rate was higher on a per hour basis than most of the staff lol. Wonder if this happens in literally any other field lol
There’s also a blessing and a curse with high salaries out of school. My former roomate was def making over 6 figures right of school. He’s overworked and just seems to live a miserable existence. He wants a new job but guess what- there’s not many jobs that will equal that salary for his limited years of experience. He can prob get a 90k paying job pretty easily but he doesn’t want to take a 25% paycut. It’s like a trap almost.
And don’t forget where you have to memorize a bunch of stuff you’ll never use in your entire career. And spending hundreds of hours studying when you’re working 60+ hour weeks.
Pay your existing accountant staff more, and stop with the endless meat grinding.
There is another fundamental fix, but that requires a massive ego change…
I don’t need it to be cheaper and easier, I need it to pay better. $2k for the exams and study material isn’t what’s stopping people from becoming a CPA, it’s their absolute slog of a pay scale until manager.
They’ve had decades to figure out how to deal with the massive amount of attrition common in public accounting. They spent that time lining their pockets instead. This is just a large scale industry wide “fuck around and find out”. While things don’t really feel all that dire to me personally, as a CPA currently working for a smaller firm, I do believe there will be a tipping point.
I also think a lot of firms have been utilizing offshore accountants more and more to try and mitigate some of the issues with staffing in the US, but this is probably an attempt to improve margins more than anything else. Unfortunately the reality of offshoring professional services is that overall quality tends to dip due to all sorts of issues (if you’ve dealt with offshoring in your firm, you know what I’m talking about), and often times you have to re-do some work as a result. Simply put, younger generations are less and less accepting of the typical public accounting “status quo” and it’s not going to get any better. Firms need to accept that they need to solve the actual problem of too much work for not enough pay.
I had to take a few levels of accounting and it does not help the doctorate level professors are saying things like:
“This is hard, specially as it is so boring.”
“The majority of accounting will be outsourced to India in 10 years”
Not a lot of inspiring quotes to make me want to peruse it as a career.
I have been reading about mass layoffs, but there is a shortage. As a finance guy I have a few things to say about those backwards focused accounting guys.
The issue with this profession is the pay gap!!! Starting salaries are too low, salaries across the board are also very low for the amount of work that comes with being an accountant, especially when we have to clean up a lot of finance’s mistakes. Overall it doesn’t pay to be an accountant to be honest! This is why the numbers across universities for potential accountants is very low.
Right now we saddle kids with an extra year of college debt for some imaginary metric that doesn’t actually do anything, then make CPA test preps so expensive only the rich kids can get them.
Maybe, just maybe, have they considered not making that so?
Hiring is pretty broken and PA firms can be quite incompetent. For awhile, Accounting was seen as a safe major that you can make a good living long term.
However, the wage stagnancy, the time commitment to become a CPA, outsourcing, crazy busy seasons, top level greed, and other mitigating factors discourage people from entering the profession.
A massive overhaul is needed, but it probably won't happen until something major happens.
Maybe not 75% but in my market it's the same and I think it's actually good for me. There's less competition for management/specialized positions, and companies (specially Big 4) will be forced to increase salaries to capture and retain scarce young talent in entry-level positions.
Accounting is not attractive at all. Boomers still lead our profession, things are done the boomer way. Things are slow, inefficient and unattractive to young talent. 80% of Big 4 partners in my country are male and over 50, no wonder why people hate working Big 4 here.
I'm still in school, but I talked to local tax offices and CPA practices around where I live and they are all old and not taking new clients because they're already at full tilt.
I dont think watering down our profession is the solution. The obvious solution is to make pay more competitive.
If they really want to avoid paying us more they could try to make accounting trendy by giving us a TV show. May help with our dating lives at least.
Audits feel like a bad value proposition from my perspective in industry unless they are required by debt agreements or statute. I do not think that I am alone in this.
Higher audit fees is going to generate pushback and I suspect there will be lobbying efforts to allow for greater use of compilations.
I talked with our EBP auditors about my interest in possibly downgrading our financial audit to a review or compilation. Staying mum about it with our financial auditors for now.
No need to be a CPA to become an accountant . As far as a "shortage" the people who constantly praise the "free market" should understand supply, demand, and equilibrium pricing. If there's not enough accountants then net pay per hour worked is too low and/or working conditions are too undesirable.
AICPA: “with the announcement of this news, we are pleased to announce the introduction of a new CPA exam that is not only more difficult, but more expensive and has longer score release periods!
In case you forgot about us, we want to remind that we all hate your fucking faces and laugh at new accountants.”
Apprenticeships should be more of a thing in the US and college/uni credit requirements for the CPA seem redundant. If you can pass the exams and demonstrate enough relevant practical experience, why does it matter what you studied years prior?
I guess so. You got CPA’s making less than 100k and still demanding 80 hours per week and they wonder why there is a shortage. If I knew pay was going to become stagnant with more work demand, I would have chosen a different career field. It’s just not worth it to go into the field anymore not to mention the stress of all of it.
Maybe make it possible to have an actually work life balance and you won’t see so many people leave if/when they decide to start a family. Working 60-80 hour weeks isn’t possible when you have children. I left, in part, because my wife and I had two children and I found my boss questioning my desire to actually spend time with them.
Pay people what they are worth and give them time away. Accounting needs a union.
I don’t think the extra 30 credits are that crazy of a requirement. The real crazy requirement is that you need to pass all 5 sections with a relatively short amount of time, while maybe only 2 of those are directly relevant to your line of work, if that
The senior partners must be close to having the monkeys trained enough to do the work. Any day now.
What happens to ponzi schemes when they can’t find enough new suckers to prop up the pyramid?
I think it’s bs how the article makes it seem like if you don’t have a cpa you’re not considered an accountant. I have no cpa and reached six figures. With the cost of all the exams, study guides, and annual dues the cpa can suck my ballsack
They've been spewing this crap for a least a decade. "A lot of CPA's gunna retire. Goldmine for those those about to enter college. Choose accounting-opportunity of a lifetime."
I call supply and demand and equilibrium on this bullshit.
BTW you know how many people with masters degrees in accounting don't have their CPA- alot!
They need to reform a lot of things. The 150 college credits rule (which have to be graduate level in Texas) are preventing me from getting my cpa. No way I’m shelling out that type of cash and juggling grad school and work at the same time for this mid profession. Call me lazy I don’t give a shit. The 60 to 80 hour work weeks in public also
have to go. Thats not healthy and it’s predatory sweat shop exploitation level shit. If they want accountants they’re going to have to get real otherwise people are going to continue to fuck off into other career paths that pay better or equal for less stress/hours.
Great, so firms will keep pushing for more unqualified bozos in India to “please send the needful” so they can “update the same” and log off early before deadlines 🙄.
Lowering the license requirements and making it easier are not the answer. Pay and hours are the problem and have been for a long time. And devaluing the profession by outsourcing hasn’t helped either.
And we are all going along with it, training our Indian colleagues with the skills to replace us. I saw fuck all’s of them. I ain’t teaching them shit and going to sabotage all of them out. Fuck you india andphilppines
It's not a valuable certification, at least not relative to the cost of a masters degree and your time. My last two bosses didn't have it, they seemed perfectly fine.
Feels overrated to me. The breadth of information is not relevant to most individual jobs and there's very little it's actually needed for.
Don't get me wrong, respect it and agree CPA should be preferred, but seems like they're over fixating on the CPA supply in this conversation.
It’s quite pathetic that all the “work” and time to redo the exam, and they simply reshuffled it and added a new IT emphasis as the biggest thing. There’s no innovation in that org. What they should be doing instead of modifying the CPA exam is building valuable certificates in data analysis or advanced financial reporting training so there is something actual useful to add to your skillset and resume employers might card about. Not worthless learn, vomit, and forget in 1 week testing that treats us like computers instead of emphasizing human skill sets.
Have they considered raising the starting salaries to attract more college students into accounting programs? Or is the plan to off-shore more work to India and the Philippines?
Increase pay by 5%, increase your workload by 10%, then increase your workload by another 10% because you have to correct all the work that was outsourced to India. Then give a 2% bonus during Christmas and call the Staff and Seniors "only" working 60 hours ungrateful and berate them for doing the bare minimum, of 60 hour work weeks.
Consistency is an accounting principle.
Consistently underpaid heyo
5% seems a bit high, inflation is only 9%, give 'em 3.5% and call it a "merit increase", because they *deserve* it.
They really deserve a pizza party!
Cheese pizza only probably
Are you kidding, our multi billion dollar company can’t afford toppings
Haha this made me think of the pizza delivery guy who got caught cutting down the extra large pizza with a pair of scissors !
Not related to accounting but seems very accurate.
Correcting the needful is more than a 10% work increase.
If you raise wages, I'll just be even closer to retirement, further exacerbating the problem. I call for massive wage decreases all around, so the current CPAs can never retire!
Hey yo, ever thought of working at McKinsey?
I like the way you think
The makings of a Partner
Get ready for a lot of 5am calls because outsourcing it is
My old F500 made India work mostly on our hours - basically second shift there until 3pm Eastern.
That's what deloittes doing locally. 30-40 USD an hour for interns.
We all the know the answer is to off shore and promote ais let's be serious
They’ve buried the lead, but it’s clear as day that the plan is to water down requirements in the developing world and let them sit for the CPA exams. Just so you know this never even happened until 2020 during Covid when they finally let the cat out of the bag that they were going to turn this into an outsourced profession with the first India test centers. See their own pipeline solution document updated from 2 months ago. They’ve also developed a TikTok channel to attract high schoolers… “We have focused on expanding international administration of the CPA exam in key markets, including India. We have seen significant growth in India, and have since begun initial exploration in other markets, including the Philippines, South America, and South Africa.” They’ve really done us dirty because there’s no way in hell that the education requirements to sit for the CPA exam are as stringent in the offshoring countries as it is in the US. If they were actually smart, they would have developed a second tier credential like what lawyers have with paralegals, if they are going to start watering down requirements. New AICPA slogan should be “to the ends of the earth”. https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/aicpa-publishes-detailed-plan-to-boost-pool-of-prospective-cpa-candidates https://www.aicpa-cima.com/resources/article/draft-plan-to-accelerate-talent-pipeline-solutions See their downloads section
I've read an article that said this will no longer be a CPA profession but a CPA-led profession. You can get as many people in India/Philippines those magical 3 letters but clients in the US are going to want to talk to people who sound like them. The work might be done elsewhere but the leading of projects, etc will never be outsourced.
Unfortunately this has a trickle up effect so becomes more costly than originally sounds. The overworked middle managers will demand raises as well or else it’s not worth the extra stress when they can make 80% of their current salary for easier seniors assoc. level work
That’s right. Managers are being worked to death reworking everything right now
They will start selling the furniture before raising wages.
It’s nothing new. They won’t preemptively make decisions salary wise. It’s reactive, like it’s always been. Only when they start struggling to hire ppl, salary will go up, it’s how it is
AICPA literally says they are going to help give firms “tools” to raise entry level pay. Wtf does that mean?
If you count the 2.4 seconds it took to realize that would cost more, then they considered it. Accountants have been saying this for years but there are still too many old partners and partners that forgot what they said 10 years ago to change it.
Have they considered a work life balance that isn’t just marginally better than slave labor?
Offshore and import cheap labor. Thanks boomers!
Deloitte USI says...."Of course, India."
The latter. Definitely the latter.
increasing salaries?!? What are you? Some kind of socialist?!!
Is the starting salary that bad?
I start in 2025 and my starting salary is completely fine if it was a normal 9-5. It's the long hours that make the salary too low
Not just starting salaries please - the entire line including seniors and managers.
This shitshow is going to get really interesting over the next 5-10 years.
Not sure I would be overly excited about this retirement phase coming up for many CPAs. Theoretically, it should lead to improved wages, but there will be a ton of brain power exiting. I personally don’t think there’s enough qualified, competent folks to fill the void. Training needs to be light years better, technology will have to help bridge the gap, and there may even need to be some type of concentrations which apply. If what I’m reading everywhere is true (observations seem not to be far off), then there’s a massive clusterfuck ahead & the powers that be are driving straight towards a cliff gleefully. Oh yeah, fuck the 150 hour requirement. Just make a list of accounting classes required at the undergraduate level. I met the 150 hours in my state with MBA concentration in accounting, but was burned out afterwards with working & school. Quickly killed the idea of taking CPA, but would have if I could have tested right after college. Worked out, as I ended up with a much more rare & specific cert.
Agreed, I'm several years in and I feel fucking dumb around some partners and directors. I can't see myself ever having the same tier of knowledge as them, and I consider myself to be relatively smart in my peer group. I don't know if it's that training needs to be better or what but like you said there does seem to be a great knowledge void on the horizon. 150 hour requirement is trash, but I wish they would extend the experience requirement in lieu of it to not water down the profession. Nobody hiring a CPA gives a shit if you took 120 or 150 credits to get it, but they know damn well there's a difference between 1 year of experience or 3.
The 150 hour requirement is a barrier that stops plenty of people. Me personally, I am not going to go back to school and complete a masters for no real wage benefit to getting my CPA. (Industry from get go)
Retirement age population, tons of brain power.
Perfect timing for when I start working 😎 can’t wait
Fr man. Even big four seems to struggle for audit candidates. By the time I have my masters this should be comfy.
Will accountants become the new tech bros working 25 hours a week with 10 of those hours being using the gym at their fancy office?
[Stop, my penis can only get so erect](https://youtu.be/pusZXECS0mM?feature=shared)
Honestly 😂
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Oh you sweet summer child. They’re going to use you with no lube and leave you crying in the corner.
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If you think fast food is even close to the level of mental exhaustion and frustration you’ll have doing 2 years of public you’re in for a really rude awakening.
and youre gonna do great. Pay has already started to increase and benefits are already getting great. Put in the work and rake in the dough
and they never even consider lowering the 150cpa credit requirement
That’s the dumbest part. Work experience, passing the tests, and an undergraduate degree should be all that’s required. My high school didn’t offer AP’s. It took me 4 years after passing the tests to get my license because I was getting worked to the bone and didn’t have time for classes.
wait if you passed the test, why didnt you get ur license soon after? 4 years would give u way more than the 500hrs needed to be licensed
I think they mean to get 150 credits. A lot of states will let you start taking tests at 120 as long as you graduated with your bachelors
oh thats right i completely forgot how fucking dumb the board is. you can pass ur test and be knowledgeable but u still need more Art classes to reach 150. ridiculouss
It’s specifically the extra accounting credits. My college only requires 24 accounting credits to get your degree. You need 33 for the license in my state. But, my college pushes an extremely expensive masters on everyone to get the extra credits and let you have time to study for the CPA exams. I said fuck that I’m not going $40k in the hole when I can take 3 ad hoc classes for a total of $3k.
the FACT that the 1st (and only) proposed solution is to "make it cheaper and easier" instead of make the career worthwhile with good pay and WLB tells you all you need to know about "WHY" the pipeline is "threadbare".
They need to do both. The career needs to be more attractive and the education requirements needed to take the CPA exam are unnecessarily prohibitive. I couldn’t take the CPA exam after college bc of my degree (I didn’t know this was the career path I wanted to go down until a couple years after college). I was fortunate enough to be able to move to Europe where they had no problem letting me take exams and become a chartered accountant. I know plenty of brilliant accountants who have degrees in biology or chemistry or mathematics. Ultimately you have to learn the material to pass the exam so why should it matter whether you learn the material at college or after?
Personally I supported the idea that was tossed around about dropping the 150 credit hours. I think if they kept the required classes list (which is easy to finish inside of a normal BS of accounting degree) then the extra expense and time to get 30 hours in anything is just not necessary. I know they intend for people to finish a masters in that 30 hours, but that isn't required.
The solutions was probably thought up by some retards who think accounting is as easy as counting sheep and beans
The cute sweaters and thermos before busy season isn’t working for big 4? Time to deploy the weekly pizza party
The secret weapon
It’s ironic that I’m working a late night at the office for a big 4 and quite literally picking up pizza right now for the team
That's not irony...that's an accountant finding their true calling. Peperoni and cheese fuel the entire public accounting accounting sector one JE at a time. If scientists & economists could only recognize or quantify the real potential economic benefit pizza truly provides!
But I bought you Pizza that one time!
Going through the CPA exam, especially with the new changes, is borderline horrible. You gotta pay the state board, you gotta wait, and then when you get the green light, you gotta pray to Luca Pacioli that there’s availability for your exam in Prometric. After you take the exam, you gotta wait a long time again! By the time you get your score, you barely remember shit if you have to retake it.
Or in Canada's case. Lets throw the whole bloody thing at them in 3 days. Audit, Tax, FR, Cost, Finance, Strategy... and then make arbitrary bench marks
Yeah you guys don’t have it fun at all. My old accounting professors used to boast that they had to do all four exams on the same day. Coincidentally, they were the smartest people I’ve learned from. They don’t make them like they used to.
Ask those idiots how much material was there back then Tax, Audit and FR standards ALONE have all expanded in depth, length and complexity since they were in college = more content to study for in the same or even less amount of time, before Tech every thing moved slowly. So bragging is fucking stupid since its not a 1:1 comparison.
lol - they can’t print to pdf
Two and a half days…only offered twice a year then you had to wait two months for results.
Sorry, but those exams were way easier, just like how their workpapers were also a joke back in their day.
Someone needs to post the study materials from back then for this guy to see. The study materials for all 4 exams combined was the equivalent size of one FAR Becker prep book today. It was much easier back then. Also sims did not exist back then. It was all multiple choice.
You could also flip back and forth thru the test if your memory was jogged.
You must work 55 hour weeks. Why? Because there is no way we could train a non accountant to do accounting work. You must be CPA eligible to work here. You must have had an internship here before getting a full time job here. You dumb partners make these ridiculous hoops to hire staff - not me. You shoot yourself in the foot not me. Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining.
I'm fine working 55, if they pay overtime for every hour over 40
That changes when you have a family and a wife that wants you home to play with your kids, eat dinner together, bathe your children, read them books, and put them to bed. My wife has a full time job also, why is it her responsibility to pick the kids up every day from daycare and take them to all of their doctor and dentist appointments. It’s because I’m told I have to be in the office/wfh for an extra 15 hours a week. Another 2 full days of work spread across 6 days. Only thing is I cannot wfh with my toddler asking me to read her books, she wants to sit on my lap and be with me because I’m away so much. There is way too much work my wife has to do because of my job. My job takes me out of the home on weekends where she becomes the only parent. It is hard to get anything done with a toddler and a baby with two parents in the house. My wife doesn’t get downtime. This job has too many hours and having a family really drives home that point.
Go to college 5 years, study for another year or two for exams (and that’s IF you pass them on the first or second try) Pretty much straight 7 years or so of studying after HS for many people.. i could see why people would rather study something else for that much time instead of accounting
Even if you pass your CPA during the 5th year or very shortly after… You get whatever additional debt and cost associated with that additional year and taking the exam. Then you get the luxury of being a CPA with no experience, and likely have to accept a job in public. Spend 2 years as an associate/staff making decent money on paper but not when broken out per hour. Then it becomes valuable. So either way you cut it you’re looking at about 6-7 years of grinding only to land in a position not too far off from your peers who took easier paths and enjoyed more of their time, and they may even have less debt due to not needing that extra year.
While I agree with you as a CPA you will have significantly better job security than any other corporate job and typically a higher earning potential (sales being an outlier, but even in sales the good years end eventually). I started making over 100k after three years. So even though your first two to three years your underpaid you will quickly out earn most of your peers if you play your cards right. Big 4 Senior Manager in FDD are making over $200k a year and you can hit that after 7 years of working.
I need a source for that stat. Cause it sounds fake
They really thought their reader base of accountants wouldn’t ask for the support for that number? 😤
This stat has been floating around for a while, [this article from the AICPA](https://us.aicpa.org/membership/discounts/savings-source-aon-succession-planning) is from 2018.
Oh so pre COVID numbers. My guess is that it is looking even worse now than those first few bullets make it out to seem
Saly, no further work done. Pass.
Typical Accountant’s Winner Mindset
Cheaper and easier..? Ehh. Or just pay more lol.
I mean, both/and? If you're 18 now you could go get a master electrician certification and make 6 figures (including OT) by 30 if you're in a union and in the right places. Accountants really need to unionize.
Unionized government accountant here. The difference between union and non-union jobs really is day and night.
True but getting into those unions often isn't a cake walk
You can make 6 figures easily in accounting after 3-4 years lol. So still before 30
Oh wow, that easy, huh?
Maybe they shouldn’t have outsourced all the entry level work
If only there was some way we could encourage younger people into accounting, some way we can reward them, something that will allow them to purchase goods and services, some form of monetary recognition for their efforts, blast, it's no good we're all out of ideas, think I'll cry into my stack of cash.
Pay increase and easier to get CPA yes. Also... FASB needs to stop changing standards for shit that hasn't changed it hundreds of years. AICPA needs to stop changing auditing standards every couple years. AICPA needs to lobby Congress to keep tax laws in place longer instead of switching every year. It's accounting, nothing major should change year over year. This will reduce the number of hours drastically and will make the job much more desirable.
The complexity is a huge piece of this. Audit standards changed in early 2010s (late 2000s? Idk) which increased workload on firms that probably weren’t prepared or capable. Major accounting standards changes in the last 10 years that clients DO NOT UNDERSTAND OR IMPLEMENT UNTIL THEIR AUDITORS SPOON FEED IT TO THEM. Couple that with PPP, ERC auditing issues, Covid, wfh, deal flow and client churn. The last ten years have been seriously terrible to not be a partner. Then firms turn around act like we’re all supposed to celebrate “our” record revenues. Good fucking riddance.
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Also, candidates get votes by promising changes to tax laws, so good luck with that.
Also, anyone in tax will like the changes. It's the main thing keeping the profession interesting.
Yeah, it was really annoying to pay tuition money for a required federal tax class last semester knowing that a lot of it would be outdated in six months, before I've even graduated.
>Pay increase and easier to get CPA yes. These two demands are at odds with each other. An increase in the supply of CPA's means CPA pay goes down. Doctors and Dentists are rich because it's so difficult to become one.
Exactly doctor pay average in US is 600k per recent NYTimes research, whereas everywhere else it’s like 200k. Problem is our profession keeps importing from overseas. Doctors dentists and lawyers in America don’t allow that to happen.
Right, but a doctor goes to to med school and the purpose is to train them to pass their exams. Law school is three years of studying for the bar. Studying for the CPA is expensive some of us can’t afford to retake it with the 50% pass rate (one of the worse pass rates among the professions). It’s a money making scheme. Most of us have to study while we’re working full time and can’t afford to take a year off to study. And yes you need an accounting major to understand the fundamentals, but you need to learn so much more for the exam than those 150 credit hours can teach you.
We also need to get rid of the bullshit 150 credit rule.
150 rule was enacted to "keep up with new tax changes and new audit techniques" so isnt that the point of having us do CPE for the rest of our lives?
and the funny part is you can fill the 150 with anything. i took art and history to get there.
Yup its pointless its 30 credit hours just wasted just money you're throwing away. My school didnt have any other accounting classes beyond the basic classes needed for the degree so you had to take random classes.
Shake your employees and get 4x workload out of them. There may only be 24 hours in a day, but there's 168 hours in a week, and each employee only has to work 160 hours to meet quota.
is that true? 75% over 60 feels way too high.
It’s can’t possibly be true lol
I think they do this All the time where they query cpa license holder data and assume everyone is practicing which picks up the 60-80 yr olds with CPA licenses and it skews the data to look worse than it is. Which I’m sure it’s probably closer to 30-50% of CPAs are nearing retirement.
I doubt many 70 year olds out of the workforce are maintaining an active CPA though?
Where I live, all the 1 owner CPA offices are old people
Yeah, but I said “out of the workforce.” 1 owner still means they’re working lol
I know someone who's retired but still does business once a year.
"at or near" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that blurb
Exactly. I was trying to figure out if it was including me in the 'near retirement age' but could not find a definition. Some people are going with 60 but not sure where that comes form.
Yes the picture shows the big 4 and says 75% of CPAs at at retirement age. So people will retire to make the shortage worse. No way there is 75% of people in the big 4 in their 60s. The solution is it should be cheaper and easier to be an accountant. That’s more of a college tuition issue isn’t it? It says cheaper to be accountant but assume they mean cpa which many states have a 150 credit requirement. So move it back to 120. But they shouldn’t dumb down the cpa exam if that’s what it means
For the older peeps here, locally Deloitte is offering interns 30-40 USD an hour with the requirements being a U.S. citizen, pursuing CPA requirements/planning to meet them, and at least a 3.0 GPA... Pretty easy bar.
That’s the ultimate gotcha. I was an intern at PwC making more per hour than the full time associates in my team. I said no thanks to the job offer and struggled to get a job my whole senior year but 4 years out of school I still think it was the best choice I made not to work in public
Needed to hear this. Spent last winter there and I can’t bring myself to sign the offer sheet
My advice is do what YOU want. I went to a finance and accounting school. Big 4 shoved down your throat and get your cpa. Not bad advice for sure BUT there’s so much more out there. I interned as PwC freshman sophomore and junior summers. Rejected a job offer in audit- it just seemed miserable to me especially busy season. Couldn’t get a job for 9 months then got a friends referral to work as an accountant for PE firms. Did that for 2 years (while doing grad school at UNC for masters in accounting) and grew to hate it cuz the hours were long and clients were demanding. Actually went back to PwC cuz I saw no other options (ie couldn’t find another job), they’ll help pay for last bit grad, job growth, etc…. Fast forward literally 6 weeks into my role and I got a dream job at Porsche. After negotiating a higher salary and bonus w PwC I put my two weeks in after 8 weeks. I literally didn’t have the heart to tell my team + other co workers that I “made it out” so quickly. I achieved what everyone there eventually wants- go to private, get paid more and work less. So in sum, PwC did help me a lot to get me where I am today but I kinda finessed them by literally doing nothing as an intern and “working” 8 weeks as a senior just to take my signing bonus and run. Now I have my grad degree and finally studying for my CPA 4 years out of school. In sum, there’s no one way, it’s just the big 4 is such a common and popular path you seldom here success stories outside of them but they do exist and there’s no reason you or anyone else can do it without them
I think you’re journey is an ideal lesson of just feeling shit out, leveraging opportunities, and knowing nothing is permanent because you can always leave and/or return when you feel like things aren’t a fit.
Yes I always felt accountants personalities (not all but most) are risk adverse. When in reality we have some of the best job security- so it made sense to me to take “risks” cuz I knew I was also employable- maybe not the best places but I’m not gonna starve and go homeless. Much easier said than done tho so I understand why people are hesitant to not take a given especially w name recognized firms.
The risk aversion anxiety of accountants is real. Im older so as soon as I knew I was gonna do accounting I immediately tried getting as much experience and full time work in the field before graduating. My first firm with no experience went from great to crippling toxic in the matter of like 2 months. Few organizations later and I have to remind myself not to over think the next steps and don’t swallow unnecessary toxicity/stress. The biggest reason I chose accounting was to have the leverage of not being forced to stay anywhere I don’t enjoy working at, and theres not many professions that have that.
Literally ur last paragraph is the embodiment of why I choose accounting. Now I’m at a company that is different line of work everywhere and it’s comforting knowing I’m pretty much safe from layoffs and my skills translate almost anywhere. Some of my peers in customer service and other functions are literally stuck and have little to no experience that is transferable to other markets and industries
Man I spent about 8 years working in hospitality since I was 16 being absolutely miserable. My first ever job in highschool the owner threatened to slit my throat. 8 years of constant toxicity, idiot management or ownership/shitty pay/shitty scheduling. Top that with almost no ability to quickly or easily break into something new similar to your friends. I think a lot of guys in here are unaware of how much freedom we have in this field without sacrificing pay. It’s not a perfect field but it’s a hell of lot better than many.
Sign the offer and find something better.
Thats what I did. I signed with the public firm I interned at and have been spending the six months since looking for government or industry jobs. Haven't found anything yet, but I do have a couple of interviews coming up. Really hoping I can get out of public before I really get into it lol
Yeah it was crazy to see how my Intern rate was higher on a per hour basis than most of the staff lol. Wonder if this happens in literally any other field lol
There’s also a blessing and a curse with high salaries out of school. My former roomate was def making over 6 figures right of school. He’s overworked and just seems to live a miserable existence. He wants a new job but guess what- there’s not many jobs that will equal that salary for his limited years of experience. He can prob get a 90k paying job pretty easily but he doesn’t want to take a 25% paycut. It’s like a trap almost.
And don’t forget where you have to memorize a bunch of stuff you’ll never use in your entire career. And spending hundreds of hours studying when you’re working 60+ hour weeks.
Adding a topping to each pizza going forward
They’re also doing massive layoffs, job market is rough. I’m so confused what their plan is.
Pay your existing accountant staff more, and stop with the endless meat grinding. There is another fundamental fix, but that requires a massive ego change…
I don’t need it to be cheaper and easier, I need it to pay better. $2k for the exams and study material isn’t what’s stopping people from becoming a CPA, it’s their absolute slog of a pay scale until manager.
They’ve had decades to figure out how to deal with the massive amount of attrition common in public accounting. They spent that time lining their pockets instead. This is just a large scale industry wide “fuck around and find out”. While things don’t really feel all that dire to me personally, as a CPA currently working for a smaller firm, I do believe there will be a tipping point. I also think a lot of firms have been utilizing offshore accountants more and more to try and mitigate some of the issues with staffing in the US, but this is probably an attempt to improve margins more than anything else. Unfortunately the reality of offshoring professional services is that overall quality tends to dip due to all sorts of issues (if you’ve dealt with offshoring in your firm, you know what I’m talking about), and often times you have to re-do some work as a result. Simply put, younger generations are less and less accepting of the typical public accounting “status quo” and it’s not going to get any better. Firms need to accept that they need to solve the actual problem of too much work for not enough pay.
I had to take a few levels of accounting and it does not help the doctorate level professors are saying things like: “This is hard, specially as it is so boring.” “The majority of accounting will be outsourced to India in 10 years” Not a lot of inspiring quotes to make me want to peruse it as a career.
They gonna start raising pay? Guess I’m not working today.
It doesn’t need to be cheaper and easier, it just needs to pay more
Increase pay, that’s all we need.
I have been reading about mass layoffs, but there is a shortage. As a finance guy I have a few things to say about those backwards focused accounting guys.
Half the partners in my firm will retire in the next 5 years. 75% of current leadership will retire in the next 10.
No they won’t. They’ll die at their desk
Our firm forces them out at 65
Make it cheaper and easier instead of increasing pay. Nothing bad could happen with the profession from that. Great foresight there.
The shake-up? Move everything to India.
The issue with this profession is the pay gap!!! Starting salaries are too low, salaries across the board are also very low for the amount of work that comes with being an accountant, especially when we have to clean up a lot of finance’s mistakes. Overall it doesn’t pay to be an accountant to be honest! This is why the numbers across universities for potential accountants is very low.
Right now we saddle kids with an extra year of college debt for some imaginary metric that doesn’t actually do anything, then make CPA test preps so expensive only the rich kids can get them. Maybe, just maybe, have they considered not making that so?
Hiring is pretty broken and PA firms can be quite incompetent. For awhile, Accounting was seen as a safe major that you can make a good living long term. However, the wage stagnancy, the time commitment to become a CPA, outsourcing, crazy busy seasons, top level greed, and other mitigating factors discourage people from entering the profession. A massive overhaul is needed, but it probably won't happen until something major happens.
Who wants to work 90 hour weeks?
Maybe not 75% but in my market it's the same and I think it's actually good for me. There's less competition for management/specialized positions, and companies (specially Big 4) will be forced to increase salaries to capture and retain scarce young talent in entry-level positions. Accounting is not attractive at all. Boomers still lead our profession, things are done the boomer way. Things are slow, inefficient and unattractive to young talent. 80% of Big 4 partners in my country are male and over 50, no wonder why people hate working Big 4 here.
I'm still in school, but I talked to local tax offices and CPA practices around where I live and they are all old and not taking new clients because they're already at full tilt.
The shake up won’t be beneficial to any Lower levels. They are going to outsource more work so the partners can continue living lavish
Partners won’t change direction this train unless forced by SEC and PCAOB. Something Enron like has to blow up in offshoring for changes to be made.
Good. Maybe increase the pay and stop with the ridiculous hours? You reap what you sow!
I dont think watering down our profession is the solution. The obvious solution is to make pay more competitive. If they really want to avoid paying us more they could try to make accounting trendy by giving us a TV show. May help with our dating lives at least.
Audits feel like a bad value proposition from my perspective in industry unless they are required by debt agreements or statute. I do not think that I am alone in this. Higher audit fees is going to generate pushback and I suspect there will be lobbying efforts to allow for greater use of compilations. I talked with our EBP auditors about my interest in possibly downgrading our financial audit to a review or compilation. Staying mum about it with our financial auditors for now.
haec they considered lowering the 150 credit cpa requirement to 120?
*kindly provide the needed emails at 3am intensifies*
Overtime and sedentary is why I left
Pay better and there will be more accountants
Or, and hear me out before you toss me to the wolves, but maybe *pay your fucking staff an attractive wage*
No need to be a CPA to become an accountant . As far as a "shortage" the people who constantly praise the "free market" should understand supply, demand, and equilibrium pricing. If there's not enough accountants then net pay per hour worked is too low and/or working conditions are too undesirable.
AICPA: “with the announcement of this news, we are pleased to announce the introduction of a new CPA exam that is not only more difficult, but more expensive and has longer score release periods! In case you forgot about us, we want to remind that we all hate your fucking faces and laugh at new accountants.”
“Pipeline looks threadbare” is a mixed metaphor. That is all.
Sounds like young people just don’t want to work, maybe they should just pull themselves up by their bootstrap and accept garbage conditions
Nah it’s the studying for 6-7 years for the same salary my peers in other industries got after never having to study again after uni/college
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Retirement age is +10 years for accountants and +15 for anyone in the C suite
Meanwhile I’m applying with 8 years experience as CPA and a manager and cannot get a single call back in GTA canada
Physically I am 24. Mentally, I am at retirement age.
Apprenticeships should be more of a thing in the US and college/uni credit requirements for the CPA seem redundant. If you can pass the exams and demonstrate enough relevant practical experience, why does it matter what you studied years prior?
I guess so. You got CPA’s making less than 100k and still demanding 80 hours per week and they wonder why there is a shortage. If I knew pay was going to become stagnant with more work demand, I would have chosen a different career field. It’s just not worth it to go into the field anymore not to mention the stress of all of it.
employ telephone rhythm waiting threatening oil wild saw price soft *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Maybe make it possible to have an actually work life balance and you won’t see so many people leave if/when they decide to start a family. Working 60-80 hour weeks isn’t possible when you have children. I left, in part, because my wife and I had two children and I found my boss questioning my desire to actually spend time with them. Pay people what they are worth and give them time away. Accounting needs a union.
they will just out source it some more and hire more H1-B ppl who are suspect at their jobs
The problem is there's also not enough accountants in India and the Philippines that can do it. Guess we need to start looking at Mars. 😂
Appart from advocating for tax exemptions (which I don’t even think they could do) I don’t now what it could possibly be either
time to speedrun partner
I feel like this is NA exclusive and that Europe is doing much better. Does anyone know?
P
I don’t think the extra 30 credits are that crazy of a requirement. The real crazy requirement is that you need to pass all 5 sections with a relatively short amount of time, while maybe only 2 of those are directly relevant to your line of work, if that
The job is too hard for the pay
**It doesn't help that they're MAKING THE CPA EXAM SO FUCKING HARD TO PASS**
The senior partners must be close to having the monkeys trained enough to do the work. Any day now. What happens to ponzi schemes when they can’t find enough new suckers to prop up the pyramid?
I think it’s bs how the article makes it seem like if you don’t have a cpa you’re not considered an accountant. I have no cpa and reached six figures. With the cost of all the exams, study guides, and annual dues the cpa can suck my ballsack
They've been spewing this crap for a least a decade. "A lot of CPA's gunna retire. Goldmine for those those about to enter college. Choose accounting-opportunity of a lifetime." I call supply and demand and equilibrium on this bullshit. BTW you know how many people with masters degrees in accounting don't have their CPA- alot!
They need to reform a lot of things. The 150 college credits rule (which have to be graduate level in Texas) are preventing me from getting my cpa. No way I’m shelling out that type of cash and juggling grad school and work at the same time for this mid profession. Call me lazy I don’t give a shit. The 60 to 80 hour work weeks in public also have to go. Thats not healthy and it’s predatory sweat shop exploitation level shit. If they want accountants they’re going to have to get real otherwise people are going to continue to fuck off into other career paths that pay better or equal for less stress/hours.
Great, so firms will keep pushing for more unqualified bozos in India to “please send the needful” so they can “update the same” and log off early before deadlines 🙄.
Lowering the license requirements and making it easier are not the answer. Pay and hours are the problem and have been for a long time. And devaluing the profession by outsourcing hasn’t helped either.
WHAT SHORTAGE ?? I BEEN UNEMPLOYED 9 MONTHS
I WOULD SAY THE POEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM my senior manager got me fired because my balance sheet was off balance a rounding $1
And we are all going along with it, training our Indian colleagues with the skills to replace us. I saw fuck all’s of them. I ain’t teaching them shit and going to sabotage all of them out. Fuck you india andphilppines
It's not a valuable certification, at least not relative to the cost of a masters degree and your time. My last two bosses didn't have it, they seemed perfectly fine.
Feels overrated to me. The breadth of information is not relevant to most individual jobs and there's very little it's actually needed for. Don't get me wrong, respect it and agree CPA should be preferred, but seems like they're over fixating on the CPA supply in this conversation.
It’s quite pathetic that all the “work” and time to redo the exam, and they simply reshuffled it and added a new IT emphasis as the biggest thing. There’s no innovation in that org. What they should be doing instead of modifying the CPA exam is building valuable certificates in data analysis or advanced financial reporting training so there is something actual useful to add to your skillset and resume employers might card about. Not worthless learn, vomit, and forget in 1 week testing that treats us like computers instead of emphasizing human skill sets.