Accounting Careers: the Lifestyle and Culture

Lifestyle and Hours
The lifestyle and hours of an accountant depend on your practice area, the time of year, the size of your firm, and your specific client or clients.

During the busy season (January to April), lowerlevel auditors can expect to work 55 hours to 60 or more hours per week; auditors at more senior levels may have to work even more. But to provide more work/life balance to new hires, many firms are trying to get away from the busy season stereotype of 80- to 90-hour workweeks with little reward. Some smaller firms hire part-time help during tax season or offer vacation incentives in exchange for overtime hours. However, this may not be the case if you’re working at a Big Four firm that often places higher demands and expectations on staff. During the rest of the year, especially summer, auditors typically enjoy a standard 40-hour work week. Generally speaking, new government regulations have made life more stressful for auditors (especially those working in-house), particularly as you climb higher up the food chain where people are more accountable. CFOs are now working the kinds of hours and suffering the kinds of stress usually reserved for management consultants and investment bankers.

Over in tax, the busy season depends on whether your client is a corporation (with filing deadlines in March or September), or an individual or partnership (with deadlines in April or October). Weekly hours during the busy season can range from 50 to 60 for staff to 70 to 80 for seniors. During the off-season, the pace cools to a steady 40 hours. That said, the hours you work will depend largely on the clients to which you’re assigned. Some clients may require you to put in longer hours and meet tighter deadlines. “This year I got killed during the busy season,” says one insider who had a particularly demanding investment bank as a client.

Travel varies depending on your practice area and clients. Tax compliance professionals spend nearly all of their work hours in their own offices, whereas tax consulting professionals can expect an occasional sojourn to clients’ offices. Audits take place at clients’ sites, so local travel is quite common on the audit side; if you like to get out of the office, this could be the area for you. Those assigned to larger clients with offices around the country could be required to travel even more. The bigger the firm the bigger the clients, which will ultimately affect how much travel is required. If your client is based in New York but has a warehouse in the Midwest that needs to be inventoried, your team will probably be sent out to do the work. Employees who work in specialty practices could also travel longer distances.

Culture
Cultural variations exist among different firms, various offices of a given firm, and firms of different sizes. In general, Big Four firms have a conservative, corporate atmosphere. These are mammoth firms, with all the hierarchical and bureaucratic implications their size suggests. And they serve Fortune 1000 clients. Bottom line: Professionalism is key to making it in the Big Four. Smaller firms can be more relaxed. But no matter where you work, remember that this is accounting—it’s all about checking the numbers again and again. “It’s very much like a library,” says one accountant about the busy season. “People are very studious and serious to get work done.”

That’s not to say accountants don’t know how to have fun. They do. Most accountants will tell you that the stereotype of the dry, nebbishy misfit just doesn’t apply these days (or rarely applies, anyway). Smaller firms often operate in close quarters, providing a great environment for office camaraderie with birthday celebrations and after-work happy hours. Big Four firms are filled with work-hard/play-hard types just out of college. “It’s like freshman year all over again,” says an insider. “You meet so many new people and you’re all in the same boat.” Lower-level insiders say they go out a lot with their coworkers and often hang out on weekends. The big firms also sponsor sports teams, annual holiday parties, picnics, and other events.

But socializing extends beyond just having a good time. Networking plays a big role in accountants’ client assignments and career paths, especially in the Big Four. In other words, there can be competition between you and your peers. In the near term you’re competing for plum client assignments. In the longer term you’re vying for a promotion to the next level in the corporate hierarchy—and because of the pyramid structure at most firms, the number of people vying for those next-level positions will outnumber the available jobs.

Diversity
They say they’ve been working at fixing it, but a lack of ethnic diversity remains a problem at Big Four firms. Finding and retaining ethnic minority employees is a difficult task for these firms, perhaps because of the paucity of minority senior-level people in the Big Four.

The story is better regarding gender diversity. The Big Four firms frequently make it onto Working Mother’s annual list of the “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers,” which takes into account job flexibility (such as telecommuting options), representation of women in companies, child-care options, advancement opportunities for women (including mentoring programs or support groups), and leave-program options for new parents.