turtleface said:
Culture is overrated. We're all humans. Have you seen some of the Big 4 recruitment brochures? All of them spew out the same crap: "Our culture is very friendly, openminded, innovative, cliche, cliche, cliche"
That's the stuff which they publicize, but there are also things which I don't think you've considered in terms of culture. For example, KPMG is supposedly famous for it's more extroverted, image-consciencous, loud and sporty people. Ernst and Young (I believe) is a more charity-focussed (based on seeing my friends who got in- had done a lot of charity work) and self-initiative firm where they seem to employ the kind of people who are really warm and friendly who are able to do things independently and on their own as well as in a team (based on what I've seen with my friends who were offered positions there). It's not just the culture of the work environment, but the people who are accepted there tend to fit specific moulds.
turtleface said:
Working in teams is also overrated. At my time there, everyone did their own thing. the only times people talked was: "have you got a red pen" or "have you finished the filing? do you want the kid to do it?"
When you go out on audit jobs, you have to work in a team. If you can't handle that, or being delegated work, or later on- how to delegate work, then maybe you are more suited to smaller audit jobs where you are the only one doing the auditing- ie. a smaller firm.
turtleface said:
And for Auditing, interfacing with clients is a bit overrated too. The big 4 is pretty much an oligopoly. If you piss off the client, what are they gonna do? Unless theres a clear breach by the auditor, or some form of incompetence, the company will be accused of a cover up if they fire their auditor. People will assume the auditor was fired cause they questioned the client's practices.
It's not just the firm we're talking about being replaced- You do know that clients can request other people to come next time round- or even to replace the individual people from the audit team on the spot right? When they're paying thousands of dollars per hour for an audit team, they do have some bargaining power over who they get now, and who they book in the years to come. My point in short is, that it's in the individual's interests as well as the firm, to do a good job.
May I ask if you've worked in Big4?
I personally haven't started yet but I've done my research- and my sister works in Big4.
turtleface said:
[edit]
Even so, its a valid point that they may not want geeks who can't communicate effectively, but my real gripe is that some of my friends who have killer marks get rejected for interviews by big 4 but are accepted for interviews by ibanks. What a joke! it just shows that the big 4 have some weird fear of competent people, like anyone who gets high marks is automatically a candidate for the serious, not very talkative outcast.
I can see what you're saying- but I know plenty of very academic people who made it in, and plenty who didn't. I think there's much more to it than just academics; after all, accounting isn't really that intellectually-intensive provided you get decent marks in uni and are likely to be able to complete the CA program (despite the high failure rate).
On a side note, my sister had a UAI of 99.8 and was accepted into Big4. By my definition those are 'killer marks' (and she maintained HDs for nearly her entire uni degree- IIRC, twice she didn't get an HD; one cred and one D).
And yes as you can probably tell from my post I may be slightly biased in favour of Big4, but I think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
