This week the 2009 UFE results come out and I'll try and follow along - as long as you are in touch with CA students, there'll be people you care about who are waiting for CA exam results at the end of November, or beginning of December.
I'll no doubt be [...]
If you're working with well-connected people you may have seen this already.
I've received multiple copies: it's been uploaded to one site specializing on the topic and it was also shared by Life of an Auditor. the latter being the first to publish it, on August 31, 2009.
[...]
Hot on the heels of the PwC discussion regarding people getting "packaged off", comes another eye-opening post - this courtesy of Going Concern, which discusses layoffs at Ernst & Young.
The post primarily concerns the E&Y offices in the USA, though there's a growing thread of commentary [...]
PriceWaterhouseCoopers Advisory has made some significant cuts to their US workforce, as mentioned off-hand by Francine and discussed in detail here
Skip down to comment 4 in the post for an interesting dissection of firm revenue math and the possible impact it'll have on partner income. It's [...]
An example of "what's it like to be a senior staff" writing seems in order, after all the drama of the nasty early fall combined recruiting, layoff and UFE exam analysis season.
The thought of explaining what it's like to run jobs with eager young staff ready to assist you came [...]
The sad news I broke ten days ago about "layoffs" hitting writers coming back from the UFE is being discussed in greater detail at mycasite.com.
Click here to go to the article and read more details about the unfortunate "welcome back from the exam, pack your desk up [...]
The month before, the count was 416; in September the total count was only 376, that's an improvement.
Accounting firms continue with dismissals as they welcome new hires and prepare for another busy season. After condemning the day-of-UFE terminations, a week later I heard that more terminations went through. [...]
If you stay up late to finish work, you may just get it done. But at what price?
You turn into some sort of 24 hour automaton.
Remember how to stop and relax, then do it.
One of the things I enjoy about my job is the flexible [...]
My dear readers have reported experiencing something horrible: layoffs immediately after the UFE!
Although it's one thing to decide, "we have too many young staff, let's tell some of them not to come into the office on Monday", saying, "well, let's get it over with quickly and call them to the [...]
Reading the adventures of new recruits on myCAsite reminded me of Homer's job search:
Smithers: What would each of you say is your worst quality?I've noticed people are wondering when marks are coming out for the UFE's 2009 sitting.
Yes, I vowed not to make any more comments on the exam yesterday, but left some exceptions. One of them would be people coming up to me and asking question, and I'll count "people landing [...]
Across Canada a few thousand students are now sitting down to day 1 of the 2009 UFE. It's not going to have as much IFRS content as the 2010 exam, but compared to prior years, where good old GAAP was the only thing for which they had to furiously thrash [...]
Another site is rolling out to add help create some sort of constellation of places for CA orbits to begin flying around - myCAsite.com.
This is one of those cases where I actually know the creator - we went to university together - but there's really nothing like it out there. [...]
After a certain point, all the studying in the world will lead you to burn out.
But before you burn out, you'll simply get fed up with the ridiculous demands the exam places upon you.
Go and cheer up Jaycee who is hitting one of those walls you run into during [...]
Thanks Videosift, you always brighten my day.
I'll let you come up with your own story for how this compares to the adventure in AuditLand so many young people go through, hopefully with less claw marks. I nominate Neil to give it a first shot, considering he's now technically [...]
Livent was a Canadian theatre company which imploded in a massive accounting scandal in the 1990's which we learned about in university as a case study in how not to do several things on an audit.
The people involved are heading off to prison, at the end of [...]
The number of spam e-mails hitting me continued their downward trend landing at 416, sliding even lower than last month's 437. Better spam filters at last? Wonderful.
I had several topics come to mind regarding how companies measure various metrics for success and failure, and of course they all slipped [...]
I'm over seven hours away from home right now, ready to start another exciting audit tomorrow.
Arriving about an hour before the hotel retaurant was due to close, I thought I was in luck - I could just wander downstairs and get something delicious.
Visions of delicious baked goods danced before me, [...]
Tick Marks has an article that's hard to believe - someone hired high school students to work on his audits. His name happened to be Michael Moore, but the guy punished by the SEC wasn't that Moore.
Not a big surprise. I've found the grave of Michael Moore in Victoria.
[...]I've finally added a link to the ACS forums, but given that it took me over the past three years to do that, I won't be hurt if you don't post there. But if you, great.
In the meantime, I'm seeing new forums popping up. Big 4 Bound was tired [...]
I have to commend The Accountant running I Want to be a CA for the recent articles, featuring a series of new and guest writers adding new perspectives, including that of a university professor.
Particularly interesting, if you want to see what the ground floor of an internal audit [...]
The summer of road trip adventures and weddings continues - a week ago sending ACS to a wedding in Waterloo, with a stop on the way at Kitchener's Golden Hearth Baking Company. I've been out there many times for audits, but this weekend had nothing to do with auditing [...]
Good ways to keep staff happy include supplying them with massive quantities of high quality sushi, but there are other ways.
Working as a young CA - or as a CA student - you'll get used to fielding the impossible and getting it done without [...]
I'm finally back from vacation while city staff continue to clean up after their labour action. Posting was sporadic lately due to real life intruding, and the next week is going to be quite busy.
In AuditLand the current crop of interns are going to be winding down their summer [...]
Subtle strike commentary? Perhaps
I disagree with Post columnist Terence Corcoran when I read much of his work - so much so that I tend to avoid buying or reading the Post to avoid getting a nasty case of "I can't believe you said that, [...]
I'm not retired from Big Four life, plus I can legitimately claim to be a little bit too busy to play "auditor of the auditors", so I stick to writing about what I know, and what seems to interest my readers - judging from the comments and e-mails [...]
Toronto's on strike. Two of the city workers' unions are, anyway. And from one union only 5% of union membership turned out to vote on the long weeknd in May. Great timing on the part of union leadership to ensure that they'd get only the diehard "hell no, we [...]
Last week I wrote about a little billing fiasco on my last bill - the week was so busy I didn't end up calling back until today to find out if there was a solution.
There in fact was - Telus' IT guys did a good job of quickly repairing [...]
If you're a Telus customer using twitter to get SMS updates, and you don't have an unlimited text messaging plan, get ready for a potentially nasty bill.
Although the USA has enjoyed this feature since the dawn of time, for the past few months Canadians weren't able to receive updates from twitter [...]
Training new people is huge in accounting firms. As you gain experience, you typically end up doing more teaching than raw accounting.
With that in mind, consider this questions, one of several I've received from my readers who have been sending me a series of interesting questions that are giving me [...]
Hot on the heels of my discussion of when people choose to leave, comes news from LYF - he has resigned [...]
Check out this excellent summary of an adventure in hacking.
You can perhaps call it anti-hacking, given the nature of the victimized target in this case - a so-called "security website" charging money for security exploits, but which featured rather poor security.
Remember to keep backups of [...]
Too many CAs? Isn't that like saying "oh no, that's too many roast potatoes?" Absolute madness, clearly.
Another interesting point I caught in the interview with Anonymous Partner discussed yesterday, was the claim that we're heading towards a glut of CAs, which seems to contradict [...]
IwanttobeaCA has a very interesting interview with a retired KPMG partner which features many candid comments on the nature of the Chartered Accountant designation and how things have changed over the years in the profession.
It also includes some smart tips for students trying to get hired - talk to the junior [...]
If you want to avoid paying peak summer prices at popular destinations, May is a great time to travel. And although I thought I was going to follow up by saying, "and yet this year I didn't," that's obviously not true.
Couple the well timed vacation with an early start [...]
I haven't found myself in this position, thank goodness, but there's an article that provides a surprisingly candid look into the world of credit card debt.
If you're paying tons of interest and penalties on your original purchases for things you weren't able to afford in the first place, are [...]
Someone out there must be wishing me luck. And it’s working.
Flying to California for a short vacation, I tried to do online check-in only to find that the website declared this sort of thing forbidden. Perhaps due to the fact I was using frequent flier points [...]
Speaking ill of it, will, in some circles, earn you a sterner response than outright blasphemy against Jesus. Or maybe it's because the banks arguably own the government.
Americans are sensitive about their currency, which should be yet another obvious revelation to anyone paying attention [...]
Fresh on the heels of my trenchant analysis cute list of quitting times, it makes sense to add some thoughts regarding work-life balance:what kind of dedication to you expect of your colleagues, and most importantly, of yourself?
How much you want to work may have little - or perhaps has [...]
Hopefully you've already filed your taxes and didn't just toss in a football-sized package of disorganized receipts in the mail.
Similar to tax cheaters, spammers continue their annoying work of clogging the internet - but their numbers fell to only 459 last month, a huge drop from the [...]
If you've been exposed to a wide variety of jobs it'll be readily apparent that a "long day" has different meanings to different people. In a recent conversation, I realized however that what's considered normal is not, however, all that obvious to someone who may have 'grown up' in [...]
I've been at IFRS training this month - all my skills in traditional Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are getting updated - whee. Everyone's gearing up to help companies convert their financial reporting to the new international accounting standards.
But I'm not writing about IFRS because I don't have any [...]
A new CA student blog has arisen - check out I Want to Be A CA.
It's written in a very direct style that I would place on its own point on the circular continuum of writing, if such a thing exists, and can be contrasted for fun with the [...]
If anyone stumbles across this helpful post, here's the link to click to get to the actual ICAO 2009 election is you have all your voter info. That link dies after May 8, 2009, so enjoy it while it's on.
Chartered Accountants are members of an Institute - in Canada [...]
One of my good friends once asked me for my full mailing address. Soon, I found myself receiving a gift in the mail - The Great Crash, 1929.
Ah yes, the economic crash.
That wasn't too long ago, really, and watching the continuing implosion of [...]
I'm tempted to quote an entire Scott Adams blog entry verbatim, but instead I'll summarize it: what's up with colleges and universities calling you up to ask for more money once you have graduated?
It's amusing to read the "donor reports" from some such schools which list out the percentage [...]
