Can I run competitively if I become an accountant?

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Now Im gonna go on a different tack, but, in the UK at least, the typical big 4 career route is 2 years as an associate, with not much responsibility, and one year as a senior associate, then leave to work in industry- 9-5 days and a 20% pay rise.

Now, even if the hours are aweful in your three years in paractice, many would argue that the dividends, which you can already see paying off in your mid 20s, are worth it.

and not all accounting is that boring. Audit tends to be, but it is made worse by chronically understaffed jobs, and tax is like a more boring, less sgtresful version of audit, but you can always find an area you enjoy- and areas like IT audit, controls assurance or tax tend to have more reasonable hours than pure audit

thanks for the UK insight..so is the US similar in that sense? can anyone comment on that? is big 4 in the US going to be a less responsibility 2 years and then out? i have a feeling US industry is harder to get into and isn't exactly a 9-5? or is it?

are you going to do audit or tax? if tax is less stressful i might be more interested in that.

maybe i could put running on a hiatus for my early 20s and return as a 25yr old, not sure. most of the local sub elites in my area seem to be involved in the tech industry or are equity analysts so i guess everyone is busy. its just that accounting seems to have more hours than all else.

What, are they going to make you work 100 hours a week? Of course you can be an accountant and still run competitively

It's been known to effect VO2MAX

i know i am grossly oversimplifying this but:

7 days x 24 hours = 168 hours

7 days x 8 hours(sleep) = 56 hours

5 days x 10 hours(work) = 50 hours

7 days x 2 hours (train) = 14 hours

168-56-50-14 = 48 hours left over

yes its possible. prioritize. remember, we have the "luxury" of doing a sport where you really CANT do more than about 15-20 hours a week.

^very oversimplified...

OP, you can certainly run competitively as an accountant, but what do you really want to do? im personally a college student myself with no academic direction. i want to find something i enjoy, but also pays well/is stable

I think you should be a lion tamer.

I feel like the OP. I surprisingly acquired an internship for next Winter with a Big 4. I guess I interviewed well because I'm not involved heavily at my school. I have a solid GPA but I've been coasting through my accounting classes without really understanding everything.

Am I going to be in for a rude awakening if I become an accountant at a Big 4? They really all seem to make it sound like they'll completely train new hires from the ground up and all the specific technical accounting textbook work isn't too important. Is this true?

I also want to run. It doesn't really seem possible as a Big 4/Mid-tier auditor or tax accountant. The hours are 40+ hours a week at minimum, and it sounds like the average and busy season is 55-65 hours a week. Is there anyone who actually worked Big 4 and decided to run competitively during?

Or should I just devote ~2 years of my life to the Big 4 and then pick competitive running up again when I hopefully transfer to industry. This would make me around 25 years old.

Oh and my internship is for tax if that matters. Seems like a couple first page posts said that would be the only way to make it work. Is it really a stretch though? Or is it doable while maintaining good work?

I don't have a clue about audit or tax yet as I haven't had any classes yet but I had to pick one for the internship. Big 4 seems like it pays well and is a guaranteed job. I know people break it down and it comes out to a poor hourly rate, but I can't complain if I can make 55k out of school when my classmates are struggling to find a job. But I do value my running, so ya...should I just bank on focusing on B4 life for 2 years and then returning to running competitively? I'll definitely miss it, I want to really be competitive past college.

I don't currently have any significant constraints such as a girlfriend or anything else. That could change in the future obviously

It will be harder than my experience at the regional level but not impossible if you are motivated enough. You will work more at that level but the duration of your time there is shorter and you get that oh so desired big 4 experience on your resume. Which is helpful if you are going the large private business route but not so much for most others.

My biggest issue with the big 4 experience is it's very limited. At least the assurance side. You get stuck on these huge companies but only see a very small area. Whereas the other firms allow you to audit the balance sheet, income statement, draft financial states and notes etc. over a few year period. You'll be lucky to see "everything" when dealing with super large companies. Unless you are around for awhile.

As I've said in my other posts you don't need to know everything going in. School is a good base but the hands on experience is where you really learn. And they should be true to the idea of training you as you go. Because you'll have no idea what you're doing in the beginning and their expectation shouldn't be in different than that if you are straight out of college.

Lastly, your social skills and ability to deal with people go much much farther than most give it credit for. Good luck.

If you want to eventually go private id suggest audit. Sure there are a limited number of tax positions in private industry but those will be much harder to find.

I don't agree that tax is the better route as suggested by someone. But that's just me. Audit is great. It's fun to travel (can get old after awhile). Fun to work on a team for the audits. Translates away from public accounting better. Tend to include more social people.

Lastly, I hate that the big 4 make you choose even though you have no idea.

One more thing.

Regional and big 4 pay for the first few years will be nearly identical. So pay shouldn't be the deciding factor IMO.

When people mention regional, are they referring to the 5th-7th ranked firms right after the Big 4? Or are regional firms the further back ones that just serve their state? Any examples of the differences?

My school is heavily pushing Big 4 which I guess kind of shapes the mindset of all the accounting students to aim for the top in public. I don't have any defined career goals. Like the OP's post, I'd really just like to find a happy medium between working for a good salary and still doing and competing at something I really enjoy which is running.

My priorities could change in a year but that's what they are right now.

Just how more limited would I be by doing tax if looking at industry? Seems like tax would be ideal more so to fit in running and training. I'm more of an introvert, I enjoy social outings but I think a general guess I'd say I'm more suited to tax at the moment. I also don't like to travel too much, I prefer familiarity in the office. But, just to what degree is audit better for industry. Is doing tax actually make it difficult to transfer out at all, or just more competitions for fewer private/industry positions?

Trying to learn as much as I can about both the accounting process and career itself while still considering the running aspect.

The training geeks on here don't want you to know this, but it doesn't take an hour a day to train effectively for a 5K.

YEW KEN DEW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because math. Anyone who can use excel can see that if you want to be comfortable in old age you have to start early.

Some assumptions just for the sake of making a model:

savings make 6% p.a.

cost of living goes up 2% p.a.

you need $50k p.a. to live

ignore tax

If you start at 25 and make $100k a year you can stop working at 45, die at 85 and still leave over $550k to your kids.

If you start at 25 making $50k a year to cover expenses while focusing on your running you'll owe someone $83k by the time you're 40. Assuming you then focus on your career and get the $100k job you'll be able to pay back who ever's been bankrolling you within 3 years but if you sill planning on dying at 85 and don't want to do it bankrupt you get to retire at 83.5. 18 months should be plenty of time to reminisce about all those PRs right?

I'd second those recommending tax if you want to run competitively.

Generally the hours are better, less travel (although I got slightly screwed in that I did travel a fair bit but that is relatively rare). When not travelling it wasn't that difficult to get 100+ in as the hours were very reasonable. 9:30-6:00 in my case which was faintly ridiculous (and now having moved to industry the stories I hear from my former colleagues who worked in audit suggest that certainly wasn't the case).

Also the work tends to be better. If you focus on advisory as opposed to compliance and in a specialist area (those doing personal tax compliance get destroyed...) then you're supplying a service that hasn't been commoditised like audit or compliance. I found myself doing relatively little spreadsheet work and mostly analysis of legislation (the pure advisory side work I did is usually done by lawyers in other countries).

This does hurt your exit opportunities but if you're bright and interview well then you can get into exactly the same jobs as your audit colleagues - you might just need to work a bit harder at that point. This is presupposing that you have excellent academics.

Something that's worth noting is that if you do your "apprenticeship" in the Big 4 at a full service firm then you can do stuff that pretty much mirrors almost every other professional industry. You can do stuff that is very legalistic and even transfer to law (one of our associate partners transferred to be a partner at a major law firm). You can work in advisory team and do consulting work and transfer there. You can work in transaction services and end up in a bank etc. Yes - it's not the same work but it'll give you enough to talk about in the interview and at 24/25 with 3 years solid work experience that's really all you need.

Yes the salary is worse and you'll maybe be a year down on those who went there immediately but to be honest it'll give you a better sense of the work involved with more flexibility to transfer to another area if it doesn't suit you. That's less of an option for those working in those companies.

You'll work less hours (a lot of those in those careers burn out in the first couple of years) and ultimately if you're a qualified accountant you can ALWAYS find work.

The social side (at least a Big 4) is also a big factor especially when studying - sometimes it can feel that you're still at uni just with a lot more money. This can be good for the first 3 years although when you get to senior managers and directors who still want to live like this you need to consider if that's really the life you want. You'll also (likely) be surrounded by similar sporting people. In my current (admittedly industry) role surrounded by ex-big 4 grads about 75% of the office exercise relatively seriously with groups of 5 or 6 on lunch runs, regular gym trips etc.

Hope that helps. Context is UK system where it's perhaps a slightly more prestigious career than in the US by the sounds of it (or at least ACA / CA are).

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