Before getting into some commentary that won't appeal to most readers, I'll start by doing a super Q&A right now for those of you starting on your summer internships:
I invite you to send me more questions about either getting into the
CA program, what it's like when you're already there, or any other random
questions you have. There's a handy "e-mail me" link here or you can send mail to my gmail account. It's "acsblog".
What should I expect to be paid during my internship?
If you're doing an internship for a newspaper or other publications, quite possibly zero. But you probably knew that already.
If you're working for a CA firm, on the other hand, your average paycheque will be close to if not very similar to that of newly hired "full-time" staff.
I am not just writing that to rub salt in the wounds of my friends studying English. But I am aware that this is a side effect of stating those facts.
What should I expect during my internship?
The luck of the draw. You will either...
- Find yourself on a series of serious jobs where budgets are tight, the number of staff is short, and they're relying you on the start to help meet crucial deadlines, giving you more overtime than you ever expected to see in your short stint in the professional world. You don't joke about bringing a cot into the office either because you fear they'll say "good idea" or because it's already happened. Your family files a missing person report when they fail to hear from you and you really do feel like you've been kidnapped.
- End up sitting or walking around, waiting for "real" work, and instead doing what people in medical fields call "scut work" - make friends with the photocopier. If you don't know how to fax, you soon will. Older staff take advantage of you being there by volunteering you for work which may or may not actually be real, such as car-wash fundraisers for the "Human Fund" - and I don't mean the group in Cleveland - or the ever-popular "Skyscraper Window Washer for a Day" job swaps.
- Have trouble staying sober because it's party time every night of the week - or if it isn't, it just feels that way. Special social team-building events, excursions to locations both near and exotic, and tons of swag to drown in. Your liver hates you, but you don't care - this is what you spent all that time figuring out the difference between DR and CR to get a 100% score on your exams in first year accounting so you could score an intern, and now you're letting loose - you know you look damn fine in a cowboy hat, no matter how pasty your skin is..
Whichever extreme scenario you tend towards, good luck this summer.
It goes without saying that some combination of the above in less extreme proportions is equally - or perhaps more - likely. But people love hearing about the extremes - although it says a lot about you whether you prefer to hear about #1 or #3 - so I had to oblige with the best caricature a few hastily written lines of text could create.
Enough about interns - what's the deal with the lack of activity here?
I haven't been exceptionally busy, but I've had a steady stream of things to do. In spite of that, last month was one of my most quiet on record, in terms of writing here - scratch that, it was the quietest - just 4 posts.
I could just blame the summer weather, and it's partially to thank.
That and getting involved all of a sudden in four sports - if you count biking to work as one of the four sports, anyway.
Maybe coaching people for the School of Accountancy exams had something to do with it too - the exam was written just this Wednesday. Results come out later this month - fingers crossed that everyone made it.
And, continuing the incredibly disparate tangents, is there any correlation between the lack of writing and the fact that I only got hit by spam 788 times? The May post where I mentioned I got hit 801 times actually sheds some light on what happened to the last month - I was writing an exam myself!
Between trying to actually spend time with friends - catching up with those who I didn't see while squirreling away with the exam prep books - and all the other distractions June just flew by.
I have much to write about but won't start now because it's late, I'm tired, and I doubt many people will soldier through to the end of this little self-indulgent bit of meta-commentary. But if you did, I salute you and invite you to read some of my recent pearls of wisdom on this now 123 comment long posting on another site.
I'm not at all surprised that you'll find my site if you Google big four Canada overtime - I already pointed out that three of the big four are paying out overtime to their non-CA staff and seniors. n.b. provincial laws treat CA, CGA, CMA and CPA and students registered to study for those designations as "professionals" ineligible for overtime pay, regardless of rank.
Well now it turns out that all of the big four are doing it - Deloitte & Touche has joined the party.
A kind reader who worked for Deloitte pointed this out to me - Deloitte's non-CA staff's overtime hours are
about to stop being "unpaid".
The news isn't that fresh, but this isn't the sort of thing you see on the front page of the newspaper - unless you Googled "deloitte Canada overtime" you might not be aware of it.
All the facts for Deloitte are available at the website they setup otplan.ca - a URL which redirects straight to a deloitte.com page.
The general details are the same as with the other Big Four firms. After KPMG got smacked by the courts who pointed out that if you weren't registered as a CA, CGA, CMA - full members or student - everyone realized they better pay up or face lawsuits.
It's a shame it took the threat of massive lawsuits to straighten things out, but hey, no one's complaining once they have cash to look forward to, eh?
Deloitte reports it'll pay within 30 days of receipt of your acceptance of their offer to settle things up.
Letters started going out at the start of June and should all be sent out by August 1, 2008 - if you don't get one - contact the "OT Administrator" through the appropriate channels. such as the official website or 1-866-669-6615. Remember that number is only valid until August 1, 2008.
Interestingly enough, that 866 number belongs to legal firm Koskie Minsky LLP and is used to settle other legal issues like class action lawsuits.
Deloitte's short term savings, long term pain
Another intriguing fact is that Deloitte's practice has been to NOT pay for their summer interns' CA student fees.
The interns, not surprisingly, generally don't end up signing up as CA students, reasoning - correctly - that the firm would pay their fees when they return as full-time employees. The Ontario CA institute - the ICAO - will even let you pick up 8 months of time you spent before becoming legally registered as a CA student, so the interns had all the incentives in the world to take this approach.
All the incentives plus one: by not being legally registered CA students, their work was all subject to overtime labour laws.
Does A Counting School believe Deloitte is going insist on having all their interns getting registered as soon as they show up for work?
Well.
There's not a rhetorical device strong enough to emphasize how obviously they're going to do just that moving forward.
Other facts
As usual employees in Quebec need not apply - Quebec, ironically for being such a leftist jursidiction, has one of the worst rules from the employee's point of view. Unless your effective hourly wage dips below the legal minimum wage times 50% (i.e., less than $12 an hour for last year), you get nothing.
Something I don't recall seeing on the other OT plan sites is the offer to cover up to 50% of legal fees ($250 of $500) to have an independent lawyer review their offer.
Cool.
Full details:
Can I get a lawyer to review my Assessment Letter before accepting?
Yes, you are welcome to have external counsel review the Assessment
Letter before you accept it. Should you wish to retain legal counsel at
any point in this process, Deloitte will pay fifty percent of the legal
fees you incur, up to a maximum contribution of $250 from Deloitte.
I was planning on writing about the nature of being an accountant and
more observations on exam prep, but that'll wait, as this is pretty time sensitive - not to mention a popular topic I find. Writing up something decent that isn't "news" takes more time if you want to get your point across completely and concisely.
I guess the only questions left after this are how the "mid-tier" firms that have non-CA staff will handle matters, and how this'll affect our friends to the south. American labour laws are quite different - I mean, minimum wage alone is about $3 lower in many jurisdictions! - so our precedents may not carry much weight on a purely legal level.
But on a cultural level, seeing the way we're treated will no doubt cause some consternation or interest if word spreads far enough.
So I suppose this is just the sort of story you'll expect to see supressed or "conveniently ignored" by those who have the power to do so. At the same time, I imagine the class action lawsuit squads from California and other more "labour-friendly-ish" states will be all over this like the proverbial seagull on a table of leftovers.
If you're not familiar with CA firms, you may be a little surprised to know that there's such a thing as "recruiting season."
Employers will come around university and college campuses during set times of the year - both in Canada and the US - to interview potential employees en masse.
The phenomenon of ‘campus visits’ is especially pronounced in the US where there’s a plethora of colleges to visit - smaller campuses often miss out on visits from the Big Four and students who want to get noticed with an in-person interview end up having to travel to a campus visit taking place at another larger school.
A reader asks what to do if you had the misfortune to miss out on recruiting season - or were simply unsuccessful in the hunt for a position.
Above: Non-big-four recruiting poster in Buffalo's airport. Photo credit: Krupo (as usual)
I'm grouping both scenarios together because the methods of dealing with either scenario are ultimately the same.
Figure out what you're applying for
You've graduated from university with a shiny Bachelor's Degree in Commerce or Business Administration. Your tuition was two or three times more expensive than that of your friends with English degrees, but it's okay you tell yourself, you'll get a high paying job that'll pay off your debts quickly.
Except where will you work?
A BComm or BBA is a great degree to have, job-wise, but when planning your job search you have to keep in mind that the specializations you studied for will have a major influence your job search. Organizational Behaviour (HR), Finance, and Marketing people will be generally looking for positions that are pretty different from someone with an Accounting specialization.
Ultimately you will hopefully pick third and fourth year courses in areas you enjoy working in. Of course, some people end up finishing a four-year program with the sickening realization that they really didn't enjoy any of the materials they studied. The prospect of a double major to switch directions towards something they enjoy may be daunting, but if they disliked studying the topic, there's a high probability they may not enjoy working in that field either.
But let's put all those hypotheticals aside to simplify things - you studied Accounting because this DR/CR stuff sounds interesting and you're actually intrigued by the prospect of showing up on peoples' doorsteps and demanding, politely, that they show you all their secret files - you want to try your hand at audit!
You want to become a CA.
Stay busy
There's one catch - to become a CA, you need to become a CA student.
To become a CA student, you need to work for an Approved Training Office.
You don't necessarily have to love that a google search for that phrase automatically hits Canadian CA websites, but it helps.
Anyway, you tried your best, but you you didn't get hired.
What to do?
The single most important tactic is to keep yourself busy.
Find something to keep you occupied - and to pay off those mounting debts or at least keep you from mooching off your parents so much if you're so lucky to have their support.
If the job is at least tangentially related to accounting, that's excellent, but you don't have to be too picky.
Don't turn your nose up at a small family business that can't afford to pay you as much as a medium-sized company, but which will let you help them improve all aspects of their business. This can give you an extremely rich resume which will come in handy the second time you come calling on the doors of your favourite CA firms.
I know this is an excellent idea because it's exactly what I did, and more than a few of my colleagues did the same thing - both locally and down in the US. Speaking with one of them we marvelled at the fact that our experiences were similar. For various reasons, we passed up on the 'mainstream' recruiting season and ended up in our niche practice.
Before sneaking during an 'off-season' recruiting drive - yes, they do exist and I'll get back to that - we both worked as severely underpaid "jack of all trades" types, working wonders for our old bosses, helping transform, modernize and improve their businesses - and in the process realizing that, "wow, we really did learn something in school."
Note the precious mix of cynicism and positivity in that last sentiment.
The key, of course, was not to think "how can I do something at this business that'll look good on my resume," but to just do even the most menial tasks if everyone was busy and to then find a way to improve things to make the menial things automated or faster - that's probably the quickest basic summary of what "business process improvement" means and practising that skill will help you in life incredibly.
While working elsewhere, keep looking for that opening
If you're in Ontario, keep checking out Ontario's Approved Training Office list.
As of June 17, 2008, in addition to all the regular CA firms, there are now 9 offices approved to train CA students in "non-traditional career paths" including the Royal Bank of Canada, Manulife, Telus and others.
Every province except Alberta currently has approved this training option; it's very new, though, which is why the list of companies to pick from is so desperately short.
Watch this list grow significantly in coming years - even Alberta is expected to approve this change in the near future according to the ICAO's page. The reasoning behind this shift is relatively straightforward: Canada still has a shortage of CAs.
The traditional method of filling the ranks with new CAs - through hiring in the regular accounting and audit firms - is insufficient now because all the baby boomers are about to start retiring in droves. It would be uneconomical for the CA firms to hire people "just to train them", so the CAs collectively decided that the best way to keep the market well supplied with people that have their valuable designation is to find other companies that can offer the adequate supervision and guidance needed to help young CA students hone their fledgling Professional Judgement and prepare for the UFE.
"Alternately" trained CAs will be trained to the exact same standards as 'mainstream' trained CAs, and will have the same rights and privileges with one minor catch - they will have to gain some experience in 'proper' audit firms to get a license to audit - a "public accounting" license.
The ICAO explains that:
With the implementation of CA Practical Experience Requirements
2007, practical experience requirements for a Licence to Practise
Public Accounting are recognized separately from practical experience
requirements for CA Qualification.
This, of course, is just fine for someone who doesn't care for doing audit - they can stay inside companies where an 'independent audit' isn't something that they have to explicitly worry about or carry out. Considering the number of CAs who jump out of accounting firms quickly and never look back, it's a rather logical solution.
If you ever change your mind, you'll probably have several years of experience under your belt - any mature audit firm will be more than happy to hire you to leverage all that you've learned in the intervening years in private industry and provide you with the training necessary to get your public accounting license. The ICAO FAQ goes into more detail if you need to know about this option. If the small business or alternate industry option isn't appealing, all is not lost.
Off-season recruiting
If you're persistent, though, you may find an office or department that needs to hire people outside the regular recruiting seasons. Keep the following tactics in mind to help find a place that will look at your application:
- Check the Approved Training Offices pages to find small and mid-sized companies that might not follow the regular recruiting season.
- Check the websites of larger companies to see if any positions are being advertised.
- Check the job posting boards for any positions not advertised on the companies' own sites.
- Stay in touch with your old university's career centre - they might get notice of positions that aren't being advertised to the general public.
- Stay in touch with your friends in case they hear of other positions being posted internally, or to get a recommendation for publicly known positions.
- Look for positions outside your home city.
If you've been keeping busy at a small or medium sized non-accounting firm, keep in mind that you will likely still be treated as a 'raw recruit' hired at the entry level, unless your current/previous job is tightly related to audit - say, an internal audit position in a larger firm or a related accounting position. Basically, any job that doesn't involve teaching you the things you'll pick up as a first or second year 'junior' won't count towards your 'experience level' when they hire you - you'll be treated like any raw recruit whether you're 22 or 38. More experience will still help, however, in helping you stand out against some kids fresh out of university, though.
And don't forget those alternative options might be just as attractive if not moreso. Lots of companies lack skilled internal auditors, so keep an eye out for such postings, even at the entry level your academic background might be enough to get your foot in the door even if you don't have fancy experience. And the government has its own audit offices - don't forget to look into those options too.
Keep it up - before you know it, you'll be studying for the UFE and getting swag for writing about it.
One reader asked a clever question to one of my recent posts about the market's job situation:
Just out of curiosity, how much lay offs are there in the accounting
firms? What is causing all these lay offs? I thought the CA firms had a
shortage of workers and they were hiring like crazy? I’m not really in
the accounting field, so I guess I’m behind on the new…
Layoffs are caused by an excess supply of employees, and an insufficient demand for their work - same as in any company.
How many layoffs are there and what's causing them? The short answer to both is, "it depends."
If you live in a region where there's lots of work, layoffs aren't happening.
If you're in a region where some or all audit firms lost business, you'll be looking at 2 to 20 people in a given city's office.
Yes, I can't give you a hard number, just some ballpark estimates, and that's because it's all spread around.
So much so that when someone hazards a firm number, hecklers also shout them down, in disbelief that any firm number is possible - check out the long line of angry messages that challenged the number of PWC layoffs at around 1000 in one of Francine's posts. She's a bit of an authority on this topic if for no other reason because of the number of people who flock to her blog to find out news on this front.
Aside from blogs on the profession, though, you won't find newspaper headline-grabbing events publicized like 400 or 4000 people who unfortunately lose their jobs at steel mills or automobile factories.
One of the reasons a newspaper wouldn't cover the news - even if they knew about it, though - is that while someone's losing, someone else is often winning. As a result, usually at least one company will be hiring because it won business while the competitor who lost business ends up shedding people. It's one of at least two little paradoxes you'll encounter in this article.
As usual, there are tons of specific exceptions to the rule which make it hard to make a generalization. The company you're interested in might have decided it's going to specialize in a given area, so it's going to shift people from, say, fraud to tax. If you're happy with the move, you win. If you'd rather die than switch, you'll end up leaving.
When you read about layoffs dragging out over a year-long period, that's usually because one firm recognizes trouble ahead and 'invites' people to leave early, and other firms either don't see the trouble, or believe they can 'ride through it'. Unless they're very good at finding new business, they'll typically have to show people to the door as well.
What's really interesting is to see how flexible things are - your perception that CA firms are hiring like crazy is correct. In general, the firms always need more fresh faced kids. I saw tours passing through my office recently - always fun to see them wandering the halls, somewhat dazed, somewhat in awe. But you will, however, find that in the midst of hiring booms some specialized groups or individual offices will nevertheless cut back from time to time.
So that's the other even bigger paradox - while one part of a given company is letting people go, they'll still be hiring hundreds of new staff straight out of school.
If you're familiar with the apprenticeship system of accounting firms, this will not be a surprise - skip to the next section.
If this is all foreign to you, I'll shed a little light on the process.
The Apprenticeship System
To get your CA you must work at least 30 months and accumulate 2500 hours of time spent on various parts of audit jobs and other such work. Most people get the 2500 quickly and have to wait it out for the 30 months to pass. Some leave as soon as their 30 months are up and they receive their CA certificate in the mail, others hang around - either because they haven't found a job they're more interested in, or similarily, because they're happy where they are.
Just like in the military - where one seargent looks after a group of junior warriors - you usually expect to see more juniors than seniors. While it's wonderful to have a surplus of highly experienced on hand, they're expensive - earning roughly half as much as the new kids. Now clients are charged a higher fee for those 30-month-experienced
"senior" staff than they are for the fresh out of school "junior" staff
who are trained on the job by seniors and managers. And there's always going to be work to be done which doesn't require years of experience, but rather supervision by seniors and managers to get the job done properly.
As long as a steady stream of seniors leaves for other companies or other departments the triangular/pyramid shape of the accounting firm hums along smoothly. Get too many people who enjoy their jobs too much - or just hire too many seniors away from other companies expecting sudden growth which doesn't come through - and you witness Trouble
Of course, sometimes even juniors get let go, but it makes less economic sense and is saved for only those situations where a company's in truly bad shape.
If this sounds cruel, it can be, but at good companies it isn't. Any decent Commerce program will tell you that a layoff is the worst thing you should consider - one of my good profs, who used to work for my company, even went so far as to say she would give us failing grades if we simply suggested laying off people when writing our assignments and exams instead of considering more creative and humane options to fix up poorly performing companies.
Of course, sometimes despite your best efforts everything fails - the good companies distinguish themselves by either offering transfers to other offices, or using the management team's network of contacts to find you a home at another company. Just because you had bad luck at an accounting firm doesn't mean you're lost forever - you may even end up enjoying the new job more - the pay or hours could ultimately end up being superior depending on where you end up. And good managers will introduce you to the right people to help you land on your feet.
Of course, there's more than just altruism at work - if they hired you in the first place, you're no doubt a Smart Person with very good qualities - and if you leave on good terms, you may remember your former employer fondly. They may invite you back at a more senior managerial rank down the road, or maybe you'll invite your old company to come in to propose work that you would otherwise withhold if you were going to stay angry at them for treating you poorly.
I'm not disclosing any secrets here, mind you - this entire section was taught to us in our third year university Auditing class by a professor who used to work for one of the Big Four; I've also witnessed much of this in action at various companies, so this wasn't just some dry theory you just ingested - it's reality.
What now?
Currently, as far as I can tell, the situation has stabilized lately - in the parts of Canada I'm familiar with - and hiring continues 'as usual' at all the major firms. Francine can fill you in on where things persist in being ugly though, and offer her additional explanations as to why it happens the way it does.
Music geeks, note the not subtle nod to Junior Senior - Move Your Feet in the title. Of course the song refers to moving your feet for purposes of dancing rather than switching jobs, but I think I've beat the point to death with the obvious-hammer enough now.
It's been quiet on my end lately because I've been splitting my time
between being busy with work, life, and studying for my exam next
weekend.
Unlike with UFE prep, I've been basically burrowing into a single book and then doing practice questions.
This is just a multiple choice exam so sharing my brilliant insights seems like a less-than-effective way of learning at the moment. Doing old questions and figuring out the logic behind right and wrong answers is the way to go here.
Once in a while there are interesting little tidbits I'd like to share, but the amount of time it would take to discuss them does not in any way correspond to the value associated with sitting down to write about them, so I'll do it for just one to prove my point, then I'll dive back into my book. I really wanted to say books, but there's really only just one book.
When tracking security logs, the exam manual suggests using programs which search for patterns. A user who typically logs in to a corporate computer network at 9 a.m. should have a red flag raised when a log-in at 4:30 in the morning is detected.
My insight? This system really wouldn't work well with me. Aside from the fact that anyone doing audit is usually equipped with a laptop that doesn't necessarily "phone home" to a corporate logging system to report this kind of data, even if it did, my log-ins tend to be so random that trying to pick out a pattern would be an exercise in futility.
Speaking of tracking things - I'm not even going to try for an elegant segue today - on the spam count front, I'm still keeping my humble little log of how much junk mail is hitting me. And it's down to 801 this month.
Have the spammers realized the error of their ways, or is filtering software killing more of this junk at the source? I'm curious.
But not especially. Still have a couple years worth of questions to burn through this week. At least the lead-up to this multiple choice exam is less eventful than the fiasco associated with preparing for the CKE with a surprisingly upset appendix.
Layoff talk is particularly interesting to hear when you're not on the receiving end. Otherwise, it sucks hard.
Fortunately I'm sitting contentedly in the latter category, as are pretty much all my friends.
The same can't be said for others, though.
Playing tennis with some other CAs I found myself in a little "Big 4" mini-conference with reps from three of the firms participating. It's always an eye-opener to hear news from another company's perspective:
Player 1: "Your firm snapped up all the best employees. They asked everyone from their competitor how much they were offering, and immediately gave them a big boost on top of that."
Player 2: "Oh yeah, and your company stole a bunch of people from my group."
Player 3: "What happened?"
Player 2: "We laid off a bunch of people, and your company hired them all."
Player 3 thinks - that sounds more like "picking up" rather than stealing.
Ah, career moves in 'the profession.'
The interesting point this raises, I find, is something that pings off Francine's interests, the indication that firms in this fair city I call home do in fact compete with their job offers. For at least some people, anyway. It should serve as some kind of comfort that the normal rules of a competitive job marketplace are still alive and well around here:
"I need good people more than you do, and I'll prove it with dollars."
My RSS feed didn't send me the news that Neil has taken his blog offline.
And, having realized it's offline, I'll twist a classic phrase and tell you that I've come not to bury his site, but to praise it.
I've known Neil since a little time before the School of Accountancy, where we got to meet face to face - and we coincidentally ended up sitting a row away from each other during the UFE - and his site has always been a great beacon of professionalism that anyone writing about their job should be keen to emulate. I hope he can bring his archives back up at some point in time.
His insights and observations were worth reading, and I think they still will be even if he doesn't talk about the Day Job. This is Krupo engaging in idle speculation, but when you work for industry the rules might understandably be totally different when it comes to how they want you writing publicly, especially when your full name is attached to everything you put out there for public consumption.
Ironically I've found myself working with internal auditors, just not Neil's company - wouldn't that be a peculiar coincidence?
Doing internal audit work, while you use a lot of the skills you've gained over the years in this setting, it's nevertheless a very different kind of job, and not just because you're now working as part of "the internal company", not the "external auditor". On the UFE you're trained to shift your mental gears for this scenario. And this is proof, really, that it's more than just a mental 'game', but a reality of life.
As this long-running conversation illustrates, it's a rite of passage for a crazy-high number of young CAs to jump to another company after they become a "full" CA. In fact, after telling some of my friends that I qualified for my CA, they immediately asked, half-jokingly, "so when are you leaving?"
Oh they're so funny.
Of course since then I've had a half dozen phone calls from recruiters. 7 calls if you count the double-call from another one of the Big Four firms.
Weird timing.
Anyway, Neil - I hope the conversation can continue, but regardless - remember to have fun, and good luck!
I'm not really in the mood to argue.
I mean, I've had some excellent food lately, which should really put anyone in a good mood.
But I'm still shocked and appalled.
And I really should've replied to the news that photography is banned from the station with a chilly, "what for?"
You see, according to the best guess of the Montreal train station's security, I apparently must look like a terrorist. Wow, they should've seen me when I was all scruffy and bearded in university. One of my friends from back then thought I was a History, rather than a Commerce student, for that simple fact.
This is the second time in two months that I've been witness to an instruction from security to stop taking photos in a government-owned facility. And it's so stupid I wish I got drop the hammer on someone the way America's Henry Waxman does two and a half minutes into this video.
Waxman is understandably annoyed with the stonewalling he gets from the EPA about its conversations with America's worst president - something which I would find especially infuriating as an auditor used to getting answers from my interviewees - and getting those answers fast.
I, on the other hand, am annoyed on two levels:
- You really think I'm a terrorist? Are you insane?
- I know you don't, actually. But if you thought I was, is this how you're going to treat me?
Given the choice, I think I still prefer a pathetic police state to a truly vicious one, but I fear the shift from the former to the latter.
It's one thing to have to open your files to an auditor to show them how you do your job. That's what we're here for - to make sure your job is being done effectively and to help prevent some kid from off the street from causing mayhem in your office.
But harassing members of the public ... for enjoying public spaces?
Maybe they were hiding the fact that more than half the trains were late.
If you're going to do it, let's return to point #2: if I were planning on causing mayhem, would standing in a wide open area and letting everyone see me use my camera be the best way of accomplishing such a goal?
Honestly!
In addition to being a completely ineffective way of stopping me from doing whatever I feel like - I have gigs of photos - if you really think I got super-duper secret information - oh look, train departures! - shouldn't you quickly escort me to a secret room for interrogation?
The fact that they didn't even try and take down any information from me - "why are you taking these photos" would be a good start, but hey, I'm just a CA, and not highly trained train station security guard - is almost more chilling than the fact they think running up to me and asking me to stop taking pictures is going to do something useful.
Of course, I'm glad I wasn't whisked off and beaten like you would be in some parts of the world - check out this video of Israeli mall security - but we're quickly heading off in that direction if you're sending security agents dressed all in black to scare you away, which pushes me to speak out.
If a facility is private, then they can of course tell you to leave for trespassing - a place of business can refund your money spent and ask you to leave too if they don't want you there, as long as they're not violating your human rights in their decision to expel you.
But government run facilities better have publicly posted rules telling you what you can and can't do.
I was recently at an LCBO - an Ontario government-run liquor store - and my cousin took a picture. Security pounced almost instantly.
Really.
How they spot you.
Are we going to set off BOMBS in your liquor store? The liquor is precious and we're Polish - we'd use bombs to defend the store in the event of a national emergency, never to harm it.
No, they didn't pull a lame 9/11 hyper-reaction argument on us. They argued that the store has to protect the design of its layout so it won't be copied by the Chinese who will then open similar rip-off stores in China.
Yes, I almost fell down laughing at that explanation.
Does the Liquor Control Board of Ontario seriously believe that some Chinese will decide they won't visit Toronto because they already know what our prettier government-run liquor stores look like?
Really?
Security suggested I voice my concerns to management. That day I was in a mood for arguing, so I did without hesitation.
They said I was free to take my business elsewhere if I was displeased with their policy.
Very well and good, except that means driving to Quebec or New York state, since the government owns all the liquor stores in Ontario.
If this was a military installation, I'd understand that you have to take some reasonable precautions.
Heck, even the train station isn't completely crazy for trying to stifle photography - even though like airport security screenings, it's a largely ineffective move. At least the "national security" argument has some weak measure of validity.
But regardless, I'm not like one of these terrorists on vacation in Vegas - great video, by the way - I just feel like taking some pictures while I'm travelling.
I'm not always going to feel so cheery and happy.
If someone's going to be a jerk about this again, we're going to have some words of discussion.
This is funny if you know a few basics about quantum physics, simply because of the instant joke that stems from it: Quantum Cryptography Broken, and Fixed.
The joke is in the comments to the article - "It was actually broken AND fixed at the SAME TIME!"
It's an easy one - an earlier series of comments is even better:
> Quantum stuff is so illogical to us mortals that you'd expect attempting to break it would just make it stronger.
Which is precisely what happened.
It continues along these lines, becoming progressively more incomprehensible to people who aren't interested in this sort of thing.
Which of course is a sign that I should probably get back to studying for my exam.
Ironically, however, reading articles like these at /. (slogan: New for nerds, stuff that matters) is technically a form of studying if you focus on security issues and ignore the non-essential nerd stuff, like HP's deal to buy EDS which is important for many reasons - perhaps you own shares or work there - but it won't help you much on this exam.
There's an even greater irony, though, in the fact that I couldn't write a snappy headline in an article about snappy headlines. At least the Parisian hallway in the above looks sort of cool.
I find myself in Montréal once more.
One of my friends immediately asks by e-mail:
And what are you doing there now? Business again? Or yet another in
your endless string of vacations! I should have become an accountant,
though it may not be too late to change that.
My friend, you see, is studying for his doctorate in finance. Awesome.
I just rode the metro to buy 6 bagels, had a proper dinner of smoked meat with pickles at Schwartz's, then walked 'home' to the hotel - which was a good idea since spending the entire day auditing people generally isn't the best way to get some exercise. The walk from Fairmount to the deli was healthy enough (check out the funky google "walking map") - going all the way home was an excellent idea.
And of course, on the way home I saw horses, which weren't pulling one of the typical Old City carriages, but which were, rather, decked out in medieval regalia.
A movie shoot for a TV mini-series set in New York city, of course.
Anyone famous? Well, Mira Sorvino is in it.
Anyway, to answer my friend's question - I promised I would - I'm doing yet more audit work.
How is it that I find myself traipsing around so much?
It's little more than a matter of being the right person with the right timing.
My friends of the same experience level would do just as good a job as me at this sort of thing, but their schedule was booked, while mine was open.
If the job needed someone a month from now, I would've been out of luck since I have a nice long engagement that'll keep me busy in Toronto for most of the summer.
Fortunately some of my friends at work are either on vacation or just back from vacation, so they can't possibly be too jealous about my little adventure - besides, they'll find themselves on the road again sooner or later.
Hopefully it'll also be somewhere fun.
I have some wonderful pictures already and I would upload them, except I don't have a card reader with me. I suspect I'll find myself buying a new one in the near future - I'll return with some pictures from the movie shoot when I get a chance. Until then, I'll stick to some photos from Paris which I could almost cheat and pass off as being from Montréal.
As for the way to help people next time they're audited? It's the concept of giving brilliantly simple advice. After wrestling over some concepts with the person you're auditing for an hour or so, remind them to archive all the pieces of electronic evidence they've generated for you.
Next time an auditor rolls into town - internal, external, or something funky like a federal tax agents or SOX specialists - you'll have a folder full of examples that document how you do your job.
Of course, that pile of information will be relatively useless if you can't make heads or tails of it, so remember to label screenshots and other files appropriately so you can quickly remember what information or steps they're demonstrating.
This works best if the work you do is subject to yearly or more frequent "walkthroughs" of what you do. If you're involved in an area that's less regimented - I'm thinking of creative types here - then you may never have to worry about this sort of thing.
But then, that's probably yet another reason why you took the 'pure creative' route in the first place.
I still have a backlog of things to write about, and yet I find myself preparing for yet another professional exam.
Yes, despite having just received the big fancy CA certificate, I'm enough of a sucker for punishment to subject myself to the pain of studying once more. At least bringing studying back into my personal conversation gives me a perfect excuse to upload a picture of the alcoholic houseplant.
Because who other than students can you expect to be drinking heavily?
Well, lots of workers in the skyscrapers downtown, lumberjacks, and of course, most of Eastern Europe.
I should probably know better than to try and answer my own rhetorical question.
The new credential I'll get by successfully writing this exam is yet another set of letters that shows I'm a specialist in certain audits.
This of course means that upon opening the book, the entire first chapter is a huge unending case of deja vu.
Define what you're going to audit, design a program, do walkthroughs and tests, gather sufficient evidence to support your findings, communicate your findings?
Check to all of the above.
It goes on and on, but at the moment just parroting the concepts would bore most people to tears, so I'll stop.
I should probably keep moving quickly through the study guide until I hit the meaty "specialist" sections where I might pick up a few new tricks, but I figure a quick refresher never hurt anyone either.
On top of all this, I'm mentoring some people who are going through the 'standard' UFE process, so I have more than enough to keep myself busy. Hopefully I'll have some more time to share trenchant commentary and delicious insights while I'm at it.
A week after they sent me the e-mail making it official, my certificate finally showed up at the office, proudly proclaiming to the world that I'm a CA. Whee!
The other 1157 pieces of 'mail' where spams that hit me - roughly as much as last month. Although the ICAO should probably be ashamed of itself for actually INCLUDING some old fashioned junk mail with the certificate - an offer for insurance with TD Meloche Monex.
How.
Incredibly.
Tacky.
Whoever thought of that idea should be stripped of their CA, if they have one, for bringing disrepute upon the profession. We have a bylaw along those lines which mandates for an expulsion or a flogging of some sort. I say we enforce the rules, even if the offender does work for the Institute.
Scratch that.
Especially.
I exaggerate a bit - they're quite nice and friendly people at the ICAO. Their procedures could use some efficiency improvements, though. You see, I noticed that although my e-mail arrived last Friday, but it was the previous Monday when they actually admitted me to the Institute as a CA. That means it's been 10 days since I 'joined', but I've only been aware of it for half that time. How ironic.
I wasn't exactly bamboozled, but it would've been nice if their systems were set up to let us know sooner instead of dragging the process out the way they did.
Before I continue - there's been enough misreporting on various other sites that I have to make this very clear:
Chartered Accountants in Canada do NOT get paid overtime at CA firms and are NOT going to be paid overtime.
More on that in a moment, but basically CAs are exempt under most labour laws - and that's the way the system works.
With that in mind, don't forget that not everyone at CA firms is a CA, or even a CA student.
Much has been written about KPMG not having paid overtime to people who, it turns out, were supposed to receive it after all.
KPMG's story was especially bad because, from what I've read, they had people who you might commonly refer to as a "technician" or "administrative support staff" doing work that is normally done by "client serving" staff, as reported by the Star and other media outlets.
As reported in the Globe, KPMG will pay out the overtime it figures it owes in an attempt to avoid getting hit with punitive damages in a class
action lawsuit which the lawyers still seem intent on fighting. This is because, anyone who took a course in business law will tell you, courts are generally gentler on you if you did something wrong if you try and make amends before the court forces you to do it.
Despite this move, though, the lawyers seem intent on fighting the case - it looks like KPMG's case isn't settled. But this is old news - we'll get back to KPMG's legal situation in a moment. What's new?
Well since the KPMG case surface, the other firms in the Big 4 thought
to themselves, "uh oh, have we misunderstood who's doing what, and
who's exempt? Is there a potential problem we need to fix?"
The court cases implied that they should rethink their definition of who is and is not exempt from overtime.
As a result, in the past two months two big announcements have slid into major Canadian newspapers from another two big firms.
Ernst & Young to pay overtime to non-accountants
As reported by Accman in late March, Ernst & Young reviewed who it was paying and realized the smart course of action was to voluntarily step up and pay people who weren't getting overtime.
E&Y's situation looks less extreme than that at KPMG, because its "support" staff were already eligible for either overtime or extra time off. But it realized that the IT groups had people who weren't considered accounting "profesionals" under provincial law - just smart and clever people not doing accounting designations.
So who does gets paid overtime?
Basically, staff or seniors who are not CA students, as well as those studying for the CGA or CMA. Members of the CA/CGA/CMA group are all automatically excluded from getting overtime by provincial law for reasons we'll get to in a moment.
How do I file an E&Y overtime claim?
Go to this site and fill in the appropriate form - sadly, Firefox is not supported, so either use your IE tab plug-in, or just load this link in Internet Explorer. Note - the deadline is May 15, 2008.
The site makes it clear that the money will be paid out to both current and former staff, so hurry up and hit the link even if you've left the firm.
PricewaterhouseCoopers to follow E&Y's lead - will also pay overtime
As mentioned by the Calgary Herald, PWC has come to the same conclusion. Take a growing IT group - everything runs on computers these days - which doesn't necessarily need CA students to get the job done - brilliant people who are comfortable computers can pick up business terminology quickly too - and you find yourself with a group of people who slipped under the HR radar.
Oops, they may not be exempt, but they've been treated the same way as everyone else.
How do I file a PWC overtime claim?
Go to this site and fill in the appropriate form. Note - the deadline is June 16, 2008.
Do I have to calculate how many hours they owe me for?
Fortunately, no. Since these are, after all, accounting firms, they have detailed records on file - basically, all your timesheets.
If you diligently reported all your time - spent on both client and non-client work - the system should automatically calculate how much you're owed.
Is there a catch?
Well if you were "eating" time - not recording work you did, you shot yourself in the foot. I don't know if you have a way of proving you worked more hours than your timesheets showed, but you better start looking through your files to see if there's anything which proves how hard you've been working if you didn't record it at the time. Can you even remember how many hours you did or didn't report?
Hopefully most people don't have this problem - in which case, the only catch is that the firm wants to be safe. That means they'll ask you to sign a release form when they send you the money, where you agree that "it's all good". That'll be the point in time when you'd better check the math to make sure it adds up.
Keep in mind, if you're in Ontario, that you only get overtime for hours over 44 per week. Thanks Mike Harris, we all hate you for that one. The rest of Canada, if I've been told correctly, gets overtime after 40 hours.
And of course, the same rules I described in the previous section apply across the country - if you're a CA - like me - or a CA student - like me one week ago - you are not paid any overtime in pretty much any Canadian province.
You'll find that both the PWC and E&Y sites include detailed descriptions of who is
and isn't eligible.
In
addition to accounting students, another important class of people is
also exempt: if you're a manager, you're no longer eligible
because managers "manage", and are by definition also exempt from
getting overtime pay - you're a Big Boy or Girl now, so goes the
government's thinking, so you
decide your own hours.
Read the Ontario Employment Standards Fact Sheet to see the proof - but you're probably asking - why is this the case?
You're a professional
Professionals, as defined by the Province of Ontario and other jurisdictions for that matter, work by thinking. The independence in inherent in generating value by using your brain instead of your other muscles means that you'll find yourself thinking about work even when you're at home
Is this difference a tad artificial considering the fact that you may be working side by side with people who are essentially doing the same thing? Why yes - that's the funny thing about the law, though.
Sometimes it creates arbitrary distinctions not due to logic, but because of what may best be described by economic history.
In a poignant comment Professor Godard at the University of Manitoba says:
“The accounting profession to me has always been close to the feudal
craft model. The senior partners are the master craftsmen, the
journeymen are the accountants who aren’t partners yet and the
apprentices are the accounting students. You work long hours under
fairly crummy conditions. You can’t find too many occupations where
that model still holds,” he says.
At least the lawyers involved didn't use that line, though, because that would make me start smirking. Lawyers, after all, are the other major occupation where that model does still hold, and in a much nastier way, if you've read the writings of Melissa and other young lawyers you'll instantly understand why it's better to be a CA student instead.
My interpretation of the situation is that as labour laws were developed, each group of employers did what they could to enshrine rights for themselves, or to keep employees from getting too many rights themselves. Employees of course fought for their own rights.
In the situation of CA students, you have a group of people who suffer for about 30 months, then pass their exams and apprenticeship and are then, as one of my friends put it, "FREE!"
Contrast this with the TTC bus drivers who just got forced back to work. They will always be doing the same thing for the rest of their lives, for roughly the same pay too. This gives them plenty of time to decide that they should form labour unions, band together, demand higher wages, and then collapse in a bout of nasty in-fightining - maybe.
If you know your tough times will be relatively short and you just want to get through them, you'll devote little energy to fighting the political system to change things - after all, you can always pick a different occupation and the rewards for enduring the apprenticeship phase are generally regarded as worth the cost.
CAs find themselves earning anywhere from $80k to well over $200k in 5 to 10 years, depending on the workload they decide to take on and where they live. Working for roughly half that amount for a short period of time isn't fun, but then, firms are spending tens of thousands of dollars on training too, and the professionals in this field have decided that the 30 month apprenticeship period itself teaches you so much that it's worth suffering a little overtime to learn a lot.
After all, you're not digging ditches - usually - or subject to random explosions, most of the time.
What about KPMG's lawsuit? Why are the lawyers still upset?
Lawyers often earn a percentage of the winnings from a court case. So if they could win punitive damages from KPMG, they win would be more successful. And everyone likes to score a big "win", so if you're the lawyer who forced someone to pay their client $40 million instead of $10 million you'll obviously be proud of their accomplishment - and depending on the local rules - may also enjoy a larger payout from the victory as well.
What now?
Speaking with colleagues at all the firms, there a few general reactions I've seen - a mix of positive and negative for sure:
- Well that sucks, because I'm a CA so I get nothing, and will continue to get nothing extra
- I'm from Quebec and I'm not a CA - my province's rules mean that I'm not getting anything anyway. Oh nuts.
- I'm happy for my non-CA friends - good for them!
- Well the firms are just doing what they're supposed to do, no big deal - they should've known about it already and done this sooner.
- The firms are doing what they're supposed to do, but they're
doing it well - addressing the problem as soon as they learned about
instead of wondering if it would go away.
The interesting question now, of course, is to determine how long
before Deloitte joins the other three - since they have a large consulting practice this could be a very expensive proposition for them. Lots of free vacation current employees perhaps?
Krupo sees a waterfall and tries to resist making an allusion to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Failed.
If you have questions, feel free to leave me a comment or e-mail me - there's links to do both on this page (hit "join" in the top right corner or here to start leaving comments - we don't do anything with your e-mail here other than contact set you up with it so we avoid getting blog-spammed), but for the best response, contact your current or former employer for their official response - and to establish a paper trail of your conversation, since I'm not a lawyer and what you have here is only general information to point you in the direction of the official statements.
Good luck.
Less than three years after starting work, I've received official notification - I'm a CA.
I found out from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario - the ICAO - who are responsible for admitting Ontario CA students into membership as a Chartered Accountant.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way, jumping through the hoops known as the UFE exam process and in getting the hours needed at my day job to get to this point.
It's nothing but good news today - the TTC strike is over too.
Oddly enough the news was sent out on Friday but I didn't check my e-mail until now.
Incidentally, I bought myself a new camera that day, not knowing the news.
You could argue I inadvertently treated myself to a "yay, now you've got your CA" present.
Sweet.
Ironically all three photos I'm uploading here were taken with my old camera during my last vacation rather than with the new one. The last two posts, though, were products of the new camera. If I hadn't traded the old one in I would've done some comparison shots, but you can trust me when I say the new one's insanely better.
You can't spell Jack in the Box without "CA".
Way back in university I developed an intense dislike for psycho activists.
You know the kind.
You say something innocuous. Say, for example, that they should buy the green bike instead the blue one, and they start screaming "HATE
CRIME!!!!!!" in your face.
Above: Alternate Strike Vehicle #1
The news from Steve Munro's blog is worth reading, especially the comment by an operator - click here - who explains that it looks like another conspiracy by the psycho activists.
As a T.T.C. Operator, let me give you my take on this situation.
I was shocked when I found out from Bob’s phone call that the
members voted against the contract. 3/3/3 increases, upgrades to
benefits, and most importantly, no concessions.
However, this wasn’t good enough for the maintenance department. They want guaranteed lifetime jobs.
The commission is buying new vehicles and like all new vehicles they
have warranties. The maintenance people don’t like this as they think
they will be laid off because the company manufacturing these vehicles
will be doing the repairs that are covered under the warranty.
I do not support the maintenance department at all. Everyone knows
the maintenance department is a joke. They are always complaining about
how hard and tough their working conditions are. Yet they might work
2-3 hours out of an 8 hour shift.
I'd normally be skeptical of such claims, except that it does jive with my past experiences with said psycho activists. The operator continues to explain how s/he believes this unfolded:
Yet about 50% of operators in transportation voted no to this offer
for it to be 65% No. I don’t believe this high figure is to support the
maintenance department. There was wording in the contract about
maintenence being about to transfer to transportation. Many operators
believed this to mean they (maintenance employees) would also take
their seniority with them.
Bob Kinnear sent out messages letting membership know this was
completely false (about carrying your seniority). Someone on the
executive started this false rumour to get operators pissed enough to
vote with the maintenance department for a No vote. I think Kinnear’s
message didn’t reach enough members before they voted.
I can’t see 50% of operators turning down this contract. This was
the second contract Kinnear worked on that was all gains and not one
concession (first being in 2005).
So operators knew they were getting a sweet deal, but a union executive (read: "psycho activist) felt that wasn't good enough.
I'm not well versed in union contract terminology, but I understand this to mean that the maintenance guys could switch to the transit department and bump transirt operators? Or something like that, anyway.
I think someone in the Executive is out for Kinnear and trying to
make him look bad. I honestly think Bob cares about transit very much
and doesn’t take any pleasure calling a strike.
I believe most operators don’t want to strike as we don’t want anymore abuse thrown our way than we already receive.
I don’t believe in striking but yet fully support Bob Kinnear. Don’t
look for Bob to get shown the door or kicked out. Not a chance that
will happen. Someone will pay and and it won’t be Bob.
If the union scuttlebut is true, then this is explosive news which you should keep in mind as you grit your teeth with rage towards TTC operators.
Above: Alternate Strike Vehicle, for families
Having quoted all that, the question remains - why strike so quickly - with 1/24th the promised notice being given - 2 hours instead of 48? Kinnear parroted a lame explanation about safety - but drivers I spoke with believe Kinnear got out-manuevered by other union executives, supporting the assertions made on Munro's site in the above comment.
What I see is the inflexible thinking of the extreme unionist mindset at play: yes, service ends at 2 a.m. on a normal day, but by ending neatly at midnight, you can start the strike at a given day, "on the dot at midnight", rather than 2 hours later, when people expect it to.
There are of course two major problems with this theory:
- lots of vehicles started to go out of service at 11:30 p.m., documented in the video linked to below,
- it smells suspiciously like a way to harm people relying on the service for a ride home.
Don't fool yourself - another kind of unionist mindset was also at work: the strike has to harm the people of the city to achieve it's goal.
Are you angry?
The TTC union believes it has succeeded. And in its own twisted way, it has one it's little battle - showing it has some kind of warped sense of power.
In the long run, the TTC union has shot itself in the foot, knee, groin, and elbow.
Simultaneously.
With the strike on, anger predictably exploded. Check out the shattered window at Spadina station.
If you're still hankering for more footage to boil you blood - after all, this Globe and Mail's article angry forum is already closed - you can check out this footage of the early hours of the strike featuring, among other things, a quick interview with some Etobicoke boys stranded at Yonge and Eglinton, which was illustrative of last night's chaos.
I haven't seen many more developments since last night's news - just the cover story on the Star confirming that the Ontario government may actually do something for once, and run to work on Sunday to restore order.
One of the two worst case scenarios has already been engaged: the public is angry, and the hotheads among us are definitely going to give the workers a hard time for the indefinite future.
The second worst case scenario is a punitive reaction from the government. Newspapers report hard economic times ahead.
Companies don't give generous raises in such situations, they cut back of lay off people. We need to strengthen the TTC, of course, so layoffs are the last thing anyone expects. But is it possible to imagine an arbitrator saying, "actually, 3% is too generous - the government can't afford more than 1 or 2%".
If I was an arbitrator, and had access to the current economic picture, I think this would be a very likely scenario - or even a wage freeze for that matter.
This is going to get worse before it gets better.
At least you don't have to hold tight - no crazy bus driver is going to whip you around a corner at high speeds for at least the next day or two.
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