Browse by Tags
All Tags »
Link-o-Rama (
RSS)
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...
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...
This is what I think of when you say consulting . The link pops up straight to a chart outlining a ten point scale showing how close someone is to quitting. Despite what you're about to read below, this is one scenario where you can actually replace many of the instances of the word "consultant" with "auditor" in the above linked article. Some will argue it's a matter of semantics between to distinguish between "advisory" and "consulting" work, as the Big 4 - aside from Deloitte - have largely shed their consulting practices. Yes, "just legalistic semantics." Until you identify the mindset present somewhat satirically presented by Getting Drunk in First Class . Above: And they also often stay in posh downtown hotels. Aside from being a way of doing business where you're actually setting up and running things versus just testing and suggesting, consulting has also acquired a kind of a bad rep from what I've seen . Just pick...
Two links to share today. First, some more of my writing at a place other than www.krupo.ca - I was invited by Nancy Zimmerman to write a guest post on taxes and was happy to share some tips. Go here to check it out . Another interesting article is this essay from the CEO of Stardock on piracy . One of his most clever points is a stark admonishment of the pirates running amok in China and other countries where intellectual property laws are a complete failure. A quote: We also don't make games targeting the Chinese market When you make a game for a target market, you have to look at how many people will actually buy your game combined with how much it will cost to make a game for that target market. What good is a large number of users if they're not going to buy your game? And what good is a market where the minimal commitment to make a game for it is $10 million if the target audience isn't likely to pay for the game? If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates...
The table's starting to fill up. Excellent. I've been slowly updating my little link list lately, adding in more sites. After noting earlier with Neil that it's awfully quiet out there, anonymous accountant is suddenly back and Life of an auditor is brimming with lively conversations and topics. Which is perfect. Couple that with more experienced people like Bill , Dennis and Francine - who is enjoying a huge traffic spike of her own - and this is a pretty healthy community. There's several other sites brimming with useful information, of course, but it's late - you can find them on my link list or on the other sites' link lists. More than enough to keep you busy.
Wander over to Growth in Value if you'd like to read some of my comments about the new TFSA - tax-free savings accounts - which Canadians get to play with starting next January. I have something much more urgent to share with you. A story from my childhood. As a young boy, I found that some of my snooty friends in elementary school called Garfield juvenile and not as funny as the Far Side and other more 'sophisticated' cartoons. And, as much as I hated to admit it, they were right. The older you get, the less amusing the orange fat cat got. This all changed when Penny Arcade shared "Garfield without Garfield" . "Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing...
At some point in time Dennis' site led me to stumble upon tastytax.com, which is run by a tax lawyer out to provide some useful advice . The page I linked to is cool in itself because it shares a thirteen-point list of suggestions on how to manage your small business' records if your business is really small (so you can't afford a full-on part-time bookkeeper), and organizing your records isn't your strong suit. The advice is both straightforward and clever. Like remembering to open a separate business account to keep your personal and business funds from getting mixed up in case the tax man comes around and audits you. Four of the thirteen points are actually just steps to point out how simple it is to keep track of how much money you earned in sales. I found the writing to be simultaneously clever, interesting, and hilarious: Get those carbon pad receipt books from Staples or wherever. Write “2008″ on the outside of them. Try if you can to put the dates on the receipts...
Easy answer. This one. My first response to his associated related "Recruit Genie" site was "BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA" coupled with, "was this designed by a 12 year old with too much time on his hands?" "Strange as it may seem, employees don't have many free speech rights, especially when it comes to making negative, public comments about their current employer. That's just fine with us..." No. No. Stop. Which former Soviet Republic did you grow up in? How many cold winters did you experience in Siberia? Yes, badmouthing your boss is not something that's a Good Idea, but coming out like the all-knowing Oracle with your own commentary is worse than amateur. It looks like the sit is really a Borat DVD easter egg or something similar. It gets funnier, though. This is worse than the sales pitches I attempted for my college newspaper back in the day: Job posts are always free, but you can enhance your presence and your recruitment brand with an inexpensive...
I started out today by writing a post in response to another post. But as much as I enjoy navel gazing, I eventually segued to my new point. The photo is probably the most unrelated illustration ever used here, which is saying a lot . I'll have to digress for a minute. I was biking home from work and simply had to stop when I saw this. Think notorious neighbourhood, house with expensive cars behind a fence, and this crazy derelict furniture with questionable food. Living in Toronto is a treat - or at least an exercise in the experiencing the transmundane - and here you find evidence why. If only to validate the feeling that I can do better by doing so myself, I have to start writing more again. Thanks to Francine for pointing this out. One of my friends paid me a fine compliment early on when I started writing here, saying that this is a 'real' blog - in the sense that useful information is shared, and it's not just a personal diary. I keep the introspective stuff to a...
There's a relatively new site commenting on accounting for accountants, students and the like, The Accounting Onion . It took me a moment to realize there's no relation to The Onion , America's Finest News Source, but it looks just as interesting, and perhaps more useful to CAs, CPAs, and allied folk. The same lack of time that has caused my postings to nosedive will keep me from going through all the entries there, but this one caught my eye - it's about PCAOB inspections . Basically, all audit firms in the US are subject to inspection, but it's the big 4 that take care of 99% of the revenue being churned through the US economy. So spending more than 1% of your time auditing companies that represent 1% of US corporate revenue - to simply things - is, according to Tom Selling, a misallocation of resources. It would, of course, make more sense to more efficiently focus on areas where you're going to have the biggest hurt - larger companies. Then again, if a large...
September was all about quantity, not quantity in terms of my writings. Just a few articles, but most illustrated with photos - some of which were even loosely related to the topic being discussed. These few posts definitely took more time to write, but the real factor behind the decline in posting frequency is directly related to the fact that I've been busy as heck. I did some math and found that in the fiscal year to date I've racked up more than 10% of the overtime in my group. Yes, we also deal with detailed statistics at work - are you surprised? It's a CA firm! Accountants love statistics. My group is comprised of a dozen and a half people, so I'm definitely 'above target.' I'm not complaining though, because my first years I got lucky, and was working on jobs with relatively easy hours, so I can take a few hits in the short term. Besides, my overtime for the past three months is equal to the amount of overtime one of my banker friends pull in 3 or 4...
The team behind Bioshock caught a lot of flack for releasing a sub-par disc masquerading as a soundtrack for buyers of the game's Limited Edition in the UK. It was a mere three tracks, all remixes by Moby. What a disappointment if you paid extra for that. Fortunately, I never did. In a doubly awesome twist, 2K made up for it by releasing the entire soundtrack to the game's original in-game audio . Click here for a direct download . There's a cool story with the soundtrack composer at Music 4 Games . The game is set in the 60's and as such, includes a slew of licensed songs which - there's a discussion on the developer forums where some hardcore fans have figured out how to extract said songs. Yay again to Rock, Paper, Shotgun for tipping me off to the existence of all these goodies - it's one of my new favourite sites.
Neil's been on vacation , which has no doubt given me an additional chance to cry " First! ", as I write about an interesting little feature in Checkmark, the magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accounts of Ontario. The Summer 2007 issue came out and I skipped right to the back for the profession's version of "true crime" stories, although it's not necessarily a matter of "crime", it's definitely more of the kind of thing you'll see Dennis or to a great extent, Francine writing about on a regular basis . The interesting feature I'm referring to is the ICAO's "Disciplinary Notices" page - or section, if it's been a rough period - which functions like a police blotter for Chartered Accountants. One name jumped right out: "Wanda A. Liczyk, North York." She has been "found guilty of three charges under Rule 201 of failing to conduct herself in a manner which will maintain the good reputation of the profession...
Calcanis and others are writing about fcbk and how it's over-hyped and has other serious problems. And to some extent, they're right - it's easy to 'break' the program and have it annoy you. And also, despite the calls for use of its application to revolutionize business models and such other things, aside from making it unnaturally easy to stay in touch with people from elementary school, is its use in business all that important ? In the sense that it helps strengthen fragile bonds among co-workers into that of a stronger community, yes it can. And it can be good for networking and all those associated Good Things. But is it as important or valuable as interesting or enlightening writings?
While bouncing around websites, waiting for my software to complete installation, I stumbled upon some interesting sites that don't really have much to do with my work, or perhaps are 100% in sync with what I do. It turns out that Nurses and HR people have banded together to highlight the best of their online writings. While the Nursing site is very formal, the HR feature is a rotating thing, where people take turns highlighting their favourites. There were two that I liked to see. First was an article explaining why it's a Good Idea to take a rejection well - the HR people might still have something up their sleeve if you don't go psycho on them. Second was a piece about how gaming is a good way to develop skills in corporate environments. Can you imagine a world where you go on Facebook and play games and this is considered part of your job requirements. Wicked. Awesome. Do the accounting sites have something of that sort? I mean sites that band them together and feature...
Next page »