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The party bus at Bay and King: wheeled debacle or the most brilliant application of motor coaches ever? As much as I'd like to think I'm just making jokes concerning the amount of travel auditors often experience, Mark Lee has brought our attention to a perhaps long overdue concept: AllABoardroom , a portable meeting room now available in the UK for the truly dedicated road warriors. It all makes me keep thinking back to a certain movie's caravan camp; with St. Patrick's Day upon us, perhaps Irish Travelers of the Business World may be a more apt term for the denizens of Audit Land. Regardless, now you can now book a tour bus for rockstar accountants . How much does it rock? It has an onboard fireplace. And, naturally, a bar. Interestingly, the fee for drinks is donated to charity. Whether this is done purely to be charitable or to make compliance with British liquor laws easier - are there really any laws regarding liquor in the UK, anyway? - is perhaps a moot point but...
Completely random promotion: check out My Life is Polish - the site is hilarious, particularly if you are of Polish descent. If you're not, I recommend keeping a bookmark to Google Translate's Polish to English engine to get some of the jokes painfully true stories. Example: Today, my mom poured water into our shampoo bottle and said "no to wystarczy do konca tygodnia". MLIP " The "punchline", automatically translated by Google is " no it is sufficient to the end of the week ". Close, Google, but the correct translation would be "now it will last until the end of the week." You get the idea regardless, but I submitted a correction to Google anyway. It'll be interesting to see if they fix it down the road. Some work even if you don't speak the language though: " Today, I realized that all of my closest friends have been forced to memorize at least 3 words in polish. By me. I quiz them every couple of weeks and get angry when...
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 a topic everyone seems to be curious about knowing more about, gets very little information about, and is often to afraid ask questions about - so go check out "TT"'s breakdown and the follow up if you want to know more. Or skim all the way down to comment 114 , which points out that while the cut of roughly 300 people is small compared to the size of the entire US firm, the internal PwC webcast apparently stated that this represents a cut of 6% of the affected group - one value provided by a commenter is 260 of about 4300 people. I spent way too much type going through all the other comments, and things did in fact get kind of dark. Consider this post - it's anonymous, but...
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 about, ironically, after noticing that Stuff Accountants Like , an unashamed homage to the inventor of the online genre, Stuff White People Like , announced their site is going on an LOA , an extended vacation - I found it amusing that my search for the SWPL link led me to their article about taking a year off - so "unashamed homage" is not too subtle a term here. SAL explained that the work involved in writing new posts has taken its toll and a busy season is no doubt about to smack the author in the face. My own busy season is in unabashed full swing - now that I've been working in as a CA firm for a few years I have the joy of being trusted to Get Things Done, while at the same...
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. Aside from the message board, which is humming with posts, there's a series of articles on becoming a CA student, and how to cope with the challenges encountered on the job, including plain English summaries of key CICA handbook sections. It's always fun to watch the development of a site from a small germ of an idea to a fledgling showcase and ultimately a full-blown star. Here's your chance to get in at the ground floor. I'll be posting on the boards occasionally too as Krupo so feel free to wander in. Watching the accounting kids flail about is almost as fun as watching the Air Show from the roof of the Palais Royale or out on Lake Ontario. Almost. But with less risk of sunburn.
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, but it was not to be. In a small town on a Sunday night many places are likely to close early. Even in Toronto my local deli will usually shut its doors a good half hour before closing time if it's completely dead. I can't blame them - it's a smart decisions to send your staff home early if keeping them around will cost more than they'll give you in revenue. And so it's almost cruel to find a delicious looking site like The Cooking Accountant on a night like this. Almost cruel, because there fortunately are a few places open that cater to late night arrivals, so I didn't have to subsist on chips and rice krispie squares for dinner. The Cooking Accountant has an awesome...
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. No, not that Moore either. Then comes the story which made our jaws drop just a bit when shared with friends: " Accountant ‘treated like a prostitute’ sues City firm for £40 million. " The article states that, while working for PwC, the accountant claimed to be on the receiving end of racist and sexist comments, and she's suing for damages. There's a curious claim in the article that she "claims that the discrimination prevented her becoming a PwC partner earning at least £500,000 a year plus bonuses." I presume that this was phrased more delicately, in the sense that "she could have one day become a partner, had she not been subject to this treatment." Being 31 years old...
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 of relying on Red Flag Deals and just set one up too - you can find it here . But until a critical mass shows up there, I don't see anything wrong with pointing at the giant crimson gorilla and its relevant discussions. A complete lack of time dissuaded me from wandering in earlier, and I don't plan on sifting through all the posts there - so feel free to point out relevant discussions. It's what we do around here. Most relevant to people currently employed - and those wondering what future salary brackets are going to look like - is the rampant trench of speculation known as the salary increase discussion thread . As many discussion boards as varieties of donuts at Lee's! The RfD thread is in a holding pattern at the...
The post count on the left side here reveals that I've had a relatively busy summer, but now that I had some time to write some fresh posts and catch up on what everyone's writing about, I see several new interesting blogs popping up. I already mentioned Want to Be in my last post . We'll get to some interesting news from Chicago concerning Deloitte but first, some introductions are in order. Winding Down Nuit Blanche Toronto 2007 Just in time for recruiting season comes Big 4 Bound who has some excellent insights into students' minds that recruiters should be aware of . On very different track there's Jenny Cao , who's pursuing CA classes and Biotech at the same time. Wow. If she manages to post with any frequency while going through UW hell it'll be all the more impressive. Finally, Narrowing the GAAP is another fun place - the resume tips are a good place to start if you're applying for jobs. The Big 4 Lingo post, on the other hand, is an excellent article...
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 won't work" crowd to come out. The city no doubt knew this was a foregone conclusion given they invested thousands of dollars in "out of order" signs for public garbage cans. No wait, I take it back. Turns out garbage workers were already on strike for eight days and I hadn't noticed. Oh well, it's still bizarre to be putting up these signs. No wait again, that article is from 2002 . The strike just started. Brilliant. I wonder if any lazy journalists will start plagairizing from the 2002 article anyway? We can only hope, for the laughter. Oddly enough the first thing CBC does is reference the 2002 strike talking about 2009 . Going back to those signs, I've already seen kids ripping...
Hot on the heels of my discussion of when people choose to leave , comes news from LYF - he has resigned from his current firm and has done so with style . Go read all about it . It's a very good breakdown explaining how to pick the timing, how to plan the departure - starting 4 months in advance is advised, and factors to keep in mind, including the potential requirement to pay back exam fees the firm may have paid on your behalf. I like the idea pointed out to get the new employer to cover such fees for you, along with a smart breakdown on how to share the news. And I most of all like how it allows him to enjoy a summer-long vacation. Well played, and good luck at your next job and during the summer adventures!
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 your data stored somewhere completely seperate from the computer hosting your website or other key production system to avoid experiencing too many tears.
Ah, the American dollar. 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 to the ennui gripping the US as the federal deficit climbs to ever-greater levels . The observation arose not while studying a macroeconomic treatise, but while sorting out a pile of coins: I'm taking a short trip to the US today and after my last adventure in March, I'm taking a lesson to heart: you don't mess with their money. In Canada we treat coins from Canada or the US at par. The 10-20% difference in currencies is so minor, in Canada only the greatest scold would care where your penny, dime or nickel came from. The line is often drawn at quarters, as vending machines usually reject the foreign coin, but up to ten cents, it's generally fair game. Not...
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 684 in March, some happy and good news. How I would picture fighting spam, in snow-form.
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 West Side's Otakuness , the always interesting Life of an Auditor who I wish could get RSS to work, the young Accounting Elf - check out the clever post about tutoring accounting , and fellow Torontonian Look at Last Year's File - check out how to serve a CEO the hardcore way , who may win the "amusing name" contest too. One of the recent posts at Want to be a CA is about the tough life seniors lead makes some valid points, but I enjoy it no doubt because I work in a good group and because this truly is where things get interesting. You get to grasp the full "big picture" of how companies and other organizations operate - none of the burrowing into your own little tiny trench, but instead you're standing on a scenic...
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