Career in Accounting Question
I’m a new grad still trying to find out what I want to do. What is everyone’s thoughts on the accounting field? How is the work, compensation, and ability to advance? Any help or insight is appreciated. Thanks.
You'll forever burn of jealousy when you see TCs on blind
Having done first hand and overseen Accounting for several years, this how I would define Accounting career path. For the first 6-8 years, it will pay low, workload will be very high, the type of work will be repetitive in terms of the transactions you are punching, and it will mainly be considered as non-revenue generating role. After that, if you are career oriented and opportunistic, you can have a clear path to be a Controller. That’s when the pay will be good, the stress will still stay high, but the type of work can get interesting. Don’t forget, lately if you want to be a Controller, most companies require you to be a CPA. I can keep talking about what after that but not sure if it applies to you. Feel free to IM.
Starting out at a big 4 will launch your finance career for the rest of your life.
Accounting is a good field and there is repetitiveness nature in work - some people prefer that over consulting gig with more unpredictability. Compensation-wise, I think Accounting ensures a stable income, better than a lot of other business careers but also worse than a lot others. And yes, do not compare the TC against swe's. But with lower pay comes great WLB and less stress for most people. While the traditional career trajectory for an accountant would be controller or CFO, note that there are other options down the road as well, such as moving to internal audit (entails total shift in perspective from looking at numbers to being mindful of operations and controls), accounting advisory, financial reporting, fp&a, etc.
Accountants often become CFOs.
What does the climb to CFO look like? Accountant - Senior Accountant - ??? - Eventually CFO
You can look up bios of our cfo and one before the previous. They come from accounting. I don’t remember the exact trajectories. It’s a long road