1. google who the big four are and why very simple question there but you’ll learn more in five mins then I could type.

2. GPA is pretty important because typically they will have cutoffs where they don’t even consider your application. This is around a 3.0 but I could be wrong/depend on your school.

3. Public Accounting is hard work everywhere. Near deadlines most people are working over 40 hours in small firms, regional firms, and Big 4. The difference in Big 4 is that they are literally the biggest accounting firms in the world and that carries prestige. So people use the Big 4 as basically a resume/skills booster

The same reasons for going to an Ivy League School even though it’s harder: networking and exit opportunities. Look up any CFO in a major company, odds are they have B4 experience. Even two years in B4 will set you apart for the rest of your life.

PWC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG are the Big 4.

Gather round while I tell you the tale of bygone times in Accountlandia.

There were once 8 Great Houses, who warred upon one another.  But these were gentlemanly wars, for the strength of an accountant lies not in his twiggish arms.  No, these wars were fought on fields overseen by the SEC, mysterious guardians of financial markets.  They were fought in board rooms, and college campuses.

The 8 Great Houses:

Arthur Andersen, the maverick of the eight.  Alas, Arthur's demise meant that all accountants were now shackled in iron Sox. 

Ernst&Ernst, a two-headed dragon that would merge with Arthur Young, who was always mistaken for Arthur Andersen.  It remains a mystery which Ernst is the one in Ernst&Young.

PriceWaterhouse, who would be forever mistaken for a lowly brokerage, asked for fair Coopers&Lybrand's hand in marriage.  Together, they are remembered for the great tragedeigh PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Deloitte would become one with Touche Ross, leading to Deloiitte and Touche.  While seemingly the butt of jokes such as "toilet and douche" and "Deloittusy", this house's vast army of Indians cannot be underestimated.

And finally, KPMG.  Who?

https://www.icaew.com/library/historical-resources/guide-to-historical-resources/firm-histories/whats-in-a-name

Why don’t you just look it up?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_accounting_firms

This ought to fill you in on how they went from Big 8 to Big 4. There aren’t any movies about them to my knowledge

Alumni here also worked at big four. It varies by location and office but PWC generally pays the most. The service line that pays the most is the transaction advisory line. They are like the special forces of each big four. Only the best goes there.

The Big 4 are white collar sweatshops. Do yourself a favor and go with a national midsize firm. You will work with clients quicker and will have more interaction with the partners. They usually pay more as well. Source: GMU grad working in accounting.

Big accounting firm be like -

1. Hire kid out of college
2. Make him work 100 hour weeks
3. When he gets burned out, release him and go back to 1
   If you go; be smart and save your money up. idk if you'll have time for anything else.
   Ultimate goal is to be a partner or coowner/owner. Good luck.

Big4 product manager here, please send me a DM.

Go Advisory, Audit is a sweatshop bruh. Although, you might need to develop additional skill sets. At the end, exiting B3.5 and get a cushy industry job 9-4.30 most days probably should be a goal in your 5 years plan.

From my experience having worked at both:

B4 busy season hours are much worse than mid tier. Late night calls with your manager and getting on calls with the India team at odd hours. Getting on at 8am and going home at midnight, especially those 2-3 weeks before the deadline. At the beginning it can seem a lot but since you have experience maybe you won’t have a bad time adjusting. Outside busy season workload isn’t terrible and about the same as mid tier. I think the benefits at B4 are A+ so there’s also that.

B4 work is a little more complex due to most likely working on public clients but at the end of the day.. accounting is accounting. You’ll just have to get used to the way they do things and their systems.

Since you’d be coming in as an experienced hire, there’s very little hand holding. It’s sink or swim especially during busy season since everyone has a ton of things to do.

I’ll add your experience is basically all dependent on the office and team you’ll be working with on a daily basis. Unfortunately your manager/partner makes or breaks it. A colleague switched to another office within the same B4 and said the experience was way better than our old office. I’ve talked to colleagues of other offices at my current mid tier and they hate it, meanwhile my experience so far is 10/10. You really have to vet the office culture in the city you’d be working at.

Overall B4 does have more recognition and will land you a few more interviews but imo unless you’re trying to be the CFO at a Fortune 500 or large global company, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Think about what your end goal is with public/accounting and go from there.

If you want to see your child grow up then stay away from big 4

I went mid tier and now find that anyone I deal with in Big4 audit is highly incompetent compared to the standard I saw in mid tier.

If you train mid tier and are good and put the work in, you will get more exposure to different clients and industries, and come out as a more well rounded accountant.

I left audit for industry immediately after my training contact, and went from financial accountant, to finance manager, to CFO of a start up in about 3 years.

If you coming in as experience hire, you need to realize that the supporting you get will be lesser than the internal breed people. I would said take it as a test.

Try to join the big 4 3 months before the peak so that you have the time to adjust yourself to their system, culture and finish all the e-learning (I think you need to do associate up to your level).

Again, ask yourself what you want to get from joining big 4? Experience - then go ahead. Because of the good benefit / better job opportunity? then maybe you should try Fortune 500 / FP&A / bank

Depends on which client you’re booked. If you’re booked on a mid tier’s best client, you’ll have a better experience than if you were booked on bottom clients at B4

Maybe it depends on location, but half the industry roles I see say Big 4 required or highly desired.

Big 4 exit ops are better. Is that justified? Not entirely but like others have said it’s a filter in a lot of job specifications.

There are places that won’t hire you without big 4 experience unfortunately. Usually the cfo or controller is ex big 4 and thinks it’s critical that everyone in his team is the same.

I made a post about this but there is a big difference. I came from B4 and went to mid-tier afterwards and the difference was night and day:

1. Extreme Emphasis on Billable Hours: In mid-tier firms, the focus on billable hours and meeting those goals is even more intense. If you don’t meet them, good luck getting a substantial bonus. The scrutiny over billable hours is higher in mid-tier firms compared to the Big Four, based on my experience. The Big Four have extensive resources and numerous high-paying clients, whereas mid-tier partners rely heavily on your billable hours, directly affecting how you’re treated and compensated.

2. Smaller Bonuses: Bonuses in mid-tier firms tend to be smaller. This observation is based on my experience and conversations with colleagues. Statistically, the bonus percentages and amounts are lower than those in the Big Four.

3. Lack of Technology: If you value efficiency and want to leverage technology to ease your workload, mid-tier firms might not be the best choice. The lack of technological investment makes your work more laborious and can significantly decrease the quality of your output.

4. Client Quality and Experience: The volume of work may be similar between mid-tier and Big Four firms, but at the Big Four, you’re working with high-end clients across various industries. This exposure enhances your experience and significantly improves your future job prospects.

I've been through both and do not recommend anyone going to mid-tier. Your experience will be extremely vast and different between two groups

look at how much of the Fortune 500 are done by mid tier. The scale and complexity is different. There are plenty of duds from B4 but on average is lower, especially those who stayed at least a year as a senior. That's why a lot of jobs filter for B4.

Just sharing my opinion. Few days back , i was tryna get some idea about firms for articleship and i noticed the following things. Big4 has a brand name , so ofcourse it is a huge advanatge in future years if you get recommended by them. But, here are some problems

1. The Big4 mostly focuses on specific fields (suppose, accounts, audit). So, you might not have a good grip on other parts

2. Although their stipend is good (minimum 10k) and increases in the following years, they have no definite working hours. Lawfully it's 8hrs, but they CAN and WILL make you work more than that.

3. They have highly qualified professionals under whom you can work but at the end , it'll depend on your own merits how far you'll go.

If you can deal with the tiring working time and looking forward to expertise some specific fields, 100% Big4 is the place. Else, there are many firms which might not have same brand name but they're really good

Just the brand name of big4. Work there for 1-2 years and then quit. Will have the exposure as well as the brand name.

I want big four for the experience of working in a professional environment and frankly they are the inly companies for whom it is worth leaving your hometown.

You either land in a supportive, top-notch team or end up with a nightmare crew that makes your life hell -there’s nothing in between. If it’s the former, the grind is totally worth it, if it’s the latter well, you’re fucked.

Agr mil jaye toh worth it !!! Otherwise kharab firm h

Start with what is the purpose of the big 4

Who hires their services and why

Cause most of our talented people end up working in the shared services departments of the global big 4. Few out of those end up climbing the ladder after years of grinding, over work and working for 1/10th of the pay due to lack of good labor laws protecting them and providing dignity of labor.

Honestly, I feel like we’ve just never thought of accounting firms as something that could go global. It’s always been that small office down the street, with files stacked to the ceiling lol. I guess we’ve just grown up seeing them like that, so the idea of building something bigger never really crossed our minds

We are occupied with working on menial job/ projects of Big 4 and other companies. We need critical thinking , direction and business model that’s different from IT services.

India cannot have big 4. India prefers outsourcing to likes of TCS, infosys and Wipro etc.

Public accountants don’t really do anything in house accountants do.

There’s tax and audit, tax is self explanatory.

Audit is basically checking the work your in house accountants do. You give us your trial balance, we audit all your accounts and issue you an audit report with our opinion.

Busy season happens because taxes are due April 15th, most everybody files from late Jan - April.

Audit has a busy season because most companies have 12/31 year end dates and want their audit reports issued asap for whatever purpose they use them for. To give to investors, banks that require they get audited etc.

Auditing is the big one.

It exists as a 3rd party verification of financial statements to show the health of a given company. Auditors are essentially signing off on the financial statements as accurate and fairly depicted.

These statements are for key stakeholders of a given company and are relied upon to give an accurate and fair depiction of the state of a company in a given period/year.

Any company can engage an auditing/review service, but it's typically reserved for larger companies as the fees are quite expensive. You generally wouldn't get audited financial statements for a mom and pop shop for example.

Big firms do all sorts of other financially related services, like the ones you mentioned.

When I started my internship and found out my group does provisions I was completely lost. I never really even heard of a provision until I was studying for FAR, and I still don't have a firm grasp on it.

Yeah. Just look at the documentaries about accounting like. The Accounant or The Accountant 2. Or government accountants look at Jack Ryan ;)

I like EY because they were the only ones to offer me a job. If I could pick whichever one I wanted I would probably go with Deloitte.

The best firm is the one where you least hate the people

Go with whoever you liked the most

https://www.reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/fuo6hn/trying_to_decide_between_big_4_offers_sweet_lord/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

They are all pretty much the same.