Why does this site hate on Big 4 so much?
I would choose investment banking over big 4 anyday but it's still a solid career. You get better wlb balance than most high finance job, steady career progression and job stability. I'm from an Asian country where my friend dad is retired Big 4 Partner. Guy is worth $3mil~, have a happy family and both of his kids are going to prestigious UK/US university.
Obviously, becoming a partner is not guaranteed and my friend’s dad is only one example, so I’m not saying everyone in Big 4 will become rich. But I don’t really understand why some people here treat Big 4 like a “bad” career when, compared with most jobs, it still offers good opportunities
Congrats on Deloitte
I should've expected this. Maybe I really deserve Deloitte.
are you a bot?
Congrats on Deloitte!
Because most people browsing the site are in college/an analyst, and big 4 as an analyst is, to put it bluntly, absolute ASS. The lower levels of big 4 are truly hell on earth with meh pay, especially in NYC - so if I'm going to be miserable for 2 years might as well go work in IB which is more prestigious. Big 4 is a good career, but really only "worth it" for the reasons you describe at the mid/senior levels. I am speaking purely from the US perspective.
Yeah, I used to have nightmares about the time I was holding a buddy’s guts in with my hands in Afghanistan after a mortar attack, praying into the radio for the casevac bird, watching him turn pale and feeling his body get cold… but then I did my analyst stint at Deloitte and truly came to understand what hell on earth looks like.
Get over yourself.
nobody asked you to invade a country buddy. You know what you signup for.
Made it out of one of the B4 into banking. 1. Pay for NYC standards is bad, and the "bonus" is like a few hundred bucks. It also doesn't really grow that phenomenally too. 2. WLB is slightly better than banking but you still get cranked for like half the year with sub-banking pay 3. A bunch of corporate beaurocracy - i.e daily timesheets, a million bullshit KPI's and point systems, random trainings on like 5 different sites. 4. Honestly the work isn't really all that interesting because you don't really contribute meaningfully to a companies inflection point but YMMV. I get it if you're there for 1-3 years, but as you go more senior especially in NYC you start to ask yourself what do people give up by not leaving? HH's were all telling me you get a meaningful base and bonus increase if u leave a year on the job. Like ~$20-80k more depending on where u jump next and only gets wider the more senior u go. I personally jumped ~$40-50k depending where the bonus lands. so imagine if you never do and make it to partner, thats probably like a million in lifetime earnings given up. Mid levels still get paid less than 1yr IB Analysts working banking-lite hours. THAT BEING SAID, Big 4 does have its place as a phenomenal launchpad/career pitstop. Billion lines of business you could transfer to internally, then leave to that groups respected exits. Strong corporate exits, and WILL get u into the door of LMM/MM IBs depending on group. arguably more recognizable globally than a lot of IB's,
Because this is a banking/PE forum of a mainly students who don't know anything
Big 4 audit. I give it a lot of credit in helping me move to San Francisco from Hawaii; giving me a crash course in full time work; helping me learn excel hotkeys and 10-key by touch; and setting me up for a finance career. Yes, there were aspects I did not like, particularly I was too creative in a job and junior position that valued no creativity or pragmatism. My next job as an investment analyst being a “venture capitalist for real estate developers” was more geared to my strengths, but I would not have gotten there without the Big 4 helping me move to SF.
It is crazy how it changed my life, in my last year of college, seeing a national application for the first time, and seeing lines that asked what city am I applying for?
I always thought I was going to live and die in Honolulu, but on that 4th Big 4 application, lighting struck my head, and instead of “Honolulu”, I wrote “San Francisco” because my family and I visited SF on vacation during my high school. That and asking my now wife on a date ranks as the biggest butterfly effect of my life.
For a lot of students, their city has a couple or all of the Big 4 and regional CPA firms, some commercial banks (like Bank of Hawaii), commercial RE brokerages and a handful of investment firms, and financial planning and life insurance companies. For the most part, that is the finance industry that 90%+ of university students out there see. Of all the choices, above, most optimize for you to stay in the local city for your whole life (build relationships, build a book of clients); the Big 4 gives the most mobility on the job and exit opportunities.
I think the biggest difference between “target” and “non target” schools is the exposure and achievement culture, that if you go with the flow, you’ll get molded into a viable candidate for high finance. As far as brain power and work ethic, for undergrad business students, I’ve met smart kids everywhere who can learn to work in finance. Some take a few years longer to get to where they need to be, but that’s ok.
For students and young professionals using WSO as information and advice to move up and change their lives, the high finance bias is good for goal setting. But, to get there, the Big 4 might be the best pathway to move to a finance city with a job.
Absolutely, consider it if that’s the best choice you have.
I think the asymmetric “path” to wealth these days is becoming at mid-career, CFO of an early, early-mid stage company in an industry that is growing and you are obsessed about. Owning a sizable equity stake as a co-founder (your other co-founders are experts in non-business fields). A stint in the Big 4 and a CPA certification, might actually be a really solid foundation.
Very, very few people stay to make partner. Those people generally love public accounting, their brains are wired that way. Those people I think it I can spot.
It's just a matter of idealizing the best finance jobs out there (it's a finance forum), so there is just lots of bias.
Besides, many are students, so they can't look at a career beyond 2 years, because the truth is that long-term you can do plenty of money in lots of careers outside finance.
Largely depends on the group you get into and the seniors you work with.
Reasonable path to ~150-200K comp by your late 20s with a promotion or two. Not a bad option for those who went to random unis and don't have access to more prestigous / higher paying firms like MBB / T2 from higher rated / target schools.
Few of my coworkers are ex-Big 4 - didn't go to grad school, went to average undergrads and recently had the means to become homeowners in their late 30s / early 40s in a VHCOL area.
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