Accounting--a warning for Aspies

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Just a note on choosing to quit (after the new job has been lined up) v. being let go ... in this industry, it is looked on much, much better if you CHOOSE to leave. My experience in this field tells me that if you aren't happy, you aren't going to make a good career of it where you are, even if they decide to keep you. If you aren't going to make a good career of it, why stay? Like you said, you have everything you need to get another job, on paper, so just DO it. You are in a great position to change jobs right now; once you've allowed yourself to be laid off, that may not be true.

My first two jobs out of school were totally wrong. The first laid me off; the second was worse, but they kept me. It had been hard, really hard, interviewing for a new job after the lay off. After the second job, I finally found the right fit, but I'd wasted 2 years, and my confidence had taken a HUGE hit. Once I was in a decent workplace, I soared, and I mean soared. I really am GOOD at what I do, it just took a few years for everyone to see it.

I would agree with you on avoiding the preparation services. Once you go that route, I think you'll find yourself stuck in that route. The CPA firms don't cross hire from the preparation services that I've noticed.

Keep your chin up and remember that you are well trained with your degree. You have a lot to offer. It's just about finding the right place. Start looking around NOW. You won't regret it.

I am not in accounting, but I have a friend who is. A very aspie-ish person, too.

I would second DW_a_mom's advice...it is MUCH easier to find a job while you still have one. If you are unemployed then you are expected to give references from your ex-employer which, in my experience, makes it harder if you've been laid off from an unfavorable situation.

I think usually firms are pretty cautious about revealing too much when asked about former employees. One, they don't want the potential legal hassles if they say something negative, two, the thing about "not burning bridges" goes both ways. Although this is a fairly large city the tax accounting community is fairly small, and I think there is a reluctance to alienate someone who may end up working for a client somewhere down the road.

Job hunting is a little problematic because I'm really looking to make a major relocation in a year or so, so even if I do get a full time job I will end up having to quit next year [hopefully.] I really want to make a fresh start elsewhere.

Anyway, if I'm not fired this month, I'll probably stick around until the end of summer---all the various paperwork for the CPA license should be completed by then. I feel pretty good about being able to explain the circumstances of what happened. Probably the only good thing about the economic downturn is that it's easier to explain sudden job changes.

Again, thanks for all the responses.

Well, guess what happened today....the whole scenario I described.

It wasn't bad at all. They were really nice, and they're even going to sign off on my CPA license.
I had asked my coach yesterday whether I could find out about it sooner rather than later, since i needed to give notice to my landlord, etc., if the news wasn't good, so they decided to accelerate things a little bit.

I have mixed feelings....it's never fun to be let go, even when you are prepared for it as I was. I cannot imagine what it would be like for someone who didn't see it coming at all.

Taxman, you're a good guy. You're in there trying, not everyone is.

Previously, I think you had talked about a midsized company. And being medium picky, maybe sooner, maybe later, you can find business people that appreciate good work.

Financial Accounting: 'No, I don't want to take too many chances. Just straight down the line.'

Managerial Accounting: 'Yes, I do want to find out what's going on in my company. And sooner is better than later.'

Believe it or not, these kind of level-headed attitudes are probably in the minority! But there has to be some people like that out there (I sure hope so! There really has to be some.).

--------

On your creative writing, I feel I'm good on dialogue, at times making a good scene better. But the main narrative arc, the main idea of what the story is about (what in screenwriting is sometimes called high concept), maybe I haven't yet developed a real good antenae for that.

And another interesting thing, which hit me browsing the used paperbacks at Half-Priced, so many novels have characters who are airline pilots, models, high-powered surgeons, Stephen King seemed to be one of the few writers including just plain people. So, you can write about the corporate world. It is underwritten about.

Good luck, and please drop us a line from time to time on how you're doing and what you're learning.

Taxman,

I had a similar experience in the legal field. The two main problems were (i) networking within a large law firm to get work, and (2) matching the productivity of my peers.

Efficiency was my biggest barrier at a large firm. Large firms already require very long hours, so working harder or longer is not a fix if a person's efficiency and productivity are not there. I tend to approach my work with the big picture in mind and am kind of a perfectionist. The result was higher quality work than my peers, but lower productivity than my peers. As you know, productivity rules the day at a large firm and leads to more work. There are no brownie points for doing a better job.

The other barrier was navigating the social structure of the firm. Social interactions with clients were short, planned and structured. After a few year I was okay in that department. Social interactions within the firm, however, became more and more problematic.

I first went to a smaller firm with lower chargable hours requirements. This gave me some bandwidth to allow my hard work to counteract any inefficiencies or other shortcomings that were glaring weaknesses at a large firm.

Now I am at a corporation and this is a much better environment for me. First, chargable hours are no longer an issue. All that matters is getting the job done. Second, the social hierarchy is pretty well defined in a company and you don't need to got out looking for work.

In a large firm, social navigation and a high level of efficiency and productivity are needed in order to keep your job. In contrast, at a company you have a job and if you do it well you will keep your job. Having great people skills or reaching a level of efficiency/productivity faster than your peers may help with advancement, but not having these skills is not necessarily fatal to employment.

Some things that have worked for me:

Get out of the house early. This might almost be biological, getting sunlight to stimulate the pituitary to release whatever. All I know is when I get out early and do something, I feel better. And you can always come home later and take a late morning or early afternoon nap.

Yeah, you can work on intellectual projects. It is a positive. It's just not going to carry you the whole way. And it sounds like you might have several, reviewing some of the more interesting parts of the CPA in a relaxed fashion---and congratulations on your CPA!---creative writing, property tax issues, etc. But, none of these are 100%, they can't be, that's part of the realistic aspect. And even if they do lead to later professional activity, the social aspect and the communicative activity, as far as right now, is being deferred.

So, try and get some right nows if you can. Try a bunch of stuff and give yourself permission to make mistakes. Consider dabbling in political activism. It's making the world a better place in ways that are comfortable to you, in ways that resonate with you. And it's accepting people where they are, and it is highly communicative. For example, if you local city council is reasonably nearby, start attending the monthly or bimonthly meetings. You will be amazed at how few of your fellow citizens do so. At a city with 40,000 where I used to live, I attended regularly for a while and I was one of only three regular attendees. Scout out some groups with values similar to your own (it's just that the serious, in-depth conversations come at irregular times and then tend to end abruptly). Also, consider visiting a group you don't agree with. I'm generally on the democratic side, and yet for a while, I attended a republican dinner club. It wasn't shopping the competition. It was more like playing poker not looking at your cards, which is a style of learning. So, I was very polite, I tried to be appreciative, wherever people were, that's was fine. And I didn't feel I needed to know a lot about the issues. I focused on the context of the conversations and less on the content. And I did better socially than when attending a group I agreed with! For example, I wasn't expecting in-depth conversations, so I wasn't disappointed, and in other ways, things worked better. I learned, Republicans are just people, and whereas I don't generally agree with them, I don't entirely disagree with them either. And I would tell people, I'm really more of a moderate and an independent, which I felt was measured honesty and honest enough. And during the pledge of allegiance, I would respectfully stand but I did not place my hand over my heart (to me, the pledge seems one-dimensional).

Consider a sport or rec league. Do something serious to stay in shape, and then for fun, consider softball or volleyball or soccer or bowling or ultimate frisbee or whatever.

And remember, some people do actually appreciate the quality of work! Some people are experienced enough and comfortable enough as managers that they have a pretty good idea of the balance between quality and quantity that they are looking for, and skilled enough to coach people to broadly achieve this balance.

Funny this thread came up. I was thinking of going into accounting as a career, but after doing research, I realized I might be getting back into the rat race of what my old career path was. I was going to complete the classes over the next year or so required to sit in for the CPA exam in Illinois, but now I'm planning on starting my Master's degree in Information Security, hopefully some more thought process involved and less paperwork / politics, etc., though no line of paying work is immune to those.

I've done bookkeeping, and to a lesser extent, tax preparation, and though the former was fun enough for me, the latter did involve a large degree of social skills in the particular place I worked between coworkers, which put me at the shaft end of getting work . The Liberty Tax thing sounded interesting though. I know working for H&R Block requires some amount of high-pressure selling RAL's down people's throats, and I've never been a good salesman to begin with, and it doesn't sound like Liberty Tax requires shoving RAL's down people's throats. Owning a Liberty Tax franchise sounds like a nightmare and a half from what I know about it, but I'll leave that headache to someone else.

H&R Block pushes you to sell "Second Look" (a $29 review of a previous year), "Peace of Mind" (audit insurance), the "Send-a-Friend" coupon (the only thing customers really like, but then we're slow sending out the money), the "Emerald" credit card, next year's appointment, the arbritration agreement, and probably a couple of other things slipping my mind.

As far as the RALs, the customers come in wanting those! Now, many customers do not fully know that these are in fact loans (and when Block used to advertise "Rapid Refund" that didn't exactly help matters!)

The most common complaint is that the customer is turned down, and then waits and waits, and waits. We try and buffalo them off to a phone number which gives a confusing message, and then the customer storms the store. And frankly, I don't blame them. Unfortunately, our system is so dysfunctional that we can't give them information even when they do storm the store. See the following link for a sample of complaints and one compliment at the top (most of your fellow employees do care, just don't have the skills or the backing from the company to follow through on the difficult situations).

http://consumeraffairs.com/finance/hr_block_ral.html

So, you will get a wealth of experience, you'll learn taxes. You in all likelihood will not get the bonus (the company is no more honest and forthcoming with their employees than with their customers). And there's a good chance that, as a new employee, you will be laid off mid-February after the rush is over.

In addition, there is the very serious issue of bank debt collection, variously called "debt offset" or "cross-collection" or "previous debt." HSBC, the bank H&R Block runs their loans through and to which the customer gives permission and directs the IRS to deposit their refund, collects third-party debt. That is, HSBC will take the customer' entire refund. Yeah, really. They attempt to justify the practice and also blur it with what the IRS does in holding back refunds for student loans or child support, but HSBC does it for a much broader category of consumer debt, like credit card debt.

I think it is absolutely reprehensible. A single parent who made $9,000 for the year and is getting a refund of $3,000 (largely EIC) and is counting on that money.

People attempt to justify this practice, and also there seems to be a lot of prejudice against poor people. I've heard people say, well, the person does owe the debt . . Well, they don't owe it to HSBC. And they were not adequately informed in advance.

On the good side, I mean the fighting side and the advocate side, the California Attorney General said in Feb. '06: "are led to expect a loan, but instead find themselves in a collection proceeding"
http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1261

Also the IRS Taxpayer Advocate said in '07 (page 10): "a reasonable person may not expect a RAL agreement to provide the contracting bank with authority to act as a debt collector for a third party bank"
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/2007_obj ... _final.pdf

Now, it is rare. Maybe 1 out of 100 people. But you've got to let people know, even though people don't know and don't want to hear it. They just want to know if they're approved for the loan or not. We're selling simplicity and then adding complications.

I have experimented with underlining parts of the paper work in blue ink.

I have experimented with saying, ' . . . so if you owe HSBC, or any of their subsidiaries . . . ' That's not strictly true, but at least it's something people can bite into. It gets them thinking. This is to be expected. The third party aspect is just weird (although apparently profitable, and Block doesn't care enough about their clients to fight the bank in this regard)

That is, I have risked my job for my clients (since it's only a temporary job anyway, it gives you a certain sense of freedom!)

I know I have gone on a little while. This is a passionate topic for me. I have worked at Block for three years. I have worked at one other place which I don't wish to mention as it might make me too recognizable. I have not worked at Liberty. But I can't imagine Liberty would be all that different. Maybe it could be.

Two clients I'm fairly sure have been cross-collected on, but each year you have kind of a grave yard of lost returns, maybe a dozen per preparer where nothing has happened.

My fellow tax preparers, care about the client right in front of them, but these more abstract issues . . . this is something I have wrestled with ever since elementary school when they showed us films on pollution and no one else seemed to care. And the teacher did not lead us in discussion.

I still don't fully understand it. Part of it is not fully believing something merely written on a piece of paper. In the Block office, at various times, I have looked up as much as I can on the Internet on cross-collection. I am out of the closet as far as being an advocate for my clients.

The part with environment protections, where people are seeing actual pictures and still don't seem to care, I still don't get that. (The films were too long maybe, the attention of children wandered, or it was too preachy, or adult language, I could follow it, other people couldn't, I guess I've always had formidable verbal skills, just wish I could make some money at it)

Okay, accept people just as they are.

And, most of all, accept myself, just as I am right now.

There's a question of how broadly this debt collection goes. The IRS Taxpayer Advocate in the paper cited above assumes that it's only previous RALs banks cross-collect for. And that seems to be the most common assumption. However, the statement we ask clients to sign is much broader:

. . . MAY RESULT IN ME REPAYING DEBT, EVEN IF THE ENTITY TO WHOM I OWE SUCH DEBT IS PREVENTED BY LAW FROM BRINGING A LAWSUIT . . .