The Top Firms Mapped out For You on Compensation, Hours and Job Satisfaction

A few weeks back, we rolled out a new page on Big 4 Transparency: Firm Insights.
This was meant to give you a new way to view the data that we collect so you could compare top firms across a variety of metrics. The idea came from wanting to see if the employees at CBIZ would benefit or be disadvantaged from a deal that would effectively make them Grant Thornton employees. And the good news here, is that it looks like this may be a good thing overall for the employees at CBIZ.

But that page can be a little overwhelming to parse through, and so we’ve distilled the highlights for you into one chart.

There’s no sponsor lined up for this edition of the newsletter, but there is a cause I care about, which is making accounting better for everyone. Every year, Tri-Merit and some collaborators including Big 4 Transparency work on a survey around what drives career satisfaction for accountants. This is presented at Bridging the Gap and published broadly to help get some key messages across to firms on how to be better employers.

It dives into more detail than what we already collect at Big 4 Transparency, and is genuinely not a money-making initiative, its just a good way to promote better practices at firms. If you want to take 5 minutes to help out and have your voice heard, that’d be awesome: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KK7BG4

Okay! Now for the goods. Basically we took firms with large enough sample sizes (and a few with smaller sample sizes but that were really interesting phenomenons) and charted them out on a matrix comparing how compensation compared to the market when normalized for cost of labour variance (to not have all the NYC and California firms just look like they pay way above market) and how self-reported weekly hours worked compared to the market as well. We also colour coded them to avoid having a 3D matrix to represent job satisfaction responses at that firm.

A few things I found really interesting which are repeats from the annual “Best and the Rest” rankings we did at the start of the year, but Citrin Cooperman seems to be leading on the blend of strong compensation relative to the market, along with lower hours worked than other firms while having really low job satisfaction. Plante Moran didn’t do well on compensation and hours, but ranked really high on job satisfaction which hints at culture being a driving factor for overall job satisfaction at these firms.

Among the Big 4, they all had some tradeoffs, but KPMG ranked the best of the 4 in terms of making it furthest into the upper right quadrant. If you check out the firm insights page, there is some difference in there as well across different service lines, with Deloitte for example clearly investing more in comp for their consulting and advisory service lines than in Tax and Audit.

Looking into the most recent M&A deal to make major headlines as well, its cool to compare CBIZ and Grant Thornton when assessing whether this deal is a good thing or a bad things for folks at CBIZ. If we look at CBIZ, they’re in the lower left quadrant with medium job satisfaction, and are being acquired by a firm in the upper right quadrant with high satisfaction relative to its peers. So assuming there isn’t too much hassle as part of the acquisition, CBIZ employees get the same treatment as Grant Thornton, and culture is retained at the firm, I’d venture to say that this deal might be a good thing for people working at CBIZ as a general rule.

Big 4 Transparency is leaning more into recruiting, and it’s being built entirely based on how I would have liked recruiting to work when I was at the Big 4 firms.

No calls that are a waste of everyone’s timing trying to push you into a role you have no interest in.

Instead, you can opt to have a call where I personally run you through what you should be demanding in terms of compensation should you choose to make the jump or not.

We only contact you about roles that fit your criteria for what you’d be interested in discussing, AND if we place you, you get $1,000 as a thank-you for working with us once you make it past the 3 month mark.

It takes 2 minutes to fill out the form at https://www.big4transparency.com/talent-pool, and then you’re in. Simple as that. The more you share about your interests, the better the chances we get it right, and the more real you are about compensation, the higher the odds you’ll get a match but that’s totally up to you. The desired compensation figure you enter is NOT shared with the hiring firms, it’s just there so we can assess if the firm’s role meets your expectations.

Here are a few roles we’re actively working on.

• Tax Manager / Senior Manager - independent, rapidly growing firm in Philadelphia

• Business Tax Manager / Senior Manager / Director - Chicago

• Advisory Manager / Senior Manager - Chicago (open to audit-to-advisory pivots)

• Tax Senior - Milwaukee

• Tax Senior - Dallas

• Audit Manager - Houston

• Tax Manager - Houston

• Tax Manager - Irving / Los Angeles

• Tax Manager (UltraTax experience) - Remote, US

• Senior Partnership Tax Manager - Remote, US

• HNW Tax Manager / Senior Manager - Boston or Bedford, NH

• Generalist Tax Manager - Remote, US

• CAS Manager - Remote, US

• Head of CAS - Remote, US

• COO / Head of Delivery - Remote, US
  

• Tax Manager - Ottawa

• Tax Staff - Ottawa

• Audit Manager - Remote, Canada

• Tax Manager - Remote, Canada

Don't see your match yet? Join the talent pool anyway. We'll reach out when the right one comes along, and only when it's actually worth your time.

Check out the Big 4 Transparency Talent Pool!