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> The misconduct mostly involved junior assurance staff, who shared online documents containing answers to internal assessments, it said. This is some major BS

> The misconduct mostly involved junior assurance staff, who shared online documents containing answers to internal assessments, it said. This is some major BS right here. "The rogue engineer", "the junior staff", etc. I've seen it more times than I can count, this was organized by management because with all those certifications junior staff can be sold as experienced. I've seen such "juniors" not being able to understand even the language used in a meeting despite ostensibly being the most qualified people in the room. Audit is the area in which this happens most of the time because it's where all the legitimacy and plausible deniability come from. And I know all major EU institutions tried this at least once in their existence: put junior auditor staff with creatively obtained certifications on what were supposed to be senior positions then when some bubble burst in the media everything was spun with the same wording as above. Just some misconduct of junior staff with no knowledge or involvement of senior management (I'd wager that as we speak ~80% of auditing staff in all EU institutions is junior or inexperienced staff). In reality this happens either to extract more money for low value individuals or to provide ass covering for senior management, boards, presidents, and CEOs, by giving them the possibility to say their best intentions and actions were derailed by a rookie mistake from an inexperienced employee.

vba616 5y ago
>This is some major BS right here You're right, but it's a shame to guess when the PCAOB release made it ultra-clear: "Improper sharing of training test answers occurred among junior staff, managers, directors, and partners at the Firm"
mschuster91 5y ago
> I'd wager that as we speak ~80% of auditing staff in all EU institutions is junior or inexperienced staff Given that the public service sector tends to pay shit, I'd tend to agree with you - and that worldwide, not just the EU. Not really surprising that any kind of major government-run project ends up in some form of clusterfuck - be it nuclear plants, major IT overhauls, construction of new roads or railroads, construction in general... wherever the erosion of the tax base following the rise of neo-liberalism hit, in-house expert staff able to exercise oversight of projects was the first to be let go and replaced by externally hired staff.
- buran77 5y ago
  > public service sector tends to pay shit Oh this is certainly not that. Plenty of those institutions pay more than any reasonable job in the private sector and yet audit departments usually stand out by being filled with juniors to a much higher degree than others. The ECA might actually be the exception, these days I wouldn't know. Imagine if the president of any such institution would be outed in the media for knowing about something critical which needed action as highlighted by an audit report but swept it under the rug. Being able to turn the narrative from "maliciousness at highest levels" to "mistake/incompetence at low levels" makes all the difference. Some of these institutions paid juniors (freshmen with a couple of years of audit, or senior employees but with no auditing experience) close to 5 figures in net monthly salary just for the benefit of having this plausible cover of "junior mistake". For anyone not familiar with the European job market that's a lot, especially for a person implicitly tasked with doing a superficial job.
- Beldin 5y ago
  > Given that the public service sector tends to pay shit, I'd tend to agree with you If you work for the EU institutions, first of all your remuneration used to be(1) good, esp. for not northwestern EU countries. Secondly, your tax exempt on certain things such as buying a house or car. Stuff like that adds up. (1) until about 10-12 years ago; I think it became less, but still not bad. I remember looking at a position once that half-matche me; salary was about double my then-current salary (which itself was quite fine). It might be better in industry, but it's far from bad in the EU institutions.
rmbyrro 5y ago
We need to replace auditors with trustless blockchain. And launch a PwCoin ICO. To the dedicated anti-crypto downvoters out there: will you consider appreciating the sarcasm, please?
- phantomathkg 5y ago
  The blockchain will still need to be audited. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    Just use Github Autopilot AI to audit the code!
- NeutralForest 5y ago
  Yes, with trustless IoT oracles validating the accounts, brilliant!
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    AI-powered oracles visually capable of reading balance sheets and spotting frauds with 99.999% accuracy. Now that's brilliant!

vba616 5y ago

>This is some major BS right here You're right, but it's a shame to guess when the PCAOB release made it ultra-clear: "Improper sharing of training test answers occurred among junior staff, managers, directors, and partners at the Firm"

mschuster91 5y ago

> I'd wager that as we speak ~80% of auditing staff in all EU institutions is junior or inexperienced staff Given that the public service sector tends to pay shit, I'd tend to agree with you - and that worldwide, not just the EU. Not really surprising that any kind of major government-run project ends up in some form of clusterfuck - be it nuclear plants, major IT overhauls, construction of new roads or railroads, construction in general... wherever the erosion of the tax base following the rise of neo-liberalism hit, in-house expert staff able to exercise oversight of projects was the first to be let go and replaced by externally hired staff.

buran77 5y ago
> public service sector tends to pay shit Oh this is certainly not that. Plenty of those institutions pay more than any reasonable job in the private sector and yet audit departments usually stand out by being filled with juniors to a much higher degree than others. The ECA might actually be the exception, these days I wouldn't know. Imagine if the president of any such institution would be outed in the media for knowing about something critical which needed action as highlighted by an audit report but swept it under the rug. Being able to turn the narrative from "maliciousness at highest levels" to "mistake/incompetence at low levels" makes all the difference. Some of these institutions paid juniors (freshmen with a couple of years of audit, or senior employees but with no auditing experience) close to 5 figures in net monthly salary just for the benefit of having this plausible cover of "junior mistake". For anyone not familiar with the European job market that's a lot, especially for a person implicitly tasked with doing a superficial job.
Beldin 5y ago
> Given that the public service sector tends to pay shit, I'd tend to agree with you If you work for the EU institutions, first of all your remuneration used to be(1) good, esp. for not northwestern EU countries. Secondly, your tax exempt on certain things such as buying a house or car. Stuff like that adds up. (1) until about 10-12 years ago; I think it became less, but still not bad. I remember looking at a position once that half-matche me; salary was about double my then-current salary (which itself was quite fine). It might be better in industry, but it's far from bad in the EU institutions.

rmbyrro 5y ago

We need to replace auditors with trustless blockchain. And launch a PwCoin ICO. To the dedicated anti-crypto downvoters out there: will you consider appreciating the sarcasm, please?

phantomathkg 5y ago
The blockchain will still need to be audited. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  Just use Github Autopilot AI to audit the code!
NeutralForest 5y ago
Yes, with trustless IoT oracles validating the accounts, brilliant!
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  AI-powered oracles visually capable of reading balance sheets and spotting frauds with 99.999% accuracy. Now that's brilliant!