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A comment about junior staff: This is not part of some sinister scheme but indeed the number of juniors is quite pronounced because the low level work involves

A comment about junior staff: This is not part of some sinister scheme but indeed the number of juniors is quite pronounced because the low level work involves a lot of small work off someone else's prior work. You dont need any technical knowledge to do it. We are talking about check the signature is there, the number in the excel agrees with the pdf etc. Im sure it can be time consuming but it needs to be done. Naturally , there are poeple setting the guidance on the work itself i.e. which signature should be found, and where you should document it. But those jobs are very limited. Thats why their project teams are so tilted towards juniors. Simply put, most of the work available is grunt work. A construction job needs 1 architect, 1 engineer, and many laborers. Its not very different here. There is a mixed bag of talent in those ranks. There is nothing wrong with staffing projects accordingly. The blame on juniors, when it hapoens, is a escapism which should be easily disarmed by anyone knowing what they are doing. This hierarchy is true for most audit firms. This may not apply to the consulting arms. The product sold is not a miracle drug. People understand those with talent are setting the steps to be performed and are the sleuths with the hound nose for fraud. Clients are paying paying for that talent and the experience.

buran77 5y ago
> Its not very different here. It's very different here. On paper those certifications junior auditors get make the difference between "guy with hammer" and "engineer". These juniors are sent in as capable auditors as soon as they get those certifications pinned to their chests. At best they have a lead auditor checking up some of their work. Very few builders intend to use "guy with hammer" as an architect or engineer with the purpose of introducing flaws in the result. While in audit it happens in so many cases because the audit report more often than not is intended to miss on several findings under the cover of "junior mistake" if ever caught.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  This is like saying that people with mechanical engineering degrees should be let loose on jet engine repair, or freshly minted doctors should do fellowship with zero ssupervision. Book knowledge != real world skills
mschuster91 5y ago
> We are talking about check the signature is there, the number in the excel agrees with the pdf etc. Im sure it can be time consuming but it needs to be done. No, it not needs to be done. This kind of job is literally what was defined as a "bullshit job" - any decent computer-first designed workflow would not need a human be involved for such crap at all. The problem is that minimum wages are too low, so companies don't have an incentive to spend money on introducing efficient, fully IT-centered processes... after all, why spend millions of dollars on a risky IT project when you can hire people for that?
- germanier 5y ago
  You can try to convince the rest of the world to follow your efficient process. Until you succeed at that you need humans at the interface to other organizations.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  The financial auditor career predates the creation of the stock exchange, predates ERISA by several decades, and predates the regulatory requirement of mandatory independent audits for public companies. This would suggest that, if the profession existed before it became a regulatory requirement, then there was a need for the profession. If many are willing to pay for the job, then by definition, the career cannot be bs. Money speaks louder than words. Now if the current job has become a frankestein of its former self, that is an issue (or those unnatural parts can be said to be bs), but that does not mean that the practice itself is BS.
appleiigs 5y ago
> People understand those with talent are setting the steps to be performed and are the sleuths with the hound nose for fraud. Clients are paying paying for that talent and the experience. This is too generous. The talent and experience didn’t prevent 1,100 of their own people from cheating. They didn’t prevent Enron, Bernie Madoff. “The guy with hammer” eventually gets promoted to Manager or Partner and then continues to see everything as a nail. But the hammer in this case is bunch of checkboxes. It’s incredible to see in my organization that Internal Audit now has some responsibility reviewing corporate internet security. Auditors running around with CISSP certificates. The result is a bunch of checkboxes. The auditor report on financial statements is now just a required check box without meaning. The hound noses for fraud are now the active investors, which try to untangle the obfuscated financial statements. When was the last time you saw anyone use Net Income as a indicator. Everyone tries to undo the accounting adjustments and look at EBITDA.

buran77 5y ago

> Its not very different here. It's very different here. On paper those certifications junior auditors get make the difference between "guy with hammer" and "engineer". These juniors are sent in as capable auditors as soon as they get those certifications pinned to their chests. At best they have a lead auditor checking up some of their work. Very few builders intend to use "guy with hammer" as an architect or engineer with the purpose of introducing flaws in the result. While in audit it happens in so many cases because the audit report more often than not is intended to miss on several findings under the cover of "junior mistake" if ever caught.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
This is like saying that people with mechanical engineering degrees should be let loose on jet engine repair, or freshly minted doctors should do fellowship with zero ssupervision. Book knowledge != real world skills

mschuster91 5y ago

> We are talking about check the signature is there, the number in the excel agrees with the pdf etc. Im sure it can be time consuming but it needs to be done. No, it not needs to be done. This kind of job is literally what was defined as a "bullshit job" - any decent computer-first designed workflow would not need a human be involved for such crap at all. The problem is that minimum wages are too low, so companies don't have an incentive to spend money on introducing efficient, fully IT-centered processes... after all, why spend millions of dollars on a risky IT project when you can hire people for that?

germanier 5y ago
You can try to convince the rest of the world to follow your efficient process. Until you succeed at that you need humans at the interface to other organizations.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
The financial auditor career predates the creation of the stock exchange, predates ERISA by several decades, and predates the regulatory requirement of mandatory independent audits for public companies. This would suggest that, if the profession existed before it became a regulatory requirement, then there was a need for the profession. If many are willing to pay for the job, then by definition, the career cannot be bs. Money speaks louder than words. Now if the current job has become a frankestein of its former self, that is an issue (or those unnatural parts can be said to be bs), but that does not mean that the practice itself is BS.

appleiigs 5y ago

> People understand those with talent are setting the steps to be performed and are the sleuths with the hound nose for fraud. Clients are paying paying for that talent and the experience. This is too generous. The talent and experience didn’t prevent 1,100 of their own people from cheating. They didn’t prevent Enron, Bernie Madoff. “The guy with hammer” eventually gets promoted to Manager or Partner and then continues to see everything as a nail. But the hammer in this case is bunch of checkboxes. It’s incredible to see in my organization that Internal Audit now has some responsibility reviewing corporate internet security. Auditors running around with CISSP certificates. The result is a bunch of checkboxes. The auditor report on financial statements is now just a required check box without meaning. The hound noses for fraud are now the active investors, which try to untangle the obfuscated financial statements. When was the last time you saw anyone use Net Income as a indicator. Everyone tries to undo the accounting adjustments and look at EBITDA.