背景介紹：早前，有香港的CPA在社交平臺控訴自己的血淚職場生涯，該人士發表了《絕對不要入行CPA會計師的5個原因》。一位曾經在香港德勤工作的過的四大審計師對該人士的文章進行了回應。

Dear SJ:

Hi, I have just read your article online and I worked in Deloitte as a Audit Senior before departure from DTT. I agree with some of the points in the article but disagree the most on the conclusion.

1) 食鐘 － 有得做但無糧出
– For the first paragraph, I tend to disagree on staff turnover affecting the manpower on fieldwork. I agree that follow up will be affected but definitely not during fieldwork as long as the job recovery rate is reasonable, manager will ensure enough staff for fieldwork (or in accordance with the said recovery rate). But definitely OT charge is way less than your actual OT time, ie. work till 3am and only 3 hours OT for weekday (which is norm)

Also, good manager (which you describe in the article) will allocate enough OT for the staff but will get questioned by the capacity. Even though I did not promote to manager at the end in DTT, from what my batchmates who promoted, it does not exactly work that way. If staff do not get reasonable amount of OT based on the planned recovery rate, manager will also get questioned by partner.

And yes, I have seen some manager asking staff to leave before 12am, so as not to claim taxi expenses. But that is only 1 or 2 managers in my whole group. All other managers either let you stay and claim taxi or ask you to leave by dinner. (Of cause you have to send in your working papers on time and it is not depending on job, it is more depending on manager style)

2) 凌晨5點放工，訓2個鐘，8點半準時返工
– I saw that memo in real person in 37/F (if I remember correctly), and the reply was posted before lunch time, and taken off in the afternoon and created some rumors flying around the audit groups. I heard the notice was not posted by a audit partner but from the directors/partners from other functions in DTT.

In general, if getting off at 3am – 6am, the normal back to office time is before 11am latest. (given that you have already sent the agreed working papers/reports for review). But that is only around 4-5 hours of sleep during weekday and I usually slept around 10 hours during weekend to compensate.

3) 無薪假返工是常識

– Disagree, because when we were taking QP exams, it was during our junior grade and junior usually do not need to follow up on job queries especially during leave for exam. I did not get scold by not checking emails during leave but I did turn my mobile phone on and sometimes, seniors will give me a call to ask some questions about the previous job. (not asking me to answer the Q from partner/manager directly)

When we get to senior, there are no more QP exams to take (because all have been passed) and of course you need to respond to emails during leave. I usually bring my laptop with me even for vacation and check email in hotel at night. It is acceptable practice and I think given the salary that DTT was offering back then, it was reasonable.

4) 老闆教你 釘書釘的規則

– Yes, I have met some managers/partners with unreasonable demand such as the staple direction must be consistent for papers, stick the post-it in the same direction and must be neat etc etc. meanwhile the deadline is tight and “wok bao” (鑊爆). But that is quite rare and as long as the manual working papers are filed in orders, managers couldn’t care less about it.

And the juniors also need to clear the “pork table” (豬肉檯) every night before leaving (we just put everything under the table so that it looks clean). But as for the senior partition, they care less so it is okay for the seniors.

5) 恐怖Job疊Job

– That is very true for ‘wokable’ colleagues. But that is very extreme, half of the batchmates are just normal people and usually in S1 grade (small jobs AIC), around 2-3 jobs at one time including fieldwork and follow ups. I remember I followed up 5 jobs the most during S1 but in S2/3, I was being listed co/large job AIC and less job over job follow up may be 2-3 jobs the most. And it is impossible for any staff to get idle, impossible unless the staff is underperforming and the firm is forcing him/her to leave DTT. Otherwise, no staff will get idle, even with normal performance.

Conclusion:

– During my junior grade, all of my batchmates always say our salary per hour is less than minimum wage requirement. That is true because our base was only HK$10k around back then. But when we got promoted, A2 grade was already $15k, S1 grade $20k and after 3 years with CPA qualitification in S2 grade, the normal salary was around $30k (even at $30k, more than half of my batchmates had left DTT already). And when I quit at S3, my salary was around $37k. (It’s the norm so I don’t mind sharing. now should be $40k?)

Given only 4 years of work experience, getting paid $37k per month was not bad. So we stopped complaining about low salary after S1 grade but started to say: very wok, no life, no work-life balance (partners always promote work-life balance with HR and it is totally BS). But if you study accounting, and going to start out in the accounting field, Big 4 is definitely a good option (beside MT in banks/ibanks) and the career prospect is much better than the ones without Big 4 backgrounds (2nd tier/local) to jump to the commercial field.

To conclude, either you don’t study accounting or you study accounting and get into Big 4 if you have no offer from banks for MT (the other option is getting into a big MNC as an assistant accountant but the promotion is slower).