NOT the place to grow your professional career
Pros
remote working (but at an expense)
Cons
1. Micromanaging - remote staff are forced to download app which focuses on tracking activities of staff (by mouse movement and keyboard activity) & screenshots of laptop are taken every 10 minutes. Hence, there are concerns of privacy if you’re using personal laptops (but management does not care); some managers like to give time deadline (i.e. must report back by certain timing) which puts stress on staff 2. Management likes to dwell on minor things 3. Terrible job planning - job schedule is only for show. Engagements are assigned to staff last minute and expects them to complete within unreasonable timeline. OT is worst than my previous big 4 company I worked at. Had to juggle multiple engagements AT ONCE. 4. Management likes to make promises with client on the completion of audit without even discussing with the team in charge. And when unable to complete, management will start blaming the staff and likes to use excuses such as clients are nice (which are seriously IRRELEVANT for the completion of audit). 5. No clear distinctions between junior and senior levels. 6. Work is done in disorganized way - as long as can get report out and get money from client with no regards WHATSOEVER for the audit work done. Lack of consistency of audit procedures across different engagements in this company. No proper guidance for audit procedures to be performed (no sample selection basis, etc). 7. MAJORITY of their clients are unqualified - have to deal with clients who lack basic accounting knowledge and making it hard to perform the audit, and causing further delays. Dealt with clients with managerial role but with 0 accounting knowledge. 8. Management keeps accepting more clients but cannot even do simple assessment whether enough resources or not - putting pressures on staff. 9. Working with foreign clients - be prepared to have meetings outside of working hours. 10. For engagements which have appointed NLA as the bookkeeper - you have to deal with the bookkeeper who is not responsive to calls/texts, and lacks knowledge on simple double entries and therefore, messing up client’s accounts even further and making the audit complicated. 11. Lack of training for staff - on-site staff are clueless, lack of knowledge 12. No benefits whatsoever (except KPI) - no bonus, no medical claims, annual leave only 14 days. 13. Have to follow Singapore public holidays (when my state has even more PH). 14. Management likes to simply change policies according to their liking. So whatever you’ve been told during interview, don’t expect it to stay the same. 15. Dealing with remote managers who are NOT RESPONSIVE to teams/whatsapp/call thereby delaying the audit process and has the audacity to blame it on the staff. And sometimes they are not helpful when staff is complaining of work overload. They would either just say ‘no staff currently available’ or they would ask you to send email to top management to prove that you are really overloaded with work. 16. Late salary payment - always received 6 days after month end. 17. Late completion of engagements past deadline - beware of risks of management asking staff to bear the penalty. 18. If you are from big 4 companies, joining this firm is a downgrade to yourself. 19. Endless meetings with management / clients - lack of time to even focus on real audit work. 20. HIGH staff turnover
