Accounting jobs have such low compensation

[Anonymous]

I'm a CPA with 25 years of experience. I find that accounting jobs want a lot of experience, overtime, technical skills, meet deadlines, give high responsibility for items that are important to the company's operations like insurance, taxes, and audits for banks. But they DO NOT want to pay for any of these responsibilities or skills! Jobs at the Controller or Assistant Controller level are in the low $100K's. And these jobs have multiple direct reports! These are smaller companies which is what I'd prefer. When I worked at large publicly traded companies 20 years ago, I made over $100K in senior accounting positions with no direct reports. Has inflation passed the accounting profession by? Am I just looking in the wrong places? A recruiter called me for a job that was responsible for everything in the office for four separate LLC's including payroll and it was paying $125K. That's just too low for that level of responsibility.

[Anonymous]

Smaller companies pay people who are not core to the business less. If you are developing, producing or selling the product, they are going to pay as little as the can get away with.

[Anonymous]

This has to be a troll. Why aren't you Chief Accounting officer by now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Smaller companies pay people who are not core to the business less. If you are developing, producing or selling the product, they are going to pay as little as the can get away with.

This. Just like for software engineers at other companies, they are cost center not core to the business
Get job at an accounting firm

[Anonymous]

Go to a bigger company. When I was an accounting manager at a big company ~15 years ago, I was making 130-140k.

[Anonymous]

You need to go in-house at a publicly listed company, mid-size bank (or larger), Big 4, or federal government at a FIRREA agency.

Chief Accountant is one step away from CFO.

[Anonymous]

It's because you are at a small company.

[Anonymous]

This is similar to, say, civil engineering.

If you are an employee at a small firm it's just impossible to earn a high salary from septic system design, small subdivisions, municipal road work.

Sector (e.g., oil & gas, aerospace) and size of firm have more to do with compensation than your occupation does.

[Anonymous]

Because we CPAs are overhead. Which is why I tell people not to go into our field.

[Anonymous]

You were supposed to build your client base when you worked in Big 8. Then as a manager you should have had 1 or 2 primary clients. Then around the time you made sr mgr, you should have been recruited for an in house role by your client.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, if you don’t want to be paid like a cost center, move to a company where you aren’t a cost center. Namely an accounting firm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Smaller companies pay people who are not core to the business less. If you are developing, producing or selling the product, they are going to pay as little as the can get away with.

Is there a “NOT” missing here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a CPA with 25 years of experience. I find that accounting jobs want a lot of experience, overtime, technical skills, meet deadlines, give high responsibility for items that are important to the company's operations like insurance, taxes, and audits for banks. But they DO NOT want to pay for any of these responsibilities or skills! Jobs at the Controller or Assistant Controller level are in the low $100K's. And these jobs have multiple direct reports! These are smaller companies which is what I'd prefer. When I worked at large publicly traded companies 20 years ago, I made over $100K in senior accounting positions with no direct reports. Has inflation passed the accounting profession by? Am I just looking in the wrong places? A recruiter called me for a job that was responsible for everything in the office for four separate LLC's including payroll and it was paying $125K. That's just too low for that level of responsibility.

You should have stayed at large publicly traded companies. You would be making 300k+ by now.
Small companies pay less.