Oh fuck. I work in credit & collections. This hits home.
Does anyone know if credit & collections will count towards experience for the chater? or should I get the hacksaw out now?..
don’t delete this thread, let people read some wise words on this debate.
I’m not suggesting that. I posted twice by accident and deleted the second one…
I think that the 95/5 distinction is important. if I had been able to get into the Harvard MBA program, I wouldn’t have gotten my CPA license. For that top-tier MBA 5%, there are job opportunities that simply aren’t available to the bottom 95%.
I work in the accounting department of a large financial services organization. There are proably ~150 or 200 “financial analysts” that work at the company. My sense is that most of those jobs ar pretty similar to the accounting jobs at the same level. You are sitting in a cube working with Excel and a couple of other software packages like SAP/ PeopleSoft and Essbase/Cognos/Business Objects. Some of the analyst jobs are definitely more interesting than the accounting jobs, but it isn’t most of them in my opinion. And some are worse. Many of the financial analysts are CPA’s. A CPA license helps in most of those jobs in terms of both getting the job and doing well in it. On the accounting side, unless it is a new college graduate, all recent hires have been CPA’s (except one that had very specific experience in a niche area).
I have worked in other companies (primarily telecommunications) with similar expereinces. This is more general corporate America rather than Wall Strreet. Just my take and experience.
i didn’t feel like I fit in with the big 4 accounting culture at all. Finance all the way! (For me at least)
Great insight. Thanks for sharing. I’m going to CPA path after passing CFA level one. I like financial analyst role and love the excel work. But I have 4 years of software development experience in billing and invoicing products. Do you think it is possible to leverage it after 5-7 years down the line?
Keep this thread on the top!
I feel CPAs rule in USA also like it is here in India, CAs rule in all finance profiles barring Investment banking or Advisory roles but here also CAs are considerable in numbers.
Why certified accountants are credited so much than any CFA in most of case?
I think CFA related finance field has no perfect sciences, be it volatility calculations, interest rate prediction, etc etc…All calculations are fallible and can differ a lot.
However it is a fact that, entrepreneurial abilities of CFAs are higher than any accountant because an accountant is a person who directs how to do things and CFA is person who has to play his shots between the slightest gap! 
…
As per psychology there is very low correlation between intelligence and creativity. Creative person can be intelligent but all creative persons are not intelligent. Intelligence cannot be developed but creativity can be developed over the time span.
I generally agree with the OP. I was miserable while working in audit at a Big 4 firm. The vast majority of the work was mind-numbing and non-value added. However, for a very large percentage of college graduates, working in audit is a great career path. Especially if one has an affinity for accounting.
I now work in PE, which I’d describe as a mixture of IBD and strategy consulting work, and I absolutely love it compared to what I was doing in audit. I fcking hated it. As I look back on it, I am so much happier now relative to when I was working in audit.
But, like the OP said, attractive jobs in financial sectors like IBD, PE, HF, etc. are hard to come by. I’d probably hate being a credit analyst or treasury analyst just as much as I hated being an auditor.
This thread should be pinned on top for the future generation of CFA aspirants.
Unfortunately, a lot aren’t.
To their disadvantage.
^I’m interested. Call me.
201-867-5309
Ask for Jenny.
You are already a Charterholder…and by the way…who is jenny?