Bad idea man. As an ex-auditor I can tell you… accounting is dog$hit
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Suggest you talk to people in tech sector in Canda and consider it an option.
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What did you decide AbhiJ? What was the outcome? have you moved to canada?
as (another) former auditor, size is important for accountancy firms. If you work for firms the size of KPMG, some of your clients will be huge. If you hang out your own shingle, what do you see yourself doing? You’re not going to be auditing Amazon or GM. If you’re lucky, you’ll be doing taxes for super-rich people. If you’re less lucky, you’ll be doing the accounts for the local convenience store and laundromat.
I was only an auditor for a year, but I remember being told that whenever they got a new client, the first year’s audit was always done at a loss because they had to learn how the client company worked etc. Subsequent years would be less work as they could just dig out the files they had prepared in the first year
And at least at the firm I worked for, it seemed that many are called but few are chosen, so to speak. There was a pyramid structure which I assume is normal, with very very few people making it to the top of the pyramid as partner. Those that didn’t make it to partner were basically kicked out of the firm and either got jobs at the firms they’d been auditing or went to smaller accountancy firms.
If you’re a “quantitative type of person,” have you considered being a quant? You’d likely need something like a MFE (masters of financial engineering, though the name varies greatly from school to school) and would spend most of your time programming.
well, it depends upon your career goals, to be honest CFA and CPA titles cannot be compared apple-to-apple because they represent qualification in two different sub-sectors within the general accounting and finance field.
CPA is more focussed towards accounting whereas CFA is for those who are more interested in finance and investment and looking for a career as equity analysts, fund managers the first and foremost consideration is the relevance to your career. Though if you take time as a factor then CPA has more restrictive education and experience requirement, but once you get qualified, the process is much faster when CFA is compared it usually takes more time to complete.
You can also opt for a finance course in Canadain parallel that would also help you make your profile stronger as well as land into a finace job.
Agreed. You can finish CPA much faster than CFA (eg within a year). It is computer-based vs handwriting, and have flexibility in choosing test date compared to CFA