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Warning: Shitty vent post, typed out hastily in a hotel somewhere in rural Australia.
Last Friday a good number of things happened at work that sent my anxiety levels through the roof, all of which were caused or exacerbated by the decentralised structure of public tax accounting, which features a system where one preparer works under a number of reviewers on different jobs (which can be anything from a tax return to a business activity statement to a tax planning task).
So the inciting incident for this cascade of bullshit is that I had booked five days of leave a good while ago, and I had followed the proper procedure by sending a leave form to my most direct superior that then got sent to the firm’s secretary for dissemination. But somehow one of my managers didn’t seem to know about this beforehand and was surprised the day before due to some kind of error in internal communication on the firm's end, at least that's what I was told when I asked about it, and as a result I had to perform emergency handovers of some tax returns I was working on one day before I went on leave (since this was the case, I have offered to assist periodically with work when I can make myself available). This has never occurred before and in all previous instances my superiors appeared to know I would be going on leave before I even had to inform them, but it appears I cannot rely on internal communication and will need to take things into my own hands in the future, despite any expectation to that effect never being communicated to me. Somehow I feel this issue is going to end up being placed on me in the end as the junior. “Doesn’t communicate well” or something.
In addition, I got bitched at by one of my managers that same day for dropping one of the 5000 balls I’ve been juggling - I forgot to send out a reminder email to a client for a business activity statement, while sidetracked with other extremely urgent work that had to be completed, and this meant the necessary client information arrived late. The lodgement date came due over my leave period, and he complained that he would now “have to” work on the client’s business activity statement in my stead, in spite of the fact that applying for an extension of the due date would have been an option. I consider this criticism to be rather hypocritical since just less than a month ago his own failure to sign and approve a lodgement email had resulted in this same client lodging an instalment activity statement two months past the due date, and the only reason why it got solved is because I noticed the issue; I suppose mistakes are only unacceptable when they're mine. Nevertheless I stayed at work four hours late that day just trying to placate him and getting the workpaper to at least a reviewable state, though why the firm couldn’t just ask for a due date extension from the ATO is unclear to me (requesting extensions is not uncommon at all; ostensibly the reason for not seeking extension in this case is not to jeopardise the payment plan the client has with the ATO, but if lodging an instalment activity statement two months late doesn’t jeopardise it, I seriously doubt this will either). He was also not happy that I “got to their tax compliance late”, meaning I deprioritised this client’s tax return in favour of meeting the year-end lodgement dates for other taxpayers. For the record that is a decision I fully stand by, since this client is nearly insolvent and I would prefer to prioritise clients that actually pay us and not ones who are in arrears for a year’s worth of billings.
I consider both of these to be prime examples of how the multiple reporting lines of public accounting firms really messes everything up. Firstly, you report to so many people that when one person doesn’t get tied into what you’re doing due to some breakdown in internal communication it ends up causing issues. Secondly, it misaligns incentives really badly - different clients are assigned to different managers that then get delegated to you, and while on a firm level it’s better to prioritise clients that actually do pay you as compared to clients whose status as a going concern is in serious question, on an individual-manager level everybody just wants you to get to their clients regardless of how much it makes sense at all because it personally affects them and how they are evaluated. I always see people saying that accounting is a “good job for autistic people” but frankly I just think it’s terrible, at least if you go into public. You need to communicate almost constantly with a revolving door of managers, reviewers and clients to make sure things don’t fall apart, and there are so many seemingly nonsensical aspects of the job that really only make sense once you start interpreting them through the lens of incentive structures. Yes, I am badly burned out and looking for exit opportunities.
Uh, why do you report to more than one person?
I used to be in this line of work, in the US. Here, every client has at the very least a partner (who earns the fees), a manager, a senior, and an associate staff (there are more levels of review for bigger clients).
There are plenty of each of those titles around the office. For a new client, the partner picks a manager he likes. The manager picks an available senior he likes. The senior recruits an associate. It’s all mixed and matched. So the number of bosses I had was # of clients I’m on (which was always several) times the average number of reviewers on each project.
None of the reviewers on any client coordinated with the others. You are expected to manage your deadlines and, somehow, know at least a week beforehand if you will miss one.
Consulting is very similar. You will have a line manager and then a number of different projects that have a project manager and various stakeholders that you're meant to talk to (including directly to clients for those projects). Sometimes the stakeholders of those projects are in other companies stacked 5 deep (and I mean 5 companies deep, each with their own hierarchies) before you get to the end client.
When going on leave, you're basically meant to tell everyone yourself that leave is happening. Do the procedure with your line manager, but email practically everyone you work with that you won't be available. Then fill out the outlook 'out of office' auto respond.
It's pretty exhausting. No, you can't trust anyone to do this for you. Most of the time your project managers are cc'd in on a lot of correspondence so if someone requests something from you they will step in and remind the stakeholder you are on leave and cover for you. But not always.
Why are there five companies between you and the end client? The day to day of consultants is a source of endless fascination to me because every explanation I've seen is some impossibly bizarre and incomprehensible thing like this.
Major Building projects are often structured under a EPCM (Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Management) model, and sometimes even in a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) arrangement.
This means you can have multiple organisations quickly spinning up a Joint Venture or other structure to deliver the entire project. This might consist of a public procurement organisation, along with a building consortium, an architectural company and an engineering company. In this case you would consider the public organisation to be the end client, but even they may be overseen by independent regulators for certain sectors (eg aviation or rail). Also the engineering or architectural company might subcontract out certain specialist disciplines (acoustic engineering, or landscape design) to other companies. So in some cases you can go: Independent regulator > Public Procurement organisation > Building conglomerate > Architectural Co > Engineering Co > Subcontracted Engineering Co. Due to contractual and other reasons (including individuals with controlling traits), every organization between you and the regulator may want you to line communicate through them rather than directly with any organisation above them. Also within any of these organisations as discussed there could be their own line chain of communication.
Now in practice you can normally talk directly to individuals across the project as long as you cc in relevant stakeholders, but sometimes, particularly when contracts and specifications are involved, things can be bogged down as every person in the chain wishes to review (and sometimes censor or otherwise modify) information provided by those below them.
Also, with mega projects there can be a ridiculous number of stakeholders that might presume you are available for the duration of a project that runs for 5+ years and attempt to contact you directly. This can be why some people refuse to put their mobile phone numbers in their email/Aconex signatures.
Now most of the time things don't go badly, but it has been known for people senior in the hierarchy to have a bad day due to things entirely outside of the control of people lower in the hierarchy and disproportionately escalate issues because they don't understand the systemic reasons for the issue existing in the first place. For a person at the bottom of the hierarchy, this can be very very stressful in some circumstances. Like if the Executive Project Manager Builder screams at an engineer that they are in breach of contract because the engineer didn't immediately provide a deliverable because the architectural firm above them hadn't actually authorised them to do the work, because Janice from Finance had gone on maternity leave.
There is so much more that could be written about this, but just understand that consulting runs into miscommunication issues all of the time, due to factors that are often outside of your control, even if you are pro-active with your communication.
Thanks. Ever think about if there's a better way? The natural impulse is to put everything under one roof but it seems there's too much here.
The Joint Ventures are meant to be putting things under the one roof (and they will literally do so sometimes with a shared Project Office). This is mainly cosmetic though as every individual organisation within the JV will consistently act in their own interest. Its common to see people from one part of the JV send through a deliverable that is meant to go to the end client that says 'no we aren't providing this thing that was clearly in the Master Specification because its outside of our scope' until they
get their skull bashed inhave things explained by a project manager somewhere in the chain that they need to present their deliverable as if they representing the JV.The short version is that better reporting structures and hierarchies could be made, but there are incentives against it. Having experience in major bids, there is massive pressure to quickly spin up a Joint Venture and divide the scope of work as soon as a tender is awarded so as best to meet delivery deadlines. This can cause massive confusion in communications at the start of a project as 'who is doing what' and 'what needs doing' is often unclear. Unclear communication channels and reporting hierarchies can persist long into the project, not helped by sub-organisations joining and leaving the project as their scopes are started and completed.
Also the usual financial and contractual incentives can create delay in communication and delivery. For instance, there is an incentive to be competitive on your company's individual bid for a scope of work. This might mean that you don't have much 'fat' in the fee, so to reduce costs you will limit the time you spend on the project (and will be responsible for to your internal line management). You will also not commence work on any part of a scope until a contract has been agreed. Even though the broader project itself may have hard deadlines coming up and a part of the scope has been overlooked and a variation needs to be negotiated
and builders are notoriously tight fisted and wish to waste time arguing with architects, engineers and consultants that something is within their prior scope even though it isn't.There isn't really a way around these issues. It can be common for some correspondence or deliverable transmittals to have over 100 recipients, leading to inbox hell which is its own problem as things get lost in the noise. It was also common to have to remind senior stakeholders that I had already responded or completed a task
and here are the attached meeting minutes for the meetings which they chaired six months ago and three months ago where I discussed and resolved the issue at lengthafter being accused of indolence.tldr; Haven't really found a better way to deal with this except perhaps to push for a single point of contact for communication, but that just plain doesn't work on larger projects.
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