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The Big 4 Transparency Newsletter is 1 year old, and there are now 5,000 of you subscribed!

I’m getting a little sentimental about this whole journey. This newsletter covers the origin story of Big 4 Transparency, why salary transparency is important, and what I hope this movement accomplishes.

The people subscribing and coming to the website are the real MVPs in my eyes. But our supportive sponsors also deserve a moment of glory

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What’s the origin story of Big 4 Transparency?

I spent a few years at a Big 4 firm, and went in thinking I had just made it big. I thought that all this hard work would immediately be rewarded, and as soon as I got my full time offer, or my CPA, I’d be all set with the big salary to match the long hours. When I got my full time offer those high hopes were popped like a balloon. I couldn’t believe it and I felt like I’d been duped. All this work for less than $50k? (I’m in Canada, salaries are lower here). I couldn’t believe it, and started talking to others at the firms around me. I found out we were being offered the lowest of all the firms in the city. I brought it up to the partner I worked most closely with, and to my surprise, he was just as stunned as me that we were so far below market. The firm didn’t even know they were underpaying us. He asked if I could gather concrete numbers from the other local firms, so I did. As a result of this, my whole cohort got a raise, bringing us to market with the others. That’s when I realized how crucial information on salaries was. First of all, my shock and disappointment could have been avoided if I just knew what I was signing myself up for. Second of all, I managed to get a meaningful salary increase for my whole cohort just by gathering some information. The firm wasn’t even doing this intentionally, they literally didn’t know.

So that’s where the idea was born and when I realized the value of access to salary information. I hope this can be a valuable resource to you all throughout your careers.

Cool story, but why does salary transparency even matter?

• It allows for more informed career planning: Nothing breaks my heart more than the posts I see about people who regret becoming a CPA. It’s not an easy journey, but I’m quite happy I did it. There’s a lot of bitterness in this industry, and I believe that if people knew the details of what they’re signing up for, there would be less hard feelings down the line. There’s an upside to a career in this field, it’s also just easy to lose sight of it early on in your career.

• Fair and equitable salaries: You hear about pay equity issues a lot in the news, but it probably doesn’t feel real until you’ve seen it first hand. I have a cousin who found out as part of a national women’s day event that she was being paid substantially less than her male coworkers because she hadn’t negotiated as much as they had at each of her promotion cycles. Knowing what others around you are making, and having that information be open and accessible to all is an important step in preventing this from happening.

• Increased competition: Ultimately, I think a lot of what drives salary growth is increased competition. There’s a shortage of accounting talent out there, but many firms and professionals in the field do not know the market value of accounting talent, so they end up having unreasonable salary expectations. The firms might end up sending out offers that are far too low and be unable to find talent, or a professional might short change themselves when giving their desired salary range in an interview process. Better data on salaries makes for a more competitive market where everyone involved can more accurately determine what is reasonable.

This all sound pretty nice, how do we get there? Simply put, the desired outcome of Big 4 Transparency is to create a more efficient market in the accounting industry by minimizing information asymmetry. Employees need to know what they should be valuing their experience and knowledge at. Employers should know the going rate for talent so they can have reasonable internal expectations.

How do we get there? Well you play a huge part in this. If you could spread the word about Big 4 Transparency that’d be excellent. More data means more people find the answers they’re looking for, and with greater certainty. If you’d rather do something else, then just having conversations and openly discussing pay with others in the workplace makes a difference as well.

It’s not just pay transparency though, we want to pay you to find your next job.

There’s a new section on the website where we’re partnering with some top recruiters. You fill in the criteria for the type of role you’d be interested in hearing about and get added to a private list. External recruiters (i.e., not your employer) can contact you for roles that meet your criteria, but only for those roles.

The best part? We cut you in on the recruitment fee. Any successful placement will land you $1,000 in your pocket on top of whatever signing bonus you may be able to negotiate.

Sounds good? Yeah it does, check it out here.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being a part of this project and thank you for reading along. And from the bottom of this email, please treat yourself to a coffee on me. Here are 3 codes to Starbucks gift cards. It’s first-come, first-serve as a thank you to folks reading this whole thing. Please don’t redeem more than 1.

1. 6215747857639805 | CODE: 94584011

2. 6215747857656852 | CODE: 63003339

3. 6215747857674523 | CODE: 63380026

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