Hey everyone, I started as an first year associate last fall, and it hasn’t been a great experience so far.
At the start I was unassigned for a few weeks. Then when I was supposed to start on a new audit, they dropped my time. After that, I got put on an engagement outside of my office, and then staffed on a busy first-year public audit for a client across the country. That has been my longest engagement so far.
I ended up getting in good with that audit team/SM, so now whenever I have unassigned time, I reach out and they usually put me on one of their engagements. But they mentioned it’s not a good look that I’ve done almost no work for my home office because of the year-end roundtable process.
Recently I’ve been working more with my home office, but I just don’t like the people or the culture. I feel like people are vague, and there’s a lot of negativity. For example, when I joined a new client, the manager immediately started talking about how the A2 hadn’t done enough work the previous week. That A2 was leaving the firm (which is why I was brought in), so I’m not sure what they expected. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen managers badmouth people who aren’t on the engagements anymore. I don’t know those people, so maybe they were poor performers, it isn’t like inspiring to hear that right when I start on a new team.
I feel pretty demotivated. The teams in my home office aren’t imo very helpful or communicative, and I’ve been staffed on a lot of small, short-term audits, so I’m always jumping in without context. Since I've been on small audits the senior and other reviewers are always splitting time with a larger client so they don't often bother to try to teach me how to do something they just like pretty much give me prior year. That's fine but they are also so busy that there is usually delays in answering whatever questions I have as well so I feel kind of alone on my engagements.
I’ve been getting good performance reviews, so that's fine. I just don't like the environment here. For example, I was working through an analytic and going back and forth with my senior about how to do it. Then at the end of the day, she suddenly said it needed to be done tonight. She ended up taking it over (it was like 80% done), and when I apologized for not knowing the deadline, she just said “ok.” So I felt kind of bad since I would pause when I had a question and I didn’t know it needed to be done like by 6PM or whatever. I’m not sure if my senior knew the deadline either.
I’m starting to think about switching firms ideally to another Big 4, or maybe a middlemarket firm. I’m not sure if moving to a middlemarket firm this early would hurt my resume. I just want to go somewhere where there is more mentorship and the ability to be on a team for a longer period. I’ve been on like 2 week assignments mostly so I never know when I’m going to be busy at work or how the new senior will be. I just feel so like demotivated at work since I don’t really like “own” a section or piece of work, and I just kind of do random stuff all the time. I don’t understand the client since I’ve just been added to the engagement and sometimes the seniors I work with don’t either so it’s kind of frustrating. Curious to see if anyone has any advice!