My new job
I thought it might be a good idea to post about my co-op job, which is at PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the "big four" accounting firms. I work in the tax line of service, which means I prepped T4s and T5s through February and am doing partnership and trust returns through March. April is personal tax of course, then May and June are corporate tax. After that I imagine I'll be filling in the holes as people go on holiday for the slow summer months.
Anyway, there's not much to say about it. Some days are good, some days are bad. Some days are stressful, some days everything falls into place. I bill my time out in increments of 6 minutes (.1 hrs) to clients. For co-ops, our budgeted bill-out rate is $100.75 an hour. I sure wouldn't pay $100 an hour for my services, that's for certain, but it goes to show you that some people will buy anything.
Anyway, with a strictly project-based structure, I'm doing totally different things and working on multiple accounts most days. That means that my supervisor is the manager of the job I'm working on at that time - in other words, I have multiple people to report to at once, but no permanent, direct supervisor. It's an interesting system, and one that took some getting used to.
What I do have is a mentor, or "coach", who is a good guy, straight-forward, and to the point - a good match for me. By design or not, he tends to be the manager on a lot of my projects so I've gotten to know him pretty well. He said nice things about me when my co-op advisor came to visit, which is a good thing as he's the last one to sugar-coat things if they aren't going well.
I'm pretty bad at my job, but I am learning a lot. Tax is insanely complicated and the lengths PwC and clients go to save tax never ceases to amaze me. I'm thinking about switching my major to operations management (ie. distribution management, supply-chaining, demand forecasting, production planning, quality management) because it will probably be a better fit.
Other than that, it's nice to get a cheque every two weeks (and it's also weird being on salary, doesn't matter how much I work, pay is always the same). For the spring, I'm hoping to move into East Campus Village, which is a residence composed of townhouses and apartments. It's known to be a difficult residence to get into, but I think I'll be all right.
Anyway, there's not much to say about it. Some days are good, some days are bad. Some days are stressful, some days everything falls into place. I bill my time out in increments of 6 minutes (.1 hrs) to clients. For co-ops, our budgeted bill-out rate is $100.75 an hour. I sure wouldn't pay $100 an hour for my services, that's for certain, but it goes to show you that some people will buy anything.
Anyway, with a strictly project-based structure, I'm doing totally different things and working on multiple accounts most days. That means that my supervisor is the manager of the job I'm working on at that time - in other words, I have multiple people to report to at once, but no permanent, direct supervisor. It's an interesting system, and one that took some getting used to.
What I do have is a mentor, or "coach", who is a good guy, straight-forward, and to the point - a good match for me. By design or not, he tends to be the manager on a lot of my projects so I've gotten to know him pretty well. He said nice things about me when my co-op advisor came to visit, which is a good thing as he's the last one to sugar-coat things if they aren't going well.
I'm pretty bad at my job, but I am learning a lot. Tax is insanely complicated and the lengths PwC and clients go to save tax never ceases to amaze me. I'm thinking about switching my major to operations management (ie. distribution management, supply-chaining, demand forecasting, production planning, quality management) because it will probably be a better fit.
Other than that, it's nice to get a cheque every two weeks (and it's also weird being on salary, doesn't matter how much I work, pay is always the same). For the spring, I'm hoping to move into East Campus Village, which is a residence composed of townhouses and apartments. It's known to be a difficult residence to get into, but I think I'll be all right.
posted by Sam F at 4:22 PM
6 Comments:
I wonder what you get out of the $100.75.
This comment has been removed by the author.
I suspect that they are getting a fine deal by paying $100.75 for your services Sam. though you are not getting the whole shebang.
This reminds me that we have to arrange for an accountant to do our taxes this year as we switched our primary residence to rental.
I will call up the accountant who was willing to explain to me on the phone what we needed to do to make sure we could put the mortgage on our rental ,rather than the house we are living in. Others who I called (realizing without any time that I needed to know that day), wanted me to come in.
I suppose a benefit of doing co-op is that you can try different areas out to eliminate what you don't like before you have to make a commitment.
Sam the operational management might be a good change. I know that is something that Weyerhaeuser is big into at the moment, given the economic times. It think that with the global market this type of work is going to be more in demand because we have to compete more and more.
That is interesting that you bill for every six minutes,the account I am working on now we only go as low as 15 minutes.
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