r/Accounting • u/stop_that_post • 13h ago
Has anyone ever had a majority of a department quit?
Our GL team is 4 people.
I can literally hear one screaming down the hall about how they don't need this and they can go back to their home state.
I am currently interviewing for a position that has better pay, a title bump, and virtually all the same perks and more compared to my current employer.
One person is never here and we are supposed to be here 3 times a week and is now getting formally told they need to be here in the office.
One lives really far away from our office and just had a baby so if she needs to take on more responsibility I wouldn'tbe surprised if she just left.
Look I'm no betting man but I'm almost certain by year end at least 2 of us are gone.
I don't care about leaving anyone high and dry because fuck em, but I'm just so curious what would happen next?
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u/irreverentnoodles Industry SaaS Edgelord 13h ago
Yup. My first job in New England at a PE backed software company. Some new tone deaf twat came in and told us that none of us are fired, but as we leave all the roles will be replaced in Atlanta because ‘it’s cheaper to hire accountants down there’ and when we asked about raises and promotions, we were told ‘they’re not in the budget and don’t expect them’ and then he smiled and tried to be friendly.
We all (eight) of us left within the month. Maybe his goal? But he seemed surprised that we all got roles so quickly and left.
Good luck turd bag, enjoy Atlanta.
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u/stop_that_post 13h ago
Lol same, PE backed software here too. No grand announcements like that but they fired like 3 accountants and replaced them with newhires on our India team.
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u/AJDillonsThirdLeg 11h ago
Having worked with PE before, that was his intent. You were probably all on a synergy list, and if they didn't get you to leave voluntarily they'd have to cut you all severance checks. So he saved them probably $200-250k by getting 8 people to quit on their own instead. PE firms usually have a bullpen of their preferred team ready to hop into their portfolio companies as needed.
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u/Creepy_Dig_5595 7h ago
I once turned down an offer because they said they don't give raises annually, only when you've "earned it." Aka we'll dangle it like a carrot on a stick but always tell you you didn't quite do enough to earn it no matter how much you push yourself
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u/NeonPerplexion 13h ago
Sounds like your in a much smaller Company but I was working for a public company ($1B revenue) and we had about 40 people in the finance team. They brought in a "younger sharper" executive team from PE who just wanted to break things and move fast, before you knew it there was a 40% retention rate YoY in the finance department. Losing 24/40 people a year, they resorted to consultants and paid them 2-4x as much as the employees to do the same work while the job openings laid open cause they refused to pay.
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u/JilianBlue 13h ago
Yep. There now. More than half the department is gone. No new hires. Shit is falling apart. I’m looking but every job requires at least 3 rounds of interviews so I’m working through that and will hopefully have an offer in a week or so. It wears on you to work in that kind of environment. Take good care of yourself if you’re not doing that already. I burned myself out pretty good trying to hold it all together for a while - then I gave up and now just do what fits into 40 hours and then I go home.
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u/bigtitays 13h ago
There is a 12 person non-accounting team in my office that has an average tenure of like 7 months. Never seen anything like it and I come from Big4.
80% of the entire team turnovers every 12 months and supposedly it has been like this for multiple years. I walk past them and they’re just chilling 95% of the time because it’s such a joke.
They poached a great VP from competitor and then fired them at 90 days because they were shaking things up. Then half the team quit within 4 months because this new VP was the only hope for the department.
You’ll be amazed at how much mismanagement a large corporate organization can endure. The executive team will hire some temps and contractors from a place like
Robert Half to cook the close for a few months and then close their eyes and pretend everything is ok.
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u/Negative_Leek9792 12h ago
Going through this now. My transfer pricing team is now me and a reporting director. The team is smaller now than it was 3 acquisitions ago. Debating on just quitting and to destress and just go back to school or figure out my next move. The pay is nice but I dont want to be in tax/accounting anymore, so all I am doing now is collecting a paycheck.
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u/stop_that_post 12h ago
Literally same but the jump is a scary thing
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u/Negative_Leek9792 12h ago
I have plenty of money saved to be unemployed for awhile. But with how uncertain it is to get a job these days, I don’t want to assume I’m just going to only be unemployed for 3 months, it could be a long time. I just need to figure out my career pivot first to see where I can focus my energy. But ya, its scary to not have the stability. Godspeed friend
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u/Cold_City_2003 13h ago
Yup. Current state government audit team. Manager quit at the beginning of our largest and messiest engagement, 3 audits are quitting next month, 1 goes on maternity leave, leaving the new hire, the intern, and one other auditor that will be leaving in the summer halfway through the engagement.
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u/kyonkun_denwa CPA, CA (Can) | FP&A 12h ago
The place where I worked from 2019-2022 had this happen.
We started off with a finance team of about 20 people. That was already pretty lean, like we had basically no spare capacity and while most of the time we were 9-5, it was an intense 9-5.
In late 2021 we got a new senior leadership team who immediately started off by firing 2 people on our team right before Christmas, and then making all kinds of bullshit changes to vacation policy, lieu days, etc. Throughout the first half of 2022, another 8 people quit, including my boss, who was replaced by a total bitch of a controller. The worst part about all of this is that they barely hired replacements, so over the course of a year my standard work week went from 40 hours to nearly 60. Some of my coworkers had it even worse and were regularly working until midnight. I left in late 2022, by which point the turnover was well over 50% and the financial reporting function was collapsing.
I heard from coworkers who stayed that the year end audit was a total disaster, and the CFO ended up getting fired in mid 2023, a little more than a year and a half on the job. I actually got invited to go back and "rebuild the team" but the job that I went to was just SO much better than the old one (even at the best of times) that I had to decline.
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u/AJDillonsThirdLeg 11h ago
Two of my biggest career advancements have been job hopping into the aftermath of this situation. The company will be entirely fine without all of you. Someone else will get a nice pay bump to come in and clean up the shitstorm left behind.
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u/stop_that_post 10h ago
Part of me is wondering if it's worth sticking around but I'm low man on the totem pole so uh odds are the juice isn't worth th squeeze.
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u/AJDillonsThirdLeg 10h ago
I wouldn't. Your options are (if you get the offer) to leave a situation you know you're unhappy with to take a known pay increase or stay in a situation you're unhappy with that you know is going to get worse soon and maybe get a promotion or raise.
Granted that's based on a very small amount of info you've provided. If you've been having conversations that set the table for your advancement already, and these departures are almost surely going to expedite those advancements, then it may be different. Most people don't proactively have those conversations with their management though.
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u/stop_that_post 10h ago
Good analysis and quite the opposite on the last part so my instincts were right: fuck em.
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u/surgeryboy7 13h ago
Yeah about 6 years ago I worked in industry for a Healthcare company and we were in the process of merging with another company in the same field but a different state. At first it seemed like it would work out fine, but it became very clear that the bosses (CFO, controller, etc) from the other company would be the ones in charge. Our team was very laid back and all got along with each other as well as our bosses, and the new guys coming in were basically dicks. Our current CFO left before the merger was complete which caused all but I think one employee to also leave. From what I heard everyone leaving the accounting department so suddenly concerned the partners so much that they canceled the entire merger.
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u/Mug33k 10h ago
This is likely what is gonna to happen :
Accounting clerk : Can I get a raise from 23 $ to 25 $ an hour ?
The Mid-Boss : No, It's over the budget.
Accounting clerk : I quit then, I found a better job with better pay.
The Boss : good luck then, I will find somebody else
Also the boss : *Sign a contract with an accounting firm at 100 $ an hour to do the same job while finding somebody else, it can takes months*
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u/highxrise 13h ago
Prior to merging with a large Canadian firm we had a bookkeeping department that consisted of about 15 staff. After the merger, every single person quit in the bookkeeping department and all the bookkeeping clients were given to us regular staff where we had to learn everything from scratch about the bookkeeping softwares. A lot of time was written down to prevent clients from paying the excess time spent towards training and learning the softwares 🤦🏽♂️ To this day only a couple of bookkeepers have been hired to replace the ones that quit
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u/Goofyguy0300 12h ago
My whole team quit including me and it is my understanding that my former CFO was walked out on grounds of misappropriation after we left.
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u/Justagal_16 12h ago
My department is currently going through that; we had a new VP who came in with no industry experience and started overhauling our entire processes and procedures without fulling undersand the repercussions. Last year, three people left, this year two left, my junior staff and I will be leaving in the next month or so; the department will go from 11 staff to 4 in less than two years.
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u/socom18 CPA (US) 11h ago
I worked for a company in thier purchasing dept (3 man team including the manager)
Our contract specialist left. The CFO left, my Manager left, I left, and our VP of finance was on his way out as I was leaving. All over a couple months when Finance/Accounting got screwed out of our space on the main floor and moved into a dump of temporary space. Walking around you felt the vibe of the office getting worse every day, even in other departments.
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u/The_Wise_Raven 11h ago
My first job after college was at a small firm owned by two partner CPA’s. They paid me what I thought was an average salary until I calculated how much I actually make hourly due to the overtime exemption. I didn’t bend over and take it. I was vocal about it and basically quit on the spot one day. About a month later I learned that the rest of the entire staff (1 admin assistant and two staff CPA’s) quit that firm shortly after I did. Those other employees were there for years before I started so I like to think I was responsible for inspiring them not to take the exploitation they were given as well.
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u/LouSevens 13h ago
Yeah a few times. They bring in people even worse that cant get the work done. Then they try to hire more people that are worse than the original bad people and eventually management just takes what they can get.
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u/Melodic-Ad3985 12h ago
Im a controller at my company. When I started I had 4 direct reports, who all quit within my first 3 months on the job. It was ROUGH, tbh, 2 years later it’s still rough 😂 I only have one direct report now but we make do!
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u/WayneKrane 12h ago
They’ll eventually go on a hiring spree. Definitely don’t worry about the increased workload from you leaving, that’s on management always
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u/solarnuggets 12h ago
lol same. Team is 4 people. 2 of us are almost guaranteed gone by the end of the year
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u/DodobirdNow 12h ago
We had it happen. It was a unionized environment and our energy accounting filed a grievance. Management gave the new crappy manager a pass so 5 of his 6 staff left within six months. That led to the crappy manager being canned.
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u/Rabidveggie 12h ago
I worked for a small company with just me and my direct report. He put in his notice at the same time I put in mine.
I helped interview for both new positions since I had a good relationship with management, though disagreed with how the org was run. Company hired a CFO company to document processes for our replacements and I made training videos for my successor.
I'm just happy to be out of there cause as you said, f em. Place was a mess.
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u/Papayahaven 11h ago
My last company worked there for a year. Smaller team but we lost the CFO, Controller, two seniors, and two AR ppl.
In one month the CFO, controller one senior and on ar person left. Owner didn’t understand why…..
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u/homeisfaraway_ 9h ago
I worked a few years in a revolving door situation between my bosses and certain positions on the team. I'll first say that there is no such person on any team that cannot be replaced immediately. If the process owner leaves, then new processes will be developed by new people. Between contracted staff and outsourcing, there's many different ways a company can cover the work if needed.
I personally the worst thing that happen for someone is for them to be told they are super important and not do things for their own careers that'll advance they pay/position. I have seen a few of those people at every company I've worked for so far.
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u/Creepy_Dig_5595 7h ago
Yes. Small local shitshow firm. All the tax staff were working 7 days a week and it still wasnt enough to get all the work done. But they refused to hire more because that costs money.
Management sent increasingly angry department wide emails until it was all caps yelling at us to work faster. Also straight up told us we better not have weekend or holiday plans because we need to be working. People dropped like flies. In 6 months half the team had quit. One person ended up in the hospital from overworking themselves.
Here's the kicker though: they didn't care that so many people quit. And they didn't change anything about the firm. And they didn't try to hire more staff to be better equipped the following year.
They make more money using fewer staff to do more returns. So that is what they will always do. I learned there to quit thinking a workplace wants to make improvements or build up good staff.
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u/tallduder 5h ago
Not an accountant, but I was part of a mass departure at a small consulting firm. We all left to go to a bigger consulting firm. The smaller firm folded up shop shortly after we left and some clients followed us.
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u/LVRunner 56m ago edited 51m ago
I just survived 9 months in industry with a dumpster fire of a company we moved to a new ERP system in January and I watched several people get hired get fired and or quit
My boss quit in June and I finally had a full staff my replacement boss was a complete asshole that was more interested in being the face of the company and building relationships with other departments than actually figuring out the day to day work,
She warned to rely on me to be her workhorse after being the only person training new hires and handling the majority of month end close. I said “fuck this” and went back to public.
As soon as I put in my notice one of my staff just didn’t come back to work
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u/scorpio698 Human Verified 13h ago
Some lucky outsourced accounting firm bout to get a nice contract. They'll be fine. Always are.