Hey all bros and sis, will join big 4 as auditor newbie soon, have alot of doubts. I am abit concerned about what is auditor's life, and how long the working hours will be? Like from what time until what time, work late until what time? Weekends also need to work? I know auditor is hard, no work life balance, but heard some saying work until 3am in midnight? Is this true? Thanks!

This post has been edited by Little Red Apple: Jan 4 2022, 09:29 AM

During peak period, yes there is longer hours. If you want on the dot 9 - 5, then better join other industry.

work before 3 days straight with no sleep if WLB is a core concern, audit life would probably be unsuitable; however having at least a couple years with them is indeed valuable

This post has been edited by danielcmw: Jan 4 2022, 09:56 AM

Thanks bro, but what does it mean work before 3? Work until midnight? How is it possible no sleep, human no sleep will die.. haha

Bro, same feeling, but I wanna try first, I just afraid my body tak boleh tahan

according musk

this job has no future.

according to /k

this job has no life.


there is plenty option to earn big money

if u willing to trade ur life and future

don't hope for balance life as auditor. my wife deal with many auditors. all also work like machine. so good challenge for the young.

those companies have very high turn over rate. that should tell u something... LOL

Well, just be assured that your resume will be enhanced if you have big 4 experience. Tahan and stay at least two years to gain most benefits. Also Big 4 will send you for your professional certs. Untung lagi.

This means working 72-ish hours straight; only going home to change clothes & shower..... but yea life as auditor is as such

Ok thanks daniel, understood, if you are given an offer between Deloitte and EY, which one will you join as audit? Thanks I need an opinion.

Thanks bro, I am wondering which big 4 should I join, Deloitte or EY? For audit.

Either one is okay. Personally (my choice) I will go for EY.

It's really hard to say; since it'll depend on individual department / partner / manager & team... broadly i have friends from all four of the big4 firms and they're all somewhat similar in nature (culturally speaking). so sorry i'm not able to confidently recommend any single firm on this

I can say work load is heavier than usual and wfh means you are on the call most of the time. Turnovers are extremely high now so be prepared for it.

Thanks bro, may I know why u choose EY? Must be something better right?

Nvm, it's okay bro, thanks for your reply.

Yes, understand, will try my best to deal with it. Thanks!

Look at the partners picture or listing to decide. Client list might help too

Very general info - EY in Msia is a lot bigger than Deloitte, have a lot more listed company audits, more GLCs too.

You might want to think about what works best for you. Personally I'd go for more diversed organisation. But some might prefer to work with the same race and gender. There's no right answer

work until 3am is an understatement

For me, EY and PwC are the bigger of the bog 4 audit firms. The bigger they are the larger the clientele and better your experiences with going to more clients and also having a bigger internal team. With that said, can be quite distant internally but that is how you perceive it.

Opportunity to go up is also there as there is a bigger pool to fill in all levels.

The professional certification, dont have to say lah. The big 4 will always push for this and support you as well.

For me after Deloitte was involved with 1MDB, I'll be a bit skeptical to join. Anyway, that my 2 cents.

What life?!?

Ok thanks bro, I am still struggling to choose haha, wish God can lend me a hand..

True ..labor day also working

Just apply all, see which one calls you for interview.

If given the choice, opt for PwC as the first choice and Deloitte the last choice.

my only tips.
work smart and hard.


2022 will be my 8th year in audit and i enjoyed it.

Good luck.

Working hours will definitely be very long tbh. However, dont give up and be sad on this itself. There will be a lot of exposure that you will gain working as an auditor because you get to work with a lot of clients from different industries. So there is how you gain exposure which you cannot have in commercial. So once in, hold onto it for at least a few years to make the experience a worthy one before deciding to move on to other finance roles.

As to which big 4 to choose, well all of them are really not too bad among each other. It all down to what position and engagement exposure they are providing to you.

Forget about work life balance in Audit. It's tedious works and super long working hours including weekends. Unless you plan to not perform well or don't wanna learn much, then you can just chill and don't give a damn but surely of course you'll get a lot of scolding and hatred from your colleagues.

Speaking about Big 4 , does anyone know how's the life for pentesters there?

Not from this area nor understand what does an auditor do. Why is it such a long working hours? Why can't there be some automation? E.g. software that can assist in cutting down redundant work?

Well, essentially the auditor works on behalf of the company/client shareholders in order to ensure that management is not being sohai with their investments from the accounting perspective while also ensuring those same accounting matters are aligned with the relevant accounting rules/standards. Long working hours can come in many forms; client providing supporting documents to be worked on late... which then results in needing to spend time to audit the information provided while also working on the "next client's file" in the calendar so to speak since it's rare for an auditor to just have a single client at any one time unless that client is significant in size / complexity kind of thing; so the timetables and therefore timelines are pretty tight; so when clients provide information late, it screws it up & can only be covered with elongated working hours (this is one of the reasons lah)

So in Msia, a lot of entities simply aren't using a streamlined accounting system where all invoices (for example in the billing side of the entity) have a somewhat similar form of format; therefore it's pretty impossible for "digitalisation" to help ensure a sample size of selected invoices for vetting is indeed valid / matched with the actualised figures within the clients' accounting system. Digitalisation is only able to be employed if there's enough standardisation within the client's system and this is rarely the case since this would be incredibly expensive for entities to employ (which doesn't even improve their profit margins from a business point of vies) & is therefore mainly used in sample selection of transactions to be tested in order to avoid any human-bias in that selection. AI simply isn't "there" yet & thus the significant chunk of audit work requires human discernment & analysis in order to be reasonably assured that things are err.... "free from material misstatement" so to speak.

but this is just from my experience lah from several years ago, maybe things have changed but... doubt it lah from conversations i've had with current folks in the audit line recently

For example ah...

Although Ms Word has spellcheck function, we still need to read word by word (pairing up with another colleague to listen to me) literally to check for any spelling errors on the financial statements and notes to the financial statements. Often time, there are still errors not picked up by Ms Word.

Wait until the day lor when artificial intelligence/technology could surpass the cognitive ability of human beings.

This post has been edited by Blofeld: Feb 13 2022, 11:43 AM

From Tax side
There's a lot of manual work in macroed excel files.
Software to enable staff to have an easier life is available..thompson reuters and other big software vendor got sell. But licensing fees very expensive so gotta do it the hard way

Thanks you guys for the explanation and analogy. Now I understand why.

Just curious, is there anyone here work in KPMG as well... If yes, then we may have lunch at One Utama yo (If I am in the office lah) ahahahah.

how is your work going?

enjoying your work life?

The words Audit and Life don’t go together.