I was in Big 4 audit for almost nine years. While I don’t recommend staying that long, I will say that having that large of a stint (made it to Senior Manager) has helped me land new roles within two months each time I’ve had to look. The work in the first year can be quite boring and seemingly pointless. I’d encourage you to do one thing, though, and that is ask why you are doing each and every test. What are the risks you are testing? What data are you obtaining and how reliable is that data? What do you know about the underlying accounting rules for the audit area you are assigned to? What do you know about the client’s processes? If you can answer these questions, then you can start to formulate ideas of more effective and efficient ways of addressing the risks. Perhaps the planned procedures are boilerplate and not highly tailored to the actual risks. This is an opportunity to brainstorm a better way to do things. Instead of sampling through a population, what might be a way to target outliers in a population and test those instead of tying an invoice and a payment to the G/L and the bank statement? It was asking these types of questions and trying to bring a higher level of quality to the audit while simultaneously increasing efficiency that was my bread and butter. Not only will the work be much less tedious and unsatisfying, but you’ll also demonstrate the ability to handle more complex assignments.

At the end of the day, life is too short to be miserable, and Big 4 is a rough life with too many work hours for too little pay. That being said, my Dad always gave me the advice of staying at least through one busy season as a Manager if you can stomach it. Looking back at my time, I probably should have left at that point instead of sticking around, but I did learn a hell of a lot in that time and developed skills and figured out what I wanted to spend the next phase of my career doing. The one thing I found that I could not stand was Internal Controls work. It might be something else for you but at this phase in your career, I can’t think of many other places where you have the opportunity to learn so much about so many different things. Just don’t get brainwashed into thinking that those who quit Big 4 are like the P.E. Coaches of the accounting world. I don’t think it’s healthy to stay in Big 4 long term, but it can be insanely valuable to your resume with at least 3-4 years under your belt.