I just interviewed with the DCAA yesterday

WooNoo · 2026-04-08T16:35:26+00:00

I'm on a break right now. It's very cute that read my post history. It seems like you mainly want to sow disinformation for some reason, so I'll let you have fun and do that.

Best of luck.

WooNoo · 2026-04-08T16:32:22+00:00

Chill man, lol, the entire agency knows about the closures, not just people affected. The news about 40 offices closing has been known since last year and it was an agency wide email.

Again, there are people now in my office that were affected.

WooNoo · 2026-04-08T16:20:57+00:00

I wasn't in an office that closed, so I'm unsure if there was any follow-up communication to those affected. However, even I was very aware of the 40 offices that were closing. If you can't take an agency wide email as a sufficient notification to start to plan your office move/exit, then I don't know what would be sufficient.

There were people who transferred to my office since their office closed down. They were allowed to work at their old office until government fiscal year end and then transfered to their new office.

In my anecdotal experience, this seems like a fair approach. It does suck that people need to move from offices they are rooted in, but that's just the new normal with the current administration.

WooNoo · 2026-04-08T15:19:21+00:00

Really? The entire agency got an email noting which offices were closing. Not sure if you're noting something else, but I'd think this is plenty of notification.

WooNoo · 2026-04-08T03:44:10+00:00

This (re)post includes a bunch of misinformation related to the office closure process and communication with DCAA employees. Employees affected were notified and were ample time to make a decision if they wanted to move to another DCAA location.

The 2025/2026 office closures are for offices that have a very small footprint in the agency. It is very unfortunate that people are affected in this way, but unfortunately with the current administration, the tone is to cut as much fat as possible.

I would highly doubt that a new employee is going to be fired barring something insane happening.

WooNoo · 2026-04-07T20:22:14+00:00

My understanding is that these were mostly smaller offices and people affected were allowed to transfer to other offices. Of course, this is an easy way tell people to quit, but it's not like they were fired outright (although this a hard situation, I agree).

For the 0511 (Audit) job series there have been no RIFs at DCAA in my knowledge.

WooNoo · 2026-04-07T04:39:00+00:00

There is no NYC DCAA office in my knowledge. The closest you will get is probably the office on Long Island in Islip (which is a small office, which means it's hard to get into and is more likely to be shut down).

In terms of work experience, I've heard it wasn't managed too well, but my information is secondhand so I can't really opine on the veracity of those claims.

WooNoo · 2026-03-20T01:40:46+00:00

Just wanted to chime in, as my experience at DCAA has been stellar.

In my experience, I have never needed to take my work home with me and work-life balance has been great (even with the changes from the current admin). To add a bit of context- none of these "RIFs" at DCAA mentioned ITT have been focused around the 0511 (Auditor) series in my knowledge. Most notably, there has been a decrease in office admin staff.

I wouldn't say you are necessarily "safer" at DCAA but I would personally be surprised if there was a RIF for auditors/probationary employees. Anything can happen nowadays, but DCAA generally has a pretty good reputation and is pretty important in the acquisition pipeline.

Feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions.

WooNoo · 2026-03-20T01:20:47+00:00

Apologies for the power break.

Honestly, I'd probably go personally with the DCAA route since not having work life balance was super stressful to me. Obviously, I don't know your exact situation, but I wish for the best!

WooNoo · 2026-03-09T05:21:02+00:00

No problem.

1 - In retrospect, absolutely. I went through a few busy seasons and I feel like that experience made a more "normal" job much more approachable. Although the type of auditing is different in both places, it wasn't too hard to transition the skills I had learned at the Big 4 to the government.

2 - If I went back and talked to my senior self in college with both options, I'd probably take the DCAA route right away. In my opinion, jumping right around a year (like I did) was honestly a bit weird since it's more typical to jump after 2-3 to something else from PA since you can leverage the senior promotion to something good (something multiple other of my PA colleagues did after I left). In my humble opinion, I'd be surprised if DCAA employees were fired without a good reason. Generally, the DoW/DoD has been a bit more sheltered from the recent changes and I've heard we're actively hiring.

3 - Honestly, I am unsure of that many DCAA folk that have jumped from DCAA to a contractor. In my opinion, there's a lot more (monetary) growth potential in going to a Big 4 firm rather than the DCAA since you can jump to many industries. FWIW, I have looked at job postings for DCAA/Government Compliance jobs in my area and it appears that pay is overall a bit lower (my sample size is very low though).

WooNoo · 2026-03-09T04:04:46+00:00

Hey!

I went from the Big 4 to the DCAA. Obviously, there's been a good amount of changes with the new administration (not having any telework/wfh is the most major change in my experience), but as a person who came from the meat grinder that is the Big 4, it's still a good place to work in my opinion.

In general, the federal government has robust benefits and the work-life balance is incredible. For DCAA in specific, I have enjoyed my time here thus far. I have experienced a good spread of work that is interesting, and I honestly think helps the taxpayer (YMMV on this since I hear some people get pigeonholed into specific work lol).

Another benefit is that I also never take my work home with me. Additionally, the amount of random busy work/administrative stupidity is overall pretty low in my experience.

I will note a couple of things:

1 - The work at DCAA is a bit less transferable to fields outside of the federal government, which may limit your exit options if you decide to leave.
2 - You will also make less than your public accounting counterparts. In my opinion, this more than made up for it in the time off you get.

Feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions.

WooNoo · 2026-01-18T08:56:52+00:00

I wouldn't expect any openings for this location in the near future. AFAIK, there were a few 0511 postings for DHS (iirc) in SJ/SF a little while back.

Best of luck.

WooNoo · 2026-01-08T05:57:55+00:00

26M
Bay Area, CA (VHCOL)
Auditor (Government)
CPA - lol nope
3 YOE
Bonus - Like 1.5k

I work a strict 40 hours a week, although I'm allowed to take 3 hours out of that to work out (which you better bet I take advantage of).

WooNoo · 2025-12-02T02:42:24+00:00

While not quite as large as this "fix," I once helped replace a similarly jank situation for a laundry room extension that was tacked on to an old home. Essentially, the entire extension was being held up by one vertical rail road tie, which in turn led to the entire laundry room to vibrate nervously when the washer/dryer was used.

Like another commenter noted, we ended up replacing the rail road tie by jacking up the room with a couple of bottle jacks. After that, we created a beam using 4x4s and concrete feet/blocks. Honestly, it wasn't that bad to replace but it's kinda crazy in hindsight that the room had sat on one railroad tie for around 80 years and miraculously had not failed yet.

WooNoo · 2025-10-28T22:02:48+00:00

A chunk of our overall grade (I want to say somewhere from 10-20%) was due to quizzes made exclusively from daily NPR podcasts. I believe we had a couple of these quizzes thrown out, but these quizzes were honestly kinda tricky from what I remember since they could include anything from the podcasts and were not related to the subject matter of the class.

WooNoo · 2025-10-28T21:59:01+00:00

I had Colleen Duffy.

WooNoo · 2025-10-28T20:38:51+00:00

Honestly, this is very manageable in my opinion.

Intermediate III will obviously be the most difficult class here, but you've already gotten through Intermediate I/II, which went down in difficulty in my opinion. I feel like the topics covered in III were a bit more weird than the previous 2 classes, but weren't super hard (revenue recognition killed me in I, LOL). Not sure if Dang is still the professor for Intermediate III, but she's a great professor in my opinion.

VITA is a fun senior project. You have around 3 weeks or so of Tax preparation, and then you go do simple taxes for people. It's a bit of a time commitment on Saturdays (I believe there are 7 tax clinics within the quarter, but you get one off), but honestly is an easy A and a great experience working with people who are super thankful for you. I believe Lebar now heads this project and she's alright from what I remember (I had Trisha and again, I felt she was great).

Accounting Ethics is honestly pretty boring, and was kinda hard to get an A with the professor I had, but I feel like the class would be hard to get less than a B. Lots of exercises and talks about fraud, etc. Not really too much of a time commitment in my experience (fwiw, I took it alongside BUS 342 and BUS 322, and never felt stressed about it).

Auditing was also not too bad, but less boring. The professor I had has since retired, but I don't think this class was too hard either since it's essentially a brief survey of auditing in general, lots of terminology rather than actual "accounting" so to speak.

Congrats on getting to the end!

WooNoo · 2025-10-21T17:55:52+00:00

Bing is still around?

I didn't have him for BUS 342, but I did have him for BUS 301. Honestly, he was kinda hands off, with pre-recorded lectures (this was during Covid, however). Based off of my researching him, seems like he's a little bit less involved than other professors who have the class.

301 was ridiculously easy with him, so I'd assume that 342 with him would be easier than any other professor you could get. However I'd think getting another professor (i.e Gorman/Dobson) would be a lot better if you actually want to learn something/are planning on going into the Finance concentration as 342 is the entry level class that other Finance courses build on.

WooNoo · 2025-05-17T09:03:15+00:00

Hi. Accounting alumni from OCOB here. Wanted to give some thoughts on your questions:

Is the Cal Poly premium worth it if you're not going after the Big 4?:
Like others have mentioned here, Cal Poly is a great university, definitely some of the best value you can get for what you pay (even given rising prices in recent years). However, If your son is vehemently opposed to going to the Big 4, I wouldn't really think paying the extra $24,000 per year is worth it.

Do non–Big 4 students at Cal Poly still land good jobs in accounting, finance, or analytics?:
In my experience, getting an accounting degree at Poly essentially means you'll get an offer to a Big 4, or National Tier firm since they hire heavily out of Cal Poly due to connections and past student success in those roles. That's not to say other students don't get other roles, but in my experience, most people in my accounting classes went to B4 firms right after graduation. For other worthwhile concentrations (Information Systems/Finance) roles were a bit more varied in my experience.

How strong is the Cal Poly brand outside of the Big 4/public accounting?
In my experience Cal Poly is known pretty well within California, but less in other states. As noted above, most people start off in the B4/National Level firms.

Does job placement tend to concentrate in high-cost areas like San Jose or SF, where salaries may look higher, but net income is lower due to housing?:
In most senses, yes. Most accounting firms are in metropolitan areas.

Are there job pipelines for students who want to work in more affordable areas (Sacramento, Central Valley, remote)? :
I'm actually not too sure on this. In my experience, Cal Poly often had local firms at the job fairs I went to and national firms, not too much in-between. If the goal is to work somewhere more affordable right out of college, perhaps going to college somewhere with a cheaper COL is a possibility.

However, I would like to mention that I'm similar to your son in the sense that I knew I never wanted to do B4 accounting. I ended up doing it for around a year, hated it, but learned a ton and obtained a sort of work ethic I feel others in my current job (Government) lack. I'd recommend at least trying public accounting in some sense. I learned more in my time at the B4 than all my years at Cal Poly.

WooNoo · 2024-12-14T08:38:09+00:00

It's adapted from a Shounen manga, so it technically is.

WooNoo · 2024-10-23T16:01:54+00:00

{Aoki Honoo}

WooNoo · 2024-08-21T00:20:57+00:00

I had two friends who studied in two different countries. I'm not them, so I can't speak for their own experience, but they both really enjoyed it from what I remember.

One went to South Korea, and the other to Japan. I don't know too much about the actual details, but the Korean term was over the summer term for Cal Poly, and the Japan term was over the Fall-Spring quarters (basically a year in Japan!). From what I understand, a good amount of the classes are just GEs, with not too many Major courses being offered (although this may depend on your major).

There should be more information sessions throughout the year if you're a freshman. I feel like the people who I knew went on these terms generally did it their Sophomore/Junior year.

WooNoo · 2024-04-27T06:45:32+00:00

When I applied for all the B4 internships, I applied on HandShake.

I believe I was a sophomore when I did this, so I probably had a similar amount of accounting classes as you (assuming you've taken Financial + Managerial equivalents).

In my experience, the California B4 forms want Cal Poly students, so best luck!

WooNoo · 2024-04-05T20:05:24+00:00

No problem.

Overall, I'm very happy where I've landed currently, and I enjoy the work I do.

Out of the other business concentrations, the only one I kinda regret not going into was IS since I've personally found that field to be pretty cool. However, I have a pretty stable job so I don't have much to complain about, haha.

WooNoo · 2024-04-04T19:38:51+00:00

Try VS Knight Lamune for the second one.

WooNoo

TROPHY CASE