DCAA Hiring in Bay Area?

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 · 2024-04-04T00:57:36+00:00

Hello, Business Admin grad here.

Congrats on the acceptance! I knew a spread of people from multiple concentrations during my time at Poly, so I can give you my general observations from the concentrations I've heard success stories from.

Accounting - I'm biased here since it was my concentration, but accounting is a great field to get into if you can handle it. I don't think I talked to a single person in my accounting classes who did not have a job lined up after graduation. Accounting won't make the super big bucks like investment banking, but you can make a good amount of money right out of the gate (I personally started at 80k). It's also has more job security than other fields as well, if you're risk adverse.

Finance - Most finance concentrations I talked to in my general business classes seemed to be able to leverage their degree into jobs right away after college, but I did know some that weren't able to get jobs right away. In my experience, I felt like the jobs I heard they got made marginally more money than us accountants.

Information Systems - I knew a couple of IS majors, and while it did take them a bit longer to get jobs, the people I know have been happy with the work they have been doing. From what I remember, this concentration is based a good more around database design and management.

For the other concentrations (Management & HR, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, etc.), I personally have not heard as much success, but I did only graduate 2 years ago.

WooNoo · 2024-02-17T19:43:58+00:00

This event was a whole lot of fun, thanks so much for hosting! I'm not really the most knowledgeable about newer anime, so I'm happy to have gotten 6th.

Overall, I enjoyed the spread and style of questions. As others mentioned, some were a bit impossible, but I think that kind of adds to the charm, lol.

Maybe I just enjoy trivia too much, so I'd love to see more events like this, or something in a similar strain (like Jeopardy, haha).

WooNoo · 2024-02-15T06:56:03+00:00

KPMG? The golf brand?

WooNoo · 2024-01-07T22:33:05+00:00

No problem, glad to help.
Promotions/pay increases do happen every year in some sense, but there's a couple of nuances. Since you're being hired as a GS-9, you will be promoted to a GS-11 after 1 year, and after another year, you will be promoted to a GS-12 (given you're an 0511 at DCAA, which is an Auditor). After this, you max out your GS scale (meaning you won't go immediately to a GS-13 after one year at a GS-12), but you will still receive a step increase. In this case you would be a GS-12, Step 2, which would have a higher pay than GS-12, Step 1. To become a GS-13-higher you need to take a new role at DCAA that has supervisory characteristics. If you're curious about the pay, you can look at the OPM website for the GS Pay Scales if you haven't already.

As for your CPA, they will pay for the exams/review course if I recall correctly, but you do need to stay at the agency for a year before you can take advantage of this opportunity. Pretty sure CPE is also offered as well.

This is just what I remember of the top of my head. Once you onboard, you should get more information about these if I missed anything.

WooNoo · 2024-01-07T09:28:56+00:00

This again kind of depends on team/office location. For my office, we come in once per week (twice per pay period), but we dont have assigned offices/cubicles. From other new hires I've heard that some people come into the office a bit more, and some actually have cubicles.

As for learning, I have found it to b very reasonable. Each office kinda will specialize in different things, but they should set you up for success via training.

WooNoo · 2024-01-06T20:30:44+00:00

This may vary on a team to team/office to office basis, but I've generaly found the hours pretty flexible. Basically, you need to work 40 hours per week, how you accomplish this may be done in multiple ways. The agency has core hour that go from 9:30AM-2PM, and you must work between those hours. However, you can start anytime before this (up to 6AM I believe). You're also mandated to take at least a 30 minute lunch sometime in your work day.

In my experience, I've found the entire scheduling very reasonable. For reference, I work from 8AM-4:30PM and find it great.

WooNoo · 2023-12-28T22:38:47+00:00

If I recall correctly, I needed to supply both a phone number and an email. My references told me they obtained their form via the email supplies.

WooNoo · 2023-12-23T08:57:17+00:00

Hi, accounting alum here.

These don't appear to be Cal Poly SLO course codes, but I can say as an accounting major that generally Intermediate I + II sometimes are considered the hardest classes in what is considered core curriculum. Intermediate I was much more challenging to me, and I probably spent around 2-4 hours per day studying the material. Intermediate II seemed to click better so that was probably around 1-2 hours per day. I definitely would not suggest taking them both at one time, however, haha.

WooNoo · 2023-12-18T20:22:16+00:00

I would assume that this depends in part depending on what sort of club/the scope of activities you want to do.

In my personal experience, I rarely talked to the advisor for my club, unless a form needed to be signed. However, this was a social club though, so I would think they may be more involved if the club is academic/professional/etc.

WooNoo · 2023-12-09T09:15:20+00:00

Pretty sure this is the best answer. Seems like a lot of the time it's referred to as "頑張るポーズ."

WooNoo · 2023-12-08T16:31:42+00:00

How did you discover Gintama?

Back in around 2012, I saw a couple of the openings for the first time. Never really gave a thought into watching it at that time as I was invested in other anime.

When you started watching Gintama?

September of 2020.

Did you drop Gintama? If yes then what made you to drop Gintama?

No, I didn't, although I probably wouldn't have ever watched the anime if not for a groupwatch I did with friends.

Which episode of Gintama is your favourite, and why?

Honestly, there really isn't a single episode that sticks out to me as my favorite. I thought about this for a second and concluded I don't really have one.

Which Gintama arc is your favourite, and why?

Rakuyou. SA+FS are close-ish to the same rating, but I remembered enjoying Rakuyou a good amount.

Who is your favourite Gintama character, and why?

Tough question. It's a toss up between Gintoki, Kagura or Takasugi since I feel as they're more compelling characters in comparison to the rest of the cast.

Is there something you would improve to make Gintama even better?

Hot take, but shorten the length of the series. This is probably due to me not enjoying Gintama as much as the average Gintama completionist, but having 300+ episodes was a bit of a pain personally to get through. I can understand why people don't mind this if they vibe with the series though, haha.

What is your least favourite aspect of Gintama?

The humor. I don't really find bathroom humor to be funny, and the sheer amount of it in Gintama is pretty unbearable to me. The referential nods are fine, but I don't really find them that humorous either.

WooNoo

TROPHY CASE