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I want to describe my old job using only spreadsheet terminology because I think that's the only language that can properly convey the experience. It was a #REF! error made flesh. It was a circular reference that somehow still returned a number.
I was a junior at a mid-size accounting firm, the kind that does audits, tax prep, bookkeeping for a rotating cast of small and medium businesses. On paper, great first job. Structured, professional, you learn actual technical skills, résumé gold. In practice, I spent thirteen months mostly reconciling other people's chaos while being reminded, gently but constantly, that I was replaceable.
The culture ran on a very specific fuel: fear of the senior manager's mood. She wasn't cruel exactly, more like weather. You checked in on her mood the way you'd check a forecast before leaving the house. Bad mood day meant redoing perfectly fine work three times because "it doesn't feel right," which is not feedback, that's a horoscope.
Tax season, though. Tax season deserves its own paragraph because nothing prepared me for it. Twelve, thirteen hour days for about ten straight weeks, six days a week toward the deadline. Overtime was technically paid but calculated in a way that always seemed to come out slightly less than what I'd tracked myself, and asking about the discrepancy got you a lecture about "understanding the compensation structure," which is corporate for "trust us."
I remember one specific night, close to midnight, reconciling a client's accounts that didn't balance by fourteen dollars. Fourteen dollars. I found it eventually, some rounding thing in a spreadsheet formula, and felt a genuine dopamine hit that scared me a little, like my brain had been so starved for wins that fourteen dollars felt like closing a business deal.
The work itself wasn't bad, to be fair, I actually like the puzzle-solving part of accounting, the satisfaction of a balance sheet that balances. That's not sarcasm, I mean it. What wore me down was the culture around the work, the assumption that juniors exist to absorb whatever hours the deadline demands, the total absence of any conversation about workload until you're already underwater.
I left right after tax season ended, timed it so I'd get my bonus first, small victory. New job pays similarly with actual boundaries around hours, and I've kept maybe sixty percent of the technical skills I built there, which I do appreciate. But I wouldn't send a fresh grad there without warning them first. Go in with eyes open, track every hour yourself, and don't expect anyone to protect your evenings during the busy months. Nobody will.
I was a junior at a mid-size accounting firm, the kind that does audits, tax prep, bookkeeping for a rotating cast of small and medium businesses. On paper, great first job. Structured, professional, you learn actual technical skills, résumé gold. In practice, I spent thirteen months mostly reconciling other people's chaos while being reminded, gently but constantly, that I was replaceable.
The culture ran on a very specific fuel: fear of the senior manager's mood. She wasn't cruel exactly, more like weather. You checked in on her mood the way you'd check a forecast before leaving the house. Bad mood day meant redoing perfectly fine work three times because "it doesn't feel right," which is not feedback, that's a horoscope.
Tax season, though. Tax season deserves its own paragraph because nothing prepared me for it. Twelve, thirteen hour days for about ten straight weeks, six days a week toward the deadline. Overtime was technically paid but calculated in a way that always seemed to come out slightly less than what I'd tracked myself, and asking about the discrepancy got you a lecture about "understanding the compensation structure," which is corporate for "trust us."
I remember one specific night, close to midnight, reconciling a client's accounts that didn't balance by fourteen dollars. Fourteen dollars. I found it eventually, some rounding thing in a spreadsheet formula, and felt a genuine dopamine hit that scared me a little, like my brain had been so starved for wins that fourteen dollars felt like closing a business deal.
The work itself wasn't bad, to be fair, I actually like the puzzle-solving part of accounting, the satisfaction of a balance sheet that balances. That's not sarcasm, I mean it. What wore me down was the culture around the work, the assumption that juniors exist to absorb whatever hours the deadline demands, the total absence of any conversation about workload until you're already underwater.
I left right after tax season ended, timed it so I'd get my bonus first, small victory. New job pays similarly with actual boundaries around hours, and I've kept maybe sixty percent of the technical skills I built there, which I do appreciate. But I wouldn't send a fresh grad there without warning them first. Go in with eyes open, track every hour yourself, and don't expect anyone to protect your evenings during the busy months. Nobody will.
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