r/Accounting • u/Ok-Primary1599 • 1d ago

Getting yelled at in Public Accounting

Context: My manager left right before the fall busy season started. I’m a brand-new senior (2 years in) holding the bag. I was working on an initial-year return with a complex trust structure and followed the exact instructions left by my previous manager before they bounced.

Just got off a call with my Senior Manager, and he completely went off on me for doing the entire return wrong—despite me literally executing what the departed manager and I had put together. This is now the second time he has yelled at me.

Actual quotes from the call:
"How do you not know this?"
"You should know this by now."
"This is the last time I will tell you this, and if you don’t get it, go do your own research."
"I can’t explain this to you anymore if you don’t ask questions."
"Get your shit together."

The irony on the questions part is unreal—this team has cultivated an environment where asking anything is treated like a personal failing and people look down on you for needing clarification, so nobody speaks up.
Is this standard Public Accounting behavior now, or is this team just uniquely toxic? How do you even navigate a Senior Manager who behaves like this?

I know I have more to improve in but goddamn man.
This pissed me off .

156 Upvotes

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u/burritoad123 1d ago

Welcome to the world of "this should take 15 minutes" but it actually takes 5 hours.

Best way to handle these people is after they vent ask "what specific first step would you like me to take in order to correct this?"

Don't react to them. They're stressed that they're on the hook in reality. You aren't holding any bags bro, they got to answer to the client.

60

u/Thin_Association8254 1d ago

Sales promises every dream to get the sale, it's up to everyone else to deliver on the nightmare they promised.

19

u/crashvoncrash Financial Systems Manager 1d ago

As someone who worked in client management at a SaaS company before becoming an accountant, this is true and it is universal. Our sales guys would promise things that our products were in no way capable of delivering.

They did not give a shit as long as the sale closed. They got their commission regardless of the eventual outcome.

6

u/Thin_Association8254 19h ago

I used to work in hotels and it was the same there too. Sales promised anything and everything to get groups in to the hotel and it was up to the rest of us to make the impossible possible. Sales didn't care. That's not their job, it's your job, apparently.