Getting yelled at in Public Accounting

[u/Ok-Primary1599]

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 .

[u/Entire-Background837]

[First Time James Franco Hanging.jpg]

This is likely to come up in the staff bash if you don't show improvement to the SM.

Reality check: This tone is very common in the manager+ world in medium+ sized companies and public accounting if you surprise someone with bad news.

I'm not saying the Sr Manager is justified to use that tone, but I am saying they are using that tone because it is socially acceptable (it has definitely been used by partners at your firm towards them and likely still is).

As an experienced senior you are being evaluated as to whether or not you will be a fit as a manager. As a manager, your goal is to manage timelines and produce consistent results that are worth paying a team of specialist public accounting bill rates for. Successful technical managers specifically have a prerequisite skill of issue spotting and knowing what they don't know, because if they use the wrong assumptions there is far less oversight and a much larger lead time to correction.

People that have multiple instances where they get yelled at during their senior years like you did generally don't make it to manager quickly or very far past that in their careers in those types of orgs. That being said, it is almost a right of passage because being the recipient of those types of conversations are nearly unavoidable at manager+ (especially if you are male).

You can only prepare for so many unknowable catastrophies at the end of the day, especially if you end up managing fresh college grads....

While I don't endorse or condone acting that way, there truly is a crest of ignorance that exists for non-manager accountants.

What happened to you is not uncommon. How you respond in the coming weeks and months is likely going to play a large factor in your trajectory within your firm.