The Accounting Podcast

Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Blake Oliver: [00:00:10] Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:00:13] And I'm David Leary, and.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:14] We're talking today about pay transparency and pay for accountants. And joining us is Dominic Piscopo CPA. Welcome to the show Dominic.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:00:23] Thanks for having me on Blake. It's nice to meet you.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:25] Dominic is a senior financial analyst at rewind and also the founder of Big Four transparency. Com where. Well, I'll let you describe it. Dominic what is Big Four transparency.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:00:37] Com absolutely. Um, at its uh, at its core, Big Four transparency is a website where we have crowdsourced salary data, um, general compensation information and job satisfaction, uh, responses as well from the general public of CPAs, primarily in North America and where you can go for free to find out how much you should be getting paid, how your salary compares to others in the industry, and then most, most recently, we've started working with firms as well to help firms make sure that they have a proper compensation strategy in place as well. So yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:12] What inspired you to set up this site?

Dominic Piscopo: [00:01:16] Um, I have a bit of a backstory on that where I, like, really learned the value as well as the difficulty of, uh, of proper compensation data all at the same time. So my background, I worked at a big four firm, I worked at Deloitte, and I honestly, I think that I got the best possible, um, hand like that I could have been given. I think I had a fantastic partner. I had a really good team where I was working and early on, the main sticking point for me was, uh, compensation. So, um, I'm in Canada where compensation is lower across the board, but especially I find kind of in the accounting field. And I was actually working in nightlife at the time, and I found that I was like pretty much making more money from the two nights I was working in nightlife than my whole week at a big four firm.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:02] When you say nightlife, you mean like a bartender or something?

Dominic Piscopo: [00:02:05] Yeah, I was working at a bar. I was doing some DJ jobs as well, and like that pays incredibly well for a student. And so I was a little bit shell shocked when I kind of got into the accounting scene. So I started asking around and I found out actually that we were, at the time, also being paid, you know, roughly 10% less than other co-op students. So kind of like interns in the city. And I kind of I raised this with a partner, probably naively, but it kind of worked out at the time, and he was actually surprised by it. He he was not aware, like where we stood. And they tried to kind of like, you know, like the big four firm, like to be kind of like the, the, the premium, like they want to be the employer of choice. And so he kind of more or less tasked me with saying, hey, can you canvass other firms in the regions, get me real numbers and like, we will make it work. So I did that like a very small local scale, just, you know, pen and paper, like, hey, like, do you mind sharing this information with me? And it resulted in my entire cohort getting a 10% pay increase. So I kind of had that with just like in the back of my mind. Um, I eventually moved on from the big four. I worked at a small business, and I kind of got more and more into entrepreneurship.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:03:17] I was like, inspired. I'm a huge podcast person. I was very inspired by like, Indie Hackers, my first million, stuff like that. And I wanted to start taking on projects and I was like, you know, like that, that experience that I had, like, I bet you so many other people are going through that. So I was just trying to learn how to use no code tools. And this was the first thing that I kind of launched. Um, and it went extremely viral on Reddit. So I launched this in the fall of 2021, um, with just kind of a post saying like, hey, just check this out. I've launched this thing just for fun, you know, let me know if anyone uses it. And, um, eventually there's like a shared spreadsheet where people can view the data that's been submitted. And I went in there and at one point there was concurrently hundreds of people in the spreadsheet at the same time. And I was like, oh, I think I might have something here. Um, so since then, I've been really kind of like developing, working it, uh, maintaining the data in there to a very, like, high quality. And I've just. Yeah, I've taken it from there and, and, uh, and we've ran with it. So since then there's a, you know, a newsletter. Now we work with firms on their compensation strategy. And yeah, that's where we are today.

David Leary: [00:04:26] And how much data do you have? Because basically the website essentially for listeners is just a form. You go in and you fill out your form about your salary and your position and the years and experience. And if you want, you could list. There's a way to put every year of your career and how much data you got every single year on there. But so every time somebody does that and says submit, that's a record, right? Yeah. How many records have you compiled in this last two and a half years or so.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:04:47] So in terms of total submissions, I would say we're probably at just over 15,000. Um, in terms of records that I'm showing, uh, just somewhere like invalid or had issues with especially early on, I didn't have great, uh, rules, you know, for, for data quality. And we're displaying roughly three, uh, 13,700, uh. Single records of data.

David Leary: [00:05:10] Its significant. Significant.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:11] Well, that's like 10% of everybody who works in the big four.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:05:15] Yeah. Yeah. So it extends beyond the big four as well. Yeah. The name was a bit of like a SEO play. Um, not that I know much about SEO, but I was like, this seems like how you do this, um, and just like a pun, like I'm big for transparency. Yeah. Um, yeah. And we've had we've had well over 200,000, uh, unique people coming to our site, uh, overwhelmingly from North America. So, yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:38] Wow. What an incredibly valuable resource for anyone who's looking to get data on compensation so that they can negotiate their own salary. Uh, I think 13,000 records here. Like, I could go and and see. Okay. Uh, I'm a staff accountant. What are other staff accountants making at big four firms or Non-big? Four firms? And what certifications do they have if they're a CPA or not? The city they're in. And this is all free to to view. You've made this completely public. I can open the spreadsheet. Right now. I'm looking at it.

David Leary: [00:06:09] That's going to say like, the accountants will love this because you can actually get all the data in a spreadsheet and do anything you want with it.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:06:15] Yeah, yeah. I think accountants being accountants, you know, I fall within that range where I'm like, okay, cool, thanks for that median number. But like I need to know like what's behind this number. Right. So that was kind of the key differentiator here versus all the salary guides that are out there is like you can you can go look at what a real person is making, um, probably from your own office realistically. Um, so yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:39] And you've even got here average weekly hours, so you can compare what people are making and divide it by the number of hours they're working. Like, here's somebody at EA that just filled this out, like recently. They're one of the latest records and they say they're working 80 hours a week. So I think you're going to have to divide their salary in half. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:06:59] No I've I've included a lot of fields in there. Most of them I've used for like various analysis on, you know, Daymore hours translate into more bonuses or. How do hours and job satisfaction, you know, play like what's the what's the difference between someone saying they're working 60 and 50 versus like how satisfied they are? Um, and then there's some fields that I put in there. I was like, uh, some, some academic out there might, might be interested in this one day. So I've had a few universities reach out, uh, where I've shared the data. But like, you know, there's a lot of, like, gender information in there where, you know, I'm good with data, but I'm not like, uh, I wouldn't feel super comfortable making hard conclusions about some of the touchier subjects on, on, you know, maybe gender or race pay. Um, so I've done some initial analysis on that. But like the door is open for academics who are interested in doing studies on this as well. So, I.

David Leary: [00:07:52] Mean, have you seen any trends or like, I mean, the assumption is, you know, salaries are up. Are you seeing that as to be true, like because you have real data, like what are what's going on, what's going on in the industry based on your data. Yeah.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:08:04] So salaries are definitely up. Um, whether they're keeping up with inflation or not is a little bit hard to, you know, that's a little bit of a difficult assessment to make because it's very like region dependent as well. So I launched this in 2021 where I think we kind of were at the cusp of a bit of a transformation in terms of compensation. So even just from where I worked, I talked to people who are starting now and they're making way more than I was at the time. Um, which is only, what, 4 or 5 years ago? Um, so I think there has been a bit of a transformation, but it happens sort of region by region, like it'll happen at different times, um, and like for different sizes of firms. Right. So I think some of the very small firms who maybe don't have access to data, and this is something that I'm trying to be part of helping with. Um, they will often kind of lag, like if there's like a big change, you'll often see some of the smaller firms, like they'll, they'll take longer to institute that change because maybe they weren't aware of it and they kind of got left in the dust for a year.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:09:08] And, you know, that creates a difficult experience for those employees. They might lose a lot of top talent just because they weren't, you know, they weren't keeping track of what was going on. So I do think pay has increased, but there's a lot of studies done where, you know, when you look at it, adjusted for inflation, compare it to almost any other profession like we're behind. Um, and I do think that that is very much like an issue in the, in the space that we're in. Um, yeah. And there's been a lot of other trends, like I've tried to kind of see, like, is this, um, is this loyalty tax people pay real, right? Like are external hires versus internal promotions being paid the same. And I actually found like quite, quite strongly like, yeah, there is a loyalty tax like you, you are paid more as like an external hire versus an internal promotion on average. So um, yeah, it's been it's been really interesting having access to this, being able to kind of like find these.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:02] And that's true across all types of jobs and industries where if you are willing to hop around from firm to firm or company to company, you can dramatically increase your earnings. Whereas if you stay someplace for ten, 20 years, you'll get that cost of living increase or a minor minor increase, but it will never add up to what you get when you jump. And the difference over years can be enormous. So are you able to quantify that in the accounting profession? Like roughly like like how much more could I make if I switch firms every couple of years versus if I stay at one firm?

Dominic Piscopo: [00:10:39] Yeah, I'm pulling up the data here. Um, so what I had done was to take a look at, um, second year, like analysts and second year senior. No, sorry. Yeah. I was looking at kind of first year seniors, first year managers and whatnot. And yeah, I found, you know, I'm just pulling it up here, um, for analysts. So already at the bottom, like there was a 5% pay difference on average, um, which is just after.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:04] A few years.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:11:05] Yeah. So this was for second year analysts. So you've got one year of experience. You're already five years behind or 5% behind. Um, and that was actually just to.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:14] Clarify, two years of experience. That means I work for a year at a firm. And then I changed jobs, and now I'm making 5% more compared to the person who didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's that's pretty. And I can see that compounding.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:11:26] Oh yeah. Yeah. So first year seniors um external hires were paid on average 12.5% more than internal promotions. Wow.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:35] Um, 12.5%.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:11:37] Yeah, that difference was 14% at the big four firms, um, managers, it was 13.5%. Uh, and I did this analysis a little while ago. I think I did this in September. So anyway. Yeah. So like when you kind of look at some of these, you're like, that's actually that's quite substantial. Yeah. It's huge. And you know like it's it's something that you should know. And I think changing jobs a lot you know does come with some downsides. But it's important to know these things. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:03] Yeah. So let's just think about this 5 to 14%. Difference. So if I stick around at my firm and I wait to get promoted internally, I am going to, at each level be paid somewhere between, let's say, five and 15% less than a person who changed firms for every promotion. So if I'm really just focused on myself and my salary and increasing my earnings, it seems like I should change firms.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:12:31] Uh, yeah, I think that's a bit of like a one time bump as well. Right? Like, um, I think a lot of the difference and some of the message that I pulled out of this was like, hey, like, advocate for yourself, right? Right. And, and this is a tool that is meant to sort of help you do that and having these discussions and actually be able to go in with real data, because I think a big difference is that first year manager probably actually like they probably negotiated their salary on the way in a little bit or needed some incentive to come that the firm is ultimately probably willing to pay. But if you just got promoted internally, that discussion maybe didn't happen and you just said, okay, cool, thank you for the promotion. Right. And so you you end up further behind. Um, so yeah, like at the individual level, this is really meant to be like a tool to advocate for yourself.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:17] Yeah. Maybe you could have it both ways. You could stay at the firm you're at and use this tool to advocate for the higher salary that you should be getting, because the firm is willing to pay it to somebody that just comes from outside.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:13:28] Yeah, absolutely.

David Leary: [00:13:29] Do you have data like which firms are like, have the highest job satisfaction or hey, uh, top ten firms, people are happier than the, the, um, big four firms or even I'd like to understand like are people doing hybrid remote getting paid less, like, do you have because you don't have filters for that readily set up to I'm wondering.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:13:48] Yeah, I have um, I have the hybrid and remote stuff. I have the, the office model. Um, I did a survey or I did a analysis on this. It's a little bit out of date, so I'll probably do a new one I generally like. I generally share them out, you know, at uh, every 3 or 4 weeks I'll share out a newsletter with like a new analysis of like, hey, here's what we're finding. So some of the earlier ones I did are a little bit out of date at this point, but I had done one at one point. Um, and what we were finding, I believe at the time, RSM Moss Adams, BDO Baker, Tilly, Grant Thornton were like the top, um, with the highest satisfaction. But I think at the time you're also, you know, you're filtering out firms where you have three survey responses. Right. So I'm sure there's a lot of very, very small firms where the satisfaction is through the roof. But I'm like, okay, if I, if I have I think the cutoff was like, if I have less than 15 or 20 submissions from that firm, I'm going to exclude it. Um, but the general trend. So I categorized by Big Four other top 20 and then other smaller firms. Um, the general trend in that analysis I did was that the other top 20 firms had the highest average reported job satisfaction. Um, so their average at the time of doing this newsletter had been, uh, 7.18, whereas uh, other smaller firms reported 6.81 and the big four firms average was 6.72. Um, on a scale of 1 to 10 for your job satisfaction. Interesting.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:22] So I'm better off, according to this survey as not Big Four, but also not small. These regional firms have good job satisfaction. But that's interesting because that that there's another stat that I saw recently from accounting today that says that it's the regional firms that are struggling the most with retention and recruitment right now.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:15:44] Yeah. Yeah. So I mean but maybe that's.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:47] Why there maybe that's why they're offering good work environments.

David Leary: [00:15:52] Conditions. Yeah.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:15:52] Yeah I think there's, there's really like a bit of a point in time thing for some of this. Right. Like um, and when I pulled this data, there was a very large sample size for, like, the general firm things. I'd be, I'd be curious to kind of, like, do another analysis on this. I'm probably due actually to do it, um, because that had been a new field. So I had added that field maybe six months prior, and I was like, okay, like, let's take a look at the first six months of collected data on this. Um, but yeah, there's it's it's really, really interesting to see, just like what people are responding to at such a large scale. Right. You can really find some interesting stuff.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:26] Did you say you had, uh, data on hybrid versus remote or in-person versus hybrid and remote?

Dominic Piscopo: [00:16:32] Yeah. So I have, um, yeah, hybrid remote and then full in-office. So that was another field that I added. Uh, I forget exactly how long ago. Let me open that one. Um, yeah. So average job satisfaction rating split up by each. So hybrid was the highest, um, at 6.78, uh, remote was the second highest 6.76. So pretty pretty similar. Um, and then in office reported the lowest job satisfaction of 6.38. So still like a hefty gap you know, .0.34 gap.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:08] Is this on a scale of 1 to 10 or how is 1 to 10? Yeah.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:17:12] So I ask everybody to to submit that with their entry. And then and then, you know, I took the average response here. Um, and then there was a self-reported weekly hours worked hybrid interestingly, was reporting the highest 48.2 hours on average per week, um, in office. This was the second highest 46.8 and then the remote was 45. So some of that as well. I'm, I'm very curious of like is this perceived hours worked right. Like where does this difference come from. And that's some of the difference between academic surveys and this. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:45] Like are these actual hours worked or are these timesheet hours worked.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:17:49] So I'm asking for actual hours worked on the website. Yeah. Um, like and I ask for like an estimate average on the year. Right. So it's not a lot of it is like a perception thing too. Right. So that's. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:01] Is there a difference in the pay between these different work environments.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:18:05] Um I don't know. So like that's something I had looked at at the time.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:09] If I go into the office, am I getting paid more than if I'm hybrid or if I'm fully remote? I would expect that perhaps some fully remote folks would be making less than if they had an in-office or a hybrid requirement, because that's one of the benefits for firms, is you can hire people who live out in the middle of nowhere, and they're willing to take less because their cost of living is significantly less than if they're in, like, New York City.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:18:31] Yeah, I was gonna say I would expect there to be some difference there. And and you know what people should really be focused on for themselves, I think, is pay relative to cost of living. Right. So I think remote opens some very interesting opportunities. Um, I've done some work on the kind of compensation service I offer with some, some fully remote smaller firms, right where it's like, okay, here's here's probably where you should be recruiting based on what you're willing to pay. And, uh, like this salary is actually going to be huge for someone living in a very low cost of living city. Like they're going to be extremely grateful for this if this is what you're offering. But like, don't waste your recruiting dollars in Chicago, New York or, uh, California as a whole, right? Like just save those because this is going to be below market there. So, um, you know, but remote definitely opens like very interesting opportunities for these people. Oh, yeah.

David Leary: [00:19:25] Have you thought about tracking beyond salary? Because a lot of times, a lot of, especially as companies get bigger and you see this in big corporations, in tech, it's total compensation. So they start figuring out like, you know, now that Bdoe has an ESOP. So there's equity and the health benefits I'm getting, and maybe I get a gym membership like the total compensation package. Have you thought about adding that?

Dominic Piscopo: [00:19:45] Yeah, I've I've wrestled with that a lot actually. Um, it's something that I think is is really worthwhile, like considering I'm also a little bit weary about how many fields to put on this survey. Right. Because it's already, you know, it'll it'll take you a minute or two or it looks like.

David Leary: [00:20:01] A tax form already. Yeah.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:20:03] Like, I don't want this to be like an eight minute thing because then we might only get one entry in a category. Right. So it's a little bit of a trade off. And I think um, I think like a solution ultimately would be to like compile some sort of a guide on like, hey, here's the benefits that each of these firms are offering and, you know, maybe match that, that salary, uh, research that you did. Along with that, I also have a I have fields for bonuses and, um, bonuses and equity. But the equity field is not used very much like this really caught a lot of traction in public accounting. Um, there is some data there for industry accountants, but not to the same scale and and not to a level where I think you can like. Draw decisive conclusions, like the sample size for industry is a little bit smaller, so the equity field doesn't get used a ton, but it's something not to be ignored. Absolutely.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:57] Well, Dominic, you mentioned that you do some consulting. Talk a little bit about that. So it sounds like you're helping firms figure out what they should be paying.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:21:06] Yeah, yeah. So, um, I this has always been trying to trying to be a balance between being able to offer this as a service and then kind of holding up my end of the bargain where I really want to have this for free for for accountants who want to better their careers. Right. So essentially I, I just do more in depth analysis on the data and I'll share out kind of like a quarterly update, and I'll share it when it gets, uh, when the data is like thoroughly cleaned. You'll receive this so you can be sure that everything's been reviewed and cleaned and, and whatnot when you're receiving it. And it'll have like a lot of kind of analysis on the, the relevant areas where you're working and percentiles and, you know, will align with your strategy on that. Um, and yeah, it's been interesting. It's a different service for different firms. So actually I work with one of the big four firms in Canada. Um, and for them, it's really just like, give me the data and go away because we have data analysts who are better than you at this. Right. Um, so that's fantastic. And then some of the smaller firms, it's been a little bit more tailored where it's like, okay, I'll do some preliminary analysis. And, um, ultimately, I don't want to be telling you how to set your strategy and run your business because this is a huge part of the business. But I will empower you to do so in a way where you are very accurate in your strategy. Right? Like you're not going to think, oh, I'm actually very generous and I'm paying really well and you're way behind market. I will say, okay, cool. If you want to pay roughly around this percentile, here's the data to be able to properly do so. Um, I'm not there to kind of tell you how to run your firm. I have not run an accounting firm either. Right. So it's it's empowering them to do so.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:41] Yeah. So if somebody is interested in consulting with you on pay for their firm, where should they go?

Dominic Piscopo: [00:22:47] Um, yeah. So I'm, uh, I have a contact me field on the website, so on Big Four transparency. Com um, or I'm very accessible via email. So dom dom at Big Four. Transparency. Com great. Um, I'm on all kinds of other platforms. You can probably just search up the website, but um, yeah those are kind of the main, the main points of contact for me. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:07] And if you want to help out and contribute your salary information to this giant spreadsheet, go to Big Four. Transparency. Com and fill out the form. You can also view the spreadsheet without even submitting. Just scroll down to open the salary spreadsheet, and you can open the Google Sheet and take a look at what people are making. I just filtered and I found that like a staff accountant at a Non-big four is making something like I closed it so I lost it, but it was like 75, $76,000 a year, uh, with like 1 or 2 years of experience, which is actually a lot more. That's a big change from what we have been hearing. So, like, it looks like salaries are going up. Uh, but I don't know. We'll have to dig into it more to see if that's a positive trend.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:23:52] So. Absolutely.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:53] Uh, Dominic, thanks so much for your time. We've got to go. Really appreciate you joining the show. And best of luck to you on all your endeavors.

Dominic Piscopo: [00:24:01] Thanks a lot for having me on.