My Big Mistake at the Big Firm, Epilogue and Miscellany.

It's hard to believe that a year ago, I pretty much had finished the last of my accounting work at my job and had began the long, slow death march to unemployment.
Sometimes it seems longer, sometimes it seems like I am still there. It may be one of those things that I won't really get past until I find a new job.

There are things I liked. It was my first "real" job as far as being in an office and not punching a time clock. I often felt a sense of achievement just being there, because I'd worked really hard in school, starting from community college accounting classes to finishing a Master's program less than three years later. I passed the CPA exam, something that a lot of people there had not been able to do [although some of that was because other people had a lot more work and so they had less time to study and prepare to take the exam.] I met a lot of people there, many of which I liked. We were one of the more diverse offices and there were folks there from all over the world. I was generally treated with respect.

But the truth was, there was really no place for me there. The partner was right, I was a "poor fit," Although it seems silly to blame someone for giving you a job,
the longer I was there the more I wondered why on Earth I was ever hired in the first place because I did not seem to have any of the qualities they wanted. I chalk it up to the "numbers game" I alluded to in an earlier post. Their business model relies on a large number of people being hired each year, with the expectation that the majority of them will be gone in two years. They also offered a job very early on, literally years before I graduated. I really should have continued to explore job opportunities even after accepting an offer with them.

I think I was also unhappy with the city I'd moved to, my living situation, etc., and that made it hard for me to really get excited by my job, especially when I had been there a couple of months and felt like there was really no purpose in my being there.

It's difficult. I feel like my career has been damaged by my decision to work there. The work we were doing was very specialized to that particular city and its industry, and pretty much none of the experience I did get is relevant to the job market where I'm at now. I am a CPA, but have no real experience. I basically have to start all over, and hope that next time I can do better. Oh well. I'm hoping sometime this year I might be able to redeem myself.

BTW, "De Minimis" basically means "inconsequential things." It's a tax/legal term for something that isn't really of importance, like a minor discrepancy. I've posted using the name at some of the other accounting sites, and think it's perfect.