Although Lisha and I technically attended high school together, she was a few classes behind me, we actually know each other because she's my BFF's hubby's sister. In other words, the boys I claim as my nephews are her actual nephews. We see each other, and her fiance Ryan, too, several times each year. Like her brother, she is tall with a propensity for athletic giftedness. And she's totally beautiful in that beach volleyball kind of way. I knew Lisha has been working successfully as a CPA for several years, but I, too, thought "all accountants do taxes." And our Thanksgiving conversations tend not to go into professional details, but go more like,
Me: "Hi! (hug) How's work and life and stuff?"
Her: "Great, thanks."
Logan: "Hey guys, watch this" (flies off the couch into a pile of blankets and then dances to the Fox Song; then Max sticks his fingers in his mouth and gags a bit; and then Francie cries because, well, she cries a lot).
Lisha clears up any assumptions about her job in this interview. Accounting, actually, sounds so NOT boring. Then again, I always thought that, like Ben Stiller in Along Came Polly, being an actuary sounded kinda interesting. Point being, her job requires a lot of her, but rewards her both intellectually, socially, and financially, quite well. And she gets to go live in Germany soon!
Thanks for sharing your professional experience, Lisha, and major congrats on multiple accounts - recent engagement, and awesome career opportunities abroad!
We got engaged mid-May in Kauai!
Bio info - who are you, how old
are you, where are you from, where do you live, what's your living/family
situation, what are your hobbies, etc. Essentially, what's your story?
Lisha. 29 years old. Grew up in West Linn, OR from 5th
grade on, so therefore call it my home. I went to University of Oregon and
loved every second of it. After graduating, I moved to Seattle for 1 year,
moved back to Portland for 1.5 years (apparently I got a little homesick), and then
back to Seattle again. I now live in Seattle, WA with my fiancé, Ryan, and
our two babies (i.e., mischievous cats), Mikey and Marley.
My baby, Mikey.
Hobbies include traveling anywhere and everywhere, enjoying the
outdoors (skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, boating, more traveling, etc.), finding
great new books to read, movies, eating, drinking, watching football, singing
along to songs … the list goes on. I used to play a lot of basketball and
volleyball, most recently playing in a lot of women and coed rec volleyball
leagues. However, most of my volleyball-loving friends have moved out of state,
and therefore I haven’t played much in the past year.
What is your current job/profession?
What path did you take to get there? Any required schooling or training?
I am a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and an Accounting Manager at
Amazon.com, specifically working on SEC reporting.
Most people probably don’t know what SEC reporting means, so I will say
this: When you invest in companies (i.e., if you have any money invested in
stock), you have rights as an investor to know the financial health of the
company that you are investing your money in.
My job is to prepare financial statements that we file with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that are available to investors in
order to enable people to make educated decisions about whether or not they
want to buy Amazon’s stock. Did I lose anyone yet?
I studied Accounting in the Business School at Oregon, while also
double majoring in Psychology because I found it fascinating. While accounting
may seem less than intriguing to most people, I really enjoyed it because I was
good at it and it challenged me. So there I was, off on my path of being an
accountant.
To be a CPA, you must have five years worth of schooling (credits) to
be eligible to sit for the exam. (Side note: the CPA exam is a bitch.
Essentially 16 hours of grueling and detailed accounting questions taken over four
separate exams.) Due to the credits requirement, most people get a Masters in
Accountancy. However, since I double majored, studied abroad in Spain for one
summer, and had a lot of credits from high school, I only completed four years
of school and jumped in to the accounting world earlier than most of my peers.
I applied for internships my junior year of college and literally had
no idea what I was doing or getting myself into. I went shopping with my mom
and bought two suits, filled out a resume in the business school, and got
on-campus interviews with all of the big accounting firms in the
Portland/Seattle area (six to be exact). From there, the public accounting
firms invite all the students in-house for second round interviews. This is an
all-day interview process with each firm, so I essentially spent my whole Spring Break of Junior year interviewing, alternating between my gray and black
suit each day. I ended up starting my career with Ernst & Young, one of the
‘Big Four’ accounting firms, in Seattle. I progressed from a staff auditor to a
senior auditor over the next few years, and then decided to leave EY after four
years for an opportunity at Amazon.com. I have been working in Amazon’s
accounting department for almost three years now.
What are the pros and cons of
your current position?
Pros:
-
Working with wonderful and highly intelligent
people
-
Salary
-
Visibility and opportunity to work directly with
our VP Controller, CFO, etc.
-
Importance and significance of my work
contribution (at least in the finance world)
-
Growth potential
Cons:
-
Working hard, long hours (by hard, I mean that
this job is very mentally challenging, which is a pro and a con)
-
“Busy seasons” where I know I’ll be working until midnight and working on weekends and can’t take any time off
Walk us through a typical day,
week, or month ...
Hmm, I don’t really have a typical day, week, or month. It’s more like a
typical quarter since we are quarterly reporting cycles. Here’s a brief
breakdown though:
Sometime between 5 – 7 AM: Wake up and do some sort of exercise (yoga,
barre, boot camp, or spin) or bike to work.
8 – 9 AM: Have a light breakfast at work and check all the emails that
came in overnight, which are either from people in other countries since we are
an international company, or from people that just worked later than I did the
day before.
9 – 6: Attend meetings to discuss accounting issues. Perform monthly
tasks such as preparing Amazon’s global statement of cash flows, reviewing our
10-Q, or researching what other SEC filers are doing. Keep up on recent
accounting developments through webcasts or seminars. Work on projects and
process improvements. I won’t get in to too much detail here so as to not bore
anyone to death.
6 PM: Head home. Do whatever we feel like doing so we are not tied down
by anything (happy hour, Mariners/Seahawks games, movies, relax at home, go for
a hike, etc.)! If it is busy season, my heading home time could be much later.
I think the latest I’ve worked this year is 2 AM, just to give people some
insight.
What is something about your job
that other people might not know or expect?
People assume accountants do taxes. MOST DO NOT. I use TurboTax just
like everyone else.
I am never busy leading up to April 15th! This date has
nothing to do with my job.
People assume accountants are really good at math. Also false. We are
really good with Excel spreadsheets and using a 10-key for simple addition,
subtraction, division, etc. People that succeed as accountants are typically
excellent writers as well – yes, we do a lot of writing. (Did this surprise
most of you?)
Generally everyone I’ve worked with at EY and now Amazon are young,
intelligent, social, and fun people. Most of my friends in Seattle are
accountants!
What other jobs could you work
with your education/training/experience?
Any job in accounting at any company, really. Probably also any job in
the finance world in general. The great part of working for a company like
Amazon is I can rotate out of accounting relatively easily and try my hand at
finance, operations, etc. I literally could become a buyer if I wanted and
start going to trade shows as part of my job.
How much do you make? (Too
forward?!? Probably. But let's be real, a large part of the reason we work is
to make money - give us some deets about your income, as much as you feel comfortable
sharing, whether specific to your personal salary, or generally speaking, as
in, What Would Google Say).
Most people in this profession start as a staff accountant, either with
a public accounting firm (like I did at EY) or directly working for a company
(like I am now at Amazon). When I started out, I made about $45K, which I think
is a pretty standard starting salary in accounting (although tax accountants
generally make more, probably because less people want to do it). In public
accounting, there is a pretty safe and clear career progression ladder, where
you generally get promoted to the “next level” every few years, no question.
When I left public accounting after four years, I was making around $60K.
Working for Amazon is a HUGE perk in terms of salary, and I make over
six figures now but will opt to leave it at that. People tend to unfairly
compare themselves against others, so I do not want to disclose how much I
actually make! However, to give you an idea, we get compensated heavily in
Amazon’s stock, which has historically done very well. To give you an idea, I
started when the share price was around $185 and now it is at $325.
Do you anticipate making any
career changes in the next 5 to 10 years?
An exciting change coming in the next couple months is that I have
accepted a rotation to our accounting department in Munich, Germany! I will
work over there for 18 months and get a better idea of operations and business
in other countries, which I am very excited about. When I return, I will have
the option to come back to the corporate accounting group at Amazon or rotate
into another field, so I have yet to decide what I may do in the future.
If you could have any other job
in the world, what would it be?
I used to say beach volleyball player. I’d also love to write a book
one day, possibly a compilation of my very crazy and highly entertaining
dreams.
If someone else was interested in
your job, what piece of advice would you give them?
Start in public accounting. You will gain so much experience that is
invaluable and make you a great catch for any future company. You will also
progress further in your career faster. Accounting is a field where you can go
as far as you want to, depending on how hard you are willing to work for it
(and obviously you gotta have the smarts)!
How do you balance work life and
home life?
Ryan and I are equally career focused and do not have children yet, so
we essentially work hard and play hard at this point in our lives. I do imagine
this will become a struggle in the future as Ryan and I start to have a family.
I want to be able to prioritize raising my children and am not sure the demands
of my current job will allow for that.
*****
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