After graduating, I joined the audit practice at one of the Big Four firms in Shanghai. I lasted a little over a year before I left.
Now I work in Tokyo. My actual working hours on any given day are roughly half of what they were at Big Four, and overtime is calculated separately with full pay. My annual salary, converted to RMB, is about 10-20% higher than what my peers from the same intake are making now (Big Four compensation is remarkably transparent), and they've had two additional raises since I left to pursue further education.
My bosses are Europeans. After 8 PM, they don't just ignore emails from employees—even if I wanted to reach them, I probably couldn't find them.
As for myself, if I apply next year, I can get permanent residency in Japan by this time. Should I choose to stay in Tokyo, my parents would help with a down payment of 1-2 million yuan, and I'd handle the mortgage. Buying an apartment in central Tokyo would be entirely manageable for me.
Of course, to be honest, I'm not dramatically happier living here than I was back home. Life in Tokyo can be quite lonely. But compared to my time at Big Four—or rather, compared to that existence which barely qualified as a life—it's incomparably better. And here's the thing: I didn't achieve this because I outworked my peers. On the measure of sheer effort, frankly, any Big Four auditor probably puts in more hours than I ever did. What I did was three things:
- Strip away illusions and see reality clearly
- Work for myself, not for the false promises society and bosses peddle
- Be strategically diligent, not tactically diligent
1. Strip Away Illusions and See Reality Clearly
I chose to join Big Four after graduation for the same reasons most people do: it's the "right" thing to do with your degree, everyone says so. You've got your financial certifications. Big Four offers stability, career prospects, even the possibility of jumping into finance, working at investment banks or securities firms.
For fresh graduates, these arguments still carry tremendous weight. But I've always been someone who snaps out of self-delusion relatively quickly. I wrestled with leaving for a while, but after weighing several critical factors and objectively assessing myself and my circumstances, I concluded that resignation was a decision that would hurt now but benefit for decades. Looking back, I think I made that call with sound judgment. A few things helped me decide:
1️⃣ Most people at Big Four simply aren't that capable. By capability, I mean the ability to quickly absorb new information and stay curious about it, empathy toward others (clients, subordinates), the capacity to identify the core of a problem, and the willingness and courage to take risks. As a man, I have substantial ambitions around wealth. And I believe these capabilities—independent of luck or family background—are what enable someone to spot commercial opportunities and capitalize on them for financial gain. Most Big Four people, especially those in the senior-to-senior manager range, are basically the opposite of all this. I couldn't convince myself that working alongside these people, taking direction from them, would help me build any qualities I actually valued in my early career.
2️⃣ The audit business model is fundamentally broken. First, domestically in China's A-share market, auditing only serves a regulatory need, not a market one. For companies going public or pre-IPO, audit firms are just a compliance cost—unlike investment banks or consulting firms that can be aligned with the company's interests. Most companies wouldn't hire you if they didn't have to. Chinese society carries a lot of resentment, and our capital markets lack proper oversight. This creates a dynamic where many audit clients resent the money they're forced to spend on you because regulators demand it. When your client starts with this adversarial mindset, the business won't thrive. I never believed this industry had real long-term potential.
Starting in 2020, when PwC used irregularities in invoice reimbursements as a pretext to discipline employees, followed by industry-wide delays in promoting managers, you could sense it—this sector is crumbling. The collapse might take 5-10 years, but it's coming.
2. Work for Yourself, Not for the Lies Society and Your Boss Tell You
I woke up to this remarkably early. I think many people eyeing Big Four, or those already there working themselves half to death, still harbor beliefs like: "If I leave, I'll never get a raise like this again." "Eventually I'll jump; staying longer at Big Four means a higher salary when I do." "This platform is pretty good" (Big Four loves this term—what nonsense). "I'm learning so much here."
If you catch yourself thinking these things, please, purge that poison immediately. Here's a test: pick any A-share-listed company in an industry you know something about. Study their financial statements. If you can clearly explain their business model, competitive advantages, and why the market values them the way it does, then you've genuinely learned something. But I'd bet that if you brought in a Big Four manager or senior manager, maybe 5% could answer that properly. That's the real skill in finance. Memorizing audit standards, regurgitating audit procedures and jargon? Does the capital market care? Does it create actual value for enterprises or intermediaries?
The people I've seen who actually developed transferable, practically useful skills at Big Four mostly jumped to other lines of business within Big Four, or pivoted into investment and research roles. The only ones who stayed, telling themselves they'd be worth more when they eventually left, were the mediocre ones with nowhere else to go, just spinning their wheels, wasting years. You're learning nothing.
3. Be Strategically Diligent, Not Tactically Diligent
This is where ineffective people screw up. This industry obliterates your body and mind and offers almost no skills or opportunities in return—every ounce of effort should go toward leveraging whatever remaining credibility the sector has and getting out as fast as you can. But some people spend their days figuring out which boss's coattails to ride for easier projects, which assignments pay well with minimal headaches, what gadgets improve life at Big Four, which work habits make things more efficient. Your house is flooding and you're worried about what outfit to wear?
My thinking was simple: this is a cesspool. Work as hard as you want—it's just a question of how much shit you're eating. The outcome is always the same. Second, the entire domestic job market doesn't respect labor law, doesn't treat junior employees like humans, makes workers suffer first and share last, and loves dressing up "brutal hours" as "building your résumé."
Either take the risk and start your own thing (even if monthly income dips below white-collar work), or join a startup in an emerging sector, or figure out how to live off capital returns, or lower your ethical standards and do something duplicitous, or go work as a laborer abroad. Anything else—trying to build a respectable life from scratch in tier-one cities on a local salary, working for someone else? That era is over. The international environment, the economic headwinds—they don't allow for it anymore. Once you think this through clearly and match it against your abilities, family circumstances, moral boundaries, and what you actually want from life, the decision becomes easy.
Summary
Not a day has passed since leaving Big Four that I haven't been grateful for the choice. No more sacrificing my health for mediocre compensation. No more collaborating with mediocre people (well, not all of them—I had genuinely talented friends there, but they've all left now, which proves the adage that birds of a feather flock together). No more pretending I'm "learning something" while working on documents I fundamentally reject. No more scrolling through WeChat moments each busy season to see the same clichéd travel and food photos from my shallow former colleagues.
Your first 3-5 years in the workforce shape your career, your habits, your worldview, your values in ways that last decades. Don't let this place leave an ugly mark on you that never fully fades.