Glossary
Best Accounting Firms To Work For: What Actually Makes One Good
There is no single accounting firm that is objectively the best to work for. The right fit depends on what stage of your career you’re in and what kind of environment brings out your best work. The firms worth working for tend to share a few traits though: they hire for judgment and ownership, they don’t confuse being busy with being valuable, and they build the environment around the people doing the work rather than around client demand alone. At Treewalk, that shows up in specific, practical choices: no HR department, no annual performance reviews, staff have real say over new client intake, and the firm has been remote by conviction since before it was common in accounting.
Which accounting firm is the best to work for?
This question doesn’t have one right answer, and any firm that claims it does should make you suspicious. What you can compare across firms are the things that actually predict your day-to-day experience: how decisions get made, whether the schedule is realistic, whether people leave voluntarily or get managed out quietly, and what happens when someone makes a mistake.
Treewalk has been recognized as a Clutch.co Top Accounting Firm in BC, which speaks to client-side satisfaction. But the more useful test for a candidate is simpler: ask current staff what changed for them in the last year, and ask what the firm does when someone drops the ball. The answers tell you more than any award.
What we built the culture around
Our vision was never built around clients. It was built around staff. We set out to create the firm we wanted to work at when we were students, and that ordering matters. Client service quality follows from having a team that isn’t burned out, isn’t managed by fear, and has room to do the work well.
A few of the operating choices that come out of that thesis:
No HR department at 75+ staff.
The reasoning: if you hire carefully and don’t tolerate bad behavior, most of what HR exists to police doesn’t happen.
No annual performance reviews.
Feedback happens when it’s relevant, not once a year on a form.
Staff have veto power over new client work.
If the team says there’s no capacity, the work gets turned away rather than absorbed as overtime.
Remote by choice, not by default.
The firm never ran a return-to-office mandate. The reasoning is direct: if you hire professionals, you give them the judgment to decide where they do their best work.
How that plays out day to day
The staff-veto mechanism above is worth sitting with, because most firms say something similar and then let the schedule quietly override it anyway. Treewalk’s answer has been to keep overtime under 1% of total time by actually declining work rather than absorbing it. That’s a discipline problem more than a staffing problem: it’s easier to say yes to a new client than to say no, and saying no consistently is the harder muscle.
On hiring, the bar is intellect and values, in that order. The internal shorthand is “A-players hire A-players,” on the logic that once a firm starts hiring B-players who hire C-players to feel comfortable, the org drifts toward mediocrity fast. Candidates go through a paid work sample as part of the process, which is as much a de-risking tool for the candidate as it is for the firm: you get to see the actual work before committing to it.
Can you make real money as an accountant?
Compensation questions like “can a CPA make $200,000 a year” or “can you make $500,000 as an accountant” come up constantly, and the honest answer is: it depends heavily on path, not credential alone. A CPA in a controllership or Fractional CFO role, or one who moves into a senior finance seat in industry, has a materially different ceiling than someone who stays in compliance-only public practice work. Roughly seven in ten people who train at a firm end up moving into industry within their career, which is part of why Treewalk deliberately builds training around skills that transfer, not just skills that keep someone useful inside a firm. We don’t publish specific salary figures, firm to firm comparisons on pay aren’t reliable anyway since structures vary too much, but the trajectory matters more than the starting number: firms that develop people into leadership and client-facing roles create more upside than ones that keep juniors doing the same task for five years.
Frequently asked questions
Is remote-first the same as having no culture?
No. Treewalk runs a Friday all-hands where teammates shout out whoever helped them that week, deliberately busy in-office days for teams that want them, and a hiring process built around values fit. Remote removes the commute, not the relationships.
Do accountants really leave public practice for industry jobs?
Yes, at a high rate across the profession. Treewalk treats that as a design constraint rather than a problem to fight: training is built to prepare people for where they’re actually headed, not just for the next busy season.
Does Treewalk offer audit or attest services?
No. Treewalk does not provide audit or attest services. The firm’s biggest practices are Fractional CFO advisory (Office of the CFO), public company support, and controllership.
How is this different from a traditional firm’s up-or-out culture?
There’s no fixed timeline for promotion. Advancement happens when it makes sense for the person and the role, not on a set clock, and staff are expected to be the author of their own career rather than waiting to be managed into the next step.
Where to go next
If any of this resonates and you’re weighing where to build a career in accounting, our careers page is the place to start, and our team reflects the people this culture was actually built around.
