Help Wanted: Slow and Expensive Corporate Accountant

Fortune 500 company is seeking a highly unproductive senior accountant to help inflate the cost of complying with a new federal law requiring that all publicly held corporations disclose the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a long-time opponent of CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure, has just gone on record estimating that making this ratio calculation will force American businesses to expend a total of $710.9 million per year. For large companies, the Chamber reports, calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take an average of 1,825 number-crunching hours at an average cost of $311,800.

Unfortunately, the Chamber’s projections have elicited widespread ridicule from independent observers. Given this ridicule, it is imperative that corporations like ours demonstrate that calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take the maximum possible amount of time and cost.

Successful candidates for our new accounting position must have a track record of delivering slow and expensive work in difficult circumstances. In this case, these circumstances include:

• Limited scope: The accountant responsible for calculating our CEO-median worker pay ratio does not have to bother calculating our CEO pay, since all publicly held corporations already must report their executive compensation. This work only involves calculating median worker pay.
• Flexible methodology: Under the proposed Securities and Exchange rule prepared to enforce the new disclosure mandate, companies like ours need only base their median worker pay figure on a sampling of our workforce.

Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in Accounting/Finance.
• The ability to produce inaccurate analyses in a less than timely manner.
• Self-starters and individuals with excellent multi-tasking skills need not apply.

Salary and Benefits:

Salary is flexible. To exceed the Chamber of Commerce average, we’ll need to spend more than $311,800 to calculate this number, the equivalent of at least $650 an hour for six months of work.  Benefits include generous vacation/unexplained leave time and nap room.