re: Is internal audit a waste of a career?

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It does include a bonus (only about 10%). What sort of roles do you think I should be looking for that pay that price in Louisiana

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Not sure where you live in Louisiana but I’d also look at remote roles.
Examples:
LINK

LINK

And don’t just blindly apply. Connect with a recruiter on LinkedIn or find someone that went to LSU and that works for the company and ask for a referral. If no one other LSU grads then try someone that went to a Louisiana school; connect on that shared Louisiana base. Or just someone that’s an ex employee of one of your previous firms.

SAS70. LOL. That hasn't existed in about a decade, since the SSAE16 SOC2 (SOC1 is for financial controls) rolled out. The amount of times I've had to cut and paste what a SOC1 vs a SOC2 is from the AICPA website would astound you.

OP, you should have stayed in Big4. I have watched hundreds of people take your route. This is how you end up in an industry IA department where you're waiting for someone to retire or leave to move up. Hess just got bought, and the Hess IA department is finito. A colleague worked there for more than 15 years, he's just gone.

The travel in Big 4 is usually what killed people, but when that's where you start out, you just follow orders because that's what everyone else does. If you want to fly in on Sundays and leave earlier on Thursdays, just do it. If you need to be home on a Wednesday because that is the day your wife needs to get preggo, ask. Too many people don't. You'll find the partners and senior managers that are humans,. Just because everyone else thinks it's fun to roll into work after 9AM and get "work" to pay for dinner doesn't mean you have to.

Interesting. I’ve always been told that this profession was sort of recession proof- but I see your reasoning.

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audit seems to get hit pretty hard, and it's because we are just cost centers in the end. we help improve processes, identify other areas of optimization

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Auditors (internal and external) seem to have a really hard time with demonstrating the actual business value of "improved processes." They invariably turn the justification for the "improvement" into consulting word salad, which makes people hate us.

I agree though, once you go industry, you're expendable. Lots of the basic work is being offshored to India already. You're not a revenue generator in industry, you're a cost center. In consulting, you're a revenue generator. There is a massive difference.

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So is the general consensus here that I try to pursue the CPA? Seems like otherwise I’m severely limiting myself in terms of outside opportunities from IA/earning potential?

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Yes and if you are dead set on staying in the NOLA/BR area, you should almost certainly bite the bullet and go back to public. If you aren’t on the inside track of the handful of industry jobs that are good already, you likely aren’t getting them. You’d probably have to try to get back into public as a Senior Associate for a which will suck being managed by a person your age, but you could get promoted after a year which will already give you a pretty big lag bump

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just seemed low for 7 years out.

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I was in IT, not financial, and I made $70k starting as a senior. 20 years ago. 100k for 7 years does seem low, but the accounting only grads were essentially chattel (based on me paying attention to how the SOX 404 teams got treated.) The women would always start having babies and quit right after they got Manager, which seemed to keep the promotion pipeline open for semi-competent males.

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I'll caveat that I do have my CPA but I don't think you absolutely need to get your CPA with 7 years of Big 4 experience and your CIA license

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My opinion is worthless and Mingo will confirm that, but anyone that’s an “accountant” and over 28-30 and not a CPA I immediately question. I’m sure I’m not the only one. IMO if you want to ever possibly be hired by non Accountants like as a controller of CFO of a small business, you should absolutely get it.

Makes sense. I was always kind of under the assumption that I’d be attractive with the CIA and Big 4 experience. At this point in my career, most of my experience is SOX, governance/risk, and operational type audits.

I thought internal audit would be rough in Louisiana (in terms of publicly traded businesses that needed it)

I did it for 15 years and salary grew and I thought after I got tired of it I was pigeon holed

I was able to transfer to accounting in my Corp eventually and a controller now