Synthia, my experience is pretty much the same as yours. I'm a veteran of one of the big accountancy firms, and was married to a guy working for another one. Several years after I got out of the game, they eliminated the overtime pay for entry staff - bumped up the salaries, but the hours were still much the same and they expanded (a bit) their "overtime pool" system where you could take time off for "excessive overtime."

For an IT person to get into the OT pool, they would have to be part of the consulting staff. The back office IT folks weren't privvy to those conditions.

But maybe things have changed in the last few years. (I'm not keen to go back into public accounting to find out, though. <g>)
Cheers,
Bev