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Accountants! Tell my why I should/should not be an accountant.
Main Post:
I am planning on going the accounting route, but I've been warned by many of a bleak and boring future. I'd like to hear your story. What are the pros and cons?
Thank you in advance!
Top Comment:
I'm a CPA and an auditor in my 3rd year of public accounting, so most of the following points are from the perspective of the audit 'path,' however, a lot of it rings true for accounting in general (I'm also drinking, so pardon the rambling):
Cons
- The hours during tax season...our firm has a minimum hourly requirement of 55 a week during that period, but it could be up to 80 hours a week. And Saturdays are mandatory. Not only is this tiring but it makes it really hard to get personal chores/errands done.
- You are judged on an objective rating scale applied to inherently subjective work. A lot of the time, you're given vague instructions on both how to do something and what the end product/deliverable should be. In addition to that, one boss might like your work and another might hate it. It can be demoralizing when you don't even know what is expected of you.
- This is more personal, but I know a lot of people in accounting who feel this way too: It's hard to see the value in what I do. It's a thankless job because I'm "The Auditor." There is no end product that you can feel proud of. Most of the challenges I face are not the kinds of challenges that make you feel proud, like you've overcome something and bettered yourself or someone else by defeating the challenge. It's more like you're putting out fires set by your own firm or your client. I loved accounting in school. I really was proud of it, and I could see how I "fit" into the equation: I helped maintain an orderly, unbiased "language" for reporting financial information. This in turn made information more reliable and available to people. This in turn made the markets more efficient. I loved playing that role of adding value to information; it seemed pure. But the real world is much, much different. There's more of a disconnect between myself and the end product. I liken my experience to the whole "Ivory Tower" notion of school. In class, we would talk about all the big, high-minded "sexy" topics in accounting (yes, there were such things). From the top of this ivory tower we could see all the cool stuff far in the distance, unobstructed, that we would one day get to experience. Then, after graduation, we were dropped to bottom floor of the tower, punched in the face, and told to start walking through weeds and swamp and thorny bushes. tl;dr: It's hard to see the value in what you do. It's hard to be proud of what you do.
- You can't leave your work at the office. It's always on your mind. You're always worrying.
- You don't know what to expect the next day, let alone the next week. While the benefit of this is that it makes you good at multi-tasking and thinking on your feet, it also gets very, very, very tiring. Sometimes, I yearn for the consistency and predictability of "just a 9-5 job."
- Your coworkers: accounting, as a whole, seems to attract a certain type of people. Remember that annoying kid who was the teacher's pet and would always ask an irrelevant question right at the end of class, causing you to have to stay longer? That's 85% of the people in accounting. There's this underlying strain of undeserved arrogance that permeates the profession. There's also an underlying element of fakeness and throwing-people-under-the-bus-edness. However, there are still some really cool, nice, smart, and humble people in the profession. Unfortunately, a lot of the ones I knew have left because they hated the job. Think about that... they quit in the middle of a recession, some with new jobs waiting for them, some without.
Pros:
- Accounting gives you versatile skills that give you a good amount of career flexibility. If you don't like it, stick it out for a few years and you will have a good-looking resume to launch yourself into something else.
- The barrier to entry is still somewhat large so it makes you all the more valuable. By barrier to entry I mean the perceived difficulty and boredom associated with the profession turns people away. Also, the CPA exam is difficult.
- Grad school (or fifth year) is only for a a year or two, so you won't have to take out tons of student loans.
- Comfortable starting salary. I live in Florida, and my starting salary out of college was $50K.
- You can apply your professional skills to your personal life (i.e. personal finances, starting your own business, investing, etc.)
- Somewhat recession-proof (although there were waves of layoffs in 2008.
- You become good at reading documents and paperwork such as leases, invoices, contracts, agreements, etc., which can also help you in your personal life (i.e. keeping you from getting shafted when renting an apartment or buying a car). This is especially true if you become an auditor.
- As an auditor, you would get to travel a lot and get to keep the airline/hotel points. I have a boss who has so many rewards points just from traveling for work that she can't remember the last time she had to pay for a flight or hotel when going on vacation.
- As an auditor, you deal a lot with people, people who most likely don't want you there because you're up in their business (literally and figuratively). However, because of this you learn to grow a thick emotional skin and learn how to better communicate and collaborate with people.
- As an auditor, you train your skeptical side and learn to question people without becoming stand-offish. For instance, when I know a client is bullshitting me on something, instead of calling them out on it, I'll ask naive, innocent questions that force them to walk me through every detail until they are forced to admit their bullshit. This is also a good personal skill to have to keep from getting screwed over by fast-talkers.
how many of you are accountants?
Main Post:
How many HENRY's here work in accountancy? And do you think it's a good industry to be in if you want to be one?
Top Comment: Not an accountant. But I meet plenty of them. I think it’s a great field to go into if you want a leg-up into senior corporate management. Essentially the CFO track is a distinct career path right up to C-level and as an accountant you basically have a smaller base to that pyramid than on the operational side. And - arguably - more ability to switch industries too. If you actually want to be a practising accountant in a big corporate practice, then you have to be able to hack the grind and office politics to make partner. Don’t know so much about that kind of thing.
ELI5: What is an accountant and what exactly do they do?
Main Post:
I'm looking into different careers to study for in university, but every single definition I find when I search up accountant is confusing. Can someone explain to me in the most simple way to understand hahah. Where do accountants work and what kind of math is involved?
Top Comment: Accountants practice accounting -- the measurement, processing, sanity-checking, and communication of primarily financial information. They can find work just about anywhere -- any entity that handles money on a large scale employs the service of potentially armies of accountants to make sure the flow of money is being properly accounted for.
Accountants of Reddit, your job is always portrayed as very mundane. What are some crazy stories?
Main Post: Accountants of Reddit, your job is always portrayed as very mundane. What are some crazy stories?
Top Comment: A few years back I was doing taxes for a client that were quite complex and I stayed up past midnight.
Should I become an accountant?
Main Post:
I am just getting started in vce and thinking of careers. And I can't thing of much besides doing something business/finance related and accounting is the only one i can think of that will be good.
If you're an accountant, do you recommend it? I want decent money, so how is the money?Especially for young accountants? (Money is an important variable in my choice btw so if you can give some insight on it thanks)
Also the most important question, are you happy with your choice? And is it hard, easy, should I do it or maybe something else.
Btw I am 16 and I like to think I'm good at math, numbers, money and I enjoy trying and learning about investing
Thanks in advance
Top Comment: Accounting is pretty good as a starting career but keep in mind that most accountants don't stay as accountants. We end up working in finance to IT, basically any white collar job and accounting itself is broad field. You could be working with different people all the day to being stuck in the office doing spreadsheets. In terms of a degree or first job, accounting is highly recommended because it will provide you with a solid foundation of understanding how a business works, what the numbers mean, how to use excel etc all skills which are transferrable to other areas. Have a look at the executive teams of every multinational or ASX listed company and I'm pretty sure that there will always be a CA or CPA there.
Why is accountancy not popular these days as a university course?
Main Post:
Asking all the young people here. I saw the indicative grade profile for admissions to all the courses in the local universities.
Accountancy has quite a low grade profile for entry these days. I thought it’s quite a good field to go into and you can always stay in accounting and hustle to reach partner or branch out to finance teams in companies and who knows, u can get to be the CFO with some time, luck and grit.
Why is it not popular these days?
Top Comment: Malaysia fresh grads happy to take 2.5k salary
Accountants of reddit
Main Post:
Delete if not allowed but I thought there may be many accountants on this sub. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching on going back to school and starting a new career, currently have a BS in animal science with a minor in business and am a zookeeper. I’ve come to hate my job, mostly due to management and fundamental issues that are too long to go into here. I wake up and loathe going into work and need to get out of this toxic environment. I’m 32 so this is the time to change I think. I’m lucky enough to have my first two years paid for at a local community college (there are only a few degree options though) and accounting has caught my eye. After reading into it I think it’s something I would really enjoy. After getting my associates I plan to transfer to a 4 year online program and get my bachelors. My question is if you’re an accountant do you love it? I know it had a fairly high income potential (something my job does not) but I was hoping to get some practical knowledge from people in the job. Currently I make ~51k gross. Is it reasonable to expect to make that entering the field? A big issue I have right now is it takes about 10-20 years before I could move up to management and more pay, is it a quicker process in the accounting world? These are super general questions but I appreciate any advice!
Edit: My only route is to do this online unfortunately, I planned on going to U Of Toledo which has a very highly rated online program. Is this not even worth pursuing if online is my only option?
Top Comment:
If you already have a BS, then go straight into a masters of accountancy. It doesn’t require a BS to get into any MSA programs, though some require more or fewer prerequisite classes. I basically took Accounting 101 and 102 at a community college and then got into a rather good private school for their MSA program. Took me 5 full time quarters to complete from there. My BS is in Physics and I never took a single business, let alone accounting, class in undergrad.
Earning potential is pretty great, with finding and keeping a job more reliable than many other fields. It is a very “steady” way to make decent money for a career. Your highest earning potential is going to be starting in tax or audit at a Big 4 firm, but I don’t think you’re going to manage that with an online program. You may even have a hard time getting into the next tier down of firms by going to an online program. Other than competitiveness, the main issue is that the industry in general had a pretty specific recruiting pipeline for entry level employees that relies heavily on campus recruiting that starts years before graduation.
Tax pays well, but audit keeps the most doors open to do other things in the field down the road. Starting salary is going to depend on your firm tier and region. Big 4 in an expensive market problem starts in the low 60s these days. The hours suck, and the job can honestly be soul crushing at times, so most people don’t stick with these firms for their whole careers, but they make the best launching points to land a cushy job in corporate accounting down the road. The longer you tough it out, the higher position you can land in elsewhere. Some people cut out after 2 years, some stick around 5-7 years after they have made manger and realize they can’t or don’t want to make partner.
You can start straight into corporate accounting, but it will pay less. At the same time the hours aren’t as bad. But the work can definitely be more boring, doing the exact same thing day after day and month after month. It all depends on what kind of person you are, but I hated the sound of it.
I realized shortly after finishing school I personally would have been happier had I gone finance. Fortunately I got into a financial services specific group at my firm when I was an auditor, and was able to leverage that into a role at a non-accounting firm that is sort of between finance and accounting, and I plan to continue to move my career more in that direction. As most people experience, after 3 years at a big accounting firm, I landed a job outside that pays more and I work much less. I am much happier now, but I would have never gotten this job without those 3 years of experience.
Any banking RCSA professionals here? : r/jobs
Main Post: Any banking RCSA professionals here? : r/jobs