Accountant fish. Can someone explain to me why people choose to do accounting? From what I’ve heard, it’s lower pay than advisory by 15-20%, brutal hours for most the year, and, stereotypically, can be seen as boring. This ISNT a dig at the role. I’m truly curious of an insiders opinion. What am I missing?

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I got out of accounting for advisory, but there are a couple things to consider. 1) the work load is predictable. You know what months you'll be busy and when there will be downtime. This makes it easier to plan life. 2) For the most part, there are right answers. There is defined methodologies and approaches to audit. Some people like being able to definitely test and prove they're right. People like that there is an already existing structure and they just need to execute it. I say this as an opposition to advisory where we normally BS our way through each project.

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Some people like doing it. It’s much better for people who like to be more systematic than to deal with ambiguity.

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Accounting sets you up SUPER well for industry finance/accounting leadership roles. It arguably gives you a better understanding of financial statements than finance, which is an important aspect in leadership roles. It should also be noted that accounting at b4 is super different than industry. After you exit to industry, it's really a cushy 40 hour straightforward well paying and secure job.

I also want to point out that accounting has different specialties within it and isn't as black and white as people think. There's def opportunities for consultants w/ accounting background for stuff like corporate structuring or financial reporting changes

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b4 is one of the few places where accounting majors can have client-facing, revenue-generating roles. also has allows people to move up faster than they would in industry and has best brand name recognition by far

It’s predictable, the rules are pretty black and white outside of tax planning, and accounting typically survives most recessions.

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I should have gone down the Accounting route early in my career (went to a school that gets heavily recruited by b4 audit). Every company needs a CFO and many CFO's become the CEO. Not every company needs a CIO/CTO. No CIO becomes the CEO and many times reports to the CFO.

This was honestly very helpful. Cool to see the consistent themes of the amount of structure in the industry which I can definitely see as the appeal

The same reason anyone picking a job and sticking with it does. They are comfortable with the risk-return of the profession.

Accountants (incl. public accounting)
-earns a high median income relative to the general population,
-have a predictable, noncritical workload (we’re not saving lives) in a long term outlook (3, 5, 10, 20 year timelines are imaginable)
-technology and offshoring will not completely eliminate the industry. If anything, it’s a role that could evolve into another, esp. after already spending time analyzing the underlying accounts. Over the next decade, Corp finance should be putting more $ towards insight, than transaction processing
-can find “a” job anywhere in the world in industry since every company with its business will need at least one. Important if life comes before work
-can pick your speed (fast-paced like accounting consulting, entrepreneurial by opening your own practice, prestige by proxy depending on the company, slower pace in industry roles mostly)
-we work with people and data, there’s a generally known structure to both (Can be a preferred flavor)


As a caveat, I’m a former Big4 auditor and tax practitioner. I left because I’m more interested in higher risk/higher comp projects—-and honestly, the hours have been better than audit

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