Accountants want to quit the profession
Accountants express a desire to leave the accounting profession entirely, citing burnout, lack of enjoyment, and a desire for a simpler life. They feel undervalued and overworked, with no clear path to fulfillment in their careers.
SOURCES (60)
“Much prefer it as it gave me broader exposure to more types of engagements, I wasn’t just doing audits over and over which was repetitive and didn’t really encourage you to think beyond fundamentals you learned. Although the fundamentals you learn from audit are super…”
Stupid professor. Lots of successful accountants without a CPA.
“Dawg come on you know audit is genuinely trash work life balance these kids just don’t give af given the cost of living and how much work there is for the pay, not saying it’s your fault but imagine being in these kids shoes”
“Accounting isn’t an 8-5” also that I take lunch every day
“Here’s a tip you won’t hear from many. If you picked accounting because you are awkward and just want to sit in a cubicle crunching numbers and not talking to people, you probably aren’t going to get that far in your career. The highest profile / best paying accounting jobs require you to manage engagements and relationships with clients,staff, and other stakeholders. This is especially true in Public accounting. If you have difficulty interacting with others, like to keep to yourself, and suspe”
“If I have even a hope of FIREing with shitty Canadian salaries and one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world, then there is hope for others. To be clear though I'm not going for full FIRE. I still plan to work to cover expenses, it's just gonna be a lower stress job. Maybe I'll offer accounting services, maybe I'll fuck off to some government role, maybe I won't do anything accounting related at all. I don't really hate working, I just hate what North Amer”
“Yup, found out i hate contracting despite the money on offer. Hate accountancy and tax and the risk and went back to a job on 50k less. Equally realised i don’t want to manage people and put brakes on promotions to those roles. I just like to play with tech and show people what it can do, leave me alone..”
“I'm more concerned about the fact that so many don't understand the basics of accounting. Who the hell cares if someone uses a mouse or shortcuts? I use a mixture of both because I don't have the time to learn and remember every shortcut. Sometimes I use shortcuts that I couldn't define to someone off the top of my head, but my fingers just seem to remember. If someone does good work and doesn't hard key numbers, I give zero thought to the way they prefer to use excel.”
“Me too. I am trying to tone it down but they still slip out. Love being able to wear what ever I like. It has been one of the more interesting industries I have worked in. I quite enjoyed manufacturing too.”
“Oh please. Big 4 sends excel workbooks to India for footing and doing pivot tables. They are not wizards at basic stuff.”
“Not sure what you mean by this because OP's criticisms apply equally to ASC 842 and IFRS 16.”
“This is my exact frustration. Sure, put it in my liabilities I get the idea. But it’s an operational liability, not a financial one. I can back out of a rent agreement mutually or exercise cancellation options written into the contract. I can't back out of a bank loan without surrendering liquid assets from my balance sheet. Treating them as the same thing makes no sense.”
““they don’t think accounting is as important as engineering”… it’s not. next question”
“No art to accounting. Just integrity or, at least that is the way it is supposed to be.”
“Let me know when you quit your job so I can apply to it lmao. The fact is, there are more qualified accountants than there are engineers. "Ppl who are not familiar with accounting look down on it" a big reason why we get paid and have jobs forever is because the business people who don't value accounting end up regretting it, and that often is a less that has to be learned from their own foolishness rather than someone else's wisdom. Stop whining. Sounds like you are in the Bay”
“What does detail oriented even mean, like I make stupidest mistakes when I do menial manual work, the solution has always been to either autometa or turf it of to a junior when I got to senior and onwards. The thing is I'm much better at controlling, finding other people's mistakes (and often my own too) and setting processes and controls for my team than doing quick and accurate data entry or other menial crap. You're doing fine you just need to find you niche.”
“Having CPA next to your name is just playing the game on a lower difficulty. You can still accomplish most things in accounting without one.”
“The overcomplicating thing is real, I think some people conflate complexity with competence, building a spreadsheet with 15 tabs and elaborate formulas when three clean columns would do the job just as accurately, it often says more about wanting to look busy or impressive than actual skill.”
“Thank you so much ,this actually makes a lot of sense!!!I wasn’t thinking of it this way”
I don’t think I ever use anything higher than algebra one.
“Ugh the bank recs part - this was so frustrating to me! In my first job I spent a few months feeling overwhelmed by the bank statements because I had never had to read one before. Especially when every client had a different bank with differently formatted statements.”
Yes I do. The statements I prepare are meaningful and useful.
I definitely developed it. Shitty bosses will do that to you
“Before I want to say, don’t feel bad, GAAP is not easy and it takes a lot of time and effort to learn. I say this kindly, you need to learn GAAP if you want to become a CPA, you should already know the fundamental principles. You will not pass the CPA exam if you don’t. If you can’t service your client or don’t have the time/capacity to learn how to service them, it may be the right decision to have them find a new service (if they absolutely need it). I’m gonna get pushback on this one. I come”
“Your company doesn’t want to pay you more as a CPA so they are trying to put you down and discourage you from trying. Quietly look for a new place of employment.”
“I'm in an industry role training with an accountant who is retiring. While preparing for YE, I've been going through their Working Paper process which is already incredibly exhaustive. Like, analysis spreadsheets for nearly every expense account, and making copies of all the back up, resaving in a separate folder. When everything was ready to send off to our tax preparers, I asked if they just send a zip file with everything. No, we recreate the network drive folder system in the tax pre”
“My role is not client facing. At all. Getting my CPA was about the education and adding the credentials THEY VALUE to my name.”
“Yes. Most of my clients are tradesmen and small business owners. I have never had a client come into my meetings with a suit and tie. An even my wealthiest clients (land developers) wear polos and jeans.”
“I cant afford it and for me to do it and if i do decide to study it for 5 years and then work 3 years as like practical work and then sit exams so i can takeover”
“To be honest its everything about it. I feel like ive been pressured to do this by my dad and his side of the family since i was 12 and i never had any interest in it. The only thing i can do is bookkeeping, bank reconcilliation and putting through statements and checkbooks”
“Do you hate accounting itself or just your workplace? Working in a small office full of old people can be a bore but bigger companies are quite different. Also feels like you are not really advancing your career or learning new things. This would also be fixed by switching to another job, there are quite a few things an accountant can do and you might even find some of them interesting.”
“Yes. Some people are nice others are not and make it a big deal to help you. I just hate the job. Tracking time, pretending to care about NFP audits. Genuinely I’m not learning much. Just copying and pasting and doing something someone else did before me the year before. It feels like a job without purpose and meaning.”
“I feel you fellow accountant. I got in here to listen to music/podcasts while making spreadsheets. But it’s all fraud interview this, internal controls walkthrough that, these fucking people won’t leave me alone.”
“It’s not formal it’s just enough people saying yeah this guy sucks and then they don’t book you on your jobs and then you get fired for low utilization”
“That professor's comment is honestly bad pedagogy dressed up as tough love. Debits and credits are famously the biggest hump in intro accounting precisely because they're not intuitive, they're a system you have to drill until it clicks, not something you're supposed to just get on day one. Plenty of people who struggled with the very first unit ended up doing great in the field.”
“whoever said accounting was easy, LIED!!!! lol submitted by /u/soyyunica [link] [comments]”
“My first accounting professor, on the first day of class, said, Don't ask why. The why won't make sense. Learn the rules and the process. It was infuriatingly frustrating (no grammar critiques) to not understand the why. It makes sense the further you go along. I can't explain it any better. When you learn to drive, you need to know how to use the gas and brake pedals. You don't need to understand how the pedal powers the engine or the mechanics behind the brakes. Learn the rules”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been required to even provide references, but yea certainly not with your current employer, I’d make one up before I did that”
“Being able to communicate and being an introvert are not at odds with each other.”
“I’m not sure if there’s a better term for what I’m describing but I’ve always heard it referred to as “blackballing” Pretty much, I’m in public accounting and I HATE it. I feel like that scene in office space when he talks to the counselor and says that each day is worse than the day before, so he is perpetually having the worst day of his life, every day. So naturally I’m trying to leave and pivot to industry, but I’m nervous for when new employers ask for references for my current job. I’m ner”
“Honestly, OP I’ve been through this 2 out of 3 of my accounting jobs. My first job fully trained me. I felt confident in the numbers because I knew what they were! The other 2/3 accounting jobs have been little to none trainings. Only difference now is I show up and do what I know how to do, ask questions when I need to and CYA with emails and approvals. My boss is very scatter brains and chaotic but so far I’ve managed. Over time I hope trust builds. But Idk. Anyways I say that because I wonder”
“Use it as a foundation and move on. Cpa is overrated. They dont pay us for the time it takes. Accountants are like doctors. You hate them when you need them, yet when you need them they are there to serve your ego”
“In general accounting dont get respect. Many treat us a paper pusher and bearer of bad news (audit and tax especially). They only time we might get some feedback is dont m&a where we tell our client you are overpaying and get a better deal or how much asset turnover we can get in a liquidation. Until we reached name partner or you have your own firm - expect nothing. There is a reason why the job is underpay and overworked.”
“I remember managerial accounting doing a good job of explaining the bare basics of accounting and then after the first chapter everything in that class seemed useless to learn. My universities curriculum had us take managerial as a prerequisite and then we took financial accounting after that. I always thought that was backwards. Debits and credits should be learnt before learning how to calculate “contribution margin”, a fake term.”
A lot of people here especially in Reddit tend to be miserable and snarky.
“Now that you say it like that it makes sense. 🤣 I didn’t have a manager advocating for me to move up to senior because I was too busy managing him. The good thing is they will be compensating me to account for the promotion I missed and this one from the proposal, which is shocking . 😊”
“" Is this just what accounting is like — constantly investigating, chasing documents and asking people for information — or am I simply working in a poorly organized company?" Probably both, the latter kinda amplifies the former.”