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The vanished grandeur of accounting

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Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#41

Post by Jack77 »

buyx wrote: post #35
Jack77 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am certainly biased (CA) I can point out that a number of MBA graduates I have dealt with certainly weren't on the same level(In Business terms) as the CA's I have. Of course there are exceptions to any rule but I would argue that seeing as becoming a CA in South Africa is very difficult (7 years all in) it means something to actually have achieved it. Achieving the "same" qualification in many other commonwe…

I know a lot of CAs (as well as people who failed at Honours and/or board exams), and they are very bright, and for the most part fairly interesting personally (and always sure to split the bill accurately). But for a bad matric accounting teacher, who put me off the field, I would probably have opted to study financial accounting as well, with a view to becoming a CA. Also there is no denying that South African corp…

There's a gem of a quote in that article: "If Einstein was born in South Africa, he would probably have studied accounting. I’m not sure that he – or South Africa and the world at large – would have benefited much from such an arrangement."

I agree with your sentiment. As a profession it does attract the brightest in this country and not necessarily for the better. I was merely trying to point out that the trust placed in CA's in South Africa is not entirely misplaced. Some would argue that the rigorous education a CA receives in South Africa is at least on par with that of an MBA though possibly more narrow before the more recent changes.

In my opinion, arguing that the standing of CA's in South Africa devalues other professions is very much the same as the age old argument of business in general drawing the brightest minds away from academic subjects. People motivated by money will often choose the route more likely to result in more money. At this point it very quickly devolves into an argument about the current form of capitalism in this country (and the world) and how it incentivises the wrong things - an argument I'm definitely not qualified to have. Thankfully not everyone is motivated by money and there are still people out there willing to do what they love or are good at.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#42

Post by collyw »

skywhopper wrote: post #9

My wife is an accounting professor and teaches Theory of Accounting at the graduate level. That's where things get really interesting, because they tackle all the assumptions underlying our accounting systems. How do you account for fixed goods, costs in different sorts of manufacturing and sales models, various forms of compensation, ownership, subsidiaries, taxes, and how do you reconcile reporting requirements for…

Sounds an absolute blast!

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#43

Post by collyw »

pkaye wrote: post #11

Accounting seems to something that is easy to offshore. Two companies I've worked at moved the low level accounting tasks to India and Macao respectively. Much of it is mechanical in nature and once the grunt work is done you can have someone local crosscheck it if needed.

OK, I don't know much about accounting, but offshoring apparently doesn’t work well for many software projects. I imagine accounting is the same. Certain types of work will be suitable, much won't.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#44

Post by mathattack »

rayiner wrote: post #3

This is a really neat article, and I look forward to reading the book. The field of accounting really is a marvelous and, in current times, under-appreciated bedrock of civilization. In the course of certain matters, I have had the opportunity to work with forensic accountants, which is a field I did not know even existed. Basically, when $100 million disappears from a ledger, forensic accountants dive in and figure…

This is a great article, because accounting is more than just the extremes of bean counting and fraud.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#45

Post by lambda »

enraged_camel wrote: post #33
hackuser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there. Perhaps accountants and archeologists would say the same about coding.

Coding is a creative endeavor. In contrast, forensic accounting is more similar to reading code someone else wrote and trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote it.

You haven't been coding long enough if you hadn't had projects that consisted mostly of just that.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#46

Post by CurtMonash »

My grandfather's New Year's Eve ritual was to do the accounting for the year (he was an inventor and business owner). Post Nazi era, he was an engineering professor at Texas Tech, and replaced the ritual by grading of papers. Precisely one year before I was born, when he was 80, he did that and then died in his sleep.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#47

Post by epochwolf »

enraged_camel wrote: post #33
hackuser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there. Perhaps accountants and archeologists would say the same about coding.

Coding is a creative endeavor. In contrast, forensic accounting is more similar to reading code someone else wrote and trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote it.

That's basically what I'm doing today. I'm trying to figure out what the hell that guy that originally wrote this codebase was thinking. (Probably something like "Oh hey, Ruby has this feature Java didn't have, let's use it in exactly the wrong way!")

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#48

Post by crpatino »

enraged_camel wrote: post #33
hackuser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there. Perhaps accountants and archeologists would say the same about coding.

Coding is a creative endeavor. In contrast, forensic accounting is more similar to reading code someone else wrote and trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote it.

Every creative endeavor is 1% of inspiration, followed by 99% or perspiration. That's the only way to manifest the pretty pictures inside your head onto a tangible medium that can reach others.

Creativity without hard, and often dull, work is called "Day dreaming".

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#49

Post by DennisP »

rayiner wrote: post #3

This is a really neat article, and I look forward to reading the book. The field of accounting really is a marvelous and, in current times, under-appreciated bedrock of civilization. In the course of certain matters, I have had the opportunity to work with forensic accountants, which is a field I did not know even existed. Basically, when $100 million disappears from a ledger, forensic accountants dive in and figure…

I'm friends with a former state senator who's a forensic accountant. She used to read bills from back to front, because they put all the shenanigans in the back. They'd be written really obscurely, and time was always short, but she'd still catch stuff. One small example was public money going to fund a party at some senator's home. She wouldn't give either side a pass, which probably helps explain why she lost the support of her party and got voted out.

Later she ran for state auditor, so I did some campaigning for her. But she lost in the primary to a woman whose qualification consisted of some time on her local school board, but who talked tough and described herself as a "pistol-packin Mama."

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#50

Post by Amelot »

001sky wrote: post #2

This would be perhaps more interesting with a contemporary angle. Has anything changed in the last 30 years? Today, the internal ethics of accounting have receded from public view. No one publicly celebrates the virtues of balancing one’s books and of audits with great art or gripping characters. Occasionally an accounting hero emerges, bringing a billion-dollar loss to light, but few people appreciate it, as the Dut…

Here is the author on contemporary accounting issues

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/04/first_we_kill_all_the_accoun...

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