The vanished grandeur of accounting • Hacker News Board

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#51

Post by girvo » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 9:10 PM UTC

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've just described my last three months.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#52

Post by Amelot » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 5:24 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #16

bornhuetter wrote: post #13

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.

> 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.

Nice

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#53

Post by EvanPlaice » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 6:11 AM UTC

collyw wrote: post #43

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.

You have a valid point but I wholeheartedly disagree.

There was a post on StackOverflow a while back where developers from different countries commented on the strengths/weaknesses of their home countries in the field of programming.

Many of the devs from India commented that the caste system had a huge influence on the types of people who become programmers. Essentially, many people from families in the higher classes go to school to learn programming because of the prospective earning potential and pressure from their families to succeed.

Many of the anecdotes mentioned projects that failed because the developers working offshore had a tendency to build the projects strictly to the specification. Despite the fact that the specification was incomplete or contained assumptions that were later discovered to be false. Ie they built what they were told to build, not what matched the 'real' requirements of the project.

The 'average' programmer there has little personal interest in the field and culturally they're more inclined to respect authority 'do as their told' not 'do what they think is right'.

A true measure of potential in a programmer can be seen in the willingness/ability to think and approach problems with a high degree of divergent thinking. To look beyond the rules/limitations of a system and discover novel solutions to their problems.

Accounting OTOH requires a very high degree of convergent thinking. Meaning, it's not only expected but absolutely vital for accountants to work within the bounds of the established laws/policies. There's a very fine line between creative accounting to increase the margins and cooking the books.

In cultures that put a lot of emphasis on respecting authority and doing what's expected, accounting may be a better fit culturally. Especially, compared to cultures that put less emphasis on authority and order.

That's not to say that there aren't talented/passionate programmers in those countries. There definitely are, they just may not be as prevalent as you or I may assume; for cultural reasons that we may not inherently understand.

Re: The vanished grandeur of accounting

#54

Post by lostlogin » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:49 AM UTC

lambda wrote: post #45

enraged_camel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've done almost nothing and I look at my code and wonder that. Yes, I'm doing it wrong.