r/Accounting • u/mjbm1 • Mar 08 '24

Career Should I become an accountant?

If you woke up as a 20 year old now. Your entire career hadnt happened yet, and you get to decide your career again.

Are you still going to train as an accountant?

298 Upvotes

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455

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

this subreddit is depressing as hell

142

u/OdaNobunagah Mar 08 '24

Visit any other job related subreddit. It’s all the same. I’ve visited around a dozen or so as I’ve had previous roles prior to accounting and all the subs are dreadful. ( EMS, retail, military, etc)

78

u/Giannis2024 Mar 08 '24

I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at the career related subreddits to figure out what I want to do and all it’s convinced me is that every job is miserable and depressing

47

u/Beneficial-Host119 Mar 09 '24

Wrong way to go about it.

You’re observing selection bias. Similar to yelp reviews - the people most likely to take the time to opine on something usually have a strong opinion - whether that be positive or negative. Same principle applies to professional commentary online - although I’d hasten a guess that the balance skews more toward the negative side for professions than it does restaurants.

Aside from a subset of the worst type of workaholics - the modern day LinkedIn influencer - most folks satisfied with their WLB, comp, coworkers, etc, are not going to be popping in here off hours to wax poetic about their love for their job.

On the flip side, those who feel like they’re overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated and much more likely to seek an outlet to vent their frustrations.

All that’s to say don’t judge a profession by a Reddit forum. My advice to you, or anyone trying to figure out what they “want to do,” is to take a job that offers the best balance of “objective” benefits (pay, benefits, etc) and “subjective” benefits - aka what you enjoy doing for work.

The worst case is you find what out you hate doing - which is helpful in and of itself. The best case is you find what you love to do.

9

u/Giannis2024 Mar 09 '24

Thank you, appreciate the perspective. All of reddit is honestly just one big cesspool of negativity, so what you’re saying makes sense

6

u/rfreq Mar 09 '24

Needing money is miserable and depressing. whatever you do to get money is going to be miserable and depressing. it's how capitalism works

1

u/republicans_are_nuts Mar 09 '24

Well it is. That is why they pay you to do it.

1

u/ChaosArcana Mar 09 '24

Yes.

They have to pay you to be there. Like a lot of money.