Accountants: Do you like your job? - Page 10

I had the same aspirations and ended up leaning more towards accounting/finance.

When I initially started looking at classes and I planned on focusing on econ/IR. This seemed like it would give me a good overview of everything.

it is wrong IFRS is coming. Tax experts are experts because they keep up with the times. The rest of us keep up with as much as we can. also, applying tax laws and looking for... stuff... is what an expert does well.

So did you take classes in Econ/IR?

I have a gut feeling I'm not made for office jobs, after a disastrous internship last summer at a bank.

Agreed. And as someone else wrote upstream, the tax people I know are for the most part doing quite well and in some cases enjoy their work much more than those in say corporate reporting.

Ditto. I'm quite curious about your experience as well.

Well, I did a bank internship on Wall Street last summer of '08, after requesting for a job/internship from my counselor. I worked there for about 2 months, and it was a pretty good pay (around 14/hour), but the annoying thing about it was that I hated waking up everyday. I basically did spreadsheets, went to presentations that I had no clue about what was going on, and all of these acronyms thrown around that I totally didn't understand. The worst part of it was that I had to put up a front and show that I loved the experience. The only redeeming parts of it all were the pay and the other college interns I met, who I talked and joked around with everyday. They were absolutely carefree, having to do no work at all, and taking 3 hour lunches. This was most likely because their supervisor was one of those middle-aged, 'want-to-fit-in-with-the-youth' type of guys. Overall, most of the work I was doing was so tedious, so monotonous, that the only thing I cared about was getting that check every other week. My cubicle was empty, except for a rundown computer. Honestly, I have never seen 2 months progress so slowly. I guess I didn't enjoy it much because I wanted more interaction with people, not just with a computer.

Hate to break it you but most entry level corporate jobs are like this. You sit in an office or cube and stare at a computer all day.

Well I don't hate it, I do work well with numbers and it is nice to have a job where I am doing something I am good at. I did hate it starting out, it was nothing but sitting in front of a computer crunching numbers. Now that I am in charge of the position I started out in I find that I enjoy it much more. Now I have other task like meetings, scheduling and other duties to break up the monotony.

I agree.

I came in expecting it to be how you stated it. But I guess you never really 'feel' the environment until you're actually in it.

Bump this.

^ I honestly don't know. The time at my suicidal-cubicle-job made me want to, well, simply put, kill myself. I honestly looked forward to 5PM each day. The only driving force, as I stated above, was the above-average pay. If I could do that again as an internship experience, I would, simply for the money. For a long-term job? Ehhh, count me out. Honestly, my main desire is to travel and work in different countries, while making decent money. I like to spend money on clothes, etc. and want to hold a job that allows me to do that + encounter different cultures/languages. I'm 17. Clueless.

How many of the accountants here actually did it because they decided it was what they really wanted to do with their career? For me I basically ended up on this path through a process of elimination... law school admissions were too risky, I don't have the manual dexterity for med school (or the grades), I wasn't good enough with math for engineering, and getting a job in finance is dicey.... so next thing I know... I'm an accountant.

Most people I know in the profession are in the same boat.