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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Accounting is a goddamn mess. There's lots of mistakes in accounting, finance, banking, etc but we're supposed to act to outsiders like they never happen. Publicly traded companies (US) get audited every year, but no audit company would give a paying customer a failing grade. New grads are funneled into working for public firms - the 10 or so companies that cater to the world's audit, tax, and consulting needs. They're supposed to teach discipline, but in reality they only teach you security theater. You're worked to the bone until you either burn out or agree to perpetuate the system to keep your job.
And the only reason it continues to work is society's social contract agreeing that it has to work because we don't have any other options. All it takes is the rumors that the idea is failing - like in the silicon valley bank run - and we're all out of luck. With the speed of information these days all it takes is a few minutes for a situation to spiral out of control. It's bonkers.
I got into accounting because I enjoyed bookkeeping in high school. Now that I'm in it I refuse to work for anything larger than a mid sized, non public company.
So basically, everyone is full of bullshit and lying to keep the system working.
Why am I not surprised?
Social security would be a ponzi scheme if it wasn't done by the government. System only works because new younger people are "convinced" to put in money to pay the old in hopes that new younger people will pay them in the future.
The social security liability is currently 23 trillion. If no new people started paying in and everyone wanted to cash out, they couldn't get a dime.
We are 33 trillion dollars in debt. 33 trillion.
If we as a country ever tried to cut spending and save money to pay that down, our economy would collapse so fast.
Social security was designed to be that way, it's not a secret or anything. It's how the system was set up and it's how it is supposed to work. Today's workers fund today's retirees.
Except it was built with the assumption that everyone would continue to have 2.5 kids, and skilled immigrants would keep making the US home, and the economy would keep growing and growing forever, and retirees would die off a couple of years after they retired.
All the base assumptions on which the system were built were shaky. People are having fewer kids, so there's less money coming in. Retirees are living longer so they need more benefits. People who paid hundreds of thousands into the system during their lifetimes are requiring millions in benefits at the end of their lives. But, people are having fewer kids and so the bottom of the pyramid is shrinking.
More immigration would help, but we're just too damn racist
The government wants to carry a debt, because everyone who is owed money by the government is incentivezed to support it.
I thought paying into it wasn’t optional??
Bro this is the fucking world! It’s just smoke and mirrors. Like the commercials. Everyone at McDonald’s smiling and happy and loving their job. Then look at reality.
That’s every job, every field. It’s just held together by duct tape and bubble gum.
🔥 Hot take: Applies to the mainstream tech industry too in my eyes... an abundance of unstable implementations and hacks that can break at a moment's notice - all prettied up with a fresh coat of paint so it "looks and feels new" to sell a new license each year or give the user a reason to keep paying that subscription. No value added whatsoever.
Fintech, construction (Solidworks, Autodesk), media & design (Adobe CC), Microsoft (Windows, office), the whole lot
Adobe and Microsoft should be dismantled. Both are some of the worst monopolies in existence!
This here is the best comment to address the OP question. Just to be clear, I 100% agree: every job, every field is just held together by duct tape and bubble gum.
Not everywhere. I work in one of those jobs (facilities management for a building with critical infrastructure) and we're very thorough and do our jobs well.
However, I know some of our other facilities phone it in.
I didn't mean my comment or the OPs to be an aspersion on how well anyone does their job. It's more a comment on perception vs reality. For example, look at how many people came to observe and realize how many US government operations are held together through gentlemen's agreements (aka duct tape and chewing gum) that Trump was able to dismantle simply by not agreeing.
Ah, I see what you mean. If my coworkers and I suddenly decided to stop giving a shit, there's not much that would prevent that as long as we don't let it get too bad. A lot runs on trust.
Our company has mechanisms to try to force us to do a good job, but that just means working towards the metrics rather than the spirit of our job. Often doing our job well means knowing when to ignore the red tape.
So I think you're right, the whole world runs that way, it's an intractable problem.
There is an open joke at the corporation I work at that there are about 5 people who if they quit at once the company would be under within a few months. I really do not think it is wrong.
I work with financial analysts and accountants at work. we swing from "holy shit the sky is falling" to "wow we have more budget in this than we realised" in a few months, meanwhile the guys in the field do the exact same job and the relatively fixed revenue stream keeps coming in
Ehh, so a counterargument is we now have "control audits" aka soc1 type2 audits that test whether management fix their stuff without external eyes. That hasGREATLY increased the fidelity of all public companies. Yeah mistakes happen, but the controls get pretty robust after only a few years.
Accounting, just like economics, likes to pretend it is a hard science when in reality is it close to reading tea leaves.
And there are what, 4 major accounting firms now, so it's not like a public company that cared about a good audit has much choice.