5 Reasons to Avoid Accounting (as a Career) - YouTube

I decided to be an accountant when I was in my final year

at university studying physics and I'll be honest

it wasn't my dream job as a kid.

First I wanted to be an inventor.

But as the years passed I changed my mind a lot.

Maybe I should be an engineer maybe I should join the army

what about physics?

In the end I settled on accounting.

I mention this because I think I'm not alone

a lot of us have a hard time deciding what to do with our lives.

So how do you know if you should be an accountant.

Hey there I'm James and in this video I'm going to give you

five reasons why you shouldn’t.

I've been working in accounting for about seven years now

so what I'm about to share comes straight from my own experience.

Hopefully these points will help you decide if you really want to be an accountant.

Reason number one you suck at Maths.

There's a widely held belief that to be an accountant

you need to be good at maths and that's no wonder we busy

ourselves with numbers all day long.

But the truth is you don't have to be good at math to become an accountant.

I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoys Maths

it’s why I chose to study physics to begin with and when it made the

jump to accounting I was hoping that I'd be able to put some of that maths to use.

However I was surprised at how little I ended up using at work.

99% of the time I was doing the basics adding, subtracting, multiplying

and dividing and to do all these I was mostly using a calculator

even for the really easy stuff or Excel.

In fact being good at Excel is a more useful skill to develop as an accountant.

Spreadsheets can help you breeze through tasks that would otherwise

be long and well tedious.

So if you want to be an accountant don't worry about the Maths

become a demon at spreadsheets instead.

Reason number two Accounting is boring.

It's sexy to follow your passion but this isn't always the best advice.

A career in something like accounting might seem boring on the face of it

and yeah sometimes it can be but most of the time it comes down

to your mindset and how you approach your work.

Accounting is cyclical by nature so there are tasks that we have to repeat

every month, every quarter, every year.

When I started in accounting I was an auditor working in London

and on my first day at the clients office I was handed a stack of 75 invoices

and told to check all of them against a report.

Not exactly riveting.

But as I learned more and developed my skills as an accountant I faced

more difficult and interesting challenges.

It became about problem-solving and getting on with people.

One day I woke up and discovered that accounting wasn't so boring after all.

Have you ever wondered how people ever end up

loving what they do for a living?

If so I've got a book recommendation for you

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport.

Reason number three Accounting is hard.

Warren Buffett famously called accounting the language of business

and he's not wrong.

To me at least learning accounting was like learning a foreign language

there are some basic fundamentals that you really need to understand

once you've got those down everything else starts to fall into place.

I found accounting hard but if you want it to be easy

then I encourage you to really take the time to understand the basics.

That's what this channel is all about.

Your guide to basic accounting.

So if you're learning accounting or thinking about it

then consider subscribing and check out my accounting basics playlist

I want to make accounting easy for you.

And if you have any questions at all you can always reach me

down below in the comments or send me a direct message on instagram

@accountingstuff

Reason number four

Accountants work long hours.

This can happen from time to time but it depends on a few factors

what your job is who you work for

and timing.

I've worked in public accounting as an auditor and in industry

as a financial accountant and I feel like I've experienced

the worst and the best when it comes to a work-life balance.

There are times when I've had to work late

eating dinner in the office getting home at midnight

for weeks at a time it sucked and I wouldn't wish

that stress on anyone.

But it's not always like this.

I've had long stretches of time doing flexible eight-hour days

it was pretty good.

Not all jobs are created equal and not all accountants have to work late.

You may not land your dream job on your first attempt

but if you're willing to take a few risks and change positions

or companies every now and then if you have to.

I'm sure that you can find a role that suits your lifestyle.

Reason number five I get asked about this one a lot.

Will technology or AI replace accountants?

In my opinion yes and no.

I’ve got another book recommendation for you

Deep Work by Cal Newport.

By the way this video is not sponsored by Cal or anything

I've been reading some of these books lately and I just want to share the love

you know whatever

In Deep Work Cal reckons there are three types of people that will

thrive in today's modern world.

Owners who have access to large amounts of capital.

Superstars aka. people who are the best at what they do

and highly skilled workers or people who are able to work well

and creatively with intelligent machines.

Unfortunately most of us don't fit into this first group

we don't all have large amounts of cash lying around

but it's within all of us to keep on practicing and become the best of what we do

or to teach ourselves to use and keep up-to-date with new technology

when it comes out.

As machines get smarter more low-skilled jobs

are likely to become automated.

More repetitive bookkeeping tasks will be done by machines.

But accounting isn't a low-skilled job.

We still need people who can work well and creatively with new software

and we still need people who can understand analyse and interpret results.

So if you want to be an accountant I encourage you to keep on learning.

If you put in the effort to become the best at what you do

or stay up-to-date with the latest technology then you'll be a valuable asset

for years to come.

If I’ve put you off accounting then good I guess.

I hope this narrows down your choices and you find a different career

that's right for you.

But if I haven't and you'd like to learn more then remember

to click on this subscribe button and head over to my accounting basics playlist

and I'll see you in the next one.

Actually I might head over there right now...