Vocation

[brin_bellway]

I came across a thread a while back of people discussing whether one should go into accounting, and it dawned on me:

You *know* a field is a good fit for you when even the people who *hate* it make it sound good.

Paraphrased examples:


Person 1: "Oh god, it's *so* boring. You sit at an isolated little desk making debits and credits, and then *more* debits and *more* credits."


Me: That sounds peaceful. Cozy cubicle, lining up numbers neatly...


Person 2: "I'm at an entry-level accounting job, and one of my co-workers has been here for *twenty years*. They've never been promoted, never gotten a raise beyond cost-of-living!"


Me: So what you're saying is that accounting is *not* up-or-out. That--barring, perhaps, the particular kind of gruntwork you do getting automated away to nothing--you *can* stay a low-level grunt forever, if you want.

Dad complains about how after a decade or so at the company making specialised ebook readers (before generalised ebook readers were invented), they started pushing him to become a manager, even though he sucks at managing. And how he thinks a lot of the problem he's had finding another programming job is that hirers look at how old and experienced he is and go "you're overqualified for all the things you're actually good at, you're only worth considering for senior positions that you're terrible at". I would find it comforting to know that I'm not going to have that problem.


Person 3, in reply to Person 2: "Yeah, there's very little of climbing the accounting ladder *within* a company. The standard way to advance is by going and getting a higher-level job at a *different* company."


Me: So you rarely, if ever, have to have the dreaded pay-raise negotiation. You don't have to convince people they ought to be treating you better *than they already are*: you only have to convince new people to treat you well in the first place, and usually while you still have [the old job to go back to] and [other job listings to apply for] if the new one won't negotiate to your satisfaction.

(Also, this implies that "you can stay a low-level grunt forever if you want" generalises to all levels of the hierarchy: you can *also* choose to get one or two promotions and then stay a lower-mid-level accountant forever. Even better!)


Person 4: "Accounting is for people who want a steady income, and who in exchange are willing to give up following their passions. I'm not saying it's a *bad* choice, exactly, since we *do* have to live in this world and having a steady income *is* genuinely important, but...in a better world, I would be an artist like I wanted."


Me: That does suck for you, dude, and I'm sorry, but that being said: I get to eat my cake *and* have it?

Comments

[feotakahari]

I love being an accountant, because accounting is made by humans to follow human rules. The goal is to create something that you can explain to people who aren’t accountants. That’s way better than, say, physics, which wasn’t made by humans and doesn’t care if humans don’t understand it.

[contrarianarchon]

>>Dad complains about how after a decade or so at the company making specialised ebook readers (before generalised ebook readers were invented), they started pushing him to become a manager, even though he sucks at managing. And how he thinks a lot of the problem he's had finding another programming job is that hirers look at how old and experienced he is and go "you're overqualified for all the things you're actually good at, you're only worth considering for senior positions that you're terrible at". I would find it comforting to know that I'm not going to have that problem.

... this worries me a lot. I don't want to have this happen to me, and it seems very plausible. How does this even work from a logistical perspective? I have no idea but clearly it's a thing; my teachers are teaching us on the assumption that manager-skills are something every engineer needs to know the basics of.

(There's a non-zero chance I've already over-qualified myself out of grunt programing work with my degree alone, I suspect.)

[brin_bellway]

>>(There's a non-zero chance I've already over-qualified myself out of grunt programing work with my degree alone, I suspect.) <<

FWIW, Dad has a master's and managed to hold on to an Actual Programming job for...sixteen years, I think? Something like that.

(Maybe longer if you count the jobs he had before then: I'm not sure when he got the master's.)

---

>>How does this even work from a logistical perspective? I have no idea but clearly it's a thing<<

Yeah, I don't really get what the hirers are thinking there either.

As I understand it from watching Dad's mistakes and listening to modern-day programmers discuss their career plans, the primary way of dealing with this is "assume your programming career is only going to be 1 - 2 decades long, and plan accordingly". Ideally this means being ready to retire at that point; alternatively, having a plan for pivoting to another field.

The fact that you're thinking about this is a very good sign for your prospects, I think. I'm pretty sure that if Dad had *known*, or even *suspected*, that the ebook-programming job would only last about 1.5 decades *and* he'd be forced to mostly retire at the end of it, he could have arranged to handle it. As it was, he supported two children and a wife, lived *within* his means but not particularly *below* them, and *still* ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars of runway.

Also, you might get lucky and *not* have two heart attacks, or anything else that would prevent you from retaining enough stamina for a full-time job. That's been a significant obstacle too: some people want youthful employees because they're not overqualified, but others want them for the ability to work 40 - 60 hours/week. Between heart disease and general aging, at this point Dad can sustainably do maybe 20, and in the realm of programming there's not a whole lot out there for that. (I'm guessing either of those problems alone wouldn't have been enough: he kept working at the ebook-programming job for about five years after the second heart attack, and empirically it seems like quite a few people in their late fifties can work full-time.)

---

Good luck. *hugs*

[contrarianarchon]

My problem is specifically the fact that I'm also getting an electrical engineering degree as well as a computer science one; I like programing more but doubt that anyone (myself included) is going to seriously believe that I want to be a programmer when I could be an Engineer.

... I was planning on trying to do "assume your career will be 1-2 decades long and pivot/retire" yes but I hadn't realized that was *standard*. What the hell. I thought that (from talking to my in-uni peers) this was a lofty ambition only for people with unusually good financial sense, and that I would probably fail to meet it, not an assumption.

[brin_bellway]

There is a distinct possibility that my programmer friends are also filtered for having unusually good financial sense. If you've been talking to your fellow CS majors, you probably have a better sense of the zeitgeist than I do (what's *their* consensus?).

I do know some people with terrible financial sense and lack of insight into it (not to be confused with people who have maladaptive psychological issues regarding finances and are *aware* of it, some of whom I also know but whom I am not talking about), but they are not programmers and I generally met them in relatively non-nerdy ways (mostly through attending the same homeschool field trips).

[contrarianarchon]

I will admit that our conversation is mostly about the most immediate practicalities of our careers; making sure we learn specializations we can tolerate and internships and so forth, so I don't have a good sense of this, but I hadn't got the impression that many of my classmates had a plan other than "Live to the extent of your means delta retirement plans and then retire in your old age" that I am given to understand is the standard plan. I'm seriously considering messaging topical friends to ask about this but it's past 5am and I need to try and sleep.

[brin_bellway]

Sleep first, *then* research zeitgeist.

Good night, and good luck with the sleep-schedule wrangling.