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I've met people who are passionate about finance, usually they are traders though. I've never met a truly passionate accountant. But then I don't know many.

by cgore 9y ago

I've met people who are passionate about finance, usually they are traders though. I've never met a truly passionate accountant. But then I don't know many. I don't know how you would do accounting in your spare time. Maybe volunteer work?

mywittyname 9y ago
I know a few people that do accounting on the side. And lots of accountants own their own businesses.
- blunte 9y ago
  For pay or for obligation, but not because it's just fun. You cannot tell me that finding someone else's financial records online and then applying your approach to accounting on them, just for kicks, is happening. Maybe if you're a finance researcher... but no, not even then. Doing side programming because you get paid, or because you have an idea that you think could be useful or marketable later, yeah that happens. Doing side projects because you want to learn a new language or tool, hoping it will make you more able to do your work better in the future, sure. That's a great reason. There are actually a lot of good reasons to do side programming. But making that a big part of a hiring process is unnecessarily focusing on a behavior that is arguably not going to separate a good candidate from an average candidate. I'm sure there's a lot of really garbage side project code out there.
kbenson 9y ago
I know someone (an old friend of my wife) who went to school for accounting, and did indeed donate time at local libraries to help people with taxes. I'm not sure if that was because they liked accounting, or liked helping people and had skills in accounting. I could see "side projects" being interesting ways to interpret different tax laws with each other. As a "game" with a very large set of rules and formulas that occasionally changes in small but fundamental ways, I could see a certain type of person reveling in their ability to find interesting rule combinations ("loopholes").

by cgore 9y ago

mywittyname 9y ago

I know a few people that do accounting on the side. And lots of accountants own their own businesses.

blunte 9y ago
For pay or for obligation, but not because it's just fun. You cannot tell me that finding someone else's financial records online and then applying your approach to accounting on them, just for kicks, is happening. Maybe if you're a finance researcher... but no, not even then. Doing side programming because you get paid, or because you have an idea that you think could be useful or marketable later, yeah that happens. Doing side projects because you want to learn a new language or tool, hoping it will make you more able to do your work better in the future, sure. That's a great reason. There are actually a lot of good reasons to do side programming. But making that a big part of a hiring process is unnecessarily focusing on a behavior that is arguably not going to separate a good candidate from an average candidate. I'm sure there's a lot of really garbage side project code out there.

kbenson 9y ago

I know someone (an old friend of my wife) who went to school for accounting, and did indeed donate time at local libraries to help people with taxes. I'm not sure if that was because they liked accounting, or liked helping people and had skills in accounting. I could see "side projects" being interesting ways to interpret different tax laws with each other. As a "game" with a very large set of rules and formulas that occasionally changes in small but fundamental ways, I could see a certain type of person reveling in their ability to find interesting rule combinations ("loopholes").