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This is a confusing rant that conflates accountancy with finance, management, economics, politics, among other things.

evrydayhustling 6y ago
This. The article essentially says, "here are a bunch of place people expect sums to add up, what if they don't have to". Fails to propose its own falsifiable theory in exchange. This is similar to folks who say "Western medicine makes mistakes, so you should try the healing powers of crystals." The point of science is that we know it is wrong, but try to make it less wrong all the time. Economic thought definitely isn't always scientific, but this essay doesn't help.
datavirtue 6y ago
I know exactly what they are talking about. Accountants nudging their way into shit they aren't qualified to weigh in on. Because they see dollars signs attached and have somehow been allowed to take a seat at the helm of a company or sphere of influence they nag at engineers and insert themselves into product design. Their only contribution is to bitch about why this or that material costs so much. Yeah, the accountants cracked the case...we can finally ignore the aviation engineers. Whoops...plane went down. Engineers fault.
texasbigdata 6y ago
He is right, sigh, in his meandering rant (as a CPA) that you could argue accounting has wandered a bit. The SEC clamping down on "non-GAAP" KPIs (even though a Nobel was won for the concept) represents that tension. Further there's a professor at HBS and I believe he argues certain network effect heavy tech companies they have negative depreciation (book value incrases with scale and time, versus say anything else which almost universally declines or at best stays flat). Negative depreciation implies the current tech P/Es are more sensigle, which in and of itself is an interesting phenomenon that arises from the professors work. So the author is dabbling near some interesting currents, but unfortunately missed the mark here.

This. The article essentially says, "here are a bunch of place people expect sums to add up, what if they don't have to". Fails to propose its own falsifiable theory in exchange. This is similar to folks who say "Western medicine makes mistakes, so you should try the healing powers of crystals." The point of science is that we know it is wrong, but try to make it less wrong all the time. Economic thought definitely isn't always scientific, but this essay doesn't help.

datavirtue 6y ago

I know exactly what they are talking about. Accountants nudging their way into shit they aren't qualified to weigh in on. Because they see dollars signs attached and have somehow been allowed to take a seat at the helm of a company or sphere of influence they nag at engineers and insert themselves into product design. Their only contribution is to bitch about why this or that material costs so much. Yeah, the accountants cracked the case...we can finally ignore the aviation engineers. Whoops...plane went down. Engineers fault.

texasbigdata 6y ago

He is right, sigh, in his meandering rant (as a CPA) that you could argue accounting has wandered a bit. The SEC clamping down on "non-GAAP" KPIs (even though a Nobel was won for the concept) represents that tension. Further there's a professor at HBS and I believe he argues certain network effect heavy tech companies they have negative depreciation (book value incrases with scale and time, versus say anything else which almost universally declines or at best stays flat). Negative depreciation implies the current tech P/Es are more sensigle, which in and of itself is an interesting phenomenon that arises from the professors work. So the author is dabbling near some interesting currents, but unfortunately missed the mark here.