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In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of deta

In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there.

john_other_john 12y ago
There is also just weeding through to prove very blatant frauds, which can be forensic in nature, if payments are hidden in group company loans or sale and buy back deals, or discounting tax rebate incomes. I mean starting with a very obvious con, you still have to prove it. Currently a project if mine, in this way. Not huge, but close to twenty million dollar property fraud.
hackuser 12y ago
> In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there. Perhaps accountants and archeologists would say the same about coding.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  Coding is a creative endeavor. In contrast, forensic accounting is more similar to reading code someone else wrote and trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote it.
  - hessenwolf 12y ago
    Forensic accounting is to accounting what debugging Cobol is to coding, maybe?
  - lambda 12y ago
    You haven't been coding long enough if you hadn't had projects that consisted mostly of just that.
    - lostlogin 12y ago
      I've done almost nothing and I look at my code and wonder that. Yes, I'm doing it wrong.
  - epochwolf 12y ago
    That's basically what I'm doing today. I'm trying to figure out what the hell that guy that originally wrote this codebase was thinking. (Probably something like "Oh hey, Ruby has this feature Java didn't have, let's use it in exactly the wrong way!")
  - crpatino 12y ago
    Every creative endeavor is 1% of inspiration, followed by 99% or perspiration. That's the only way to manifest the pretty pictures inside your head onto a tangible medium that can reach others. Creativity without hard, and often dull, work is called "Day dreaming".
  - girvo 12y ago
    You've just described my last three months.
- Amelot 12y ago
  Nice
andrewflnr 12y ago
I suspect that's pretty well captured in the comparison to "spelunking through git commits on a 10 MLOC project". (I say "suspect" because I haven't actually done either, thank God)
rahimnathwani 12y ago
You can use computers to do some of the digging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law#Accounting_fraud_detection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law#Accounting_fraud_...

john_other_john 12y ago

There is also just weeding through to prove very blatant frauds, which can be forensic in nature, if payments are hidden in group company loans or sale and buy back deals, or discounting tax rebate incomes. I mean starting with a very obvious con, you still have to prove it. Currently a project if mine, in this way. Not huge, but close to twenty million dollar property fraud.

hackuser 12y ago

> In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there. Perhaps accountants and archeologists would say the same about coding.

enraged_camel 12y ago
Coding is a creative endeavor. In contrast, forensic accounting is more similar to reading code someone else wrote and trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote it.
- hessenwolf 12y ago
  Forensic accounting is to accounting what debugging Cobol is to coding, maybe?
- lambda 12y ago
  You haven't been coding long enough if you hadn't had projects that consisted mostly of just that.
  - lostlogin 12y ago
    I've done almost nothing and I look at my code and wonder that. Yes, I'm doing it wrong.
- epochwolf 12y ago
  That's basically what I'm doing today. I'm trying to figure out what the hell that guy that originally wrote this codebase was thinking. (Probably something like "Oh hey, Ruby has this feature Java didn't have, let's use it in exactly the wrong way!")
- crpatino 12y ago
  Every creative endeavor is 1% of inspiration, followed by 99% or perspiration. That's the only way to manifest the pretty pictures inside your head onto a tangible medium that can reach others. Creativity without hard, and often dull, work is called "Day dreaming".
- girvo 12y ago
  You've just described my last three months.
Amelot 12y ago
Nice

andrewflnr 12y ago

I suspect that's pretty well captured in the comparison to "spelunking through git commits on a 10 MLOC project". (I say "suspect" because I haven't actually done either, thank God)

rahimnathwani 12y ago

You can use computers to do some of the digging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law#Accounting_fraud_detection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law#Accounting_fraud_...