[Frondo]

My sister is an accountant and she genuinely enjoys working with the numbers. She finds it, not exactly fun, but kind of fun? She describes it like every situation is a puzzle she gets to solve, and then maintain. She also likes working with her customers and enjoys those interactions, like she gets a good feeling from helping her customers out. That's enough for her.

Not the vocation for me but it's very interesting to talk with her about her experiences, because they're so remote from mine...

[saiya-jin]

Sounds like some hardcore deep backend software dev jobs (I have similar for more than a decade), but actual creativity is scaled down to few %.

Accountants are extremely limited by rigid tools they use and laws they have to adgere to. Then comes given company's 'way we do things here' limit.

Take any modern programming language, you start with unique big problem/task, have to crack hundreds little and big problems, often with use of stackoverflow and other webs, but ie hard alghoritmic problems I solve mostly on my own since nobody faced those in exact mix of technologies, data and other constraints. There are sone further limits but my alghoritms are my solid creations, nobody ever questioned them nor made me refactor them for any reason.

To outsiders it may look exactly same weird nerd stuff of course. To me, accounting has very little room for creativity, its there but almost microscopic. And the joy you describe is also present, thats there in many jobs that actually create stuff, digital or not

[galaxyLogic]

Note your sister doesn't just work with "numbers". She works with a structure of interrelated accounts. In a sense she is working with the structure of the business. She is observing the business-process which is a bit like looking at a simulation.

[Frondo]

Very true and well said!

[jimmygrapes]

FWIW I share your sister's take. A large part of my job involves accounting and audit/compliance, and few things stimulate me more than trying to figure out "what the fuck were they thinking" and fixing it.