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Comment by IkmoIkmo | Hacker News Reader

Hah, throughout the article I kept thinking: this guy probably just read Jacob Solls book, it's basically a brief summary. Of course, he ends up signing the article haha.

I enjoyed his perspective but I can't help but wonder what his ultimate point is. For everyone to appreciate accounting in our culture and art? If anything I feel we have a healthy appreciation of accounting and auditing where it matters; in our institutional & governance frameworks. We have audits of auditors, schools, financial institutions, governments, agriculture and foodstuffs etc etc. It's far from perfect but the 1600s could only dream of the role and importance of accounting and auditing today, regardless of the cultural position.

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Recognition of how certain roles are becoming extremely specialized, as Adam smith first set out in his division of labor thesis in the wealth of nations as a way to increase productivity, succinctly critiqued by Robert Heinlein: “specialization is for insects”

Accountants used to be merchants, businessmen, politicians, lenders, financiers, and insurers all rolled into one. Now they are (at entry level, or working for the state at least) seen as excel jockeys and bean counters enforcing some arcane business/legal code that nobody else wants to touch

And as much as I hate to bring in taleb, most accountants/auditors have no skin in the game, and therefore what they do is intriscally boring. If they stood to lose a pound of flesh as in the merchant of Venice when the businesses they oversee go bankrupt, perhaps they would be written about in Shakespearean terms today

>most accountants/auditors have no skin in the game

Bit of an ironic comment given that almost all accounting/auditing firms are partnerships. The participants arguably have more skin in the game than any other corporate entity of comparable complexity.

Since those big firms are consulting firms, they have less a skin in the game, and more in the meta-game.

> Now they are (at entry level, or working for the state at least) seen as excel jockeys and bean counters

Few entry-level jobs are glamorous. An accountant at the top of their trade is a CFO or financial crimes prosecutor.

The same is happening in software. Each new specialization carries with it heavy penalties in tooling and domain knowledge (bureaucracy and arbitrary details). This, in my opinion, slows problem solving as a whole and leads to the need for bigger teams when a more lean approach could have achieved more with less. It's bloat, but in people and tools instead of law and process.

> most accountants/auditors have no skin in the game

Sarbanes-Oxley says otherwise

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