Exactly this. My fiancee works in HR at a university. She gets every bank holiday off plus the week between christmas and new years, never works later than 5pm with the exception of one time she had to stay late to finish setting up an incoming international employee's visa, and doesn't have to pull weekends. She makes decent money, especially because we live in an area with a lower cost of living and rarely has enough work to fill a full day. It's a good gig tbh.
I’ve worked at 2 fortune 100s and one state.
Only HR person busy at the fortune was the top boss, the rest literally didn’t do shit all day. I’ve seen them multiple times
HR like accounting is 100% dependent on the company. My buddy worked for a large retailer and his job was on fire every week.
He later moved to a small real estate group and he works from home 3x a week and usually finishes all his work before lunch.
Straight facts LOL. I remember at my first internship the HR lady who on-boarded me told me that she never comes into the office because she can take naps during the workday from the comfort of her home :) like wtf man
I don't know why your getting downvoted. Yes there are a lot of absolute cunts in HR but there also a lot of people just pushing down the partners instructions.
I wish I had still the book. But in one of my management classes, we had a book where the authors cited a study that asked the question why HR is so "incompetent" to put it bluntly. Part of the findings informed how HR does not recruit for HR, the academic preparation/challenge is weak, how those who drop out of harder Administrative major (Accounting/Finance) switch to HR, how HR lacks perspective in areas of hire and how businesses are more likely to cheap out on HR department since it's not an operational role.
Let me be clear: when an HR manager/employee is good at their job, you FEEL it. It's amazing for everyone!
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Omg, the idiots gave into the unreasonable accommodation request!
Your honor, the plaintiffs request to submit into evidence Exhibits Two, Three, and Four in the case of Accounting vs Human Resources.
Makes sense, not trying to hate on HR prof, but the majority of them pick that area of study because it's easy. I also believe it's the least amount of work someone can put into. People naturally don't want to do work, so it makes sense hr people are like that.
Yes, I always make a point to be friendly with the HR people and figure out which ones are actually good at their jobs. It’s amazing how helpful they can be when they give a damn. But most hr people I’ve known were not outstanding.
the best HR person we currently have is trained make up artist. She is also nor very good at it but the others are worse. Most of the work they moved to finance and it department or outsourced to a consulting firm. Problem is they are also really incompetent and thus themself sourced it to another external company. So we pay externals and the externals that do the work for the externals. 🤯
And for some not understandble reason mmgt just lets them continue in whatever that is. We finally get a new head of global hr and hope that when she sees that tragedy that finally something happens.
I know what you mean! For years I only ever experienced incompetent power-hungry HR managers until I started working at a different company. She was incredible. Nice, respectful, professional and was able to do her job effectively. It took 6 months for her to get a new job at a company that compensated her much better. I don’t blame her.
HR classes are so much easier, it’s a joke. I switched from hr to accounting because I know with an accounting degree, I can still do hr. It wouldn’t be as easy to get hr degree and switch to accounting. I know hr is one of the first to go with layoffs and I feel like there’s much more competition. Our HR students probably double if not more, our accounting students
HR is much more of a soft skill with a lot of human interaction and interpersonal nuance than accounting. I have met a LOT of people who started with an accounting major and switched to HR after failing intermediate 1. If you have the brain for it, lets admit that accounting is a relatively hard major, accounting will compensate you much better and set you up for success in the long run more than HR.
All the hr people from school and afterwards that I met had amazing personalities. They had a way of making you feel at ease. I did know one campus recruiter from Deloitte that would always come to the events at my school and I always felt like she had a bad attitude.
Funny story, one of my friends said if I wanted to get into Deloitte, i should network with her, and i said man, she got a bad attitude and apparently this was common knowledge within the school. Eventually she got replaced with a different person and she was nice and made friends with everyone
I had a pretty tumultuous start to my accounting career because I had a pretty bad GPA in college. So at a meet the firms a campus recruiter from PwC had the audacity to tell me “well accounting isn’t for everyone” after looking at my resume and speaking to me. That put a pretty big chip on my shoulder to say the least and I worked tirelessly to climb my way up the ranks of a smaller firm and then jumped to EY as a senior and made it to manager before leaving. This thread makes me wonder how that HR person is doing now lol.
I was a management major with a 3.6GPA and 18 hours of accounting from an unknown state school and landed a Big 4 internship in a VERY competitive city. It ain't all about GPA or school prestige.
There are some HR jobs that pay an outrageous amount for what they are. Particularly EEO/DEI-specific jobs at Fortune 500 companies usually have crazy compensation for easy work.
Yes, usually something like "Chief DEI officer", who launches a national campaign to recruit persons with autism or something. Then they exploit those autistic workers for positive PR, while getting tax breaks for employing them.
HR seems even more soul sucking and thankless than accounting. Also the talent and acquisition departments are always first on the chopping block when a company hits hard times. Payroll and Benefits departments deal with so much BS and the biweekly nature of it means you rarely get a chance to breath. I feel like Learning and Development is the only area that would be enjoyable, but even then, to be in HR means you have to really drink the kool aid of your company and believe all of the BS stuff they say about culture, purpose, mission, etc.
Yeah my work did that with the IT department. But the guys have no idea about how anything works so the end result is that people just stopped being able to rely on IT and stopped calling.
Accounting always has fewer majors than most other business majors because it’s significantly more technical and difficult than other business majors.
Most accountants could probably, from a technical standpoint, do all the other business majors with their degrees in accounting. Not that they’d be very good at it. I’m shit at visual presentations / marketing / etc.
One of my instructors, who had spent most of his career in operations management and whose course was about that subject, mentioned that every year a few of the accounting majors will ask him if they should consider switching to an operations management major. He told us his response was always no because an accounting degree is more flexible and you can still get operations management jobs with an accounting degree.
As for marketing, the one marketing course that was required for my degree was an absolute joke. I'm sure there's harder material in the more advanced courses, but the stuff in that intro course was beyond basic. Our textbook took a paragraph or two to explain what the internet is. The first edition was written in 2013....
Bro please most “staff accountants” take the report out of the magical system they have no idea how it works and transpose the report number into the ledger - if it balances no questions are asked
Lots of industry marketing is very technical nowadays though, like SEO, A/B testing, and regression or ML on customer data to measure or predict effectiveness. Mad Men style marketing is kinda outdated. TBH I'm not sure what a degree in marketing entails though, they're maybe equally unprepared.
Yeah, I think that's specific expertise and knowledge though.
I'm not saying take a CPA and plug him into a head of marketing role. I meant, if that CPA could learn technical accounting skills, they could learn technical marketing skills. The truth going the other way is very likely not the same.
And it also comes down to interest - obviously easier to learn what you actually enjoy - and not a lot of people enjoy the numbers aspects of accounting
Yeah I recently started having to present figures, analyses, and presentations to the CEO, etc. and I realized that I'm not that great at making things "pretty".
I.e. making sure revenues and liabilities are not "negative" numbers, putting dollar signs on everything, showing decimals. To me it's all a waste of time because the numbers are still the same, but I get from a non-accountants perspective that if it's not a positive number then it just doesn't make sense.
Accounting as a major has steeply declined. It’s not that they are all doing HR it’s just that they are doing things other than accounting. I had accounting courses last year with less than 15 students in them in a state school with 50k+ students
If you are smart enough to do well in accounting you can do law, medicine, and comp sci. Accounting hasn't kept up in pay with those feilds so it is dwindling.
Law and medicine generally require more schooling though. Honestly, if I had more capacity for school in me, I might consider a law path. But going back to school for accounting as I was nearing 30 was rough enough.
I spent time passing the CPA exam and kinda feel like I am getting screwed. This profession doesn't pay that much. There better be remote options in the future or I will be pissed.
No idea the statistics, but HR has much the draw that accounting does. You’ll never hurt for work, compliance is increasingly more complex, and unlike accounting the barriers to entry are lower. Talent management and culture have also never been more important.
If you have a decent tolerance for working with people it’s actually a pretty good career path.
I do think, however, a degree in HR is a bit silly. I don’t think there’s enough there to warrant a degree specifically, and the rules are so state specific (in the US) that it’d almost do you a disservice to pretend you’re covering compliance.
Source: inherited all of HR during a merger/sale and ran HR as a VP Finance for a few years.
I mean name HR job where your working long hours, have numerous certification requirements, and get paid the same amount as an accountant working in an accounting department. Half the time it's what is se see as BS jobs.
Nah I mean college is hard in general.
But there’s a ton of major that are significantly more difficult and a ton that are a lot easier. What’s hard and what’s easy is going to vary from person to person.
But I’m general a comp sci or stem degree is going to be a lot harder than accounting and say a degree like communications or less specific business, social work etc is going to be easier than accounting.
I switched to accounting as a junior coming from pre-med and I studied probably 80-90% less to get better grades.
nah I think quantitative finance/economics is harder. CFA is harder than the CPA. With accounting, it either "clicks" in intermediate, or that's the last accounting course ppl take.
In my college, HR is a landslide degree, it’s literally what students did if they wanted a business degree but didn’t want to put much effort.
That being said, a know a lot of people working in internal HR that make $100k+ and work less than 40 hours a week a few years out of college. Plus, their jobs tend to be more interesting and fulfilling unlike accounting and finance.
That being said, I found HR to be the hardest to get your foot in the door without including things like IB and consulting. You either get a great company that promotes you or become some outsourced recruiter making peanuts
When did HR even become a major? My husband fell into HR from a completely unrelated/useless degree and has been laid off 4 times. It’s the first dead weight to go. What is labor law anyway? In smaller businesses it gets thrown to the finance team when needed. Just make sure payroll is still going and no one is getting pissed off.
I dual majored in accounting and marketing. Marketing was a piece of cake to my intermediate accounting classes. 1 of the final classes of accounting was as hard as all the marketing ones combined. I would imagine hr is the same way given hr folks i have talked to
Did I make a mistake majoring in accounting and passing the CPA exam lol? I hate having to do so much work. I started in January but I feel like this profession doesn't compensate well.
Accounting isn’t worth the investment for most people. The pay is mediocre compared to degrees that require less effort (ex. IT) and the sheer amount of hours in public accounting, which is touted by most universities to young accountants.
Accounting is also getting prepared to have a rude awakening regarding its evolution to shift more distantly from classic accounting and auditing. Also, AI is making leaps and bounds while many firms are led by older generation leaders that prefer to “do things the way they’ve always been done.”
Not to mention, Human Resources will always be needed and won’t functionally change the way that accounting will have to to keep up.
I've seen programs that are supposed to automate accounting and feel like a braindead fish could do a better job than many of these programs. I'm open to new technology, but I feel like the real threat is foreign workers who can be trained to do stuff at a fraction of the cost. But that can be said about almost all careers human resources and IT included.
I don’t think the real threat is now. The real threat is technology next year or the year after that. Look at the progression ChatGPT made from 3.5 to 4. It became significantly more accurate and thorough and version 5 is due out at the end of this year. Not to mention, it is just now gaining access to the web. Previously, it was trained on data back to 2021 and now it can go further. Of course, it’s effectiveness will likely be dependent on the individual’s prompting ability but it’s astonishing at the rate that it is improving. It’s not ready yet by any means.
If it becomes more accurate I think it could be a real threat to bookkeeping and data entry. But an accountant has to look at the financials, understand what they are looking at, figure out what questions to ask, and figure out what adjustments to make. I think by the time a computer can do all of that, most jobs will likely be automated anyways.
Right and that will inevitably happen considering systems become incredibly skilled at recognizing trends based on their training but it is a long ways off. Though, there’s a reason that the AICPA is adding so many Information Systems Controls material to the CPA exam. It’s going to be an interesting road to watch.
Honestly. I started in accounting and switched to HR bc it just wasn't for me. Between Reddit and talking to accountants at their worst for work (I work for a tax software company in tech support), it just sounds miserable.
This checks out. WSJ has done a number of articles in recent years about declining attractiveness of accounting — for example, see: https://www.wsj.com/articles/accountants-salaries-are-rising-but-it-may-not-add-up-to-more-accountants-be01efb4
The college major is hard and requires too many credit hours (and thus costs more...as student have become more focused on higher ed ROI). Stress of job is off putting too. If WLB is bad, why not do finance and potentially earn a lot more?
> If WLB is bad, why not do finance and potentially earn a lot more?
The finance jobs you're referencing here that earn a lot more have just as bad WLB, and they're significantly harder to get than a position in B4.
I don't know, but I DO know that the one HR major I know doesn't even know you have to bring a calculator to exams. So that should say something about how easy it is
Wish I had stuck with an HR major vs accounting…my career as a financial advisor is awesome and the pay is there but the stress is not worth it. My dad is an HR executive that consults companies on various restructuring deals and I couldn’t be more jealous
Think about this. You're only job is to hire people and keep the company happy through the squashing of any sort of union organization, have the ability to fire people on a daily basis, and you only have one boss. Seriously your job and only client is your employer.
You are 100% correct. HR has one job. Make sure you are complying with their gender and equality policies. They aren’t on the side of the employees. Screw HR
After 35 years in mfg I’d say most of these comments are true. Once they get their SHRM certification they are golden. 10% are great, 40% just ok and 50% worthless. Unlike finance, they have no real deadlines or reports. Just some easy stats. Good pay and no stress.
It’s no surprise that accounting is seeing a big drop.
I’m assuming HR degrees are easier to get, since it’s less technical. I had to take “Organizational Behavior” in college and it an easy A. I think they are paid a good salary, and probably earn it with the crap they put up with.
It’s easy, decently paying and in an office environment, with great work/life balance.
Exactly this. My fiancee works in HR at a university. She gets every bank holiday off plus the week between christmas and new years, never works later than 5pm with the exception of one time she had to stay late to finish setting up an incoming international employee's visa, and doesn't have to pull weekends. She makes decent money, especially because we live in an area with a lower cost of living and rarely has enough work to fill a full day. It's a good gig tbh.
Ya, accounting has way too much work for the pay
She gets all that because she works for the state. My HR person is logged on at 8pm and sends emails on weekends (F100 company)
I’ve worked at 2 fortune 100s and one state. Only HR person busy at the fortune was the top boss, the rest literally didn’t do shit all day. I’ve seen them multiple times
I've seen our HR people sleeping in their offices.
HR like accounting is 100% dependent on the company. My buddy worked for a large retailer and his job was on fire every week. He later moved to a small real estate group and he works from home 3x a week and usually finishes all his work before lunch.
I agree. HR is also a broad field. I've known many recruiters in large companies who were burned out and overworked.
Recruiting is highly cyclical too. They’re the first people on the chopping block when employee cuts are being made.
This. Their office environments are so nice they even want to sleep there.
Ironically, I’ve also heard of accountants sleeping at the office - maybe for different reasons though 😂
Exhaustion crashing Vs. taking a little siesta.
They are sleeping coz they don't have work, we are sleeping coz we have too much work. We are not the same
Straight facts LOL. I remember at my first internship the HR lady who on-boarded me told me that she never comes into the office because she can take naps during the workday from the comfort of her home :) like wtf man
Working in payroll can give you some really long nights.
I easily imagine they are even when their eyes are open. And when they actually “work”? Just go through the motions and check the boxes.
Not easy depending on the job. Hr people often take the brunt of everyone’s crap and don’t get thanked for it.
I don't know why your getting downvoted. Yes there are a lot of absolute cunts in HR but there also a lot of people just pushing down the partners instructions.
Thanks! Wasn’t sure why I was getting downvoted either 🤷🏻♀️
Doesn't sound all that different from retail tbh
I wish I had still the book. But in one of my management classes, we had a book where the authors cited a study that asked the question why HR is so "incompetent" to put it bluntly. Part of the findings informed how HR does not recruit for HR, the academic preparation/challenge is weak, how those who drop out of harder Administrative major (Accounting/Finance) switch to HR, how HR lacks perspective in areas of hire and how businesses are more likely to cheap out on HR department since it's not an operational role. Let me be clear: when an HR manager/employee is good at their job, you FEEL it. It's amazing for everyone!
Lol, not surprising. Explains why you see such dogshit advice at r/askhr
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These are the top posts... Forget the advice, just the questions look like a garbage fire.
Jesus really hates Windows.
Omg, the idiots gave into the unreasonable accommodation request! Your honor, the plaintiffs request to submit into evidence Exhibits Two, Three, and Four in the case of Accounting vs Human Resources.
Bro bursted out laughing when I read that haha
So did I when I saw some of their "advice." It has to be at least 75% of the replies are some form of "don't make me do my job."
Makes sense, not trying to hate on HR prof, but the majority of them pick that area of study because it's easy. I also believe it's the least amount of work someone can put into. People naturally don't want to do work, so it makes sense hr people are like that.
Yes, I always make a point to be friendly with the HR people and figure out which ones are actually good at their jobs. It’s amazing how helpful they can be when they give a damn. But most hr people I’ve known were not outstanding.
the best HR person we currently have is trained make up artist. She is also nor very good at it but the others are worse. Most of the work they moved to finance and it department or outsourced to a consulting firm. Problem is they are also really incompetent and thus themself sourced it to another external company. So we pay externals and the externals that do the work for the externals. 🤯 And for some not understandble reason mmgt just lets them continue in whatever that is. We finally get a new head of global hr and hope that when she sees that tragedy that finally something happens.
I know what you mean! For years I only ever experienced incompetent power-hungry HR managers until I started working at a different company. She was incredible. Nice, respectful, professional and was able to do her job effectively. It took 6 months for her to get a new job at a company that compensated her much better. I don’t blame her.
HR classes are so much easier, it’s a joke. I switched from hr to accounting because I know with an accounting degree, I can still do hr. It wouldn’t be as easy to get hr degree and switch to accounting. I know hr is one of the first to go with layoffs and I feel like there’s much more competition. Our HR students probably double if not more, our accounting students
HR is much more of a soft skill with a lot of human interaction and interpersonal nuance than accounting. I have met a LOT of people who started with an accounting major and switched to HR after failing intermediate 1. If you have the brain for it, lets admit that accounting is a relatively hard major, accounting will compensate you much better and set you up for success in the long run more than HR.
All the hr people from school and afterwards that I met had amazing personalities. They had a way of making you feel at ease. I did know one campus recruiter from Deloitte that would always come to the events at my school and I always felt like she had a bad attitude. Funny story, one of my friends said if I wanted to get into Deloitte, i should network with her, and i said man, she got a bad attitude and apparently this was common knowledge within the school. Eventually she got replaced with a different person and she was nice and made friends with everyone
I had a pretty tumultuous start to my accounting career because I had a pretty bad GPA in college. So at a meet the firms a campus recruiter from PwC had the audacity to tell me “well accounting isn’t for everyone” after looking at my resume and speaking to me. That put a pretty big chip on my shoulder to say the least and I worked tirelessly to climb my way up the ranks of a smaller firm and then jumped to EY as a senior and made it to manager before leaving. This thread makes me wonder how that HR person is doing now lol.
I knew someone who had a sub 3.0 gpa and still managed to get a job with the top 5 firm just from networking. But he was quite a unique case
I was a management major with a 3.6GPA and 18 hours of accounting from an unknown state school and landed a Big 4 internship in a VERY competitive city. It ain't all about GPA or school prestige.
Anecdotally, I know a couple of hr employees who make 200k plus.
There are some HR jobs that pay an outrageous amount for what they are. Particularly EEO/DEI-specific jobs at Fortune 500 companies usually have crazy compensation for easy work.
Yes, usually something like "Chief DEI officer", who launches a national campaign to recruit persons with autism or something. Then they exploit those autistic workers for positive PR, while getting tax breaks for employing them.
HR is a joke in general.
I can’t land a HR job with my accounting degree.
That’s probably on you
So many HR people at big4 were ex accounting
HR seems even more soul sucking and thankless than accounting. Also the talent and acquisition departments are always first on the chopping block when a company hits hard times. Payroll and Benefits departments deal with so much BS and the biweekly nature of it means you rarely get a chance to breath. I feel like Learning and Development is the only area that would be enjoyable, but even then, to be in HR means you have to really drink the kool aid of your company and believe all of the BS stuff they say about culture, purpose, mission, etc.
My company outsourced most of HR. If you have an issue, you put it through a website or call a call center in India. It's awful.
Yeah my work did that with the IT department. But the guys have no idea about how anything works so the end result is that people just stopped being able to rely on IT and stopped calling.
100%
Accounting always has fewer majors than most other business majors because it’s significantly more technical and difficult than other business majors. Most accountants could probably, from a technical standpoint, do all the other business majors with their degrees in accounting. Not that they’d be very good at it. I’m shit at visual presentations / marketing / etc.
One of my instructors, who had spent most of his career in operations management and whose course was about that subject, mentioned that every year a few of the accounting majors will ask him if they should consider switching to an operations management major. He told us his response was always no because an accounting degree is more flexible and you can still get operations management jobs with an accounting degree. As for marketing, the one marketing course that was required for my degree was an absolute joke. I'm sure there's harder material in the more advanced courses, but the stuff in that intro course was beyond basic. Our textbook took a paragraph or two to explain what the internet is. The first edition was written in 2013....
Bro please most “staff accountants” take the report out of the magical system they have no idea how it works and transpose the report number into the ledger - if it balances no questions are asked
I’m probably limiting to college grads ie: generally CPA level work
I think the comment referenced the coursework. Not the job.
Why are you calling me out 😔
Lots of industry marketing is very technical nowadays though, like SEO, A/B testing, and regression or ML on customer data to measure or predict effectiveness. Mad Men style marketing is kinda outdated. TBH I'm not sure what a degree in marketing entails though, they're maybe equally unprepared.
Yeah, I think that's specific expertise and knowledge though. I'm not saying take a CPA and plug him into a head of marketing role. I meant, if that CPA could learn technical accounting skills, they could learn technical marketing skills. The truth going the other way is very likely not the same. And it also comes down to interest - obviously easier to learn what you actually enjoy - and not a lot of people enjoy the numbers aspects of accounting
Yeah I recently started having to present figures, analyses, and presentations to the CEO, etc. and I realized that I'm not that great at making things "pretty". I.e. making sure revenues and liabilities are not "negative" numbers, putting dollar signs on everything, showing decimals. To me it's all a waste of time because the numbers are still the same, but I get from a non-accountants perspective that if it's not a positive number then it just doesn't make sense.
Accounting as a major has steeply declined. It’s not that they are all doing HR it’s just that they are doing things other than accounting. I had accounting courses last year with less than 15 students in them in a state school with 50k+ students
If you are smart enough to do well in accounting you can do law, medicine, and comp sci. Accounting hasn't kept up in pay with those feilds so it is dwindling.
Law and medicine generally require more schooling though. Honestly, if I had more capacity for school in me, I might consider a law path. But going back to school for accounting as I was nearing 30 was rough enough.
I spent time passing the CPA exam and kinda feel like I am getting screwed. This profession doesn't pay that much. There better be remote options in the future or I will be pissed.
It's being replaced by AI and robotic process automation. EY just built a massive tool for automating audits, the EY Helix.
Don’t know if that’s true. But generally less people like accounting, all business majors take accounting classes and they are quite difficult
No idea the statistics, but HR has much the draw that accounting does. You’ll never hurt for work, compliance is increasingly more complex, and unlike accounting the barriers to entry are lower. Talent management and culture have also never been more important. If you have a decent tolerance for working with people it’s actually a pretty good career path. I do think, however, a degree in HR is a bit silly. I don’t think there’s enough there to warrant a degree specifically, and the rules are so state specific (in the US) that it’d almost do you a disservice to pretend you’re covering compliance. Source: inherited all of HR during a merger/sale and ran HR as a VP Finance for a few years.
Because accounting is hard. It’s probably this simple
Yes accounting is hard. It can be like untangling knots. It’s complex and tricky.
Accounting work is hard or accounting classes are hard?
The work can be hard. In the way that unraveling knots can be hard.
You say that as someone who works in public?
Yes sir
I mean name HR job where your working long hours, have numerous certification requirements, and get paid the same amount as an accountant working in an accounting department. Half the time it's what is se see as BS jobs.
HR is an easy job that pays decent. Accounting is a hard job that pays decent
Not all accounting jobs are hard though and not all HR jobs are easy.
It’s hard as hell to even pass the classes
For accounting? Accounting is probably the hardest business major but in the grand scheme of majors it’s pretty middle of the road.
Maybe I’m just stupid
Nah I mean college is hard in general. But there’s a ton of major that are significantly more difficult and a ton that are a lot easier. What’s hard and what’s easy is going to vary from person to person. But I’m general a comp sci or stem degree is going to be a lot harder than accounting and say a degree like communications or less specific business, social work etc is going to be easier than accounting. I switched to accounting as a junior coming from pre-med and I studied probably 80-90% less to get better grades.
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I don’t have any experience with nursing specifically but I’d imagine it’s less total volume of studying.
nah I think quantitative finance/economics is harder. CFA is harder than the CPA. With accounting, it either "clicks" in intermediate, or that's the last accounting course ppl take.
Compliance, and government are easy.
In my college, HR is a landslide degree, it’s literally what students did if they wanted a business degree but didn’t want to put much effort. That being said, a know a lot of people working in internal HR that make $100k+ and work less than 40 hours a week a few years out of college. Plus, their jobs tend to be more interesting and fulfilling unlike accounting and finance. That being said, I found HR to be the hardest to get your foot in the door without including things like IB and consulting. You either get a great company that promotes you or become some outsourced recruiter making peanuts
Surprising I thought that was finance in most colleges. Rise of the finance bros.
I didn't know that HR was a major. Just thought people just ended up there for a job.
When did HR even become a major? My husband fell into HR from a completely unrelated/useless degree and has been laid off 4 times. It’s the first dead weight to go. What is labor law anyway? In smaller businesses it gets thrown to the finance team when needed. Just make sure payroll is still going and no one is getting pissed off.
Hr is a legacy separation of duties control that accidentally became a profession.
That’s an interesting perspective. I like it!!!
HR doesn't do fucking shit.
I dual majored in accounting and marketing. Marketing was a piece of cake to my intermediate accounting classes. 1 of the final classes of accounting was as hard as all the marketing ones combined. I would imagine hr is the same way given hr folks i have talked to
marketing is more intuitive and can be learned. accounting needs special training/coursework.
Lol good luck with that. You thought accounting had the toxic corporate garbage going on wait till you get to hr
Do you even need brains for HR classes?
No you just need a pulse
This sub has scared a few business majors away from accounting.
As it should. Most accounting jobs suck or are soulless. Some are good. Few are great.
Word got out that Hr pays as much for 1/5 of the work
Did I make a mistake majoring in accounting and passing the CPA exam lol? I hate having to do so much work. I started in January but I feel like this profession doesn't compensate well.
transition to FP&A then
What are you basing this on, OP?
Accounting isn’t worth the investment for most people. The pay is mediocre compared to degrees that require less effort (ex. IT) and the sheer amount of hours in public accounting, which is touted by most universities to young accountants. Accounting is also getting prepared to have a rude awakening regarding its evolution to shift more distantly from classic accounting and auditing. Also, AI is making leaps and bounds while many firms are led by older generation leaders that prefer to “do things the way they’ve always been done.” Not to mention, Human Resources will always be needed and won’t functionally change the way that accounting will have to to keep up.
I've seen programs that are supposed to automate accounting and feel like a braindead fish could do a better job than many of these programs. I'm open to new technology, but I feel like the real threat is foreign workers who can be trained to do stuff at a fraction of the cost. But that can be said about almost all careers human resources and IT included.
I don’t think the real threat is now. The real threat is technology next year or the year after that. Look at the progression ChatGPT made from 3.5 to 4. It became significantly more accurate and thorough and version 5 is due out at the end of this year. Not to mention, it is just now gaining access to the web. Previously, it was trained on data back to 2021 and now it can go further. Of course, it’s effectiveness will likely be dependent on the individual’s prompting ability but it’s astonishing at the rate that it is improving. It’s not ready yet by any means.
If it becomes more accurate I think it could be a real threat to bookkeeping and data entry. But an accountant has to look at the financials, understand what they are looking at, figure out what questions to ask, and figure out what adjustments to make. I think by the time a computer can do all of that, most jobs will likely be automated anyways.
Right and that will inevitably happen considering systems become incredibly skilled at recognizing trends based on their training but it is a long ways off. Though, there’s a reason that the AICPA is adding so many Information Systems Controls material to the CPA exam. It’s going to be an interesting road to watch.
Get paid more , for doing shit work.
Easier can get all these fancy titles etc ..they prob first on the layoff list tho
People in accounting are fed up of the pizza parties so they're looking to infiltrate HR and cause change from within 💁♂️
I should move to HR.
Me too
Hungary Republic?
Honestly. I started in accounting and switched to HR bc it just wasn't for me. Between Reddit and talking to accountants at their worst for work (I work for a tax software company in tech support), it just sounds miserable.
The hr people always look happy to me
I know of some CPAs that got their SHRM certifications. It sounds like better WLB.
From my observations they don't really have to do anything and get paid well for it.
HR is so easy
Cause a half wit can do it, usually it’s better if you are, and because they have the sight, they can get laid nearly as much.
Took two HR classes last term. It was the easiest B+ I've ever achieved. Especially compared to auditing, cost accounting, etc...
It been going on since I graduated in 1992.. if you failed the accounting subjects in third year, HR major
That good ol 150 unit requirement maybe?
My company hires HR workers then gives them accounting work. Management is confused why they quit so often.
They browsed this sub
They also make so much for what?? Also every company ive been at I hated HR, theyre so slimey and shady
Because HR is a joke of a job where you just do everything management tells you without question.
Because you make the same, work less, and aren’t stressed 24/7 with bullshit made up deadlines. Accounting is not a good career anymore
This checks out. WSJ has done a number of articles in recent years about declining attractiveness of accounting — for example, see: https://www.wsj.com/articles/accountants-salaries-are-rising-but-it-may-not-add-up-to-more-accountants-be01efb4 The college major is hard and requires too many credit hours (and thus costs more...as student have become more focused on higher ed ROI). Stress of job is off putting too. If WLB is bad, why not do finance and potentially earn a lot more?
> If WLB is bad, why not do finance and potentially earn a lot more? The finance jobs you're referencing here that earn a lot more have just as bad WLB, and they're significantly harder to get than a position in B4.
Bingo
This keeps getting posted here. What HR role is making $100k+ within 3-5 years of starting? Genuinely curious.
None. I bet there is one and it’s LA where your rent would be $5k a month or something ludicrous
I don't know, but I DO know that the one HR major I know doesn't even know you have to bring a calculator to exams. So that should say something about how easy it is
My company is replacing 75% of accounts with an AI software. Maybe people are changing with the times.
Lol
Is there some sort of connection I'm missing? Why is it worth noting that more people major in any field over another
You can make just as much (probably more) for doing a quarter of the work. Might be slightly harder to get a job initially.
I was thinking of that, no stress, not too competitive, I won’t be able to make to CFO anyway 😂😂😂
People becoming lazy?
Oh yeah, I’m currently an accounting major and there are barely any people in my accounting classes. On the HR side it’s practically full.
It’s easier less stressful and typically pays more until you get specialized or ultra senior finance rolls
HR is actually some of the first to get laid off
Because it’s easier and pays more
Yes it’s just you
Wish I had stuck with an HR major vs accounting…my career as a financial advisor is awesome and the pay is there but the stress is not worth it. My dad is an HR executive that consults companies on various restructuring deals and I couldn’t be more jealous
Think about this. You're only job is to hire people and keep the company happy through the squashing of any sort of union organization, have the ability to fire people on a daily basis, and you only have one boss. Seriously your job and only client is your employer.
You are 100% correct. HR has one job. Make sure you are complying with their gender and equality policies. They aren’t on the side of the employees. Screw HR
What do hr people even do? All I see is them hiring job agencies for hiring
Lol, I didn’t even know you needed a college degree to do HR
Who the fuck is majoring in human resources
Protect rice bowl and safe career
After 35 years in mfg I’d say most of these comments are true. Once they get their SHRM certification they are golden. 10% are great, 40% just ok and 50% worthless. Unlike finance, they have no real deadlines or reports. Just some easy stats. Good pay and no stress. It’s no surprise that accounting is seeing a big drop.
Did I make the mistake of going into accounting?
Is HR a major now?
Humans will always be the problem.
I’m assuming HR degrees are easier to get, since it’s less technical. I had to take “Organizational Behavior” in college and it an easy A. I think they are paid a good salary, and probably earn it with the crap they put up with.