If you ask yourself what can make the most money with the least amount of work - your answer is accounting. Perhaps investment banking can make more on a sustained basis with a longer time horizon, but the workload is incredibly higher, and the success rate has more variability.
One of my primary responsibilities in Managerial Accounting was analyzing Job Costing reports and overseeing the entire Cost Accounting staff. My bonuses were directly related to how much money I saved the company. The last year I worked in the Construction Industry was 2007 and my salary was $72k, but my bonuses landed me just over $190k total income for the year!
Now I’m self-employed and even though I gross $80-$90k/year, the Self-Employment Tax (it’s the full 15.3% in FICA, which is normally paid 7.65% by employer and 7.65% by employee) and State and Federal Income Tax hit me HARD! When I’m filing my tax return each year, I find myself wondering if I should re-think my decision to not have children…I need those deductions and tax credits! 
I’m not sure if I disagree with you or if just disagree with your choice of words??? Accounting positions that pay well also come with a very high level of responsibility! The skill set required for higher level accounting roles isn’t something that can be taught to someone, either. So that makes the ones who can fill those positions even more valuable!
The way I think of it is this…how much money do you need or want to live comfortably where you live?
If that number is very low, then the investment you need to make in education and training is also low. I’m in CA so I’ll use that as an example. If I was comfortable with $35K/year, i would need very little investment. Almost any full time job with a college degree would pay that. I could choose the easiest major and get an administrative assistant job and be fine. If that were my goal, it would be a waste of time to study computer engineering.
If that number were say, $70K/year, then I would probably need a non-humanities major or a humanities major with post graduate work. This is for first year income. So to min/max that choice, I’d want the easiest non-humanities major. Maybe Econ. I could get some entry level operations or some type of job where the degree is really just an entrance ticket and the rest is on the job training. The computer engineering degree would still be a waste.
If that number were say, $100K/year, then the choices get more limited. There are not that many entry level jobs that pay that much, and those that do, require quite a bit of training and investment in education. Now I’m talking a STEM major and probably post grad education. Either that or investment banking or some similar role.
This same analysis can be done for your wage at the 5 year point, or career earnings. Each person will have a different acuity to certain professions, but what I’ve found, if you are willing to do the work to invest in education and training, the best bang for your buck is accounting. This of course depends on how much value each person places on the relative dollars earned vs. the relative cost (financial and non) of the investment. YMMV.
I feel I should also point out that partners at Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and so on earn well into six and seven figures.
Oh that big 4 accounting ship left the port years ago for me; AFAIK they usually recruit straight from undergrad and supposedly the young recruits work extremely long hard hours. Apparently a large number of these recruits wash out after 2 years or so but some of the ones that stay can do very very well. I think with that also you have to have the right personality for that culture.
Well, of course a database administrator is going to think an accountant is living the life.
Just kidding. 
I agree with you completely.
I started out as an accountant and instead of making big $$ decided that I could afford to make a lot less and use my skills in the arts where a practical person with a numbers background is always the last to be hired and the most welcome when they finally get around to it. I can honestly say I enjoy a respect that far outstrips my paycheck, love my job, and since it is a fairly small company I get the opportunity to learn and use other skills that would be closed to me anywhere else.
I’ve certainly worked for companies that viewed me as someone who existed only to harsh their mellow, but since shifting 14 years ago to being a dedicated non-profit accountant I find that I get a lot of respect, some of it from accounting and finance professionals making orders of magnitude more than me who think I’m being wonderfully altruistic by using my awesome powers in the service of art. I kinda like that. Mind you, I never got that as a standard-issue accountant during the first dozen years of working in the for-profit world.
And I only have to own one suit at a time, so win-win.
I tend to look at it from a different perspective. Having a career that I find interesting and challenging was and is the most important factor. Once I found it, I performed at the highest level possible and continued to learn and advance within the field. The salary was above average from the beginning and quickly exceeded my most ambitious expectations!
But after 12 years, I was bored with accounting and decided to start a new career in the insurance industry. I had to take a serious pay cut initially, but as my knowledge and experience have increased, the money has also! =)
Best laugh I’ve had all week. Thanks!
I am pretty excited about the sheer number of opportunities available if I’m successful in getting a CPA license; I think the nonprofit world could be appealing to me; I am much more interested in quality of life than high salary.
Enjoying what I do and having the respect of some of the most powerful people in my industry is more important than how much I earn! Last year, the insurance company I admire and respect most (Auto-Owners) asked me to join their Continuing Education team on a part-time basis. I was incredibly honored that they wanted me to help train and educate their employees and agents. No one with less than 10 years of insurance industry experience has ever been been asked to serve in this role prior to me. You can’t put a price on that, at least I can’t!
I used to do a combination of e-discovery for litigation and forensic data mining to help with forensic accounting investigations. Definitely interesting stuff, even if accounting isn’t really my thing.
In my experience, actual accountants (CPA, or responsible managerial types at most companies) are considered highly educated professionals. However, the stereotype is that they’re nit-pickers, unimaginative, and pedantic to an extreme. This stereotype holds double for the accounting department drones who aren’t actual accountants, just data entry or clerk type people.
I think that a lot of it is because regular old operational type accounting practices specifically discourage thinking outside the box- that’s how Enron-style things happen. Instead, it’s more of a procedure governed by a fairly strict set of rules (FASB), and it’s more concerned with dealing with exceptions than thinking up new ways to do anything. This doesn’t lend it to people whose mentalities tend toward the spontaneous, experimental or creative, IMO.
I appreciate the sentiment that says, ‘more important than money’, etc. It’s mind boggling to me though.
I’m not a volunteer. I work for money. Hopefully wheelbarrows full of it. I personally couldn’t give two shits about job satisfaction, peer respect, or anything else but money. I want to do the least amount of work, for the most possible money, meeting a certain minimum. I’ve told my teams in the past - the way a company shows its appreciation is by paying you. All the 'thank you’s in the world don’t pay your mortgage. If you are valuable, you will be paid. If not, you will not. Period. It went well, because they got bonuses.
On the topic of accountant personalities I think I should add that one of the accounting professors I have taken classes with is about the nuttiest professor I have ever had(and he has been a successful practising CPA for decades), or to be more specific his teaching style is out there - and, mind you I have a degree in Literature and a minor in philosophy. I think the only professor I had that clearly used a wackier teaching method was the Shakespeare professor I had that would speak to an empty chair, like pretend that this empty chair contained a student enrolled in the class, just to freak students out who thought she was going senile.
A couple of examples - I asked him if when solving for the basic accounting equation whether there is a particular order that is best to arrainge the equation or if it is irrelevant; he pauses, looks me in the eye and asks in a very slow and deliberate tone “Is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.” And I’m like huh? He also does things like using the example of prostitution to demonstrate the concept and proper recording of unearned service revenue. And his motivational speeches are pretty good too - for example he’ll say things like “This next chapter is very important, this is where we learn to cook the books. For those of you interested in embezzling, not that any of us here would be interested in that, we’re all highly ethical of course, but just in case you are, you’ll want to really study this next chapter” It’s kind of hard to describe his teaching style in print, but the class goes by very fast to say the least.
I’m an actuary. To me, accountants are wild and extroverted and even a little bit crazy.
Accounting can take you into many areas of finance. I started out as a CPA with one of the Big 4, done forensic auditing, financial reporting for a large company, CFO for a business division, corporate Treasurer, and now am responsible for the mergers and acquisitions of a Fortune 25 company. Over the past 3 years I’ve been responsible for about $15 billion in investments our company has made. That’s not anything I had imagined I would ultimately be doing when I got my degree a few decades ago. Follow your dreams and don’t settle for a label.
Allow me to qualify the sentiment about doing what one loves, etc. by saying that money isn’t an issue as long as I’m making enough to live comfortably…
Actuarial science is actually very interesting to me and it’s an area of the insurance industry that I plan to explore in the future. I’ve discussed potential future career options with two large P&C insurers and both felt my skills and experience would make me a good fit in Underwriting (and Actuarial science is the basis of underwriting).
I actually did the same thing for about 6 years. But more on the technology than the accounting side. I didn’t care much for e-discovery. I thought it was monkey work. But I do like the data mining and data analysis stuff.
I sort of felt the same way, which is why I got into computer consulting. Except I hated having my head buried in code all day and night, trying to figure out why some damn stored procedure wouldn’t work. Plus having to deal with clients and middle managers with no understanding of what I did, but which didn’t stop them from making stupid demands anyway, just made everything that much more frustrating. One of the main reasons I went to business school and got on a business track.
I think one of the main differences with pursuing accounting or law vs computers is that most of the time, you are managed by other accountants or lawyers with a greater body of professional knowledge than you. Much of the time, tech workers are managed by a guy like me (or worse). Someone who kind of knows the tech and maybe even used to do it a long time ago, but now they are just professional managers (or worse, salesmen).