The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting | Hacker News Reader

The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting

nytimes.com

12 pointspaulpauper8 comments

We in tech have been dealing with this for decades. My original tech job (custom web dev for small sites) has been replaced by tools from Squarespace and Wix that allow for non-technical self-service of web development. And Amazon Marketplace ate up the market for maintaining small e-commerce shops (most of my business in the 00s).

A.I. was always an overblown threat. The real threat has always been a good UI that encodes most of the rules around a system. You don't need fancy A.I. to figure out most of these tasks, you really just need a collection of widgets someone can throw together to build their own semi-custom automaton.

Knowledge worker need to change and adapt like the rest. And they have it better because they already have a degree and skillset which can be incrementally added to. They may not be able to get an accounting job, but they could probably learn some other skills and get an accounting-adjacent job in sales, management, or tech.

I don't know. Not everyone can just adjust to doing something else. E.g. you mentioned transitioning to sales, managemnt or tech. For sales you have to like to sell (and have a knack for it), it's not for everyone. Management? Not everyone can go into management, who do you manage if the people that were managed are gone? Thus, automation is also coming for the middle-management. Tech? Tech is too complicated for many people to get into. Additionally, if it's the only place in the sunlight that's left, it might become crowded as well.

Sure, but hopefully you're capable of doing something else.

Most knowledge workers need to upskill over their career. Whether you're a mechanical engineer or an accountant, there's a very good chance that your job looks different today than it did in 2011 or 2001 (or, if you're old enough, 1991). It's much easier for a knowledge worker to learn one new skill and combine it with their other existing skills, and be able to leverage that into a new career.

We are still really, really far away from near full automation in accounting.

If there was a universal API for financial data exchange between companies then maybe it would be accelerated (starting with Accounts Payable Workflows). Would be my dream to work on a project like this. As for the non-data entry part of accounting, we are even further away in terms of automation.

Software engineers will come along without domain expertise saying "how hard can it be?" They inevitably hit a brick wall when they realize why it's difficult. Even the incumbents with new solutions are selling automation snake oil right now - looking squarely at Microsoft and Oracle.

I doubt full automation will ever happen, but I believe "mechanization" is already happening with RPA on workflows that are stable and reproducible.

Commercial AP automation solutions (SAP ARIBA, etc.) exist today but afaik there's no universal standard for electronic invoicing portals, so companies trying to invoice their clients find themselves having to manually enter data on different invoicing portals depending on which software their clients have implemented (there is even a processing fee at times). The burden is borne solely by the invoicing party however.

We don't need 100% automation to have a giant effect on employment. We can get to 90% automation and cut a lot of the workload of accountants which means in the long run less accountants overall. My expectation is that big companies will employ less and less accountants because for them it is worth it to invest in RPA (and better tooling) to cut their accountants workload (even with all the outsourcing that happens. e.g. some big companies in Germany like to outsource adminstrative tasks to eastern europe, there are quite a few eastern europeans willing to learn german for those jobs). For small shops with a handful of employees it's a different numbers game and I think the change there will be a lot slower. I don't know how the landscape of adminstrative jobs in offices will look like in 20 years but I think it's very important for (would-be) employees to have more skills than just being able to work as accountant or doing other adminstrative tasks at the PC. Actually, it scares me a bit (not so much for myself, yet, but for society and for the ability of the masses to get good jobs).

When’s autohotkey going to IPO?

Should be worth about $10b.

A lot of complexity is from buying a general purpose system (e.g. ERP software) to do a handful of specific workflows. 99% of cognitive effort is tip-toeing around all of the unused functionality minefields.

But we can’t blame our $100m or whatever ERP « investment » that makes staff slow and error-prone. It’s the human’s fault.

"99% of cognitive effort is tip-toeing around all of the unused functionality minefields"

This almost always goes unrecognized. Not sure if project manager's fault, the actual software or just the horse-blinders everyone puts on when implementing the ERP

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