Hey. I have some news for you.
Let’s lead with a couple AI stories I saw over the weekend.
Futurism drifts into The Onion territory with Top Venture Capitalist Says AI Will Replace Pretty Much All Jobs Except His, Which Relies on His Unique Genius
The future is a world of jobless workers — except for the enlightened philosopher-kings of venture capital, that is.
Or at least that’s according to Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen, who imagines a future where the workers of the world sit jobless, in an employment apocalypse that will affect pretty much everyone except the unique genius of him and his peers.
Appearing on his company’s a16z podcast, Andreessen made the case that venture capitalists — like he and his rich buddies — will be some of the only ones exempt from the AI revolution.
“Every great venture capitalist in the last 70 years has missed most of the great companies of his generation… if it was a science, you could eventually dial it in and have somebody who gets 8 out of 10 [right],” the investor reasoned. “There’s an intangibility to it, there’s a taste aspect, the human relationship aspect, the psychology — by the way a lot of it is psychological analysis,” he added.
“So like, it’s possible that that is quite literally timeless,” Andreessen posited. “And when the AIs are doing everything else, like, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.”
And World Economic Forum asks “Is AI closing the door on entry-level job opportunities?” We’ve been talking about how AI and offshoring are eliminating the fresh hire gauntlet (see: RIP Associate Work) and thus creating a training vacuum but that’s a problem for tomorrow’s accounting firms to worry about.
WEF says:
While 170 million new jobs are projected to be created this decade, the rise of AI-powered tools threatens to automate as many roles as it creates, particularly for white collar, entry-level roles. Bloomberg finds that AI could replace more than 50% of the tasks performed by market research analysts (53%) and sales representatives (67%), compared to just 9% and 21% for their managerial counterparts.
Whether by narrowing entry pathways or making roles that once required specialized skills more accessible, estimates suggest that AI could impact nearly 50 million US jobs in the coming years.
The Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 reveals that 40% of employers expect to reduce their workforce where AI can automate tasks.
It continues, depressingly:
As entry-level roles decline, salary expectations are also shifting, with remaining hires expected to take on roles supported by AI for less money. A recent survey found that 49% of US Gen Z job hunters believe AI has reduced the value of their college education in the job market.
At the same time, US firms are expanding business operations in India, where skilled professionals can be employed at significantly lower costs, Charter points out, further intensifying competition for white-collar roles.
And The Philippines, WEF. Don’t forget Philippines.
FacilitiesNet explains how an accounting firm can get its people back in the office with a new office:
“If companies want to draw their employees in, you’re going to have to do a little bit more than just give them a chair, a desk and a laptop, and say, ‘Here’s where the water fountain is,’” says SeanTaylor, CEO of Smith+Howard.
You don’t get a chair and a desk at Smith+Howard:
Smith + Howard leaned further into this idea of adaptability by addressing different working styles of its employees, even going so far as moving to a 100 percent free-address system across all levels of the company, including the C-suite. Though previously all workspaces had been fully assigned, the team addressed a need for focused work by designing smaller private offices known as focus rooms.
“Some of them are of a large curve, one monitor system, some are dual monitors, some are triple monitors, and as you check in, you can pick the space that works best for your day,” says Taylor.
“We’re more of a results-based firm than an authoritarian you must be in the office five days a week, so if you want that flexibility to be able to work some days in the office, some days out, then you really can’t expect the firm to hold fast a space for you,” Taylor says.
A church treasurer across the pond used church donations to keep his accounting firm afloat. Shoulda just got in bed with private equity, my guy.
A 60-year-old man has been jailed for a year after he admitted defrauding a church of £410,000.
Ernest Reddick of Diamond Road in Dromore, County Down, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of fraud by false representation and one of false accounting.
Detectives said donations from the congregation of Lisburn Baptist Church were being used to “prop up” Reddick’s accountancy business.
At Craigavon Crown Court on Thursday he was given a two-year sentence, half of which will be spent in prison and half on licence.
CMC Accountants in Lisburn has some great Google reviews:
CNYCentral in Syracuse is covering a payroll modernization meeting that happened with EY consultants and city leaders:
A private meeting in the City of Syracuse’s Strathmore neighborhood between city leaders and global consultant EY (Ernst & Young) raises new questions about how taxpayer dollars were spent on the information technology project known as Payroll Modernization. The administration of Mayor Ben Walsh spent $8.1 million over five years and the project is not complete.
The brainstorming meeting took place over two days in October of 2022. It happened inside the Firebarn community center in Onondaga Park. EY created colorful power point graphics for what it calls a ‘wavespace’ session. They invited top leaders in the Walsh administration to brainstorm how EY and the city could work together for a tech-based future.
…
Emails obtained by CNYCentral indicate immediately following the Firebarn sessions. Mosher and Huebner were directly involved in coordinating meetings with the city’s digital team to bring EY on board for the payroll modernization initiative.
One person not invited to the payroll modernization brainstorming session with EY was Susan Fahrenkrug, the owner of Advanced IT. That’s the company Mayor Walsh said was hired by the city to manage the payroll modernization project over EY. Fahrenkrug is the whistleblower who told the city last fall that her small tech company was used by EY as a ‘pass-through’ to get in the door. “I was surprised that EY was involved and giving presentations and timelines even before my contract with the city was signed for the payroll modernization project,” Susan Fahrenkrug said.
According to the article, Advanced IT wasn’t pushed out but rather, EY wanted them to be primary on the contract. Why? “Somebody from EY called me and they said they had a non-compete with Oracle, and they couldn’t do above a certain dollar threshold with the city of Syracuse because of that relationship,” said Former Budget Director Tim Rudd. “They needed a pass-through vendor, and I accommodated them.”
Juicy.
The head of audit at KPMG Ireland will be paying her former nanny €55,575 ($63k USD) after she fired the pregnant woman on New Year’s Eve 2023, reports Irish Independent.
The nanny, Naomi Hanlon, was hired to care for Emer McGrath’s children in August 2020 and paid €855 a week ($969 USD). Their friendly relationship took a turn shortly after Hanlon was married in May 2023:
But she said that the relationship “irrevocably” changed on October 2, 2023, when she told Ms McGrath at a performance review that she was pregnant.
She alleged that Ms McGrath’s demeanour changed, and she became “cold” to her in following weeks.
There was an “awkward” discussion about her plans and the tone of when her leave would commence was said to be not representative of their typically affectionate and close relationship.
From there, the nanny said, McGrath claimed the nanny resigned at that meeting. The nanny said she did not. And so:
She said Ms McGrath then accused her of breaching her contractual obligations by having a directorship in a company and having a role in two other companies.
Ms McGrath complained that Ms Hanlon had been dishonest about her outside interests and as a result the family “cannot trust” her to “be employed in the care of our children”.
McGrath claimed the nanny “was not devoting her full time and professional energy to the role.”
KPMG Australia has published some research that we definitely need to take a deeper dive into:
Research from KPMG Australia has labelled accounting as one of the most common occupations, despite widespread coverage that the profession is on a rapid decline.
The research highlighted the fastest-growing jobs, the jobs steadily declining and the most common occupations over a 10-year period from 2014 to 2024.
The research revealed accountants and bookkeepers remained two of the most common occupations, with a 5.3 per cent growth rate over this period from 420,400 to 442,800.
The most common occupations in 2024 included retail shop floor workers, food service workers, nurses, midwives, teachers and aged/disabled care workers.
We’ll wrap this up with an opinion piece in CFO Dive: The Ben Affleck accounting shortage hack
The article is mainly author Maura Webber Sadovi plucking comments from r/accounting:
For the uninitiated, in certain finance circles Affleck’s original 2016 thriller — dubbed the favorite film of accountants by The Wall Street Journal — enjoys a similar type of draw as that which the Watergate drama “All the President’s Men” has for journalists.
As the sequel hit theaters on April 25, the finance profession’s love for the movie lit up a Reddit accounting thread. “Crazy to think i(sic) was just a baby staff accountant fresh out of college when this first came out and now im(sic) a big boy manager,” recalled one writer on the social media platform. “I was in high school when it came out and it made me want to become an accountant. Now I’m an audit senior,” another responded.
Asked to explain the industry’s love for “The Accountant,” another Reddit writer asserted that Affleck’s character is similar to Keanu Reeves’ John Wick and at the same time, that the film is ground breaking for the accounting profession in the sense that it puts accountants in a positive and heroic light rather than as nerdy, meek or worse, representing them as thieves.
“The Accountant shows the world that there’s more to you, as an accountant, than meets the eye,” the poster said in the accounting thread. “When you attend your next high school reunion or are stuck making small talk while in line at your local Chipotle and someone asks ‘So, what do you do for a living’ you can say, with all the confidence in the world, ‘I’m an accountant.’”
I can never tell if these people are serious. I know these people aren’t:
K, that’s that. Have a good week, you. Reach out via email or text if you see something interesting we should be covering or just want to bitch about whatever.