Any Aspies who are accountants or financial professionals?

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Hello all.....

I am wanting to know if there are any accountants or finance professionals on Wrong Planet who are Aspies? If you are an accounting major or business major who is an Aspie, that will work as well. I am an accounting major who will be graduating in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in accounting. As a financially minded Aspie, I am interested in networking with other like-minded Aspies.

Thanks, Scott

My major in college was financial services and I worked in the industry for almost six years in various capacities.

Unfortunately, I had a personal catastrophe in 2007 and haven't been able to return to the industry as a result (nothing illegal, just a series of snowballing bad personal choices).

I miss the industry.

Sorry to hear that and hope that you find another niche to pursue.

I am a math econ major but may want to join in financial services industry but graduating this year.

Congrats..and I wish you the best if you go the fin svcs route.

What sort of finance professionals are you looking to connect with? I used to be a quant on Wall Street and am now Chief Scientist at a retail bank.

Basically, any accountants (any kind), economists, Wall Street types, or other in the financial arena - who also happen to live with ASD.

Hi,

I'm a chartered accountant living and working in the UK. I hated university; I felt excluded from my flatmates, colleagues etc, but didn't know why at the time- developed a bit of an alcohol problem and another serious bout of depression, so left after 6 months. I have always managed to be employed full-time, despite desperately wanting to run away several times!

I self-funded my studies while working in a few different offices, and got my chartership in 2009 (aged 25). It is one of the wisest things I decided to do. I now work in the head office of a very large multi-national retailer as a Strategy Analyst. My job is great, but not without its challenges.

This afternoon, for example, I have experienced a little conflict because one of my colleagues decided to hold a meeting behind me (at her desk). I hate having people too close to me, and despite wearing my noise cancelling headphones (my boss is pretty understanding, so I get to wear these every day), I could "feel" all the people behind me. I got up quickly and sat next to another of my colleagues to get away. She got angry at me and said "if you've got a problem, you should just tell me". I tried to explain, but I'd clearly misunderstood the situation, as she turned back round and ignored me. Sigh.

I suppose it still hurts when stuff like that happens, but I'm getting so good at shaking it off, knowing that I haven't done anything wrong- I'm doing my best to fit in in this place, and occasionally I slip up!

Anyway, I love my job; my boss pushes me hard to do things that used to be terrifying, like holding workshops with our board and meeting new people all the time. I'm getting braver all the time.

I am an accountant working for a US government agency and have Asperger's. This is my first really solid job opportunity in accounting--I've worked here nearly a year and it's going really well.

I think the best accounting jobs for people on the spectrum are the ones that involve regular transactions/procedures each month, which is most of what my job consists of.
People should probably be very careful about other jobs such as public accounting [especially with Big 4 and other large firms.] My first job was with one of those and it was horrible. I didn't work for nearly three years after that.

My day job includes bookkeeping in the morning and coldcalling later on in the day, so it's a mixed bag, don't know if that counts. I majored in accounting though, but after reading horror stories decided not to go into public accounting or anything major like that.

The more people I hear about avoiding public accounting because of how bad it was or could be to them, the more I feel I want to avoid public accounting. If it means getting some accounting experience through that route prior to graduating, so be it. At the very least, I won't have to do deal with that after I graduate. So many different routes in accounting to pursue that are not in public accounting - governmental accounting, cost/managerial accounting within companies/corporations, non profit accounting, and others. 80% of the people who enter public accounting end up working outside public anyway within two years after starting public.

Scott

It depends on whether you end up in it or not - it's hard to describe but my school didn't really have linkages to a lot of public accounting firms so I was not able to get into any. I think a lot of people do it so that they can get their CPA license; I'm going the Maryland route for that because public accounting is appealing to me less and less as my net worth increases and side-business gets more successful.

Public accounting shouldn't be ruled out for autistic people at all, it's just that some people like it and some people like it less. A lot of autistics would be awesome in auditing.

Why do you think that is?

The thing about public accounting is, there are two pieces of it that are equally important....the technical skill part and the socialization/teamwork part. From my experience, I'd say the socialization/teamwork part is actually somewhat more important, especially for someone just starting out. It doesn't really matter how much you know if you can't convince people to put you on a project or if your team members don't like you. You have to network and market yourself constantly, at least at the bigger firms. That usually is not something autistic people are into, although I guess there's always an exception.

Also, you can be awesome at auditing, but if you take too long to do things, no one is going to want you on their project. It's important to be detail oriented, but it's also important to prioritize and know when you're finished. Auditing is about doing enough work to have a reasonable assurance that things are fairly stated. You don't actually go over every single item. It involves a whole lot of grey area, which is why I knew from the beginning it wasn't for me. I thought tax would be better, but nope...

I won't say all public jobs are bad, but people probably should look at smaller firms if they're on the spectrum.

The thing about governmental is that it can be very tough to get in, especially on the federal level. I tried for years and probably the main reason I got the job I have now is that I'm American Indian and my agency is one of the few that uses Indian Preference when hiring. I still had to be qualified for it, but I didn't find a federal job until I applied to this agency.

GCAspies, many autistic folks would be great at auditing for the same reasons many non-autistic folks would be; they have the knack for it, love travel, and have great attention to detail.

Moved following post to dovetail into original post's purpose! -

Excerpt of beginning of post: By any chance, are financial consultants who hire professional staff with Aspergers(AS) seeking to attract clientele with (AS)?

Last edited by Here on 01 Nov 2014, 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.