Accounting is very broad. From a practitioner standpoint there is specialization into specific areas, excise taxes, income taxes (personal or corporate), international mobility, etc. Then you have your typical non-tax firm work, compilations, review engagements, audits (pub-co or private) and special purpose reporting. There's umpteen other offerings from firms these days.
In industry, transactional accounting is likely where you would start if you're behind hired as a staff accountant, and It's going to be dull, in my opinion. I've never seen a shortage of jobs but many of the higher positions, Controller and up are typically walled behind a required designation (CPA or legacy CA/CMA) and X years experience. If you have no intention of pursuing a designation beyond your undergraduate degree you could be stuck in transactional accounting for a long period of time. Data entry, reconciling, fillings, repeat.
I have sat in both seats and starting off the firm route gave a better breadth of work, and for the most part was more interesting, I felt like I was constantly challenging my brain and learning especially involving myself in tax reorganization strategies but the work-life balance was miserable.. Busy season was typically 300 billable hour months + all your administration time on that, you could be pushing 350 hours a month no problem. Pay at a firm when first starting is also a pittance.
If you ever consider the firm route go for a small or midsize, that's what I did and you can move up the ladder quickly as well as get to a stage where you're the reviewer and your level 1s and 2s are doing the grunt work.
This post was edited by SBD on Aug 29 2022 07:57am