Comment by MrDarcy

1 day ago

> But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush?

Look for those who are trying to serve established respectable professions, ideally have already done so for many years or decades. Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism (in the ideal sense).

Then look at their own mission. Then look at their own work. Do they show their work? Are they open? Do they willingly allow their customers to audit their work product? Does how they talk about their work match the work product itself? Does the thing do what it says on the tin? Are they hypocrites with respect to those they serve or those they manage?

These are my strategies and I’ve found they lead to working almost exclusively with people who have high Integrity.

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MrDarcy

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HexPhantom  6 hours ago

I especially like "do they show their work?" In a gold rush, obscurity is often part of the business model: vague claims, unverifiable demos, hand-wavy benchmarks, carefully managed customer stories. Companies serving serious professions eventually have to deal with people who ask boring, concrete questions and expect boring, concrete answers

underlipton  18 hours ago

>established respectable professions

>Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism

In America, in 2026, this is a particularly dark joke.

  • MrDarcy  17 hours ago

    I think this is the comment that drives me off this site permanently. It’s been a good decade and a half.

    • LeanOnSheena  16 hours ago

      I am CPA, former auditor, and a self-taught programmer. I am in a director level finance & technology role at an American, private-equity backed portfolio SaaS company. I have worked with all kinds of finance professionals.

      I studied accounting in part because my father was an engineer at a public company that was rocked by an accounting scandal. It impacted my family in many ways for years and left deep impressions on me during my formative years.

      There are many CPAs who believe strongly that part of their job is protecting the public interest. I have seen more than a handful go to the mat for things that were highly principled. Sometimes they did so knowing that they were risking their job / career / reputation. It's not a patient dying on the table sure, but I know many who take enormous pride in their responsibilities as accountants. I have seen lots of CPAs standing up for what is right, and I have watched executive teams yield to them almost as often.

      It's easy to get cynical, but there's lots of good ones out there.

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