<p>Of course I generalized–how else can you tell someone what to go into? Everyone is different and what is one person’s fun is another person’s agony. </p>
<p>I’ll totally agree with Tetrishead when he says that it is difficult to generalize and accurately describe everyone’s experience in each field–but that was my effort–since it was what the OP asked for.</p>
<p>As Tetrishead points out, there are many parts to finance and many don’t involve dealing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many deals going on in certain areas. For example, as a Treasurer I’m making many more finance deals than the the average person. Yet, when a different finance person is working on SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley), they will be completely unconcerned with deals and working only on compliance and governance issues. </p>
<p>In Real Estate, deals are the key–in fact the “Art of the Deal” comment came from Donald Trump’s book of the same name, where he argues that being good at dealing with people daily is what determines your success.</p>
<p>As far as Operations, yes, Supply chain is big and may not involve “figuring out how things work”–but many operations management majors go into process management which does involve this–as does information technology as it applies to operations.</p>
<p>And as for accounting–even those working for big firms (Deloitte, E&Y, etc.) are usually doing audits–meaning that most people there spend at least 6 1/2 out their 9 hour days on their computers comparing actual results to expected and doing writeups. How exactly is that a job that requires a lot of interactions with others? The only time the interactions occur is when the senior presents the overall results to the company’s managment or audit committee–usually about 14 hours per month is spent doing this, I’m guessing. And don’t get me started on the “lonliness” of tax work.</p>
<p>Look, I generalized–okay–but based upon my 15 years working as a CPA for gigantic Fortune 500 companies, my time spent running my own technology consulting firm (8 years) and my current work as a Director of Corporate Treasury for a publicly traded small start-up here in the Silicon Valley, so I do have at least a little idea about each of these fields; --and I really don’t think my generalizations are that far off base.</p>