Speak with colleagues to understand how the business works - what is it’s core competency - service or product, and how does your company build and sell that.
Then get a basis in accounting.
Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
41–50 of 87 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#42Twitter is a great start.
Create an anon account, follow investors & business people, ask questions, and over time start engaging in conversations.
A couple good follows to start: 1. @patrick_oshag (also listen to his pod) 2. @trengriffin 3. @secretCFO - read newsletter as well 4. @onlyCFO - read their newsletter as well 5. 10k diver (read his threads on his website)
From there, look at who they follow and engage with. Twitter is a one-stop shop for all your business learning.
P.S. we write a daily tech & markets newsletter @ themarketbyte.com. Having a daily email outlining top business information is useful to stay on top of news and develop a pulse for the market. Cheers to your jorney!
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#43I was also at the same juncture and found the 'The Personal MBA' Josh Kaufman book highly valuable. Because this book is an index book. Each couple of pages is the distilled top level wisdom/knowledge of a separate business domain. If that section takes your attention it provides a curated book list for digging in deeper.
So you just read the entire book for a wide-but-shallow understanding, and then drill in to topics that interest you most.
Getting into the business domain is firstly an issue of awareness. Once you have an awareness of the landscape you build your knowledge bit by bit.
For me it was obvious that sales was my weakest area, so I focussed on that with further reading and practice. (Turned out I was quite good at it in the end - a total shock to me as I am the nerdy techie type personality).
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#44CFA offers a free foundations certification. That should cover basic finance. On a side note, your company/HR should have an executive education plan. They should be able to recommend the materials or courses to help you learn what they want you to. If not, they probably should start something like that.
Why disagree with this?
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#45'Financial Markets and Institutions' by Modigliani and Fabozzi. Really focus on the sections about benchmark rates and DCF/NPV valuation. This will help you work backward on an enormous number of business topics and really assess business models.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#46I think getting basics of accounts/finance will go a long way. Being able to read a balance sheet/profit & loss statement/cashflow statements will help you understand the health of business. Next I would say, reading up on basic marketing/consumer psychology will help develop/acquire product and sell it. Since you mentioned being CTO, I am assume you have development/programming background. This series [1] is good re…
The CFA has a foundations course that should be more comprehensive than this, instead of focusing just on financial accounting. It's free, online, and you can earn a cert for it.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read it a long time ago, and while it doesn't contain anything that will change your mind, it's a concise coverage of all the important topics in a single and easy to digest package. I feel that it gives solid foundations to start learning and build upon. I've read it and recommended it to a lot of people
Agreed. There are a lot of "popular business" books which are basically a blog post stretched out over 200 pages. They're full of wonkish ideas that might, at best, only work in a specific context. Kaufman's book is a thorough grounding in the different aspects of running a business, without the faff.
Funnily enough the book explains in the opening chapters that it began as a blog post. I don't know if it was converted from a series of blog posts or not but that was pretty popular during the time it was written.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#48Take cfa courses. Will answer ALL of your questions. And get the cfa took if your serious.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#49Some thoughts as a strategy professional for a large tech co:
- Financial : DCFs, multiples, statements, esp what drives value of firms (Resource: Aswath Damodaran)
- Strategy: how firms create value (Resources: YC Startup School lectures esp Peter Theil’ lec on YouTube)
- Ops: YC lecture on metrics investors want (CAC, LTV, diff biz models like aaS, etc)
- most important would be to check out your co’s pitch decks, SEC filings (if public) to understand the core strategy, value prop, financial performance and most critical hypotheses
Re: Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?
#50You learn business by becoming a businessman.
I wanted to say the same thing. Start a small business on the side. Something you enjoy; there's a million ideas. A friend of mine buys and sells classic motorcycles. Someone builds new replacement parts for unsupported industrial equipment. Car accessories, anything.
It should not have the potential of losing a lot of money, because you don't want to worry about it and you have a full-time job already. So that rules out big capital investments, machinery, etc. You will need to sacrifice margin (so you'll learn what that means for sure). You will need to choose your market carefully and learn a lot about it.
You don't need to make a big profit, huge revenues; you're in it for the experience. Go low overhead: work out of your home, store things in your garage, don't mess with business stationary until you need to, etc. After a year, you'll be learning about financial statements (but you should still study those of other companies as others here have said.
Make sure to keep the business finances separate, too.