Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#62I know this is off-beat, but I found Warren Buffett's annual letters invaluable as a resource to learn about corporate finance. They don't substitute a good textbook, but they give a great insight into real world application.
They're available for free on www.berkshirehathaway.com ("Annual Reports" -> "Chairman’s Letter"), for those who prefer a book Lawrence Cunningham wrote a great compendium with annotations and context called "The Essays of Warren Buffett".
I re-read these every once in a while over the years and found endless useful insights as my real-world business and finance experience grew.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#63Accountancy was my second career. I currently do a mixed accountancy/technology management role at an SME.
I learnt to code from books and the internet. I'm not bad at using high level languages to get things done. I couldn't pass a Google whiteboard test, I couldn't write a compiler, an os, a db or anything. I know about coding, but I am not a software engineer.
Becoming an accountant actually does not have a prequsite much beyond basic maths, ratios, percentages etc. Then it requires 2-3 years of intensive on the job work and study to get to the basic level. In the UK that would also mean passing 10 intensive exams in that time. To get to CFO would probably mean another 7 years experience.
But it sounds like you want to know about finance. I would learn to read financial statements. Get some financial statements for some smaller companies from whatever your local corporate register is (uk companies house has them free online). Start with the balance sheet (sometimes called statement of financial position) and profit & loss (sometimes called an income statement). Go through it line by line and read the acounting policy and Google the terms. You can also look them up in your local accounting standards.
Next take a look at a cash flow statement. Notice how different looking at cash is to looking at profit. Work it why and why it is much more important to have cash than profit.
Learn some accounting ratios like Return on Capital Employed, see if you can calculate them from those statements.
A bit of knowledge about Mudigliani & Miller, and NPV (not the maths, Excel can do that. The assumptions) would be good. Learn the Sunk Cost hypothesis, and relevent costs.
I think this will get you where you need to be without long coursed of material that you may not use. You don't need to be able to prepare financial statements.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#64The onramp for finance is accounting. There is no other right answer. This is also essential for general business administration. Accounting is a huge topic; being able to read financial statements is a good, first tangible exercise. Best book I have found for this is Thomas Ittelson, Financial Statements. Using double-entry accounting methods for your own financials with a tool like Beancount is super helpful from a…
I would like to strongly second your recommendations regarding accounting. Double entry accounting is the root of all finance. If you understand it well enough to keep accurate accounts of your personal finances (credit cards, 401k, salary, pre/post-tax expenses, etc), you understand it well enough to fumble through a financial statement. I’d plug GNU Ledger, but really any double entry accounting software is good to…
What's the opinion about gnucash?
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
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Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#66Second to the suggestion about accounting. For the general business side, try picking up some business framework books such as Traction/Get A Grip(EOS) or Good to Great or Scaling Up. They lay out challenges almost all businesses have and proposed frameworks to manage them.
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#67Software engineer with an MBA here. I didn't have a bachelor's degree, got into coding as a hobby and turned it into a career. I needed a degree to put on my CV. All the hard problems I'd encountered weren't in the technology (99.9% of business coding is simple), so learning more CS wasn't actually going to help that much. So I took an MBA (they accepted my board experience as good enough to not require a bachelor's,…
Where did you get your MBA?
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#68I’ve done MBA and been involved in small family business my whole life. I think more relevant than finance or accounting practice are the business fundamentals which I think are different but related. If you want to learn the former there might be good resources in this thread.
To level with the CEOs, I think many CEOs value few things above else: either have a great understanding in relevant specific industry niche like residental construction or copper mining or in specific technology like web applications or weather measurement hardware. Another few things CEOs have to constantly think about are investments, in what and how much to invest to balance optimal risk reward ratio. Third thing is maybe the strategy/business/industry language like SWOT, business model canvas, balace scorecard, revenue, roi, roe, equity, debt, corporate taxes, ebitda, earnings, customer life time value, product lifecycle, growth drivers, organic/nonorganic, acqusitions, divestments...
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#69I’ve done MBA and been involved in small family business my whole life. I think more relevant than finance or accounting practice are the business fundamentals which I think are different but related. If you want to learn the former there might be good resources in this thread.
To level with the CEOs, I think many CEOs value few things above else: either have a great understanding in relevant specific industry niche like residental construction or copper mining or in specific technology like web applications or weather measurement hardware. Another few things CEOs have to constantly think about are investments, in what and how much to invest to balance optimal risk reward ratio. Third thing is maybe the strategy/business/industry language like SWOT, business model canvas, balace scorecard, revenue, roi, roe, equity, debt, corporate taxes, ebitda, earnings, customer life time value, product lifecycle, growth drivers, organic/nonorganic, acqusitions, divestments...
Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?
#70Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552667
That resolves into a blank page for me. Am I missing something?