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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?

#31

Post by EvanAnderson »

gen220 wrote: post #17
jonahbenton wrote: post #11

The 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…

Came here to say this, too.

I think at least a 100-level knowledge of account is beneficial to nearly every developer. Bookkeeping is, arguably, one of the oldest and longest-practiced "data processing" disciplines. It seems arbitrary and somewhat old-fashioned until you grok the reasoning and history behind it (double-entry sourced from summaries of various different "journals" to facilitate separation of duties, closing periods and rolling-up detail entries into totals because human computational power is limited, an equation that balances implicitly when there aren't entry errors, etc.)

From a personal finance perspective I think everyone should get some training in account but, sadly, that's probably way too optimistic of an attitude.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#32

Post by staysaasy »

I recommend taking a formal college accounting course online, via any online learning platform. I took accounting in undergrad and found it to be one of the single most valuable and generally applicable courses that I took. Accounting is the language of business – knowing accounting for business is like knowing object-oriented programming or something similarly basic for coding.

A great unrelated line that I heard from an MBA who works in Marketing: Everyone thinks that Marketing is a creative field and Finance is a methodical quantitative vocation. But in reality, the best marketers are methodical and quantitative, and the best Finance folks are highly creative.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#35

Post by hippich »

I am taking MBA course at UoPeople. Because I do not have much of career plans and wanted to "check it out" more than anything, I ignored lack of prestige. What I find so far - a lot of stuff is very superficial to anyone who did at least some business on their own, and invested in stock market (not speculated/traded/yoloed).

But at the same time, some material kinda helps to put disjointed pieces together.

Based on my experience there (I did not finish it yet, btw), I think the best approach would be to actually get your hands dirty with running a business AND investing first for quite some time, and after that take an MBA class to organize all the knowledge you gained. Without getting hands-on experience, I am not sure much of MBA program will make sense or help beyond learning the vocabulary and getting connections (connections if you go to a prestigious school of course, that what most pay for I think). It is much easier to understand the importance of financial statements after you actually traded or run books for a business, filed taxes.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#36

Post by ericskiff »

As a developer turned co-CEO, developing an understanding of the differences between cashflow, revenue, profit, and overhead was critical.

My recommendations are a little different from most other folks here, in that they relate to understanding the business as a whole and how finance figures into it:

Norm Brodsky's "The Knack" http://theknack.info/

Jack Stack's "A Stake in the Outcome" https://www.amazon.com/Stake-Outcome-Building-Ownership-Long...

If you're in a startup environment, Brad Feld's "Venture Deals" https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitali...

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#37

Post by mathattack »

Think of it as Accounting is how you keep score, Finance is how you justify strategy. For better or worse you have to learn financial accounting first. I’ve been unable to learn it on my own - I needed to take courses. If you don’t want to be a full time accountant, where you take the courses doesn’t matter. The material is the same. Finance my require coursework or book learning, but you can advance a lot on your own if you have the basics. Just apply NPV and ROInto everything you see. You didn’t mention Econ, but most senior execs think in terms of Micro. Supply and Demand.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#38

Post by demadog »

jonahbenton wrote: post #11

The 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…

Finance for Non-Financial Managers is a very well written and approachable book with a good amount of humor. It’s concise enough to not waste your time and doesn’t assume you have a finance background. Great launching off book! https://www.amazon.com/Finance-Non-Financial-Managers-Briefc...

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#39

Post by wtvanhest »

jonahbenton wrote: post #28
wtvanhest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CTOs at most Fortune 500 companies do not need a strong working knowledge of double entry accounting beyond accruals and capex and how it depreciates. You can be ahead of most technology peers by simply knowing the basics of accrual accounting. How to learn it? When working on a project, talk to the finance person you work with about the accrual process. They will be happy you asked. If they don’t help, google “when…

Absolutely, very few CTOs in my experience understand double entry or know how to read a balance sheet. To their detriment, IMO, but there are all kinds of effective CTOs across all kinds of orgs. But OP was asking for guidance in learning how to engage on those topics- as opposed to communicating about technical things to that audience. Hence the recommendations. I agree about the value of NPV, tho I would argue tha…

People are too quick to recommend accounting and finance books. Or... recommend super complex material because they think the subject is complex. If his/her goal is to learn what it takes to be more effective at the finance piece, they should follow my advice. If they want to go deeper for fun later, they can, but it won’t have as much value as improving the 3 things I mentioned.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?

#40

Post by frankc »

If you want a really well rounded finance background, you could pursue the level 1 CFA exam, or the curriculum of it. If you are not looking to pass the current exam, you can get older books for almost nothing used.

If you want to actually pass the exam, you need to register and get the current curriculum. You should be prepared to put in to 200 to 300 hours of study for this, though. Its a lot of material.

If you are not looking to pass the exam, I would recommend going through the accounting section and the economics section. The corporate finance section would probably also be useful.

If you were to pursue all 3 exams and pass, you would have a knowledge base that exceeds an MBA in finance. The MBA has other things the CFA can't give you though like project and presentation experience.

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