It works here, for obvious reasons, but not nearly so many people know what $1e9 means as know what $1 billion means. Although if you dig into it, it turns out

It works here, for obvious reasons, but not nearly so many people know what $1e9 means as know what $1 billion means. Although if you dig into it, it turns out that a lot of people are hazy on exactly how much more a billion is than a million, or a trillion than a billion. Quite aside from the short and long scale thing, I just mean that instead of knowing that a billion is to a million as a million is to a thousand, their concept is more like a million is "big", billion is "really big" and trillion is "omg really really big!!!".