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Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer?

206 points by leonardo2204 4y ago

Hi, everyone! I'm a recent-transitioned CTO, and I feel I lack a lot of business background when discussing with others C-Level. Is there a way (books, courses or even College material) to help improving this gap? Thanks!

nimzoLarsen 4y ago
Paul Graham has some great essays on business / startups: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
- fenesiistvan 4y ago
  His Zuckerberg example doesn't sound as well now
danuker 4y ago
This site is teeming with book recommendations. Here is the all-time top of the Business category: https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/7/all-time/page/0/0 https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/7/all-t...
- tracyhenry 4y ago
  Author of the site, thanks for plugging it. Disclaimer that this site hasn't been updated since Sept 2021. So the book list is not the latest. I do want to give it a spin some time later using the latest language models and make auto updates.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Cheers for creating it and keeping it online! It is an amazing resource.
cdiamand 4y ago
You could (should?) ask others in your company at the C-Level to give you a high level briefing on what they work on, and how they think about their work. They may also have favored books, materials etc. Coming from a technical background where you've likely had to understand and work on complex structures, I think you're well positioned to understand the structures in your organization.
verdverm 4y ago
Crossing the Chasm is a must read. The Challenger Sale too. Among the other references in sibling comments
meekaaku 4y ago
I 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 read targetted to developers who want learn a bit of accounting and finance. [1] https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal/accounting-for-developers-part-i https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal/accounting-for-develo...
- autodev1 4y ago
  I second this, immensely. I learned basic accounting at a community college-- Financial Accounting (3 hr course) & Managerial Accounting (3 hr course). I later took Intermediate Accounting 1 which was also super insightful. But those first two... Wow. They really opened up the "black box" of internal financial operations within a business, to me. Prior to those first two courses, I had no idea what happens when I pay a cashier a dollar, and how that dollar flows through a company to pay their vendors & employees (as well as taxes). Intermediate Accounting 1 & 2 (dropped out of 2) taught me more about how accounting statements relate to the stock market & financiers. If you'd like a free intro, you can check out this free online college-level textbook on accounting: https://www.principlesofaccounting.com/ https://www.principlesofaccounting.com/ [1] Accounting knowledge + Digital Marketing experience has been invaluable to me as a Software Engineering consultant (in the digital marketing & small + medium sized business space)-- I understand the language of business and can predict what a customer needs much better than I could before. [1] About the author: Larry M. Walther is Professor Emeritus from Utah State University. He previously served as the EY Professor, Head of the School of Accountancy, and Senior Associate Dean of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. Dr. Walther has authored numerous accounting textbooks and articles, and has served as director and/or consultant to a number of public and nonpublic companies. Dr. Walther earned his Ph.D. in accounting from Oklahoma State University and has public accounting experience with the audit firm of Ernst & Young.
  - starwind 4y ago
schimmy_changa 4y ago
This book is an easy-to-read and short reference for all of the financial jargon / skills you'll need to know: https://financialintelligencebook.com/ https://financialintelligencebook.com/. Worth it to read and to be able to reference quickly. (Covers cashflow, balance sheet, working capital, etc) Agree with others here that working with someone else at the C-level to help you come up with your own small curriculum would be great, even if they don't need to teach you themselves.
baxtr 4y ago
Hi! Could you give an example or be a bit more specific? What kind of things are you struggling with? Is it certain topics or business lingo?
- leonardo2204 4y ago
  Thanks for your time! Basically, business in General, understading whether or not The company numbers are doing ok or not, how much to invest in the tech team, cut costs and so on.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    Ok. Thanks. Sounds like you are mainly struggling with topics around numbers, investments, costs etc. Unfortunately I don't have a specific resource to recommend. But I can share from my experience. I have advised some tech people on this specifically and it usually boils down to: explain everything you want to do in $ figures. $s is the language the CFO and the CEO speak. So you need to translate anything into their realm. Most tech folks talk team, tech, servers. CFOs/CEOs don't bother and don't understand. So try to calculate some basic business cases for most of your requests and for their questions to you. Nothing basic, but have some rudimentary logic ready.
giantg2 4y ago
CFA 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.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Why disagree with this?
  - noiwillnot 4y ago
    Did not downvote, but the basic cert price (Foundations) appears in the website for $350
marban 4y ago
Ray Dalio — How the economic machine works, Principles, etc. Jim Collins — Good to great
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-10th-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B08H5PKGGG/ https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-10th-Anniversary-ebook/d... Great resource to go from zero to some basic understanding of a lot of stuff.
- lta 4y ago
  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
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - blowski 4y ago
    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.
    - operatingthetan 4y ago
      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.
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      > without the faff interesting choice of words! "Established in 1972, the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) is the independent, private-sector, not-for-profit organization responsible for the oversight, administration, financing, and appointment of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)" in the US, FASB is everything when it comes to setting the rules of accounting.
kidgorgeous 4y ago
Start a Shopify dropshipping website, or learn SEO/PPC/Organic TikTook/Facebook ads, hire a VA, and pitch local businesses on marketing services.
- earth-adventure 4y ago
  What terrible advice to start a small time side hustle with low margins, for someone accomplished enough th have become CFO of an actual company.
SnowHill9902 4y ago
You learn business by becoming a businessman.
- spfzero 4y ago
  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.
  - motoxpro 4y ago
    What the heck. Your advice to a new CTO is to start a small business on the side? I would immediately fire them if I were on the board and they did that.
    - spfzero 4y ago
      Why? As long as it is not competition to your employer, your off time is your time. How would it be different from a hobby? And as mentioned, the intent is not to make enough money that you leave your current job. You're still a loyal employee doing an honest full-time job there.
eof 4y ago
Others have said CFA. CFA is the obvious paved path to what you are looking for. A few grand to add some letters to your name, and it will forever alter the way you think about business. But probably just ask someone who you think knows a lot to teach you.
- Dowwie 4y ago
  A CFA is completely absurd for a CTO to pursue, even if that CTO were working for an investment management company. The OP wants to study to learn, not study to pass an exam. You can do one or the either for the CFA, but not both. Also, one doesn't learn "business" with the CFA but finance and accounting.
  - eof 4y ago
    i'm a cto persuing a cfa because i have an interest in business. i think its completely absurd that you would think a CFA would be irrelevant to business.
    - Dowwie 4y ago
      300+ hours per level, and if you don't have a foundation you likely will have to re-take level 1. Every single person I knew in tech who advanced through and obtained the CFA changed careers into finance. Every single one. Good luck with your career change! :)
- ioblomov 4y ago
  I second seeking a mentor. Unless your goals specifically require it, getting degrees is costly, in time, money, and opportunity cost. As an engineer/CTO you too have specialized knowledge and experience to offer. Offer it up in exchange for theirs.
jonfw 4y ago
Has anybody here had experience with having a technical background, and then getting an MBA? I’m curious just how much this fast tracks someone into leadership
- lifeplusplus 4y ago
  I did it, and it didn't do nothing for me.. turns out brand of college matters a lot
fxtentacle 4y ago
Get some public P&L sheets and learn how to read them. Once you can argue about the financial effects of your own and your competitors' decisions, the other C levels will take your advice much more seriously. Also, understanding where money comes from, where it goes to, and how budgets were allocated allows you to learn A LOT about how different industries work. Also, which country?
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Lots of finance-based suggestions already. But, if you're willing to use history as a guide, then first up should be marketing & sales. In many cases, those who bubble to the top have an M&S background. Financials are important, but not as important as having a bias for customers and revenue.
j45 4y ago
Hi welcome to the front role. Spent a good amount of time in the CTO role. Happy to chat offline. Things I wish I knew: The first law of learning business is tech folks can learn business far easier than business folks can learn tech. You have this. Second law is no one should represent your voice. They should help present it. The leadership team should be facilitating introductions to learn more about the business how they see fit. If it’s not proactively happening.. keep reading. Learning business is as much about understanding what the business needs and how it can get there as accounting and finance. Understand the type of cto you are there to be, there are many kind. I have a book somewhere that broke it down well but effectively it can vary. Read into CIO roles and responsibilities as well as traditionally they made the decisions about tech If your position is net new you are extra capacity. Be mindful of absorbing work from other areas that upholds the past vs change for the future. Find a framework you like for your first 30-60-90 days. First, tech should never ever roll into Finance, only CEO. You are now the leader of possibility and capability in the organization. It may ruffle feathers. Find all the reports from McKinsey, etc making this clear why. This will mean you’ll need to be a better communicator and self manager out of the gate. Get an executive coach or mentor immediately. Once a week at minimum if not twice a week for the first few weeks. You will know when to ease off. Setup your own way to communicate regularly with the entire company. Find all the meeting you May want a slot on. Learn the phrase innovation accounting- how to measure what can’t be counted by dollars and cents. Your world can be undermined by folks who want to measure what suits them. Digital transformation - take a few classes or certain immediately. Quicker than books. Be clear in whether the business is building the future, or catching up to the present. Change management - take a cert immediately for it, it’s fine to read but only a 2-3 day thing. It will keep mbas with no track record at bay. Togaf/Cobit - having something like this doesn’t hurt. At least read about it. Agile/scrum - make sure you can talk the talk and walk the walk. Those words belong to you now. I’d probably lean towards agile. Six sigma - this overlaps with others a over however a bit better known in the business world. Consider it. If you want to become a better speaker look into a course like Roger Love’s speaking courses, you will discover how simply your voice is just an instrument like keyword and you can use it as well as the best. Learn how to read and summarize simply when needed. It helps tremendously to present complex ideas simply to folks who just need to know to put the car in drive.
lcall 4y ago
A few books I read or am reading now, though I'm not in business or management currently: The Personal MBA: master the art of business, by Josh Kaufman (and personalmba.com has more info, maybe). Seems to want to be the practical guide. MBA in a Nutshell, by Milo Sobel. Seems slightly more academic than the one just above. Start Your Own Business: the only startup book you'll ever need, from Entrepreneur At least the first two come with lists of recommended further reading, by topic, including on finance, marketing, etc etc.
dgs_sgd 4y ago
A lot of knowledge falls under the business umbrella. Have you asked the other C levels where they learned, or what you should focus on? I think that would be more helpful then turning to general learning material first.
headelf 4y ago
I would start by reading High Output Management by Andrew Grove – It really gives a great lens to view a business through and helps you focus on the right problems
gretch 4y ago
MIT free course on finance from first principles. Answers questions like the difference between price and value. Why do interest rates exist https://youtu.be/HdHlfiOAJyE https://youtu.be/HdHlfiOAJyE
- m3affan 4y ago
  Real LPT in the comments
- jewba 4y ago
  I tend to watch a lot of MIT open courseware, most of the times not really paying that much attention. But this professor (Andrew Lo) is the best one by far. Makes the syllabus really engaging and easy to understand
robviren 4y ago
I took the long road after graduating with a mechanical engineering degree in 2012 and working in industry. I quickly realized that engineering often meant executing and not strategizing, which frustrated me to no end. I learned that being right was secondary to making people above you look intelligent. So much of what drives action at larger orgs revolves around a small group of people with their own special social dynamics, opinions, and egos. As others have indicated an MBA would give you the language and credibility most orgs require to get into "business" positions. I do not feel the actual coursework is needed to understand the concepts and theories that have meaning for any given org. Businesses largely want growth, diversity, innovation, cost cutting, and future profitability. But I swear you could shortcut all that for just making the primary business stakeholders happy. Whatever they care about, what they perceive, what their goals are, that is what makes or breaks your position. Being able to present ideas is key. I got a lot out of some of the MIT open course material [1]. I am certain some exploration on that channel for the business topics will yield more excellent content. Soft skills often separate talented and business minded engineers from the business side of the org. I cannot stress how little being "right" actually matters once you get into business. I have to constantly make forecasts as a product manager and often have frighteningly little to work with in terms of data. Capture assumptions, build out strategy, believe your story. You will be wrong sometimes. Being able to check your own ego, guide an org towards what you believe is right, and dealing with a bunch of different people who all think their view is the right view all play into it. I love the challenge and enjoy seeing my contribution play out. Would highly suggest it for those who enjoy those sorts of challenges. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY
sanswork 4y ago
Startup CXO will give you an overview of all your fellow CXOs responsibilities.
saasdev 4y ago
Great question. As a founder and CTO, I too have been through this. Couple recommendations: Books: -The Personal MBA by Kaufman is a great start -Financial Statements: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports Next advice is to learn investing. I’ve learned a ton by studying public companies, listening to earning calls, reading 10Ks, etc.. Audible books are great for consuming biz books on marketing, mgmt, teamwork, etc.. Founders podcast for just learning entrepreneurship and it being awesome.
deleted 4y ago
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ssss11 4y ago
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.
themarketbyte 4y ago
Twitter 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!
magicloop 4y ago
I 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).
boppo1 4y ago
'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.
bobobob420 4y ago
Take cfa courses. Will answer ALL of your questions. And get the cfa took if your serious.
rahulgoel 4y ago
Some 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
deterministic 4y ago
This is what I learned from founding a business and running it successfully for 5+ years: Business is easy. As long as you are cash-flow positive you are in business. You improve your business by continually removing bottlenecks stopping you from improving your cash flow (see: Theory of Constraints). Bottlenecks can be anything from marketing/sales to product development and tech. So you learn as you go directed by the bottlenecks. That’s pretty much it. It’s easy but hard work.
splittingTimes 4y ago
I would add "simple excellence" [1] to the already recommend "personal MBA". Trying to map your companies products first on a "value proposition canvas" and then whole business on a "business model canvas" is a great way to better understand on a high level whats going on in your organization. === [1] https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Excellence-Organizing-Management-Transformation/dp/1439838453 https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Excellence-Organizing-Manageme...
yla92 4y ago
Highly recommend to check out this, regarding reading the P&L statements. https://lethain.com/profit-and-loss-statement/ https://lethain.com/profit-and-loss-statement/ Also check out the rest of his posts. I find them clearly written and useful.
Scubabear68 4y ago
I was a part time CTO for awhile and have done a lot of consulting to C-suites. In my experience, you don’t need to know generic “business background”. You need to know the industry your company is in, and the unique characteristics of your company in that industry (both positives and negatives). The CTO needs to understand the industry environment, and the C-suites strategy within that environment, and how technology fits into that strategy. A CTO can also bring opportunities to the C-suite - it is possible you know about exciting innovative tech possibilities that could materially impact the business that non-technical leaders don’t know much (or anything) about. Sure, you can learn generic finance stuff. But the real gold is understanding your company and your vertical very deeply indeed.
syntheweave 4y ago
I second the ideas around learning accounting, and also becoming comfortable working a spreadsheet. Learning business strategy as a corporate executive is really the kind of skill best paralleled in certain forms of gaming - tabletop games with a lot of trade/barter mechanics, MMO guilds, and such: it's some combination of people knowledge, planning, negotiation, and internal controls and mechanism design. What you're designing from the top of a large organization is a "machinery of people", and if you formulate all of the quantifiable stuff into a spreadsheet, it won't be a crystal ball, and it can bias you towards nonsensical "works in theory" decisions, but it will give you a sense of how to manage events proactively and leverage specific strengths instead of just reacting to crises. The spreadsheet's answers ultimately reflect the philosophy you bring to it, so a general study of philosophy(best done in a classroom dialogue) can pay off as well. A last thing to check out would be Wardley mapping. This is a good brainstorming mechanism for getting a sense of the terrain and the dependencies in your industry.
- MaxPengwing 4y ago
  I'd say that 18xx & Food Chain Magnate, are good business strategy board games. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/19/series-18xx https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/19/series-18xx https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175914/food-chain-magnate https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175914/food-chain-magnat...
RexFactorem 4y ago
Basically you need to be able to express your ideas simply, avoiding SE jargon as much as possible, and state how stuff either makes money or saves money. For more detailed info, here you go: https://github.com/kuchin/awesome-cto https://github.com/kuchin/awesome-cto
omarhaneef 4y ago
You may have heard people say that “business” is not a deep discipline and I think the theory of business is pretty accessible. Go to any business school site and just look at the MBA curriculum: https://www.hbs.edu/mba/academic-experience/curriculum/Pages/default.aspx https://www.hbs.edu/mba/academic-experience/curriculum/Pages... I would then focus on the introductory courses (typically Accounting, Valuation, Marketing, Org theory etc). Find the syllabus for those courses or the text book and just browse it. That won’t teach it all but it will sort of give you a map of the territory so you can look it up when you need to. About the level of memory most MBA grads have 5 years after graduation.
TbobbyZ 4y ago
Alex Hormozi
enslavedrobot 4y ago
Go take evening classes and get a business degree or graduate certificate specifically designed for students from a science/engineering background. Finance and accounting is literally child's play for anyone with a strong math background. The harder part is understanding business models, human psychology, and developing a useful network. Since completing a tech focused business program, I've done very well financially and found myself sitting on grant panels focused on commercializing academic research. It's astounding how naive hugely successful researchers are when they try to write business plans. Sometimes my scientific idols submit grants with kindergarten level understanding of business. It's shocking. The opportunity that exists for a talented technical person with a holistic understanding of the art and practice of business is astounding. They literally throw money at you. More importantly you can leverage your knowledge to actually do what you want with your life.
thewileyone 4y ago
Look for an Executive MBA course nearby that you can enroll and complete. The most important things that I learned from such a course was Financial Management and Marketing Strategy.

deconstruct 4y ago

"learn business" was mentioned but there seems to be a lot discussion here around accounting and finance - those aren't "business", at least not the core of it anyway. Accounting for one is recording what has already happened in a business - its merely reporting, nothing more. Its a reporting function of business. There is far too much focus I feel on accounting and finance in MBA courses. Its not business. An MBA degree these days is sort of an entry price or piece of paper into the C-suite. I don't see that MBA degrees actually teach a lot of business. Business is finding people and having them pay for value - a product or service. If you have an accounting department or knowledge of accounting/finance, you don't have a business, you have reporting. That's all you have. Business is far more about sales, marketing, pricing, psychology, product/market fit. Then there is the delivery of that value - the actual product or service. I'd also say a big part of business is learning about and being about to solve problems in a certain market. Accounting/finance in a discussion of "learn business" should come way down the list IMO - its nothing more than reporting. (A lot of the resources here focusing on accounting or finance are great resources - if you want to learn accounting / finance or if you want to get an MBA but they don't necessarily equate to learning "business". Also there is no better way learn business than doing rather than reading about it. I heard someone once say that you'd learn more about business running a lemonade stand than doing an MBA - I tend to agree).

mdorazio 4y ago
I have to hard disagree on this, but I think it might be a difference in size of company you're thinking vs. other people in this thread. Most companies where a developer will be asking this question have already figured out their product-market fit and sales pipeline. At that point and thereafter business is increasingly about "the numbers". The bigger the company, the more that is true. Understanding what "the bottom line" means for your team, department, and the company as a whole + what drives that is the core of "business". Put another way, I don't care how great you are at product - if you don't understand what costs and margins are required to actually turn a profit you'll still fail anyway.
- deconstruct 4y ago
  Large companies put people in very "tight"/narrow well defined roles (developers included) and like to hire MBAs in C-suite roles. And yes, I agree they will have well defined sales pipelines and product market fit. Business is about numbers, yes - at all sizes of companies. But what actually drives those numbers? Its 1) value and 2) sales/and marketing. Its not the accounting department. That's my point. Understanding costs and margins is crucial, yes. But its very much secondary to having a valuable product that people want and that you can market/sell effectively - that's business, not accounting/finance. A developer asking questions about the value a product creates and the problems it solves or doesn't solve will do far better than learning accounting/finance as far as "learning business" goes or getting an MBA! I'm not a Musk fanboy, but he has created multiple valuable companies (spolier alert, he didn't do that by focusing on an MBA but rather on creating valuable products) - here is what he has to say about MBAs in large companies: https://youtu.be/Y6P8qdanszw https://youtu.be/Y6P8qdanszw "Spend less time on finance and power points and more time on making your product as amazing as possible". Bingo. That's business.
- deleted 4y ago
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Hapapapa 4y ago
Completely disagree with this. To use an analogy the purpose of an artist is to communicate emotions from the artist to the public through works of art. But training to be an artist is learning brushstroke, chiseling technique and what not. Sure the purpose of business is selling products and making profit and that’s the big picture but a huge part of the daily practical reality of doing business will involve accounting/finance. They are fundamental and necessary skills for any business of decent size and unlike the other skills you mention which are more intuitive they can be taught.
- deconstruct 4y ago
  Business will involve accounting/finance, sure. It will involve lots of other functions - but business is not defined by accounting/finance. Its defined by people buying a product or service they find of value - that is core to business (just like the definition of an artist is someone that actually produces art). If you don't have that you don't have a business (no matter how many accountants or MBAs you have). Any skill can be taught.
  - Hapapapa 4y ago
    Yes it is not defined by accounting and finance but those are crucial skills just like learning proper brushstroke is crucial to being a painter. And I disagree that any skill can be taught. Selling, marketing, innovation etc are very dependent on the area of business you’re in, market conditions, the current state of technology etc - too many variables and some skills that are important in one area of business are wrong in a different kind of business, there’s a lot of art to them. Accounting is mostly done one way and the same way whatever your business is and necessary for any business. It makes sense for business schools to teach that first in their core curriculum before teaching things like strategy and marketing. And things like product sense, market timing etc can’t really be taught
    - deconstruct 4y ago
      Sales and marketing, learned they can be. A business without knowing accounting/finance, exist can. (An accountant, hire, one can). For accounting/finance to be useful at all, a business exist, must first.
tracerbulletx 4y ago
Eh, accounting breaks down to tax, financial, and managerial accounting and it's more like the modeling language of business. You definitely should learn to speak the language to run a business and your decisions will be expressed in that language. You can leave the specialists to optimize your taxes, and financial posture since they need to know all the little laws and GAAP rules and techniques, but you should definitely know more than the basics.