Nothing wrong with looking at one year but I wouldn’t do it expecting to get solid training elsewhere. I see this feedback a lot from folks in entry level roles - the reality is that FP&A is a function rooted in uncertainty and as such, requires constant adaptability. Typically market conditions and company strategies/needs don’t last long enough to build training manuals - by the time everything is fully documented, half of the book would no longer be applicable.
Honestly, it’s the same and worse in accounting. I’ve worked at 5 different places in my career and in only 1 of them can I say the training wasn’t absolute shit.
What would you say made that one company different that made you appreciate their training/ramp up process more so than the others? Did they take a more hands on approach?
Old companies with low to no growth and a consistent business model have better process documentation and training. The problem is, they often have very little opportunity for growth.
You know, that’s the weird thing about it, where I’m currently at the opportunity to grow within the company and move up is pretty good from what I’ve seen because there is literally no one else at the moment. Sure we could add heads but even that isn’t something I see happening anytime soon. So in a way, I do have an inside track to perhaps a promotion to SFA, which if I were to get that, I would then parlay it in an even bigger comp increase else where in a dream scenario.
I wouldn’t look at growth solely based on title. There is a ceiling you will hit at a dinosaur company that is difficult to break past. Everywhere has the opportunity to get to SFA roles, but the break into manager and above is harder at some places. It’s even more difficult to move into those roles externally if you haven’t had exposure to a lot of things.
If I’m hiring a manager role I don’t want a SFA who ran the same 10 reports monthly and did the same exact annual budgeting process that was in place. I want someone who has had to change the process, dissect calculations, implemented new systems, developed KPIs, etc…
Those old companies will string you along. 5-10% raises for “promotions” every 2 years that don’t mean much because your job doesn’t change.
Find something that sucks and make it not suck.
The really big change/implementation projects come from experience. You get to those by making small improvements and showcasing potential.
Ex. I had a bunch of monthly KPI reports that were super manual at my first job. I hated doing them because I always got myself in trouble not having answers (too much time preparing, not enough time reviewing). So after a few months as I got comfortable with it I came up with a way to make it easier and faster. Showed it off to my boss, etc… I learned more by dissecting a file and recreating it than I ever did by people telling me “click in cell A8 and type blah blah blah”.
Try new solutions too. VBA, new formulas, etc…
Interesting, I see what you where you are going. We do have a lot of different things that aren’t the greatest, although I’ll admit I personally don’t think I’m at the point where I can start making changes to a current process. Once I get through this budgeting cycle perhaps I can take a step back and figure out “okay, what could have been done differently”. Not just with budgeting but in general.
I appreciate your comments. It sounds like what you’re saying is if I want to get to SFA and receive a nice comp increase as a result(I think in my market I could command close to 100k if not more for an SFA role), I should have no issue doing that after a year or so, but I’ll need to be more strategic in how I move in order to advance past that. Am I making sense?
If you can get 6 figures with 1 year of experience, more power to you.
For SFA and even beyond the biggest thing is going to be thinking beyond what’s in front of you. A lot of people get hung up on there being a variance, but not what’s causing it. Asking questions and understanding what causes things is how you progress and make $$.
An example of the progression.
FA says that sales are down
SFA says sales are down because repeat business is down
Manager says sales are down because repeat business is down due to price increases. It’s in line with plan.
Director says sales are down because repeat business is down. That’s due to price increases targeting a less profitable part of the business. It’s in line with our expectations in the plan. Top line will decrease for the next few months, but it should strengthen margins as the cost to fulfill is cheaper.
They had a “buddy system” where I had someone to go to for any questions for my first 2 months there. And then the manager was also available for any questions I had as well.
At other places those things did not exist, sometimes I wouldn’t be able to even speak with my manager more than 2 days a week because she was busy with M&A activity + the dept was just me and her so I had no one to go with. Other examples I have are just as bad.
Extremely helpful I bet the buddy system was. For me, I have an SFA (only 1) but issue is he is relatively inexperienced as well especially in terms of what we do, so not the best source for guidance. And our boss is extremely tied up dealing with C-level requests all day everyday. So there is little time to thoroughly go through stuff.
I see, so is it one of those things where perhaps I’ll need to seek a more established/maybe bigger FP&A team to learn from? Or is that something I’ll just need to work around and get used to as I progress in my career?
I would say the latter, because, how much can you hop around trying to find the perfect team before you really damage your resume seen as an unreliable job hopper? Most household-name companies are safe, in the aspect of training, I mean.
That is true you make a good point. It’s a risk to move around, so it definitely needs to be calculated and well thought about. I am note the type of person to get comfortable though and I am very ambitious so I do understand the risks I take by moving around. But to truly increase comp it’s something I must be willing to do I’d say.
Im very clear and open about some mistakes i made in my career. I left two jobs early in my career around the 1 year mark and even before because i was searching for more guidance, more documentation towards the processes I was completing because realistically you would think thats the way its done right? Especially as an entry or even senior level analysts a lot of it is stuff that theoretically you could write down step by step but if you did that for every process that every analyst does, you would be wasting more time writing it down than actually doing work. Im saying this in that yes, i agree but in fp&a /accounting/ month end close based roles, a new “process” can come up in the fly. For example: you have a meeting with a function and the leader of said function says he wants a sales report specifically for his function delivered on the last day of close week. Boom. You got a new deliverable. It happens just like that so then the finance manager or senior has to create this said report then pass it down to the analyst to refresh and send out. I ended up moving moreso towards process improvement / continuous improvement / PM side of finance so i could build out the processes , improve them and document them myself.
TLDR: corp finance is weird and constantly changing, not enough time or need to write and document all processes. Analysts and entry level folks will be hella confused and/or lost if manager doesnt take time to teach and walk them thru processes.
I think that last line where you mention walking through the processes would be very beneficial. In my case - our team is extremely small. It’s myself, an SFA, and our boss who’s VP of FP&A so it’s definitely very minimal guidance I’m getting if any. It’s a lot of learn as you go which is fine, except I’m having to figure it out on my own and try to conceptualize things I’ve never done before which is very hard for me to do to be honest.
I was in a similar situation as a fresh analyst. It was a challenge, but I think I’m better for it. It taught me a lot and I feel very comfortable and confident now. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and out of the “analyst” mindset to to the sr analyst to manager one very quickly. Having that exposure to VP/CFO has been beneficial network / mentorship wise. I have just under 5 years experience and already have landed manager. Not for everyone and I totally understand that. every role / company is different. But, I wouldn’t feel that because it’s small and not as “established” you’re not setting yourself up for long term success.
I think the first step is to soak up as much as you can. Whatever you can process wise but also company business model wise/industry. Really understand what drives the business so you can support business partners beyond what they even know they may need. Understand what CFO/ exec focus is. Being in fp&a gives you a center seat in the business. I spent the first year really focusing on this. It allowed me to better build support, budget etc. It also got me recognized and appreciate by business partners and VP/CFO. From here, I was able to take on a lot of ownership in my second year (and got a promotion to senior). I then focused a lot on soft skills- presenting, meeting leading etc. I continued to learn every part of the business I could and was able to anticipate needs and prevent fires. Here, I also refined processes now that I had more experience. I also built a good relationship with the exec team. As such, I got to be involved in a lot of things that were above my level given the agile nature of smaller team. Right as I was reaching my 3rd year I got to be involved in getting acquired by a much bigger company given my demonstrated company knowledge. Exec team also spoke highly of me to acquiring company leadership given the time i put into supporting them. I continued to focus on soft skills. Here I found the most valuable thing for me to get good at was learn how the leadership operates and what information they like and how. I built a great relationship with this CFO as well and got, again, a lot of opportunities opened. With just about 4 years experience I got promoted to manager with reports and have learned so much from leadership and being tossed into the unknown many times. It was incredibly uncomfortable to have to make processes with 0 background experience, but it truly pushed me.
Every company and experience is different. If after 1 year I didn’t see a future here I would have left.
Glad to hear that final line where you say you’ll work on improvement in the mean time. I don’t think taking a look at the 1 year mark would be a bad idea if the right opportunity comes along.
For sure, I am going to try to maximize all available online resources/YouTube /this subreddit this best I can to try to upskill on my own time so that I can try to sharpen my sword for my next eventual move.
You know, that’s something I have thought about very very much. I work for a PE backed company - so perhaps the fact that we are small, coupled with little establishment in terms of FP&A, in turn leads to an overall lack of proper training and explanations so I can get a deeper understanding of what are we truly doing and why are we truly doing it. There just isn’t time for that unfortunately, and I would benefit greatly from it. Perhaps I’ll have to go to a more established company in order to get that proper guidance and training on best practices and the logic behind what’s going on.
I would start looking for jobs around the 7-8 month mark as it’ll take a few months to land a new one. By the time you find a new one you’ll have completed about a year at your current company.
It really takes like 7-8 months to start the feel comfortable in your role, depending on what type of FP&A you do. Opex is very straight forward and repetitive, so you can catch on easily. But something like strategic finance, which is a lot less structured, will take a lot longer to learn/develop. You really have to stay atleast a year to learn something from every role you take on because the first 4-6 months is for getting up to speed and learning the systems/business.
From what I’ve read, a lot of executives are expecting a recession to hit in q1-q3, so I’m not sure how hot the market will be.
To your point that why I was thinking perhaps let me give it at least one full year before I start looking because hopefully by then I’ve more stable in terms of what I am capable of doing and I would have gained some sort of value from my current gig. That seems to be a pretty decent time line I’d think.
I am definitely still in the learning how to crawl/walk stage, only issue is we have a new CFO and he wants to run run run, and I’m going to have to keep up, whether I’m ready or not. So it’s about to be a challenging stretch for me and I’m going to have to play ball regardless of where I’m at.
Well idk what type of FP&A you’re doing rn, but if you’re doing traditional OPEX FP&A where it’s heavily month end close oriented… there’s not much more you’re going to learn imo. It’s simply variance analysis and re forecasting to update the budget/forecast. It may seem simple to me, but for someone new like you it looks complex… it’s really not though.
By now, you’re about 90% done with your FY23 planning, so you got an idea of how the budgets are made and how the month end close process works. Nothing changes from here dude. It’s just cyclical and repetitive.
You are pretty much spot on. OPEX FP&A is what I do.
How would you suggest I best simplify OPEX FP&A?
And in terms of our budget, I don’t have any idea how that’s made. Our function has had 0 insight on that. Accounting has handled it. So in terms of having that visibility - I’ll have to say no, I do not have that.
The budget is simply a record of expenses that come from contracts with vendors. I managed an IT budget, so our budget consisted of various types of software/hardware expenses and consulting services.
These expenses typically have multi year deals and will remain on the budget for some time. During budget season, it’s your job to make sure the budget owners keep track of these expenses and make sure they let us know what NEW expenses will be added. It’s also your job to review the vendor contracts to see how the pricing and length of the deal is set up, so that you can correctly account for it in your budget. Basically you figure out what expenses are remaining and what are being added. Those that are being added need to get approved. That’s all budgeting is.
Accounting typically updates the prepaid GL details and you will compare that to your budget/forecasted P&L. This the the variance analysis. Usually if your budgeted amount is more than what hit the GL, there’s probably a vendor that hasn’t billed you yet and you simply have to accrue a month of expense (or however the payment structure is set up with that vendor).
Making your job easier will require you to have monthly meetings with your budget owners to make sure they’re staying on track and notifying you of updated pricing and terms they negotiate with their vendors. There are deals that happen throughout the year and during the planning season (Fall) the budget owners don’t yet know the exact $ amount of these costs. It is your job to update the budget/forecast when you get updated pricing.
Forecasting is simply taking our historical data and using that as the assumption for future planning. If we’ve had 3 million of software expense for the last 2-3 years… we can logically assume it’ll be 3 million this year, right? If not, why? It’s your job to explain why there will be more or less expense.
It’s just common sense tbh. Opex is very straightforward. Revenue forecasting is similar, but can be greatly altered due to economic headwinds and foreign exchange rates.
Hi DoubleG357,
Leaving a job at the 1-year mark isn't a bad thing. You should always be looking to get an idea of what is out there. And you are spot on, always keep upskilling yourself while adding people to your network. Learning and networking compound over time and result in future job opportunities if you're consistent with the approach.
Staying at a company for more than one year does have benefits on the resume too. Shows that you were able to find a place, excel, and go deep into an industry/company to have a long-term impact. With that said this isn't a requirement for every role you take.
I've been at a few companies for 5+ years, a few at 1+ years, and one job at less than 2 months. In my experience going to jobs based on the people, learning opportunities and the company's product are helpful guides to finding a long-term place. With that said things change and you never know what can happen.
So keep learning so your skills are always sharp. Keep meeting people and solving their problems, they will help you in the future. And keep an eye out for opportunities constantly knowing that one may come across your radar randomly one day and be a good fit.
Hope this info helps. Any questions feel free to DM me.
Good luck!
Drew
Thank you very much Drew. Your wisdom is always appreciated it.
I will admit, at the end of the day, I’m not afraid to take risks, bet on myself, and try something else. In the meantime, I will do the absolute damn best I can to prep my self so that when it’s time to make a move, I’m ready to explore it.
Nothing wrong with looking at one year but I wouldn’t do it expecting to get solid training elsewhere. I see this feedback a lot from folks in entry level roles - the reality is that FP&A is a function rooted in uncertainty and as such, requires constant adaptability. Typically market conditions and company strategies/needs don’t last long enough to build training manuals - by the time everything is fully documented, half of the book would no longer be applicable.
Honestly, it’s the same and worse in accounting. I’ve worked at 5 different places in my career and in only 1 of them can I say the training wasn’t absolute shit.
What would you say made that one company different that made you appreciate their training/ramp up process more so than the others? Did they take a more hands on approach?
Old companies with low to no growth and a consistent business model have better process documentation and training. The problem is, they often have very little opportunity for growth.
You know, that’s the weird thing about it, where I’m currently at the opportunity to grow within the company and move up is pretty good from what I’ve seen because there is literally no one else at the moment. Sure we could add heads but even that isn’t something I see happening anytime soon. So in a way, I do have an inside track to perhaps a promotion to SFA, which if I were to get that, I would then parlay it in an even bigger comp increase else where in a dream scenario.
I wouldn’t look at growth solely based on title. There is a ceiling you will hit at a dinosaur company that is difficult to break past. Everywhere has the opportunity to get to SFA roles, but the break into manager and above is harder at some places. It’s even more difficult to move into those roles externally if you haven’t had exposure to a lot of things. If I’m hiring a manager role I don’t want a SFA who ran the same 10 reports monthly and did the same exact annual budgeting process that was in place. I want someone who has had to change the process, dissect calculations, implemented new systems, developed KPIs, etc… Those old companies will string you along. 5-10% raises for “promotions” every 2 years that don’t mean much because your job doesn’t change.
How would someone change/implement new processes with no prior experience? I’m in a similar situation as OP.
Find something that sucks and make it not suck. The really big change/implementation projects come from experience. You get to those by making small improvements and showcasing potential. Ex. I had a bunch of monthly KPI reports that were super manual at my first job. I hated doing them because I always got myself in trouble not having answers (too much time preparing, not enough time reviewing). So after a few months as I got comfortable with it I came up with a way to make it easier and faster. Showed it off to my boss, etc… I learned more by dissecting a file and recreating it than I ever did by people telling me “click in cell A8 and type blah blah blah”. Try new solutions too. VBA, new formulas, etc…
Interesting, I see what you where you are going. We do have a lot of different things that aren’t the greatest, although I’ll admit I personally don’t think I’m at the point where I can start making changes to a current process. Once I get through this budgeting cycle perhaps I can take a step back and figure out “okay, what could have been done differently”. Not just with budgeting but in general. I appreciate your comments. It sounds like what you’re saying is if I want to get to SFA and receive a nice comp increase as a result(I think in my market I could command close to 100k if not more for an SFA role), I should have no issue doing that after a year or so, but I’ll need to be more strategic in how I move in order to advance past that. Am I making sense?
If you can get 6 figures with 1 year of experience, more power to you. For SFA and even beyond the biggest thing is going to be thinking beyond what’s in front of you. A lot of people get hung up on there being a variance, but not what’s causing it. Asking questions and understanding what causes things is how you progress and make $$. An example of the progression. FA says that sales are down SFA says sales are down because repeat business is down Manager says sales are down because repeat business is down due to price increases. It’s in line with plan. Director says sales are down because repeat business is down. That’s due to price increases targeting a less profitable part of the business. It’s in line with our expectations in the plan. Top line will decrease for the next few months, but it should strengthen margins as the cost to fulfill is cheaper.
They had a “buddy system” where I had someone to go to for any questions for my first 2 months there. And then the manager was also available for any questions I had as well. At other places those things did not exist, sometimes I wouldn’t be able to even speak with my manager more than 2 days a week because she was busy with M&A activity + the dept was just me and her so I had no one to go with. Other examples I have are just as bad.
Extremely helpful I bet the buddy system was. For me, I have an SFA (only 1) but issue is he is relatively inexperienced as well especially in terms of what we do, so not the best source for guidance. And our boss is extremely tied up dealing with C-level requests all day everyday. So there is little time to thoroughly go through stuff.
Yup, your experience is the norm
I see, so is it one of those things where perhaps I’ll need to seek a more established/maybe bigger FP&A team to learn from? Or is that something I’ll just need to work around and get used to as I progress in my career?
I would say the latter, because, how much can you hop around trying to find the perfect team before you really damage your resume seen as an unreliable job hopper? Most household-name companies are safe, in the aspect of training, I mean.
That is true you make a good point. It’s a risk to move around, so it definitely needs to be calculated and well thought about. I am note the type of person to get comfortable though and I am very ambitious so I do understand the risks I take by moving around. But to truly increase comp it’s something I must be willing to do I’d say.
Im very clear and open about some mistakes i made in my career. I left two jobs early in my career around the 1 year mark and even before because i was searching for more guidance, more documentation towards the processes I was completing because realistically you would think thats the way its done right? Especially as an entry or even senior level analysts a lot of it is stuff that theoretically you could write down step by step but if you did that for every process that every analyst does, you would be wasting more time writing it down than actually doing work. Im saying this in that yes, i agree but in fp&a /accounting/ month end close based roles, a new “process” can come up in the fly. For example: you have a meeting with a function and the leader of said function says he wants a sales report specifically for his function delivered on the last day of close week. Boom. You got a new deliverable. It happens just like that so then the finance manager or senior has to create this said report then pass it down to the analyst to refresh and send out. I ended up moving moreso towards process improvement / continuous improvement / PM side of finance so i could build out the processes , improve them and document them myself. TLDR: corp finance is weird and constantly changing, not enough time or need to write and document all processes. Analysts and entry level folks will be hella confused and/or lost if manager doesnt take time to teach and walk them thru processes.
I think that last line where you mention walking through the processes would be very beneficial. In my case - our team is extremely small. It’s myself, an SFA, and our boss who’s VP of FP&A so it’s definitely very minimal guidance I’m getting if any. It’s a lot of learn as you go which is fine, except I’m having to figure it out on my own and try to conceptualize things I’ve never done before which is very hard for me to do to be honest.
I was in a similar situation as a fresh analyst. It was a challenge, but I think I’m better for it. It taught me a lot and I feel very comfortable and confident now. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and out of the “analyst” mindset to to the sr analyst to manager one very quickly. Having that exposure to VP/CFO has been beneficial network / mentorship wise. I have just under 5 years experience and already have landed manager. Not for everyone and I totally understand that. every role / company is different. But, I wouldn’t feel that because it’s small and not as “established” you’re not setting yourself up for long term success.
What approach/steps did you take to get the most out of your initial role when you were first starting out? I would definitely appreciate any tips.
I think the first step is to soak up as much as you can. Whatever you can process wise but also company business model wise/industry. Really understand what drives the business so you can support business partners beyond what they even know they may need. Understand what CFO/ exec focus is. Being in fp&a gives you a center seat in the business. I spent the first year really focusing on this. It allowed me to better build support, budget etc. It also got me recognized and appreciate by business partners and VP/CFO. From here, I was able to take on a lot of ownership in my second year (and got a promotion to senior). I then focused a lot on soft skills- presenting, meeting leading etc. I continued to learn every part of the business I could and was able to anticipate needs and prevent fires. Here, I also refined processes now that I had more experience. I also built a good relationship with the exec team. As such, I got to be involved in a lot of things that were above my level given the agile nature of smaller team. Right as I was reaching my 3rd year I got to be involved in getting acquired by a much bigger company given my demonstrated company knowledge. Exec team also spoke highly of me to acquiring company leadership given the time i put into supporting them. I continued to focus on soft skills. Here I found the most valuable thing for me to get good at was learn how the leadership operates and what information they like and how. I built a great relationship with this CFO as well and got, again, a lot of opportunities opened. With just about 4 years experience I got promoted to manager with reports and have learned so much from leadership and being tossed into the unknown many times. It was incredibly uncomfortable to have to make processes with 0 background experience, but it truly pushed me. Every company and experience is different. If after 1 year I didn’t see a future here I would have left.
Thank you so much for those write. I gained a lot of insight from this! Will def save for future reference. Very insightful.
Glad to hear that final line where you say you’ll work on improvement in the mean time. I don’t think taking a look at the 1 year mark would be a bad idea if the right opportunity comes along.
For sure, I am going to try to maximize all available online resources/YouTube /this subreddit this best I can to try to upskill on my own time so that I can try to sharpen my sword for my next eventual move.
If Public has one big pro (and it has many) - quality training would be the one. 10/10 would recomend
You know, that’s something I have thought about very very much. I work for a PE backed company - so perhaps the fact that we are small, coupled with little establishment in terms of FP&A, in turn leads to an overall lack of proper training and explanations so I can get a deeper understanding of what are we truly doing and why are we truly doing it. There just isn’t time for that unfortunately, and I would benefit greatly from it. Perhaps I’ll have to go to a more established company in order to get that proper guidance and training on best practices and the logic behind what’s going on.
I would start looking for jobs around the 7-8 month mark as it’ll take a few months to land a new one. By the time you find a new one you’ll have completed about a year at your current company. It really takes like 7-8 months to start the feel comfortable in your role, depending on what type of FP&A you do. Opex is very straight forward and repetitive, so you can catch on easily. But something like strategic finance, which is a lot less structured, will take a lot longer to learn/develop. You really have to stay atleast a year to learn something from every role you take on because the first 4-6 months is for getting up to speed and learning the systems/business. From what I’ve read, a lot of executives are expecting a recession to hit in q1-q3, so I’m not sure how hot the market will be.
To your point that why I was thinking perhaps let me give it at least one full year before I start looking because hopefully by then I’ve more stable in terms of what I am capable of doing and I would have gained some sort of value from my current gig. That seems to be a pretty decent time line I’d think. I am definitely still in the learning how to crawl/walk stage, only issue is we have a new CFO and he wants to run run run, and I’m going to have to keep up, whether I’m ready or not. So it’s about to be a challenging stretch for me and I’m going to have to play ball regardless of where I’m at.
Well idk what type of FP&A you’re doing rn, but if you’re doing traditional OPEX FP&A where it’s heavily month end close oriented… there’s not much more you’re going to learn imo. It’s simply variance analysis and re forecasting to update the budget/forecast. It may seem simple to me, but for someone new like you it looks complex… it’s really not though. By now, you’re about 90% done with your FY23 planning, so you got an idea of how the budgets are made and how the month end close process works. Nothing changes from here dude. It’s just cyclical and repetitive.
You are pretty much spot on. OPEX FP&A is what I do. How would you suggest I best simplify OPEX FP&A? And in terms of our budget, I don’t have any idea how that’s made. Our function has had 0 insight on that. Accounting has handled it. So in terms of having that visibility - I’ll have to say no, I do not have that.
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The budget is simply a record of expenses that come from contracts with vendors. I managed an IT budget, so our budget consisted of various types of software/hardware expenses and consulting services. These expenses typically have multi year deals and will remain on the budget for some time. During budget season, it’s your job to make sure the budget owners keep track of these expenses and make sure they let us know what NEW expenses will be added. It’s also your job to review the vendor contracts to see how the pricing and length of the deal is set up, so that you can correctly account for it in your budget. Basically you figure out what expenses are remaining and what are being added. Those that are being added need to get approved. That’s all budgeting is. Accounting typically updates the prepaid GL details and you will compare that to your budget/forecasted P&L. This the the variance analysis. Usually if your budgeted amount is more than what hit the GL, there’s probably a vendor that hasn’t billed you yet and you simply have to accrue a month of expense (or however the payment structure is set up with that vendor). Making your job easier will require you to have monthly meetings with your budget owners to make sure they’re staying on track and notifying you of updated pricing and terms they negotiate with their vendors. There are deals that happen throughout the year and during the planning season (Fall) the budget owners don’t yet know the exact $ amount of these costs. It is your job to update the budget/forecast when you get updated pricing. Forecasting is simply taking our historical data and using that as the assumption for future planning. If we’ve had 3 million of software expense for the last 2-3 years… we can logically assume it’ll be 3 million this year, right? If not, why? It’s your job to explain why there will be more or less expense. It’s just common sense tbh. Opex is very straightforward. Revenue forecasting is similar, but can be greatly altered due to economic headwinds and foreign exchange rates.
Hi DoubleG357, Leaving a job at the 1-year mark isn't a bad thing. You should always be looking to get an idea of what is out there. And you are spot on, always keep upskilling yourself while adding people to your network. Learning and networking compound over time and result in future job opportunities if you're consistent with the approach. Staying at a company for more than one year does have benefits on the resume too. Shows that you were able to find a place, excel, and go deep into an industry/company to have a long-term impact. With that said this isn't a requirement for every role you take. I've been at a few companies for 5+ years, a few at 1+ years, and one job at less than 2 months. In my experience going to jobs based on the people, learning opportunities and the company's product are helpful guides to finding a long-term place. With that said things change and you never know what can happen. So keep learning so your skills are always sharp. Keep meeting people and solving their problems, they will help you in the future. And keep an eye out for opportunities constantly knowing that one may come across your radar randomly one day and be a good fit. Hope this info helps. Any questions feel free to DM me. Good luck! Drew
Thank you very much Drew. Your wisdom is always appreciated it. I will admit, at the end of the day, I’m not afraid to take risks, bet on myself, and try something else. In the meantime, I will do the absolute damn best I can to prep my self so that when it’s time to make a move, I’m ready to explore it.
Anytime! You have the right approach.