Finance to Tech
Alright follow monkeys - i've had it. Just had 2 consecutive 4am nights and I'm done with PE. I've said this before in recent years and contemplated quitting a few times, but this time... its different, its real.
Looking to move into Tech - FP&A / Strategy, heck even operations sounds great - does anyone have any good recommendation on resources to learn more about FAANG divisions and how to prepare for interviews? Am guessing case studies / behavioral questions etc will be a chunk of the process.
Appreciate any advice thanks all.
How did you come to terms with giving up the money and opportunity cost?
I am in the same boat as you but too much of a pussy to go through with it.
Interested as well. I'm curious if it's possible to make the move to PM. I'm assuming for experienced hires they would want tech experience, even if we know how to code?
My experience: Went through the process and got an offer at big tech company on the product side. For product/operations/strategy, product sense is extremely important - have a deep understanding of the product offering ( ie. AWS at Amazon or WhatsApp at Meta). For case studies/interview prep check out Exponent on Youtube, gives you a good idea of product/case study interviews. I also suggest learning SQL and maybe intro level Python - check out SQLZOO for SQL and Udemy for python. Glassdoor should give you an idea of some interview questions and you can also make an account on Blind, the tech version of WSO.
From my experience interviewing at tech companies, behavioural questions are not very common and are moreso used as a formality at the start of an interview. Interviews are focused on domain knowledge/ technicals and have heard that non-tech roles such as FP&A might be asked SQL questions.
Hopefully this helps, feel free to PM if you have any other questions.
Not OP, but a few quick questions. Did you come in from IB or PE, and if so after analyst stint or 2+2? As well, was it an APM type of role or full PM? Was it easy to get interviews as a finance guy?
Came from more a trading/markets background and have a stem degree. I just graduated so I haven’t worked full time in finance or tech. It’s not an APM role, it’s a Product Analyst role so you can think of it as a mix between PM and Data Science… I’m using data to drive the product roadmap. Interviews were pretty easy to land, went to a pretty solid school and have internships and a degree that fit the job requirements.
SQL is really easy to learn. Don't fret. One thing that needs a bit more work is figuring out what specific queries you are allowed to write in different SQL servers. For example, you can write a lot of queries in PostgreSQL, but not that many in DB SQLite.
Python is an all purpose language and takes more time if you want to become proficient at it. Again, don't worry too much about it. Just start.
I did this ~5 years ago (but to a growth stage co, not big public co) - anything specific you want to know? In general you're probably targeting roles in FP&A, strategic finance, corp dev (if unicorn or bigger), strategy, strategic partnerships (non-sales), chief of staff, etc. Maybe also product or operations, but less likely.
Interviews have a wide range from long drawn out processes with long ass case studies to very fast processes, all fit, where they figure you have decent business sense and can figure it out
MBA required? What would you say is the right experience level to make the move over?
I don't think there's a "right" experience level - it just ends up translating into your new title/seniority. 2 of my most recent bosses took dramatically different paths - one did BB IB for almost a decade and came over at the Sr Director level and the other did a year of IB and not quite a decade of tech/startup finance.
In general, moving over pre-MBA after some IB likely gets you senior analyst, maybe manager as a title. If you have an MBA (or IB plus some other experience such as PE), you should target manager/senior manager (roughly equivalent to IB associate). I suppose that means IB VP is functionally similar to director on the other side, but director tends to have more initiative (i.e. you own your own projects, though you also own execution of your VP/CXO's too - maybe similar to a IB VP up for director promote). This obviously flexes with size of company - the smaller you go, the easier it will be to get a flashier title.
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