Biggest Challenges Faced by a Finance Manager at Microsoft
As a Finance Manager at Microsoft, Andrew's biggest challenges revolve around both supply chain constraints and the intricacies of financial modeling in the tech space; a current significant hurdle is the GPU shortage, requiring high-level meetings with the CFO to strategize allocation to customers and internal needs, while another key challenge is that "complexity with modeling" requires deep understanding of the "actual backend infrastructure" such as Azure workloads and storage types, which goes beyond standard textbook models.
Financial Modeling, Technology Infrastructure, Supply Chain Management, Problem Solving, Strategic Planning
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Andrew Sullivan
Finance Manager
Microsoft
Wake Forest University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Finance
Technology
Finance
Honors Student, Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. Difficulty in procuring and allocating GPUs is a significant challenge, requiring high-level discussions with the CFO.
2. Financial modeling in the technology sector is complex, requiring a deep understanding of backend infrastructure beyond standard textbook models.
3. Building complex financial models involves understanding specific Azure workloads and storage types, and their associated pricing.
Transcript
What is your biggest challenge in your role?
Right now, GPUs are a very tough issue that we deal with on a day-to-day basis. We have meetings with the CFO about how we can possibly give all these GPUs to customers we've committed to and still support our own products. So that's definitely an issue.
Another challenge is the complexity with modeling. Different things in the technology space are tricky because you have to fully understand the backend infrastructure to build a financial model off of it. It's not like what you learn in class, which is often cookie-cutter.
Our models are super complex; they get down to individual Azure workloads. We need to know if we're running Redis, what kind of VMs we're using, and what type of storage, like hot or cold storage. You really need to understand the backend of the product.
Knowing that kind of pricing can help build these complex financial models. That's probably the most challenging thing we've been doing recently.
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