The challenges of being the only finance person in a team of Techies

I am free and that is why I am lost.

This famous quote by Franz Kafka aptly describes my situation of being surrounded by techies at Zipy. Initially when they talked about Kafka, I would wait for his wise quotes to come out. Much later did I realise that Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform (whatever that means).

I would not say that it is difficult to be the only finance person in the middle of a team of engineers and tech enthusiasts, but definitely it is interesting. Especially so because these techies always use so many acronyms while communicating. I have learned that my understanding of these acronyms is entirely different from theirs. And I have learned this the hard way.

So, the other day when my colleague, talked about npm, I was sure that it was about the Net Profit Margin of the Company. I went ahead in the chat with full energy discussing the fixed and variable expenses leaving the other side bewildered. They were like, what has Node Package Manager got to do with this. Then I realised that NPM is a designation of the new IT manager we were hiring (and again I was wrong). Man, these tech abbreviations!

Then comes the DAU, MAU and WAU. I could easily relate to DAU being the Dow Jones Index and WAU being their reaction to my new shirt, but could not fathom why they would discuss Mao Zedong in the business meeting! Even our daily, monthly and weekly average users would not talk about the Chinese leader.

Later I was bombarded with SDK, GTM, PH, VM, API, DNS, webstaging, prod, MFA and similar tech jargon. I learnt that the only way to dodge these bullets is to keep nodding as if you have understood and say something intelligent. This worked well until I said in a meeting that I liked hotfix more than netflix but cannot watch it with the family.

Over the last few months, I have understood that it is better to Google every time I have to deal with a tech term and try to use it in my conversation the next time. I am now making my own acronyms, like “SPD” for ‘Salary payment Day’ or “PFG” for ‘preparing for Guftagu (which by the way is our informal chat time with the team), which baffles the techies.

All in all, it is a great learning experience and I think now I am getting a hang of it. The only challenge that remains is that when they talk about a Beta version, my mind wanders towards Madhuri Dixit. Just hoping this is a STP* and soon I’ll be an ETA.

• Short Term Phenomenon
• Expert in Tech Acronyms