Most of my professional career consisted of working at a large corporation. In what is likely an ongoing series, I reflect on how working in the corporate world impacted my investing over the years. We all come from various backgrounds. We all bring the sum total of our experiences to our investing. My corporate middle-management job colored much of what I learned about investing.
First, I should say that corporate life was - for the most part - fantastic. I met many incredible people. Some of my lifelong friends came from my corporate career. I learned a ton. I worked in the corporate setting for over 17 years, and you don’t do something that long unless you enjoy it. I went through several phases where I liked my job, where I was indifferent to my job, and where I hated my job. Seventeen years is a long time. Of course, I disliked many things about my career, and I will share them liberally in my writing. But working for a large publicly traded company was an excellent learning experience for me as an investor.
I want to share some of my experiences. Many of you might be in similar circumstances: toiling away as a cog in a giant machine, pining for your free time where you can sit down and peruse a juicy 10K. Why not do both? Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things you can do in your corporate job to improve as an investor:
Get Free Training: I worked in logistics and supply chain. But when I got interested in investing, I asked my boss if I could take a finance class. He was thrilled! I found a class called “Finance for Operations Managers.” In it, we learned about the three financial statements in detail. We performed competitive industry analyses. We learned about comparable companies and how to evaluate M&A. It was a class on investing disguised as a finance class.
Make Friends with the Finance Department: My group had a lot of P&L responsibilities. So I spent lots of time with finance folks. They were in a separate building, and they used to joke that they saw me more than they saw their boss. Of course, I was working with them, but I also peppered them with questions. How did accruals work? How did they record inventory on the balance sheet? What were the advantages and disadvantages? Frequently I researched companies I was interested in and asked them financial questions that I couldn’t figure out from the filings. They were accommodating and practically delivered me a degree in finance over coffee.
Perform Research on Company Time: I spent a fair amount of time at the tail end of my corporate career doing investing research. I also did a lot of that at work. I read all of our company filings. I read all of our competitor’s filings. My boss noticed once and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was reading our 10K and that of our competitors. What was he going to do, say, “Stop reading our annual report and get back to work?” I worried that I would get called out for wasting time. On the contrary, My boss complimented me for going above and beyond and showing an interest in the company.
Observe Leadership: I spent years working for different bosses, both good and bad (luckily primarily good). I was lucky in that I spent my last ten years at the company working at the corporate headquarters. I saw many C-level executives in action and observed how they ran the company. For me, assessing management capability remains a difficult investing task. Having this experience helps me determine if I think the management of a company I’m investing in has what it takes to drive progress.
I occasionally felt guilty about “wasting time” on investing while working. I needn’t have worried. In retrospect, having an interest in investing helped me ask our team more insightful questions. It gave me a deeper understanding of our operation and how it fit into a money-making organization. And it made me more aware of how the various operational groups influenced the company. I’m sure I wasn’t the ideal employee in many ways. But my interest in investing pushed me more to the positive side than the negative.