How I became a CFO

Today is my birthday. The date is so round that it is better not to name it. But there is a reason to think about transferring experience to the younger generations. They say that human civilization began with the fact that people were able to feed their old people, and this accelerated the transfer of knowledge from older generations to younger ones. So I, in my old age, decided to open such a transfer of knowledge with my first essay.





It is longread and is therefore not recommended for people with clip thinking. I would like to believe that they are not here.





First, a lyrical digression ... It was at the very end of the 1990s, when I worked for an audit company, which, in fact, was the internal auditor of Sibur. So internal that all employees went to work at the head office of Sibur and had permanent jobs in the same way as the regular employees of Sibur. My responsibilities included the automation of accounting in the management company.





The holding structure included about 30 petrochemical plants. We must pay tribute to the then "Sibur": he bought these enterprises, which were often city-forming, and restored their work, resuming production and paying many months of wage arrears. Not being an auditor, I, nevertheless, wandered around Siberia and the Urals (SibUR), doing due diligence of such purchased factories. So much that I have seen! The most harmless - as mathematicians say, "oh-little" - was the forgery of signatures and seals. Most of all, of course, I was impressed by the fraudulent privatization schemes, when the top management bought shares of these enterprises for the money of the enterprises themselves. So we opened all this fraud.





But my main job in the head office was the automation of accounting. When I just started work and told the accountants, of whom there were as many as 4 dozen people, that my motto "Make life easier for an accountant", my words caused slight bewilderment. And when I said that in 3 months they would all leave work not at 9 o'clock in the evening, as now, but at the end of the working day - at 6 o'clock, they looked at me like an idiot: he just does not know which there is an insane amount of work. A month passed, accountants left work at 8, after which they began to look at me with a certain curiosity ... The second month passed, accountants left work at 7, and began to look at me with noticeable interest ... After the third month, when they left work at 6, there was respect in the eyes: he is responsible for his words.From that moment on, they began to consider me as their own and the attitude changed dramatically: when it was necessary to improve or speed up something, the phrase was heard more and more often: "Let's ask Kolya - he will think of something."





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This is how I became a CFO, and I worked in this position for almost four years. During this time, I thoroughly imbued with all the financial troubles from budgeting to reporting to foreign owners, and now I can safely say that I am a specialist in corporate finance.





I hope, colleagues, if you have read this opus to the end, it did not leave you indifferent.





Happy New Year! May it be better than the old one!





01.01.2020








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