The FP&A Life at GE, Microsoft–and Now Google

Antonio Reza is the Head of Finance for Google Cloud Consulting in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). In this episode he reveals the FP&A life and lessons he has learned over the past 14 years working in finance and strategy at Google, Microsoft, and GE. He brings experiences across 10 different countries leading teams across the globe spanning different industries (he also speaks four languages). In this episode he reveals:

• How Getting into GE’s finance and FP&A training was life-changing
• Why so many tech people like himself are inspired to get into finance 
• Country specific differences in finance that he has learnt over his career 
• Google in the midst of AI revolution and how we used AI at Microsoft for our commercial forecasting 
• How AI in finance is still about automation – with insights the next frontier for FP&A
• How FP&A at Google and Microsoft FP&A teams are set up 
• Why “Walking  the Shop” remains core to his career in finance
• How the biggest companies in the world manage real-time data
• Despite the technological avalanche storytelling and persuasion is fundamental at the top tech companies
• Why FP&A needs to focus on snapshots vs “real-time” dashboards 
• FP&A Need to Ask Why x5 Times: The Secret of great storytelling 
• Why I am focused on grasping and applying the economic picture in my work 
• My biggest challenges in moving from individual contributor to manager early in my career 
• How a  “failure” led to my team and I staying in the office for 56 hours trying to close an audit – and the people skills I learnt along the way 
• Why Despite working at Google, Excel still bosses Google Sheets for finance teams
• Using your 20s to hustle and have a successful career 

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Further Reading

WSJ: Google Finance Head: Anything That Can Be Automated, We Strive to Automate

The Pyramid Principle:Logic in Writing and Thinking by Barbara Minto

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It; Chris Voss

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma; Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman