Happy Path

You're Going to Need a Calculator

If my foray into the world of MultiTRAK wasn't proof enough, I'm here to tell you that my career had gone from watching an endless stream of tv shows to manipulating an endless stream of numbers. Every day, I tackled story problem after story problem. If a project has X dollars and we need X programmers, how long can we make each contract? Please account for day rates, taxes and a software allowance. It was my personal version of Hell. My right brain had been locked away and my left brain called into action. This was jarring, especially for someone who had previously been designated a "creative".

During an early days meeting with Charles, I had a disturbing conversation that jolted me into the reality of the job I'd accepted. I started working just after the beginning of a new fiscal year. To track our year, we needed a master budget that included all the funding and resources and projects related to our group. This took the form of a multi-paged and ever-expanding Excel document. As Charles built the Excel behemoth and created a financial road map, I watched agape. He was doing things I'd never seen before. I kept thinking Excel can do that? Should I know how to do that???

At one point, Charles was using an Excel formula to calculate a contract. He decided to confirm the total—remember how I talked about checks and balances?—on his calculator. "We'll need to get you one of these," he said, punching buttons.

"A calculator?" I asked, surprised. "I'll just use the one on my laptop."

"No, we'll get you one for your desk." He returned to his spreadsheet, satisfied with the number confirmed by the calculator. I wondered why I'd need a calculator. How much math could I possibly be expected to do? Later that day, Charles brought me an extra calculator he'd found. For the remainder of my time at The Bank, I used it daily. Many, many times daily.

At some point, I realized my entire job was numbers. Maybe it was the day a team member walked up to my desk and asked why I was staring at the wall. "Staring at the wall?" I asked. "Oh. I guess that's probably how it looks. I was looking at the calendar." There were various sheets of paper pinned to my soft cubicle walls. I was forever staring at these charts and guides.

When I took stock of the cubicle papers, they were all numbers. There were multiple calendars. I was constantly calculating the days until contracts ran out or when a project would go live. I looked for dates like end of the quarter or reporting and forecasting cut-offs. I looked at past dates to see when a project had started and I calculated workdays in a month. The numbers continued. There were charts with bank abbreviations and their corresponding numerical codes; a list of team members and their identification numbers; a time table for the buses and vans that shuttled employees from one bank building to another. It was all numbers, all the time! If this were a movie, the camera would be trucking around my desk as I stared at a wall full of sheets while graphically imposed numbers swirled around my head.

My job bore such little resemblance to what I'd done my entire professional life, it was laughable. In a way that wanted to make me cry, but I could still sometimes laugh at myself. I'd say something like I need to do the forecasting for Q2 before IST testing ends on BKEY and then immediately start giggling. Who was this person I'd become?!?

There was definitely some satisfaction in learning new skills and conquering problems in my bank role. The little IT knowledge I'd had prior to working with the group served only to make some terminology ring a very distant and vaguely recognizable bell.

My friends thought it was hilarious that I worked in FinTech. I would relate something from my workday and they would look at me with blank stares or ask question upon question to get a basic understanding of what I'd just said. They were proof that I wasn't just an idiot. I was really and truly out of my league.