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Comment by ignostic | Hacker News Reader

I'd strongly disagree that it's not the CFO's job to foster and enhance company culture. If your CFO is a cost-cutting machine, I hope he's not highly compensated. Any qualified first-year accountant can do that job.

It's a good CFO's job to make sure that resources are invested strategically. Indeed, it's every executive's job to work together towards a shared vision and goal. If someone is working towards a different goal, you're inviting unnecessary conflict. No one should need to be micromanaged - at any point - if they share the goal and the culture along with the rest of the employees.

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When you bring in an outside CFO, chances are that you're getting a highly paid individual whose main incentive is to increase the valuation of your company to make it look good for an acquisition, increasing revenues substantially, or going public.

Cost cutting is just one tool in their toolbelt to work towards it. But it's the sharpest and most easily understood tool they have so that's why they will reach for it so often.

In an ideal world, you'll get a CFO that totally jives with you culturally, accepts a lower salary (or limited equity stake), and just handles all the paperwork. But such people will rarely carry the title of CFO.

> "In an ideal world, you'll get a CFO that totally jives with you culturally, accepts a lower salary (or limited equity stake), and just handles all the paperwork."

Again, I have to disagree. Ideally you get a proactive CFO who understands the value of the company culture, and works to encourage it. Yes, even if that costs more money. A paper pusher who stays out of your way does not approach the value of a good CFO who gets what the company is about and what they're trying to do.

Anyone who hires a paper-pushing-bean-counting CFO should not be surprised when that CFO tries to sacrifice long-term success for short-term balance sheet exhibition.

> Anyone who hires a paper-pushing-bean-counting CFO should not be surprised when that CFO tries to sacrifice long-term success for short-term balance sheet exhibition.

This is the point. You are not to be surprised, but as CEO be ready that your CFO will require guidance while doing otherwise useful things.

Exactly my point.

Should a CFO be singularly focused on bean counting to the detriment of company culture? No.

Is that often the reality when you bring in an outsider as CFO well after your company culture is established? Yes.

CEOs just need to be aware of this fact and work closely with any outsider who gets hired into a CFO position in their first 6 months on the job to make sure that all interests are aligned. It would be great to find someone up front that totally gets it and is willing to be a dedicated CFO, but I think such individuals are extremely hard to find.

The sad fact is, many CEOs only bring in a CFO when they're trying to find a way to cash out. Company culture usually takes a back seat at that point.

I couldn't agree more. People complain that non technical people don't understand or value everything that goes in to our work other than 'writing code' -- look around, you are probably doing the same for other roles as well, including your 'bean-counters'.

I remember hearing the joke about "How do you make a startup profitable? Fire the CFO" because over-paid outside hired executives are bad for company culture.

The case I heard about, the CFO was was fixated on hassling people over business lunch costs (meeting with industry contacts etc.), and not creating value or the company or preparing the company for larger investors etc.

That's not how things work in reality. Look at the original post. The CFO was handling compliance with all sorts of insane regulatory minefields, the kind where a mistake can lead to the government destroying your company. No, a first-year accountant can not do that job.

But different jobs require different sets of cognitive biases. The ability to handle the regulatory compliance is very unlikely to reside in the same brain as the ability to understand that cutting small perks costs more in morale than it saves on the budget, so if the CEO isn't keeping the CFO on a leash, the CEO is not doing his job.

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