What a Strategy job in Tech Actually Looks Like

Let's talk about bisops because on the surface bisops seems like a dream job.

You get to solve important problems. You get a seat at the table where big decisions are made and you get to shape the future of where the business goes.

But on the inside it's a little bit messier than that. One day you're advising executives and the next day you're up at 10 p.m. on a Friday night.

I worked in bisops and consulting over the past 5 years. And what I learned is this. BisOps looks a lot different in

this. BisOps looks a lot different in reality than on paper. So before you decide you want to work in bisops, let's talk about what you're actually signing yourself up for. Yo k cart. This isn't

in the script man. You're going to scare them all away. You like the job, too, didn't you? You're right. All right,

didn't you? You're right. All right,

let's run that back. Take two. Because

the truth is, bisops can be a really great career. But only if you have clear

great career. But only if you have clear expectations for what the work is actually like. Because if the job in

actually like. Because if the job in reality doesn't match the story that you were sold, then the day-to-day grind can wear you down and leave you feeling burnt out. So that's why in today's

burnt out. So that's why in today's video, I'm going to break down what BisOps really is, what the work is actually like, and ultimately whether or not it's a good fit for you. Because the

last thing you want is to say yes to a job that you didn't actually sign up for. All right, so let's actually get

for. All right, so let's actually get into it. What is bisops? It's the

into it. What is bisops? It's the

strategy job that everybody wants, but does anybody actually know what it is?

So the energy that I'm imagining is if we were grabbing a coffee, if you had like reached out on LinkedIn or something or you're like a friend of friend and you're asking me what this job is actually like, this is what I'd tell you. I've had dozens of these

tell you. I've had dozens of these conversations over the years and always found myself wondering, is there a way to make that information more accessible? because as someone who grew

accessible? because as someone who grew up like workingass who never had parents or friends who worked in these kinds of jobs, it was always just through like the kindness of strangers and alumni that I even found out about these positions. And so if you're in that

positions. And so if you're in that position, you don't know what this kind of job is or you're kind of, you know, have a little bit of an idea of it but aren't too sure, this is the conversation that we'd be having. I

honestly thought about making this into a PowerPoint for a second, but I didn't want to make a PowerPoint. So instead,

we have this notion doc. And this notion doc, we're going to cover five things.

The first thing is the pitch. like what

does the job look like on paper? Why do

people, you know, get attracted to it?

And then we're going to dive into the reality. So, these are the things that

reality. So, these are the things that no one tells you about what the job actually looks like. And, you know, they're not all bad necessarily, but they're just things that you don't get to see until you're actually on the inside. From there, we're going to talk

inside. From there, we're going to talk about what you actually do on maybe a day-to-day basis or on a project basis.

And I'll talk about a real example of something that I worked on in the past.

Then, we're going to get into what is probably the million-dollar question, which is, is Bispops the right fit for you? Is it a good job or career for you?

you? Is it a good job or career for you?

And then finally, I'll leave you with a couple of reflective questions and maybe things to think about or ask yourself if you're considering this as a job. Okay,

let's get into it. So, what does the job actually look like on paper and why do people get interested in it? So, we

talked a little bit about this in the introduction, but just at a high level, this job is really appealing to people because you solve really important business problems. You get a front row seat to what the business looks like and how decisions are made both at an

executive senior level but also in between like all the layers of like middle management and you get to see kind of this direction of like oh this is how decisions get made and how it flows through but you also get to see the other end of it of oh this is the

data the gathering that's happening and this is how it influences decisions up at this level. So you really get to understand how a business works. In my

case, I worked at a tech company. So I

really got to understand how that tech company works specifically on the sales side and then how that relates to basically how they bring in revenue because you're solving important problems. You're also getting a lot of

executive exposure at a pretty early stage of your career. So oftent times you're sitting in these meetings with like senior directors and VPs and sometimes even seuite people and you're usually the youngest person in the room.

And it's kind of crazy. you're this like young 20some who's just a couple years out of college, maybe in your first or second job, and people are actually looking to you for advice that not only has high visibility, it also has a huge

feeling of validation. In addition to working with executives, you're also working with a lot of different parts of the business. So, you might hear the

the business. So, you might hear the term crossf functionally a lot.

Basically, that's just a fancy word for working across different functions. A

function might be sales, it might be finance, it might be marketing or a product. And in bisops, you kind of are

product. And in bisops, you kind of are this glue person that works across a lot of different parts of the business. You

might not work very deeply with any one of those functions. Sometimes you might depending on the project, but you get a lot of different exposure. So if you're using bisops as a launchpad, this is a great way to build relationships and to also understand like what different

functions do. You often times do see

functions do. You often times do see people who are probably a little bit more senior in their bisops career jumping into other things that are completely unrelated, but because people trust them to be this kind of go-to problem solver, they can make that jump without a problem. One thing that you

also do in bisops and what makes it a really great sell, especially for people young in their career, is that you got to learn a lot. And that's both on the hard skill side where you learn how to build decks, do modeling, run data analyses, and project management, but

also on the soft skill side where you actually just learn a lot by watching the people around you, seeing how they interact, seeing how someone runs a meeting. And there are so many different

meeting. And there are so many different styles of doing that. And because of Bisops, you get so much exposure. You

can see kind of what works, what doesn't work, and kind of create your own style, especially around communication and building relationships, that kind of like fuzzy stuff that there's no one-izefits-all model for. And finally,

the pay is pretty good. like you're not going to make as much as like a data scientist or a software engineer. Like

that's technical side. But if you compare it to consulting, like you're making comparable pay to consulting, but without all the crazy hours. You're not

flying around at client sites. You're

doing similar work. And so I think relative to consultants, which I think a lot of people who are watching this video probably are or are thinking about, work life balance is pretty good.

Pay is pretty good, and it's a great exit to make if you still like that kind of work. All right, so that's the pitch.

of work. All right, so that's the pitch.

After hearing that for about 5 minutes, maybe you're like, "Damn, I need to go sign up for this job." Before you do that, let me tell you about the reality and what no one tells you about the job.

The first thing is that strategy and execution work is super messy. Like it

sounds sexy on the surface. You got to like solve important problems, work on these important issues, but there's a lot of ambiguity and a lot of times that ambiguity comes from knowing knowing really what the hell is going on. Like

there is no definition of success. The

core problem sometimes isn't even super clear. And priorities are kind of

clear. And priorities are kind of changing all the time. Like something

that's, you know, important one day as a strategy might change the next day entirely. And a big part of why strategy

entirely. And a big part of why strategy and execution and operations work is so messy is because it's highly political.

Like when you hear the word crossf functional and you think about different teams, you should also think about the word politics. It feels often times like

word politics. It feels often times like a high stakes group project where there's no shared rubric. No one has the same agenda. People have different

same agenda. People have different incentives. So if you're the one in the

incentives. So if you're the one in the middle who's trying to navigate all of that. Again, think you're getting

that. Again, think you're getting exposure all these different parts of the business, but all these different parts of the business aren't necessarily working together smoothly, they might have different directions and often times do have different directions that they're pushing towards. So imagine

trying to navigate all that, bring people together and kind of like, you know, the term you'll hear is drive alignment. That can be very draining.

alignment. That can be very draining.

That is also a very useful skill to have, but it's super messy. Related to that, executive

messy. Related to that, executive exposure isn't necessarily glamorous as well. Like yeah, you can sit in on

well. Like yeah, you can sit in on meetings with senior directors and VPs, but it's really high pressure. Like the

closer you are to the top, the more urgent that things feel and the more that you get exposed to, you know, last minute changes, fire drills, people changing their mind all the time. And

this is very concrete things like, hey, we have this big meeting tomorrow, but I changed my mind about what vision we're going for, so the entire deck needs to be reworked in some big way. Like those

are real changes, and the closer you get to the top, the more exposed you get to that. It's not glamorous. And then

that. It's not glamorous. And then

finally, even though you work on important problems, I mentioned this a little bit, what's important changes constantly. And sometimes it feels like

constantly. And sometimes it feels like you're not working on something that's important, you're working on something that's urgent because you don't necessarily get to define what's important. That sometimes is set and

important. That sometimes is set and often times is set top down. So if

someone changes their mind up top, like you are responsible for making sure that that goes through. And so if you're in this fast-paced environment where things are constantly changing and the strategy is constantly changing, that means that you're often times reacting more than

you're actually building something. So,

you don't necessarily have time to be proactive and think deeply about problems. You're just trying to catch up to what's been changed. I think this will probably make a lot more sense when we talk about whether or not Bispops is the right fit for you where I'm going to

dive into a bit more detail about that.

But for now, let's kind of take a step back and look at what you actually do like what does the work look like? What

does your day look like? Or what does a project look like? And then I'll get into a real example. So, what do you actually do? Bisops is a pretty broad

actually do? Bisops is a pretty broad term and to try to give it a single definition is probably going to be pretty hard because the exact function and what you do on a day-to-day basis is going to vary depending on the company that you're at and the size of the

company. So if you're working at a

company. So if you're working at a really large tech organization, it's probably going to be a little bit of a different role than if you're a really small startup. And the general rule of

small startup. And the general rule of thumb I've heard is the smaller the organization, the less that the title matters. So if you're bisops at a 12

matters. So if you're bisops at a 12 person organization, you're probably doing a little bit of everything. But if

you're bisops at a large corporation like I was that had like thousands and thousands of people, your job is a little bit more specific and you're probably usually working in within a specific vertical. So for me, I worked

specific vertical. So for me, I worked in go to market and sales strategy. But

there are also different types of bisops roles for product strategy. You're a bit closer to finance. You could be a bit closer to marketing. It really depends.

But if you cut through all of that, in general, what bisops is is you are the Swiss Army knife person who gets done. And whatever that is that you're

done. And whatever that is that you're doing, it's about executing and just making sure that you get to a decision point or a point where someone can do action. It could be strategy today. You

action. It could be strategy today. You

could be building like a fancy deck and presenting that to executives. You could

be a spreadsheet monkey tomorrow where you're just doing data analysis and running models left and right. Your

weeks can vary depending on the project that you're working on. It's really

messy, but the through line that connects all this together is pretty simple. You're the person that people go

simple. You're the person that people go to when things are messy and unclear and a decision needs to be made and people want to feel good about that decision.

At its core, if you really try to distill it down, you're answering one of three types of questions. The first

question is, what's wrong and how do we fix it? This could be something like,

fix it? This could be something like, hey, our revenue for product A is going down over the past quarter or the past year. How do we get it back on track?

year. How do we get it back on track?

And so sometimes these are called like getwell plans or like action plans. It's

like what can we do to steer this back in the right direction? The second

question is the reverse of that. You

look at what's working and how you scale it. So you're really looking at the

it. So you're really looking at the opportunity areas, things that you should do more of, double down on, take bets in. And as you look about strategy,

bets in. And as you look about strategy, it's like all right, we should invest more resources into this area. And then

finally, and this third question kind of overlaps with the first two, it's what's the best path forward? So if we've decided that we want to do something, so for example, if we take question two and think, oh, this product is selling really really well. This team is doing

really, really well. How do we scale it?

What's the best path forward? is the

concrete steps that you would take and prescribe in order to actually scale that business. This question is really

that business. This question is really how do we get there? Like what should we actually do and what are the trade-offs?

Because often times when you're making these big strategic decisions, it's not really clear that like one option is necessarily better than the other. There

are a lot of both quantitative and qualitative factors that people take into mind like where's the market going, what are competitors doing, what is our product specialty, all that kind of stuff. So how do we actually do these

stuff. So how do we actually do these things? Well, you do it in a couple of

things? Well, you do it in a couple of different ways, but there's one general workflow that kind of permeates all of these questions. The first is that you

these questions. The first is that you learn how to diagnose problems and size opportunities. So, you look at data, you

opportunities. So, you look at data, you run analyses, you talk to people to figure out what's broken, why it's broken, where the opportunities are, and what the trade-offs look like. So, these

are your classic like invest divest questions. How do you optimize strategy

questions. How do you optimize strategy around a particular area? How do you make something work better? That's the

question at the end of the day. Step one

is all about figure out what the problems and the opportunities are. Step

two is trying to create some structure around it. A lot of times these

around it. A lot of times these questions are pretty messy. And if

you're an executive that doesn't have a lot of time, then you want someone who's going to help you sort through that messiness and make it something that's clear and easy to understand. This is

why consultants, strategy people, and bisops people are really good at building frameworks because you turn something that's like kind of chaotic and ambiguous into a really structured problem with clear action paths forward.

So it could be taking something that like here and then saying, "Hey, these are the three problems that we're actually going to focus on." And for each of these three problems, we have two strategies that we're going to talk about. This is the final strategy that

about. This is the final strategy that we're recommending because of XYZ reason. These are the trade-offs. It's

reason. These are the trade-offs. It's

like super clear and easy to understand.

Right? After you do that, you've defined the problem. You've made it clear and

the problem. You've made it clear and into a framework. You also kind of take messy input from different teams and you're translating across all the different functions because marketing, sales, ops, finance, they might all be looking at slightly different data and

just have a different perspective.

Oftentimes in bisops, you're the person in the middle who's bringing that all together and turning it into something that leadership can actually make a decision on because they don't want to hear five different stories. They want

to hear one story that distills it all together so that they can make a decision that they feel good about. That

leads us directly into the next step which is after you've done all that, you've taken all the input, you've run the data, you are providing a strategic recommendation for what to do next.

You're packaging all of your insights into recommendations. 99% of the time

into recommendations. 99% of the time that usually takes the form of a PowerPoint deck. And then you're laying

PowerPoint deck. And then you're laying out what has happened, what's the fact pattern, how did we get here, and what should we do next? Like what is the conclusion? And should we do something

conclusion? And should we do something different? You don't know necessarily if

different? You don't know necessarily if they're going to take your action plan or not. Sometimes they do, sometimes

or not. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But if they do, sometimes

they don't. But if they do, sometimes you're responsible also for driving the follow-through. So this is where like

follow-through. So this is where like the project management becomes really important because you're coordinating across different teams. You're tracking progress and trying to really push the project forward and hold people accountable. So if on week one of the

accountable. So if on week one of the action plan XYZ team says that they're going to do this thing on, you know, week two, week three, you're going to want to check back in with that team and see how things are going. This is part of the work that I personally don't find

very enjoyable because you are dealing with a lot of egos, personalities. How

do you like push this forward? Make sure

things are happening. Really, really

important. Like this drives a lot of execution, but this can also be something that's really draining. And

I'll talk a bit more about that in detail. Okay, I've been talking for a

detail. Okay, I've been talking for a while. Drink a coffee first. Matcha

while. Drink a coffee first. Matcha

matcha chat. All right, so that's the big picture of what a project might look like. I'm going to talk about a specific

like. I'm going to talk about a specific project that I worked on every single year for the 3 years that I was there that maybe makes this a little bit more real. So every year I did financial

real. So every year I did financial target modeling during the annual planning process. And if you haven't

planning process. And if you haven't heard of the annual planning process before, basically it's this process that companies go through every year. It's

the main time of year where a leadership sets the strategy and figures out three big questions. One is what they want to

big questions. One is what they want to go after. What do they want to invest

go after. What do they want to invest money in, time in, and kind of set as their north star for their strategy. The

second is the reverse of that. Like what

do they want to walk away from? What are

things that are not worth the investment anymore and that we should pull back from? And finally, at the end of the

from? And finally, at the end of the day, it's like how do you hit your numbers? If you have a certain sales

numbers? If you have a certain sales target, financial target that you're going after, how do you actually game plan hit those things? So basically,

it's like what do you double down on?

What do you walk away from? Right? I

think I just repeated myself. That was

an unnecessary bullet point. Anyway, the

stakes are real because you're not just moving budgets around. You're literally

deciding where people, money, and time will actually go. And this is the time of year where big reorggs can happen, big restructuring can happen, product decisions are made. Like a lot of really, really big decisions are made

during this like 4 to 6 month period.

And if you get it wrong, you miss your goals, you lose trust, and it's a show. You spend the next 12 months

show. You spend the next 12 months cleaning up the mess that you've made during planning. So, it's really, really

during planning. So, it's really, really important that you get it right. What

was my role in this? Every year, one piece of the planning process that I did was to build the financial targets and figure out how much we're aiming to grow across different teams and different products. This is literally like we get

products. This is literally like we get a number top down of like, hey, the company needs to grow 30%, right? This

is how the 30% is going to get split across the different teams and the different products. I was the one that

different products. I was the one that built the model that kind of rolled everything up together. So, think like giant massive spreadsheet, multiple tabs with like thousands of lines for each team, each region, each product, and all

the different revenue targets that we should be hitting. It's like all those little pieces that added back up to the big number that we were going for. The

hard part wasn't necessarily the modeling and plugging in numbers, it means that you're talking to a lot of people. Cuz when you're talking about

people. Cuz when you're talking about something as big as financial targets, everyone has a lot of different opinions. Product has an opinion,

opinions. Product has an opinion, marketing has an opinion, sales ops has an opinion, sales has an opinion. If

you're the one who's running that model, you need to take all that information in. So, a typical day could be I can

in. So, a typical day could be I can wake up on a Monday, 9:00 a.m. jump on a call with finance to check if their assumptions match our assumptions, if our numbers are kind of the same, if we're projecting similar growth at least. After that, hop on 10 a.m. back

least. After that, hop on 10 a.m. back

tobacks with different sales ops directors to pressure test the targets.

Like, do they think this is reasonable?

How do they think their quarter is going so far? The year is going, are these

so far? The year is going, are these targets too aggressive? Are they not aggressive enough? And then at 11:00

aggressive enough? And then at 11:00 a.m., you can meet with the product go

a.m., you can meet with the product go to market and then do the same thing. Do

our numbers match your numbers? How are

they different? Let me get your perspective. By noon, I might have

perspective. By noon, I might have rebuilt the model five times already and talked to five different people just to get it ready for my senior director to review it before he then takes that model and goes and review it with other leadership people. And that's not just

leadership people. And that's not just one day. That's like weeks of work where

one day. That's like weeks of work where you're taking an input. You're working

the data and you're trying to build a recommendation for someone so that they can make a decision off of it. And

things were changing all the freaking time. Like if you're thinking about the

time. Like if you're thinking about the sales business, revenue forecasts are changing all the time. The market is changing all the time. The products that you're launching might be changing. So

the model has to keep up with that in real time because at any given moment if someone wanted to make a decision or change the strategy, they wanted a source of truth that they can look to and say like, "Hey, this is where we're

at right now. This is the current state.

What do we do about it?" Because if the numbers are wrong, the strategic decisions that they're making based on that will be wrong, too. I'm going pause there for a second and just try to distill like what this captures, right?

It's like if we start at the very top, you've diagnosed a very specific problem. In this case, the problem is

problem. In this case, the problem is kind of given to you. This is just something that we do every year. Then

you go about collecting data, collecting information, talking to various people, navigating like the politics and trying to come up with a version of something that makes sense. Like there's never going to be a perfect answer with something like this. A lot of it is judgment calls and trade-offs, but

something that seems reasonable that your boss or your boss's boss's boss's boss or whoever can defend when they're in those big seuite level type meetings.

We have a bit of the good and we have a bit of the bad that we talked about earlier. good, a lot of executive

earlier. good, a lot of executive exposure, a lot of learning, hard skills, soft skills, and you're working on something that's very important. On

the flip side of that, a lot of high stakes, a lot of high pressure, last minute fire drills and changes, politics, navigating all that stuff. So,

if we boil all of that down, we want to be asking the question, is Bisops the right fit for you? We're going to do it in two sections. BisOps might be a really great fit for you if these things resonate. and Bisops might not be a

resonate. and Bisops might not be a great fit for you and might be something that you should think about avoiding if you're this kind of person. If when

someone has a problem, you like being the person that they go to to give advice, to solve it, to kind of be the solution guy, this could be a really good job for you. I remember like 5 months into the role, I was already sitting in meetings with like VPs and

directors and I could be like crunching numbers in a spreadsheet in the morning and then in the afternoon I'm like in these big meetings where people are turning to me to influence or give them advice on what they should do next. and

I'd catch myself thinking like, "Holy like I'm 25 years old. They're

actually listening to my recommendations." If you like that

recommendations." If you like that validation and that's something that excites you, Bisops could be a pretty good role. Something else that Bisops

good role. Something else that Bisops has a lot of, if we think about all the exposure, is variety. If you like working and doing different types of things from like modeling, building decks, kind of jumping around and talking to different people, this might

be a good fit for you. Like it can be pretty chaotic at times because you're moving really quickly. But if that's the kind of stimulation that you like and you don't like just doing one problem or one project for weeks or months at a time, then bisops might provide the kind

of variety that keeps you excited.

Bisops is really good for people who are also really curious and you like asking why a lot. And the reason why is pretty simple. When you're diagnosing problems,

simple. When you're diagnosing problems, no one really cares about the surface level problem. In order to get to

level problem. In order to get to something that's actually that's actually actionable, wow, that's a hard word to say. You need to keep asking why and digging deeper and deeper until you get to the root causes of something that you can actually solve. No one's

expecting you to have all the answers or to be an expert in something, but you do need to care enough to kind of keep digging, keep asking why. And you're not trying to be, you know, annoying to people. You just want to understand what

people. You just want to understand what the story is. A lot of this job is chasing down that story and then building another story around how you can fix it. And finally, kind of putting all that together. If you like solving

problems, you like variety, you like being curious, at the end of the day. If

you like optimizing and figuring stuff out and how things could be better, even if you're not necessarily the one who's like the face of a project, this could be a really good job for you. If you're

the type of person who likes finding smarter ways to do something, you might really like this job because you'd be surprised at the amount of inefficiency and just stuff that doesn't work well,

even at really well-established organizations that you think have their together. like working at one of

together. like working at one of the biggest tech companies in the world, I thought, "Wow, everything's going to run super smoothly." No, a lot of stuff is still duct taped together. A lot of stuff is ad hoc. And as a bisops person,

you get the opportunity to figure out how to make things better, how to make things work faster or smarter. The Kanye

West song now. But yeah, like if that excites you, this could be a really good job for you. Okay, let's minimize all the good things. Let's talk a little bit about some of the bad things. Well,

maybe not even bad things, but like why this job might not be a good fit for you. One, if you're someone who needs

you. One, if you're someone who needs stability to do your best work, BisOps might not be a great place for you. And

you already might get a sense of why.

Like, if you thrive in structured environments where you have really clear goals, you have a lot of deep uninterrupted focus time, bisops is probably going to feel super chaotic.

For me, there are weeks where everything was a fire drill. You'd be building like a pricing or financial model in the morning, writing slides for a completely different deck the next morning, and then it always feels like you're playing

catch-up. priorities, goals are always

catch-up. priorities, goals are always changing and it feels like you just built something a week ago and now you're being asked to change it because someone changed their mind about what it should look like. It's frustrating at

times. If you are someone who wants to

times. If you are someone who wants to know what your workload is looking like on a given week on a given day, the unpredictability of the work in Bisops might drive you crazy. Very exciting for some people, very frustrating and

chaotic. Something else that's also very

chaotic. Something else that's also very common place in Bisops is this idea of seeing things through. You might not like bisops if you actually like to see projects through end to end. What I mean by that is in bisops oftentimes you

don't own the final decision or the implementation for something. You build

the analysis, you tell the story, have the deck, and then you just kind of hand it off. Sometimes you're also

it off. Sometimes you're also responsible for the execution and implementation of it like I talked about earlier, but most of the time you're not the person who's actually seeing the project through at the end and making sure that things are actually done. If

you get energy from making sure that the stuff that you've been working on actually gets done, this job can start to feel pretty empty because a lot of the work is going to live in slide decks, emails, newsletters, and these kind of big strategy reviews, but you're

not always around to see if anything actually happens. And so, you're not

actually happens. And so, you're not sure if you've actually made an impact or if you've just made a pretty deck that sounded good. And this ties in directly to the third point of this job might not be a good fit if you care more about impact than praise. There's a

really big difference between doing work that looks good and doing work that makes a difference. And for me, honestly, this was one of the biggest challenges because I realized that a lot of the work that I was doing, I couldn't actually track whether or not the

analyses that I did made any difference because the signals of good work weren't some number going up wasn't a clear metric and something you can measure.

Good work was whether or not people said good work. Like whether or not they

good work. Like whether or not they looked at your presentation and said, "That was a really good slide." Or

whether they kept asking you to help solve their problems. And this was the same thing at my level. This is the same thing like level up, two levels up, three levels up. It was always by proxy, just someone telling you that it was good work or someone going back to you.

The more that people trusted you, the better you were at your job and the more impact that you were having. I found

that really unsatisfying because I come from like a research background in undergrad at least where often times you're trying to run experiments. You're

trying to find causality in an enterprise sales organization, which is what I was a part of. You can't do that.

There is no causality. And that wore me down. Like for some people, it doesn't

down. Like for some people, it doesn't matter. They just enjoy doing the work

matter. They just enjoy doing the work and they can see the impact that they're having through the people and the interactions. But for me, I wanted to

interactions. But for me, I wanted to see like a number go up. I wanted to be able to tie something that I was doing to something concrete. Something else

that also wore me down over the years was intellectual rigor or intellectual honesty. So the bullet I have there is

honesty. So the bullet I have there is like you care about intellectual honesty, this might not be a good fit for you. It's a little bit loaded, but

for you. It's a little bit loaded, but let me explain what that means. When we

did analyses, we really did try our best to be rigorous. Like we spent time in the data, often a lot of time with the data to figure out like what is the evidence showing? But when you're in a

evidence showing? But when you're in a fast-moving organization, executives don't have time for that detail or that nuance. Business decisions are happening

nuance. Business decisions are happening quick. They just want a recommendation

quick. They just want a recommendation that they can feel good about and so they can carry on and, you know, go into their 50 other meetings. Often times

that means that you're writing a proposal and pitching something that you actually don't feel that good about because you'd have a meeting tomorrow or at the end of the week and the story had to land. So even if your data was messy,

to land. So even if your data was messy, you had to have a clean narrative. So

you could be working on something for like two months and then the final version of that you see doesn't click with what you've actually been working on. It sounds maybe a little too

on. It sounds maybe a little too confident, sounds a little too good to be true. And that for me always felt a

be true. And that for me always felt a little bit like Like I totally understand why that is. Like yeah, if you're, you know, someone in the sea suite, you don't have time to understand the methodology, the little details. You

just want to know like this is a good path forward. I get that. Being on the

path forward. I get that. Being on the other side of that though, especially coming from like an academic research background where everything was super rigorous. You're trying to find

rigorous. You're trying to find statistical significance, P values that make sense, this felt weird. It it it felt just like not honest to me. But

that's honestly how a lot of the business world works. You don't have time for nice statistical tests and rigor or even a regression. Like most

people didn't know what a regression is or if they saw saw one, they thought that you were really smart. Um so that's something to be mindful of if you're entering this environment. It's really

fast-paced. things are happening quickly. You might not have time to get

quickly. You might not have time to get the answer that you're actually looking for, but you still have to sound good about it. You know, fake it till you

about it. You know, fake it till you make it. Like, that's the name of the

make it. Like, that's the name of the game here. And then finally, bisops

game here. And then finally, bisops might not be a good fit for you if you don't like managing emotions, egos, and people. Basically, if you don't like

people. Basically, if you don't like playing politics because the hardest part at the end of the day wasn't the data. It wasn't about putting a slide

data. It wasn't about putting a slide together. It was the people. Convincing

together. It was the people. Convincing

teams to align when they have different goals and different agendas is a really, really difficult thing to do. And you

know, your mileage may vary. The larger

the organization, the more difficult this might be. And the hard part isn't that like people are backstabbing you or sabotaging you. That's often not the

sabotaging you. That's often not the case. That actually be easier to

case. That actually be easier to understand if people are evil and bad.

The hardest part is like people are genuinely trying to do a good job of what they're doing. It's just that what they're doing doesn't necessarily match up with what you care about. And so the question becomes, how do you get people

to care about your point of view, your perspective, and do what you want them to do? But you're not their boss. you

to do? But you're not their boss. you

don't have power over them. And this is where you're trying to navigate that whole playing field. You're trying to get people to like you. You're trying to build trust, relationships. You can't

always take what people say at face value. You have to understand the

value. You have to understand the relationships that different people have. And this means that when you're

have. And this means that when you're talking strategy, you're not just talking about being strategic. You're

talking about being diplomatic. And

that's a whole different ballgame. Like

coming from a consulting research background, I knew how to do data analysis, run numbers, all that good quantitative stuff. What I did not have

quantitative stuff. What I did not have as much experience of and what I to this day still find very draining is navigating all the kind of, for lack of a better word, and politics

around it. If you're working on

around it. If you're working on something that you really care about, this is an obstacle, sure, but it's a necessary one. And I get that. Like if

necessary one. And I get that. Like if

you really care and are passionate about a goal or a project or something that you think will have really high impact, this is just part of the job. That's

totally fine and I get that. But, you

know, going back to something I said earlier, impact often times isn't really clear. the proposals that you're making

clear. the proposals that you're making aren't necessarily baked in evidence.

It's just something that you kind of feel good enough or directional about.

And so if we take this idea of impact being kind of questionable or unclear and then navigating a lot of politics to make sure it gets done, it's like why do we have so much conviction about this idea and have to get through all this

political stuff if we're not that confident about what the impact of this change is going to be? Those two things combined together were pretty draining.

You don't know if what you're doing is actually going to make a difference, but at the same time, you're spending weeks, months trying to get people on board with your idea. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance that comes from that. At the end of the day, how does

that. At the end of the day, how does this all fit together? Well, this is where we come to the very end where I'm going to throw this back to you and ask you to be a little bit reflective, to

think about some of these questions and what good work actually looks like. I

want to encourage you to not just fall for the prestige, the pay, like those are great things, but on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't matter how big your paycheck is. If you're feeling tired and

paycheck is. If you're feeling tired and drained by the work, and it feels like you're just trying to survive Monday through Friday so you can get to the weekend, that's so much of your time.

That's five out of seven days. And if

you're exhausted by working, that kind of bleeds into the other parts of your life. Just because you're working 9 to5

life. Just because you're working 9 to5 doesn't mean your brain is just thinking about the 9 to5. It can be something that bleeds into the rest of your life, even when you're offline, so that you're never really off. You're never really recharged, and you're kind of in this

state of fatigue all the time. So, this

section is for you to think about whether or not the trade-offs that I've talked about are worth it. Because for

me, I spent a lot of years doing this work. I built models, I solved messy

work. I built models, I solved messy problems, built decks, helped people make decisions. And it did teach me a

make decisions. And it did teach me a lot. Specifically, it taught me how to

lot. Specifically, it taught me how to think faster, break down complex problems, give it some structure, and then execute to get done. Like

that's a skill set that I'm going to take with me wherever I go because spoiler alert, I don't work in this job anymore. But I learned a lot from it.

anymore. But I learned a lot from it.

There's a lot that I'm grateful for. But

at the same time, maybe the most important lesson that it taught me after chasing this career path of the past 5 years is that it's really important to find work that's good for you, not just work that you're good at. Cuz I realized

that the more that I worked at this job, the better I got at it, the less I actually liked it. Which is a signal for me that, hey, maybe I'm not on the right path. And that becomes really clear when

path. And that becomes really clear when you look at the people above you, you look at leadership and you ask yourself, is that what I want to be doing in 5 years or 10 years from now? And for me, the answer was no. It's like the stuff that I enjoy doing. The more that you

advance in the organization, the less of that that you did and the more politics and people that you had to work with.

And I don't mean that in like I hate people like no, I really love working with people and collaborating. But if

you're collaborating on things that you don't really care about, then that can be really draining for you. If you want to navigate the politics and you find that enjoyable, great. That is your career path. Good for you. Go for it.

career path. Good for you. Go for it.

For me, I realized this is probably not something that I care that much about and it might be specific to working in a big organization. It might have been

big organization. It might have been specific to the organization that I was in. And so I am curious like what bisops

in. And so I am curious like what bisops and strategy looks like if you're at a much smaller organization. Like you have 20 people, there's probably not as many politics. You don't have time for

politics. You don't have time for because you have to execute on things that are truly urgent or the business is going to collapse. I don't

know. I've talked to friends who have worked at startups and uh it's kind of the sense that I get. All right, enough about myself though. If you're

considering bisops, these are a few good questions to ask yourself. One is what kind of pressure brings out the best in you and what kind wears you down?

Because as we've talked about today, there's a lot of high stakes and a lot of high pressure when you're working with executives and important problems. Is that something that you find energizing? That kind of leads into the

energizing? That kind of leads into the second question. Like when the stakes

second question. Like when the stakes are high and everybody's watching, do you feel energized or is that something that makes you feel like you're walking on a tight rope? You're on edge. You're

nervous. You get tired. And don't think about that just in terms of can I do this one week, two weeks, one month at a time even. Think about this on a

time even. Think about this on a year-to-year basis. Like is this the

year-to-year basis. Like is this the kind of career that you want where there's constant pressure and that pressure is pushing you to do your best or do you think that's something that's going to leave you feeling exhausted, anxious, tired? For different people,

anxious, tired? For different people, this brings up entirely different answers. It's important to understand

answers. It's important to understand what this means for you. The next

question is really how do you want feedback to show up? What does impact look like for you? Is it numbers, concrete outcomes? Is it something

concrete outcomes? Is it something different like recognition and praise?

If you really like concrete, tangible ROI, but you don't get that. Depending

on the role that you're in, bisops can be really tiring because you don't get a 5% increase, 10% increase in something.

You get, hey, that was really good work.

Thanks. And for some people, that's enough. For me, that wasn't. And

enough. For me, that wasn't. And

finally, at the end of the day, if you distill everything together, this is perhaps the most important question.

What does a good workday actually feel like for you? At the end of the day, when you look back, what do you want to say you've accomplished? Is it, man, I sat down for three or four hours and I was really focused? I got to think

really deeply about something. Is it,

wow, I get to talk to a lot of different people. I got to work on this project

people. I got to work on this project and kind of really push it forward. Is

it I don't even want to work, which is honestly an answer for a lot of people, too, and that's totally fine, but 99.99% of us need a job. So, what does a good workday on the job feel like for you?

What do you feel like at the end of the day? Are you exhausted? Are you still

day? Are you exhausted? Are you still energized? Think about that. Let it sit

energized? Think about that. Let it sit for a little bit. For me, something that I've realized is a good workday feels like a lot of focused work. It feels

like a lot of time to think. It feels

like working on things and collaborating on things where I feel like everyone cares and we're all kind of on the same page. That sometimes looks like a

page. That sometimes looks like a business context. Sometimes it doesn't

business context. Sometimes it doesn't and it might be more creative. Right now

I'm pursuing a path where I have a little bit more flexibility in my schedule to choose what I want to work on because what I found is after working for bisops in three years at the end of each workday I'd feel really tired. It

felt like I was always tilting between one of these two extremes where I was really isolated or I was really extroverted. It didn't really ever

extroverted. It didn't really ever strike the balance that I wanted to. And

part of that was the unpredictability of the job and just things changing constantly. Like if I spent the entire

constantly. Like if I spent the entire day working on a model, super introverted, I'd just feel very cooped up and want to talk to people and be super extrovert at the end of the day.

Then sometimes I'd have the reverse. I'd

spend the whole day talking to people on backto-back meetings and I just be drained and want to perm it up somewhere underneath a blanket by the end of the day. I've realized that though I like

day. I've realized that though I like novelty, I probably need a bit more stability in the work that I want to do.

Maybe that's contradictory to me just saying it'd be interesting to work in a startup, but I think the through line of that is like I'd probably really want to care about the work that I'm doing. And

when you really care about something, it's just fun. Like you are energized and you work through the whole day without it feeling like you've worked on the whole day. Sometimes that's what YouTube is like. It's pretty good. All

right, if you've made it to the end of the video, congratulations to you. You

just listen to a 30 minute video about bisops. But really, if you think about

bisops. But really, if you think about it, 30 minutes isn't really all that long for something as important as a huge career decision. If we were grabbing a coffee in real life, this is the conversation that we'd have. I'd be

real with you. I'd be honest. I'm not

going to be super idealistic about the job because I've done it. But at the same time, I'm not going to be super cynical and tell you like, "This is an awful thing. Don't do it." Because

awful thing. Don't do it." Because

that's not true. I got a lot out of it.

But it also took a lot from me. I hope

that that's what you got by the end of the video. You have a clear

the video. You have a clear understanding of what you might be walking into. And obviously, I'm just

walking into. And obviously, I'm just one person, right? This is just one perspective. Keep doing your homework.

perspective. Keep doing your homework.

Keep looking into whether or not this is something that's right for you. In the

meantime, if you found this video useful, let me know. I spent a lot of time scripting, researching, and working on these videos, and I'm probably going to spend a lot of time editing this afterwards. So, if you found this

afterwards. So, if you found this useful, please do let me know. You can

drop a comment below about what you found useful or other questions that you have. You can like, you can subscribe.

have. You can like, you can subscribe.

Uh, you can even buy me a coffee if you want to. I'll drop one of those links. I

want to. I'll drop one of those links. I

don't know. In the meantime, if you're curious about how I even made the transition to bisops and working in tech, I made a video about that. I'll

link that here. And you can see how I went from consulting and that grind to working in tech.