Why Does Accounting Help Figma Data Scientists?

Praveer Melwani says a couple of the data scientists devoted to finance at Figma come from accounting backgrounds, and their grasp of the work is what enables them to be better builders.

They understand the work has to be really, really hard and always correct. They already know the nuances of checks and balances, what a refund is, and what an uncollectible is. The nomenclature is what lets them build well. Data science partners on the product team build as much product intuition as the product managers and engineers, if not more. They sit on the core team that can ideate and push change, and they do it by leveraging a different tool.

He could see the same background translate to a finance engineer. A shared understanding of what is necessary is the part he treats as already useful. Building the context over time stays possible, and building enough of it is important because it lets a builder push other people's frame of thinking.