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The coolest job I've ever had and the $145 Billion mistake.

The US Treasury was the coolest place I've worked. And I made a $145 Billion mistake that was almost disastrous. Here's the story.

👋 Hey, it’s Sundar! Thanks for reading experiMENTAL: my newsletter helping founders and marketers navigate the CRAZY world of consumer tech with secrets from 10+ years in Marketing at Uber & others.

In today’s newsletter, you’ll learn:

  • A bit more about my career

  • What the US Treasury does

  • How I made an almost disastrous $145 Billion mistake

My career

Like most people, my career is nothing but linear.

It looks more like this client journey map ^ then a straight forward line.

High level summary:

  • Graduated in 2009 with a degree in Finance. Terrible year for Finance.

  • Tricked Bloomberg to hire me as a Programmer for 2 years. Hated it.

  • Quit and spent a year trying to break into Finance.

  • US Treasury for 2 years. We’ll talk about that.

  • Analytics at DIRECTV for 10 months.

  • Uber for 5 years. Talk about it alot.

  • Fired from 2 startups in 18 months.

  • Consultant and present day.

Today, we’re going to focus on the bullet that says “US Treasury for 2 years”.

It’s a role few people know I did, but it’s by far the coolest job I’ve ever had.

But first, what is the US Treasury and what does it do?

The US Treasury

The Treasury is the piggy bank of the US.

It’s first secretary was Alexander Hamilton who you might recognize as the main character from Linn Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's mission is to maintain a strong economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable economic growth and stability at home and abroad, strengthen national security by combating threats and protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. Government’s finances and resources effectively.

The US Treasury

In a more simplified explanation, it is responsible for:

  • Managing Federal finances

  • Collecting taxes, duties and monies paid to and due to the U.S. and paying all bills of the U.S.

  • Currency and coinage

  • Managing Government accounts and the public debt

  • Supervising national banks and thrift institutions

  • Advising on domestic and international financial, monetary, economic, trade and tax policy

  • Enforcing Federal finance and tax laws

  • Investigating and prosecuting tax evaders, counterfeiters, and forgers

Today, we’re going to focus on the bullet that says “Managing Government accounts and the public debt;”.

Enter the Office of Debt Management.

The Office of Debt Management

The US is the largest public issuer of bonds in the world and the US Debt currently stands over 33 Trillion Dollars.

Whether that’s good or bad is a discussion for another day.

But on the surface it’s a really large and scary looking number.

At the time I joined, the team was responsible for managing $19 Trillion of Debt.

Yes, $19 Trillion. You read that right.

To put into an absurd perspective, we joked that a billion dollars was a rounding error.

And the impact of the team is enormous.

We influence the Treasury Curve which influences things like auto loans, mortgage loans, savings rates, the stock market, FX rates, and more.

So, imagine being a 25 year old analyst who walks into this epic building (which is right next to the Whitehouse) being at one of the epicenters of global finance.

My office for 2 years.

It definitely never went to my head. Definitely not.

Everything was awesome.

Until that one fateful day.

Now let’s get to the $145 Billion mistake I mentioned as my hook to lure you in to reading this newsletter.

The teeny tiny $145 Billion Mistake

Every quarter the Treasury shares guidance to the market on how much it plans on issuing for the next 3 months.

I was responsible for putting that presentation (example) together for the 2 years I was there.

We then present the report to the heads of every major bank in the US + the secretary of the Treasury.

Jack Lew was the Secretary of the Treausry when I was there.

In a careless mistake where I imported the wrong data, I estimated that the Treasury would be borrowing $145 Billion less than intended.

That’s $145 Billion less debt that other countries, banks, companies, and people would borrow as a risk free way to generate income.

But it also signals that the US Government was generating more income than planned signifying a healthier economy than anticipated.

A few days before the quarterly announcement, at 1:26 PM EST I get pulled into a room with a “Hey, this doesn’t look right”.

Panic. Sheer panic.

I then spent the next 14 hours debugging my analysis until 3:30 AM.

And I found my mistake.

In a 3,000+ row spreadsheet, I messed up one row. One row almost blew up my career.

In Marketing at Uber, we had something called the “New York Times Headline test”.

Basically, you want to avoid your work being front page of the NYT because it’s usually for the wrong reasons.

Sidenote: Uber was pretty bad at that having ended up on the NYT a few times while I was there.

Had my mistake gone through, it would have been on the NYT and potentially every other financial / news outlet in the world.

Luckily, we caught it and I got to continue to work on some fascinating things over my 2 years:

  • Predicting when the US might default on it’s debt during debt ceiling shutdowns

  • Launching the first new security in 20 years (The Floating rate note)

Looking back on this role, I felt like a highschool jock that peaks too early. I still got to work on some fascinating things at Uber but in terms of actual badassery and impact, nothing will ever top my time at the US Treasury.

To Amar, JD, Chunger, Katz, Fred, James, Alan, Chris, Shailesh, Ernest and a few others that I apologize for missing, thank you for giving a 25 year old, that had been struggling to find a job in Finance for a year, the opportunity of a lifetime.

That’s it for this week.

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