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I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks bett

• type_enthusiast 6y ago
  If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing. If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact. Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved.
  • oblio 6y ago
    > If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing. Yes, but they're exceptions. > Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved. The vast majority of the best paying jobs out there (FAANG), don't care at all about references. It's a big world, it depends a lot in which circles you move around, I guess.
    • type_enthusiast 6y ago
      Disclaimer: I do work at a FAANG. I'm not sure what circles you're talking about. "References" in the traditional sense may not be an important thing. But certainly being able to back your resume claims – whether with skills from that experience, or with people who will vouch for you – is important. If it wasn't, we could all just put "Optimized SQL and improved profit 20%" (or anything else) on our resumes, no? I participate in interviews from time to time. I don't ask a lot of trivia-type algorithm questions, but I do try to size up where a candidate has invested their effort so far. Have they invested it in trying (and learning) to solve problems? Or have they invested in in padding their resume? I'll take the former over the latter every time, even if they don't have a bunch of brag-points on their resume. That's just me, though shrug
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    If optimizing an internal tool can raise profits by 20%, I don't understand your disagreement. The comment you're replying to mentioned profits vs. unnoticed efficiency, not internal tools vs. consumer-facing software. If it makes a big impact, it makes a big impact. > If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact. This seems like an argument that there are no priorities and no things that are more important than other things. I don't think you believe that.
    • type_enthusiast 6y ago
      > This seems like an argument that there are no priorities and no things that are more important than other things. I don't think you believe that. On the contrary, I'm arguing that making an impact wherever you can is better than avoiding things that don't meet some criteria of "things that are likely to help my resume." The priority I'm advocating is, making an impact by applying your skills (or even better, learning new skills) to solve problems that you can find (or are brought to you). This is how you'll build a breadth of experience (which will be valuable for employers) and identify a niche that you enjoy (which will be valuable for you).
• punnerud 6y ago
  If you “improve admin interface load times by 20%” do the calculation on what that is in saved time and possible money over 5 years. Then you have both. You should of course have someone in management agree to your numbers and approve that you can use it on your CV.
  • Swizec 6y ago
    That’s why I said profits not revenue. Specifically to capture that 1 & 2 might be the same work :) Just talking in terms of business impact puts you miles ahead of other candidates in many eng jobs. Especially for levels above junior. Very important to have engineers who (want to) understand why they do what they do.
    • alisonkisk 6y ago
      Meanwhile the most wildly successful companies in history did the opposite of that and hired techies to make amazing stuff that printed money.
      • Swizec 6y ago
        > hired techies to make amazing stuff that printed money. you are agreeing with me
  • stanmancan 6y ago
    Unfortunately saving time/money is not as sexy as increasing revenue. I learned this once by creating a tool at a telecommunications company I was working at. It made it significantly faster for Technical Support to initiate a Remote Desktop session with a customer. We ran reports on how many RDP sessions we started per month; and recorded how much time the tool saved. At the time it was estimated to save about $2.1M in time savings every year, at a time when the Tech Support queues had long waits. Couldn’t get any traction with management. Had some grassroots growth internally until we were asked to shut it down since it was an unofficial tool. Meanwhile they would chase sales campaigns or marketing stunts that might result in $50-100k in new sign ups. Nobody cares how much you saved in time because it doesn’t get reported anywhere. It shows up on no important metrics. Sales going up by $100K is sexy. Admins handling an extra ticket per day because the interface is quicker isn’t.
• Klinky 6y ago
  How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.
  • peruvian 6y ago
    This should be part of the product spec or even tech spec. If you cannot measure the impact, why're you working on it?
    • Klinky 6y ago
      You are talking about the project/product itself. Does your company sit down each quarter and crunch who specifically was responsible for the revenue and profits that quarter, down to the employee or lines of code? Doubtful.
    • concreteblock 6y ago
      Some things can't be measured.
      • dfcowell 6y ago
        Challenge accepted. Do you have an example?
        • Scarblac 6y ago
          Who exactly was responsible in a company for the company's profits going up by 20% in a quarter.
  • Swizec 6y ago
    The PM you worked with should be able to answer this question. If they can’t, your project is likely a waste of time. The signal from a hiring standpoint is that you asked and cared about this. Engineers who will just do whatever are less useful/impactful than engineers who push back and care about the value they’re delivering. Even if it’s sometimes fuzzy to estimate.
• F_J_H 6y ago
  Even better: I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20%, which boosted profits by 20%.
• yongjik 6y ago
  Counterpoint: when every developer is urged to build something with "measurable impact", you end up like Google, where people launch something visible, get promoted, and move on, leaving the service to wither away.
  • Swizec 6y ago
    Arguably that means you have bad easy-to-game metrics. I wouldn't call what many (most?) Googlers do "impactful". More like "Let's keep a bunch of smart people busy so they don't get hired by our competition" If the service you built withers away when you move to a different team, it was a pet project that The Business doesn't care about (because it has zero impact). Literally the definition of a bullshit busywork job :)
  • austhrow743 6y ago
    How is this a counterpoint? The above is advice to developers seeking to improve their career, not executives at large public companies making hiring policy decisions.
  • Chris2048 6y ago
    The fact that goog is well known for starting projects then killing them, suggests to me they don't really appreciate the measurable impact of their work.