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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. So
by 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 agoThis 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 agoYou 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 agoSome things can't be measured.
- Swizec 6y agoThe 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.
- Klinky 6y agoYour original example is very specific, but your follow up clarifies that the reality is that it is vague guesswork. I think you could claim contribution, but very hard to define that line x of code written last Friday resulted directly in y% of profits. To me it signals you're probably exaggerating. You better be able to back up your reasoning behind your claim. Bold claims require bold explanations.
- Swizec 6y agoIt’s not vague guesswork at all. If you can’t measure the success of your project, why are you doing it? It’s okay, even expected, if the answer is probabilistic. What’s not okay is doing stuff for no reason. Bonus points if you’re able to tell a story like: We did X to achieve Y, but it didn’t work because Z. So we tried ...
- Klinky 6y agoThis goes back to the tying of a SQL query directly to profits. That would be an interesting story if it were true, but such a story is probably an extreme rarity. We're talking about calculating the impact of your weekly or daily work directly to profit generation. There is a level of granularity and detail to your claim that is likely impossible to realistically calculate, so it would be very hard to accept such claims at face value.
- dfcowell 6y ago"I made the query for X, an operation that is performed Y times per day, Z% faster resulting in N% increase in Xs performed daily. This meant we could (defer hiring additional headcount|do more <profit-generating/cost-limiting process dependent on X> per day)." Many teams don't invest in the tooling required to measure this kind of impact, but it's possible to ballpark it.
- ryandrake 6y agoThat’s a good example. The math doesn’t need to be precise, and you don’t need to track it down to lines of code. “Part of team of X developers who delivered product Y that produced $Z in revenue.” is enough for anyone to very roughly ballpark-estimate impact.
- Fiahil 6y agoit’s _very_ easy to calculate your impact, or the one of your team, when you work on meaningful projects. if that’s not the case, you are probably working on non-essential things.
- Klinky 6y agoDown to the lines of code written? Your product may get millions in revenue, but you wrote a single module out of hundreds, how much % do you take credit for? Also it sounds like a toxic culture if you have to constantly try to tie your day-to-day work directly to how it impacts new revenue and profits or else your work is considered worthless.
- mden 6y agoI think that's rather naive. A lot of work engineers do involves either keeping systems afloat or minor alterations that in cohort lead to a new feature but each minor alterations itself not doing anything meaningful. Evaluating individual or even team impact in those cases is _hard_. Yes, product people or in some cases managers do it but most of their numbers come with five asterisks to cover their asses as they are largely bs. There are definitely people who are impactful enough and deserve to make bold "I" statements but they are in the vast minority.
- alisonkisk 6y agoHuge grain of salt. More like a red flag. I don't want BS artists like that anywhere near me.