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Yeah I almost don't believe that this article is real. They mention that employees have to do things like project how much revenue their position can bring in.

Yeah I almost don't believe that this article is real. They mention that employees have to do things like project how much revenue their position can bring in. That seems... insane. That's not the job of an individual contributor. Assuming this article isn't bait, then the management are very incompetent.

kcplate 3y ago
Projecting revenue happens practically every day for sales pros and to be honest, I kind of feel like it’s probably a good exercise for non-sales folks as well. It puts your contribution and compensation into more holistic company perspective and should make it very real to you just what kind of layoff risk you are at within the organization. If you can’t articulate your value to the company maybe your company cannot either and that is a bad place to be as an employee…
- hgsgm 3y ago
  How much is it worth to build the pipeline that generates the movie poster images in Netflix?
- rybosworld 3y ago
  "I kind of feel like it’s probably a good exercise for non-sales folks as well" That's really hard for me to buy. In a world where knowledge workers are specialists, why force everyone to learn the financial side? By the same logic - Why not ask sales people to estimate how long a new software feature would take? Also, comparing sales to any other role in this context is disingenuous. Sales already know how much revenue they generate based on each sale. Projecting that out according to some percentage becomes trivial. I.e., "I sold 100 this year, and think I can do 105 next year". It's barely an "exercise". For nearly every other role, the effort is so abstract that it's virtually useless. How does a QA/PM/Agile Lead measure their revenue impact? The answer is they don't. Because the work they do is part of a larger organism that generates revenue. It's the managements job to know how much revenue the organism will generate.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Yes, I agree--it's totally ridiculous to ask non-sales employees to show how they directly (or even indirectly) bring in revenue. As an extreme example, the janitor's job is not expected to be tied to revenue. Tons of worker-bee office jobs don't impact revenue, even indirectly. This is not an exercise that is very useful to individual employees. If your senior management doesn't understand how your team, as a large unit working together, impacts revenue, then that's kind of the fault of that management.
    - phkahler 3y ago
      >> If your senior management doesn't understand how your team, as a large unit working together, impacts revenue, then that's kind of the fault of that management. Let's be more blunt. Then that management needs to go. Repeat at each level all the way up.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      > If your senior management doesn't understand how your team, as a large unit working together, impacts revenue, then that's kind of the fault of that management. I am sure they do, but this isn’t about their understanding of your impact on revenue, it’s about your understanding of your impact on the company revenue. If you dont understand your value, you cannot argue your value from a position of strength. For what it’s worth, every position in a company from bottom to the top has an impact on revenue.
      - kramerger 3y ago
        This is the attitude you see when someone promotes a salesman to CEO. When you are a hammer, all problems will look like a nail to you. Even in a small company such as a startup, people have specialisations that only when put together will create some value. It is practically impossible for a lowly dev to estimate how much his work this week have contributed to the company bottom line.
        kcplate 3y ago
flashgordon 3y ago
So having been in many faangs/maangs (let us just say "modern" tech companies) I can very much attest to this sadly. "Impact" is used as a way to add a bunch of randomness and bias to a calibration so that you can decide how many fall into each rating bucket. Even worse is with promotions and promotion committees!

kcplate 3y ago

Projecting revenue happens practically every day for sales pros and to be honest, I kind of feel like it’s probably a good exercise for non-sales folks as well. It puts your contribution and compensation into more holistic company perspective and should make it very real to you just what kind of layoff risk you are at within the organization. If you can’t articulate your value to the company maybe your company cannot either and that is a bad place to be as an employee…

hgsgm 3y ago
How much is it worth to build the pipeline that generates the movie poster images in Netflix?
rybosworld 3y ago
"I kind of feel like it’s probably a good exercise for non-sales folks as well" That's really hard for me to buy. In a world where knowledge workers are specialists, why force everyone to learn the financial side? By the same logic - Why not ask sales people to estimate how long a new software feature would take? Also, comparing sales to any other role in this context is disingenuous. Sales already know how much revenue they generate based on each sale. Projecting that out according to some percentage becomes trivial. I.e., "I sold 100 this year, and think I can do 105 next year". It's barely an "exercise". For nearly every other role, the effort is so abstract that it's virtually useless. How does a QA/PM/Agile Lead measure their revenue impact? The answer is they don't. Because the work they do is part of a larger organism that generates revenue. It's the managements job to know how much revenue the organism will generate.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Yes, I agree--it's totally ridiculous to ask non-sales employees to show how they directly (or even indirectly) bring in revenue. As an extreme example, the janitor's job is not expected to be tied to revenue. Tons of worker-bee office jobs don't impact revenue, even indirectly. This is not an exercise that is very useful to individual employees. If your senior management doesn't understand how your team, as a large unit working together, impacts revenue, then that's kind of the fault of that management.
  - phkahler 3y ago
    >> If your senior management doesn't understand how your team, as a large unit working together, impacts revenue, then that's kind of the fault of that management. Let's be more blunt. Then that management needs to go. Repeat at each level all the way up.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    > If your senior management doesn't understand how your team, as a large unit working together, impacts revenue, then that's kind of the fault of that management. I am sure they do, but this isn’t about their understanding of your impact on revenue, it’s about your understanding of your impact on the company revenue. If you dont understand your value, you cannot argue your value from a position of strength. For what it’s worth, every position in a company from bottom to the top has an impact on revenue.
    - kramerger 3y ago
      This is the attitude you see when someone promotes a salesman to CEO. When you are a hammer, all problems will look like a nail to you. Even in a small company such as a startup, people have specialisations that only when put together will create some value. It is practically impossible for a lowly dev to estimate how much his work this week have contributed to the company bottom line.
      - kcplate 3y ago

flashgordon 3y ago

So having been in many faangs/maangs (let us just say "modern" tech companies) I can very much attest to this sadly. "Impact" is used as a way to add a bunch of randomness and bias to a calibration so that you can decide how many fall into each rating bucket. Even worse is with promotions and promotion committees!