4 ms·

Genuine question for those saying the CV items don't show the impact of this guy's work: How are you supposed to know what the impact of your work is, especial

by CM30 1mo ago

Genuine question for those saying the CV items don't show the impact of this guy's work: How are you supposed to know what the impact of your work is, especially in a large company? Because my experience is that most employers don't tell you how your work affected the company's KPIs or what not. You don't have access to the analytics saying how your changes affected conversion rates or visitor counts or whatever else. Do most people just make this stuff up? Guess somewhat plausible numbers? Or are there companies that tell their employees exactly what effect their work is having on the company and how much impact their actions are having as a whole?

ytoawwhra92 1mo ago
Make it up, exaggerate, claim credit for organisational achievements. Sometimes it's just a matter of rephrasing your CV items and removing all the words that hedge or otherwise water down your contributions. But in all it's a bit silly because employers will say they want to hire people who do "impactful" work but most of them won't let people pick what they work on, or tell them how what they're doing contributes to the organisation's goals. If you want to build an HN-approved CV you'll need to find an employer who will give you clear information about company KPIs and will let you self-select the work you do to improve those KPIs.
- CM30 1mo ago
  Yeah that makes sense. Gotta just figure out how to word my achievements in such a way that there's some sort of obvious, visible impact. > If you want to build an HN-approved CV you'll need to find an employer who will give you clear information about company KPIs and will let you self-select the work you do to improve those KPIs. Yeah, pretty much. And even outside of your resume/CV, it definitely feels like whether you do well in a company comes down to whether you're lucky/persuasive enough to be put on a greenfield project with a lot of support from management and interesting problems to solve or stuck on a badly run project with no meaningful results in sight. Still remember the one company things didn't work out at for that reason. Joined at the same time as one other developer, and they seemingly got put on all the interesting projects where they could instantly make a huge impact on the organisation. Yeah, it's a lot easier to do well in a role if things line up so nicely.
  - ytoawwhra92 1mo ago
    Yeah, it's profoundly unfair in many ways. Most people in their early career have very little influence over what they work on, but that work goes on to profoundly shape their subsequent opportunities. Knowing this, though, you can redirect your career by taking a role that will look great on your CV even if the role itself is horrible. I did this in my early career and it worked well. > stuck on a badly run project with no meaningful results in sight You don't need meaningful results, really. Just projects that sound impressive to prospective future employers where a backchannel won't throw you under the bus. Like if you spend two years on some overhaul of an internal system that turns into a horrible shambolic quagmire, unless your colleagues blame you for the quagmire just leave that part off your CV and say what the project was meant to achieve.
GrumpyYoungMan 1mo ago
You describe impact based on the scope of your job role. Most of the things you do day to day could conceivably be phrased of "I am doing my job and I overcame unusual challenge X / did Y to prevent the problem from occurring next time / taught Z to my coworkers to improve the team." List out those things, take out "I did my job..." part (because doing your job is the bare minimum) and put out those extra things on your resume as your impact. Contrary to what others say, don't make stuff up unless you're a particularly skilled liar. If you have to ask the questions you are asking, you aren't.

by CM30 1mo ago

ytoawwhra92 1mo ago

Make it up, exaggerate, claim credit for organisational achievements. Sometimes it's just a matter of rephrasing your CV items and removing all the words that hedge or otherwise water down your contributions. But in all it's a bit silly because employers will say they want to hire people who do "impactful" work but most of them won't let people pick what they work on, or tell them how what they're doing contributes to the organisation's goals. If you want to build an HN-approved CV you'll need to find an employer who will give you clear information about company KPIs and will let you self-select the work you do to improve those KPIs.

CM30 1mo ago
Yeah that makes sense. Gotta just figure out how to word my achievements in such a way that there's some sort of obvious, visible impact. > If you want to build an HN-approved CV you'll need to find an employer who will give you clear information about company KPIs and will let you self-select the work you do to improve those KPIs. Yeah, pretty much. And even outside of your resume/CV, it definitely feels like whether you do well in a company comes down to whether you're lucky/persuasive enough to be put on a greenfield project with a lot of support from management and interesting problems to solve or stuck on a badly run project with no meaningful results in sight. Still remember the one company things didn't work out at for that reason. Joined at the same time as one other developer, and they seemingly got put on all the interesting projects where they could instantly make a huge impact on the organisation. Yeah, it's a lot easier to do well in a role if things line up so nicely.
- ytoawwhra92 1mo ago
  Yeah, it's profoundly unfair in many ways. Most people in their early career have very little influence over what they work on, but that work goes on to profoundly shape their subsequent opportunities. Knowing this, though, you can redirect your career by taking a role that will look great on your CV even if the role itself is horrible. I did this in my early career and it worked well. > stuck on a badly run project with no meaningful results in sight You don't need meaningful results, really. Just projects that sound impressive to prospective future employers where a backchannel won't throw you under the bus. Like if you spend two years on some overhaul of an internal system that turns into a horrible shambolic quagmire, unless your colleagues blame you for the quagmire just leave that part off your CV and say what the project was meant to achieve.

GrumpyYoungMan 1mo ago

You describe impact based on the scope of your job role. Most of the things you do day to day could conceivably be phrased of "I am doing my job and I overcame unusual challenge X / did Y to prevent the problem from occurring next time / taught Z to my coworkers to improve the team." List out those things, take out "I did my job..." part (because doing your job is the bare minimum) and put out those extra things on your resume as your impact. Contrary to what others say, don't make stuff up unless you're a particularly skilled liar. If you have to ask the questions you are asking, you aren't.