What looks better on a resume?
1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20%
2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20%
If possible, always work on some version of option 2.
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 :)
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.
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.
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 ...
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.
Many teams don't invest in the tooling required to measure this kind of impact, but it's possible to ballpark it.
But it's 20 people working on it, from design to sales to ops to customers relations to devs. How could you possibly pin 20% of the profit (not even the turnover, but the profit) on one guy?
Even if he improved the SQL queries and that immediately led to more sales, making the choice to work on that over other things was probably not his.
It’s a team effort. Being part of the team who did X is enough. You can then talk about your specific individual contribution when appropriate.
Just like everyone in an NBA team “wins the championship” and gets to put “winner” on their resume. Or how hockey players say “I won the Stanley cup”, even though they did it as a team.
There's a big difference between:
1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20%
2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp on a multi-million dollar project.
Most software devs work on tiny fragments of large projects. Let's say I work in Microsoft on Bluetooth stack in Windows 10 - how do I translate that into increased Microsoft profits?
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.
There are definitely people who are impactful enough and deserve to make bold "I" statements but they are in the vast minority.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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).
You should of course have someone in management agree to your numbers and approve that you can use it on your CV.
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.
you are agreeing with me
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.
I don’t get that. Solving an extra ticket per day should somehow correlate with either revenue increase(indirect) or cost saving(direct), right?
Managers want big teams. It makes them look good. Having 15 direct reports looks better than having 10. That means the manager needs his people to be efficient enough to look good on paper, but inefficient enough that he gets to hire more people. Having a bigger budget and higher headcount makes him look good.