> Found a smoother way to sort numbers that reduced the "whirrrrrr" noise our disks made. It turns out this reduces disk failure rates by 1%, arrested nanoscale structural damage to the buildings our servers are in, allowed a reduction in necessary PPE, elongaded depreciation offsets and other things -- this one line of code has saved Google a billion dollars

Hah! I mean, if you can truly prove a business benefit by improving performance, I’m sure that you’d have a good shot at a promotion. Thing is it’s actually quite difficult to do so, and in the likely chance you cannot it just looks like you squandered a bunch of time for no reason.