[ChuckMcM]

I completely endorse the suggestion that engineers should learn to understand this concept. If you learn one thing in your career, it should be this. One of the differences between working at BigCorp versus working at SmallCo or VentureCo is that in the smaller companies the relationship is much easier to trace out.

Dan Warmenhoven (when he was CEO of Network Appliance) had a wonderful way to very clearly explaining this in an accessible way. From gross margin to net margin to the fraction of the margin that was allocated to engineering.

But the other concept, on-off splits, is also something which I think managers need to understand a bit too. When I was at Google their compensation system tended to unfairly bias toward people delivering features and I and others argued for recognition of people that made delivering those features possible (which finally came about in 2009). As a manager you have to recognize when someone on your team or in your organization is helping the whole team work better or get more done. Whether that is an administrative person who is keeping things in the group calendar current or a tools engineer who is keeping the build running smoothly. If you're lucky they will be sick for a week and you'll see the entire organization hiccup as it adjusts. I say lucky because that will give you visibility into their contribution you might not otherwise have until it is too late.

[rsp1984]

When I was at Google their compensation system tended to unfairly bias toward people delivering features and I and others argued for recognition of people that made delivering those features possible (which finally came about in 2009).

Interesting. I started at Google as a SWE in 2009 and I did not see any of this. I left in 2011 so I don't know how the situation is today.

However when I worked there it was obvious that when promotion cycle came everyone was first to claim they "put feature X into Y", even if they were just the ones doing the wiring, not the ones implementing the actual thing.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that promotions were (probably still are) in the hands of "promotion committees" (which most often did not have a damn clue about your product or team and who contributed what in reality) and not in the hands of your boss. As a result I saw promotions biased towards the most shameless liars and self-promoters.

[hinkley]

I’ve had coworkers confide in me that their value isn’t being seen. Some were really good, some were constant problems to be managed. I have seen this scenario you observed, and my standing advice is take a week off.

If people are glad you came back then you are correct and you need a raise or more power or both. If they just ask you about your trip then your perception of your value is out of whack.

[vehementi]

If they're glad you're back maybe you're a silo or bottleneck

[hinkley]

Certainly. But that sort aren’t the kind who intimate something like that in private. Everybody knows what they think of themselves. And in some cases they know what I think of them too.

I’ve been indispensable before. It’s a great feeling if you don’t know any better. But there are other ways to be indispensable besides holding all the important bits in your head and refusing to share it.

[ChuckMcM]

I like that. It does require careful observation though if you're the manager.

[karmakaze]

> In basketball, there’s a metric they started tracking in recent years called on-off splits. Simply, it’s meant to capture how much better your team is with a given player on or off the court. I love this metric because it’s an attempt to measure an individual’s impact on a team’s performance with an acknowledgement that individual statistics can’t paint the full picture.

Also found that 'on-off splits' metric so resounding.