[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

> a platform engineer who makes internal tools

You wouldn't run an A/B test to quantify your impact, but you could pretty easily do before/after metrics (or just collect them on the way during a graduated rollout) for any feature you're rolling out. It should be straightforward to quantify productivity benefit for a large initiative.

> How much of that revenue is attributable to the manager's superior skill

The output of a manager is the output of their team. We can't A/B test managers (or at least, we probably shouldn't), but we can look at a cohort of managers and see how well their teams are generating business impact. Combined with other data (e.g., upward feedback surveys, level-skip 1on1s, retention metrics, etc.), we can measure the impact of a manager.

[esafak]

> The output of a manager is the output of their team.

People say that but it makes no sense. That means the same manager would have a different "output" going from one team to another. Are you going to cut his/her salary if he leaves a big, successful team to help fix a flailing team because it has less output?

I get it: doing it this way is easy. My ideal is marginal attributable revenue or profit. How much better are you than the next person? We can haggle over the marginal part but I'm not conceding on attribution. Otherwise you're mooching off other people's work. Why are we paying you the big bucks? Show me what you did.

[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

> People say that but it makes no sense. [...] Are you going to cut his/her salary if he leaves a big, successful team to help fix a flailing team because it has less output?

I think it works fine if we add on the concept that a good manager operates on a different timescale. The on-boarding timeline for a first-line EM can be months at some companies.

In your example, the manager moving over should be given a compensation package based on the expected value he's going to get out of the flailing team once he works his magic. (And, indeed, this is exactly the kind of package often given to externally-hired CEOs brought in for turnarounds.)

> Otherwise you're mooching off other people's work. [...] Show me what you did.

But that's just it. The manager's skill is improved utilization of resources. The leader's skill is improved direction of resource utilization. By definition, those skills are expressed on the canvas of the team they lead.

Or, more simply: A leader without followers isn't actually a leader at all!

And, indeed, we see that in the real world too: A successful executive in one company goes elsewhere, doesn't fit in with the new company's culture, and performs terribly. It's a tale as old as time.