| How do you make people trust your judgement enough that they'll take your suggestions seriously? While management at most companies is dysfunctional, this problem is 90% our fault. Try asking a hacker how many dollars they contributed to the bottom line at their last job, and they'll give you a blank stare. Try asking 10 hackers what their top 1-3 most valuable contributions were at their previous company. Most of them will immediately dive into the details of what they did rather than how it affected the business. Ask them to quantify those achievements in terms of dollars, or user growth, or any metrics that the business cares about, and maybe 2 will be able to answer. I'm not talking about asking for immediate answers either. Most hackers can take days and still have a hard time quantifying their contributions. This gives the impression that the most programmers-even great ones-either are completely unaware of how they affect the business, or don't care. And if you don't know how something impacts the business, no one will trust your ability to prioritize. We as a community need to learn to speak the language of dollars, growth, and business objectives if we want to be taken seriously. Otherwise we're just tossing out ideas without articulating how valuable they are. |