If his monetary value to the company was as said why would any other metric like complexity even remotely matter or need convincing assuming the main goal of the company was to make money.
Money would matter even more than the interpersonal stuff in most cases but on top of it even the managers treasured him so there should've been even less of an issue of communicating value.
Getting bored is totally understandable though given his calibre but that's a separate issue from how the company evaluates performance.
> If his monetary value to the company was as said why would any other metric like complexity even remotely matter
Here is why: I turned off a feature flag in our feature flagging service which saved company 10% infra cost, do you think I can be promoted to Staff+ and lead 50 engineers?
Promotions and/or recognitions in corporate environments works differently.
I don't agree with it, but this is how it works: If what you did feels simple, anyone else can do it as well, why should we promote you for finding such silly mistake or improvement.
Models of extra compensation works elsewhere, like commissions and base salaries. I would think we could come up with something for engineers and ops in return for saving the company money that doesn't result in exploitative behavior.
There is just no collective bargaining power to put it into effect.
Same with executives and upper management.
One cannot be a director/VP of 3 people. They need an empire…
One can be a VP of 0 people.
Look into what the title means at banks!
I was an Executive Director / Vice President at Goldman with 0 reports.
Banks are the inversion where a Director is higher than a VP! An ED w/o reports is actually moderately impressive though!
Well, I was on the tech side which (at least at Goldman) has comparatively higher powered titles at less reports compared to the real bankers.
I suspect it's because the tech side doesn't run the model where ambitious young people without a clear idea of what to do go work for an investment bank for three years as sort-of 'finishing school'. So there are less juniors to herd for the techies.
> staff+
Maybe. It looking easy isn't the point. If you have the knowledge and skills such that doing so is a semi-repeatable endeavor, especially in a world where your colleagues apparently missed that 10% savings lying on the floor, is that not (part of) the point of a promotion? [0]
> lead 50 engineers
That's a totally separate ballgame. Nothing in your example says anything about leadership ability. Maybe you have those skills, and maybe you don't, but technical acumen is separate from leadership.
[0] https://mosaicstrategy.us/2016/10/10/know-where-to-tap/
> If his monetary value to the company was as said why would any other metric like complexity even remotely matter or need convincing assuming the main goal of the company was to make money.
I'll just be the Nth commenter to say it, but corporations, especially larger ones, are anything but efficient. I don't know if it ever was true, except maybe for companies focused on producing high volumes of highly standardized/specific products in a competitive environment. That's not to say that efficiency isn't desirable or beneficial in general, but as soon as it becomes difficult to put a value tag on the work being done (which unfortunately gets harder in more services oriented corporations), competing for clever ideas just rewards less than competing for the boss's attention. There's no justice or fairness in that.
Companies can be efficient and inefficient at the same time. Efficient at some things, and inefficient at other things.
For things with direct bottom line impact and fierce competition, many companies can suddenly become very efficient. But in a big company, that's often the exception rather than the rule.
> even the managers treasured him so there should've been even less of an issue of communicating value.
I’m not a fan of doing politicking, bjut after much courses on writing and communication, I strongly believe that such simple solutions could have been presented in a way to justify rewards.
There are people that do nothing worthwhile and can find words to justify themselves. If someone brings value, you can find words to earn him recognition.
This is what i hate about modern corporate culture (or human culture in general perhaps).
I dont want to expend effort politiking. I dont want to expend effort blowing my own trumpet. The value of my work is self-evident, but requires an equally intelligent person to understand.
And most people do not understand, and thus, fail to recognize the value.
I don't think this has anything to do with _modern_ corporate culture. There was never a golden age where corporate culture was better across the board.
Sometimes they do understand, but often your nice work may highlights someone's else egregious errors. And the political landscape may not work in your favor. So private praise (if you're lucky) and public silence.
Oh, I've worked in more than a dozen of software companies. When it comes to planning activities and setting goals, I've rarely seen a lot of sense.
I mean, we are in the industry where it used to be a standard practice, not so long ago, to deliver daily reports about one's activities while "planking", or throwing a beach ball to another person doing some silly acrobatics...
It should come as no surprise that there's no rigorous assessment protocol for these kinds of things anywhere. Retrospectively, I will admit, that enormous amount of effort and resources are wasted due to bad planning. But it's still not done.
I can imagine that with the field becoming more competitive, eventually, the industry specialists will come together and try to address the problem, but so far and for so long the resources just kept flowing in, the huge waste wasn't really a problem.