> 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.

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BobbyTables2 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Same with executives and upper management.

One cannot be a director/VP of 3 people. They need an empire…

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jmalicki 21 hours ago | parent [-]

One can be a VP of 0 people.

Look into what the title means at banks!

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eru 18 hours ago | parent [-]

I was an Executive Director / Vice President at Goldman with 0 reports.

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jmalicki 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Banks are the inversion where a Director is higher than a VP! An ED w/o reports is actually moderately impressive though!

	▲	eru 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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sivalus 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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hansvm 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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/