Promotion reviewers often have limited time to dive deeply into each project in a promotion packet, making it crucial to present information that quickly captures their attention.
The best way to capture their attention is by showing the impact of your work in business terms.
This approach involves translating technical achievements into quantifiable business outcomes, such as:
- increased revenue,
- cost savings,
- improved customer satisfaction.
For instance, if a project focused on optimizing and speeding up CI build time, you might calculate the cost savings from the developer hours saved due to the optimization. If the average build time decreased from 70 minutes to 30 minutes, and you have about 100 builds a day, you could write:
Bob's project improved build time from 70 minutes to 30 minutes, a 43% reduction across all builds.While seeing a quantifiable number, such as 43%, is impressive, it can be challenging for a reviewer to gauge the true impact, especially when compared to another candidate who improved a rarely used service’s uptime by 70%, from 20% to 90% uptime.
70% seems much more impactful than 43%, right? However, this comparison doesn’t portray the full picture. What if you re-wrote it as follows:
Bob's project improved build time by 43% across all mobile builds, saving 16,080* developer hours a year, which is equal to $1,608,000 annual cost savings.Do you see the difference? With just one sentence, you highlighted the impact of your work to someone who might not understand what you did and how you did it, but over $1.6 million in savings a year will clearly express its value.
These metrics make it clear how platform improvements directly contribute to the company’s bottom line. Presenting your achievements in this way helps connect your technical work with strategic business goals.
Quantifying your impact in business terms makes it easier for decision-makers to recognize and reward your contributions, paving the way for career advancement.
*Math:
(70mins * 100 builds a day)/60mins (1hour) = ~117 hours/day
(30mins * 100 builds a day)/60mins (1hour) = 50 hours/day
117 hours - 50 hours = 67 hours diff
67hours * 20 work days in a month * 12 months = 16,080 hours/year
16,080 hours/year * $100/hour (avg dev rate) = $1,608,000/year