How Do I Explain My Business Impact As A Developer To Get Promoted?

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Hey folks, I'm just leaving the office here. We're going to experience dev subreddit. Um, I don't think this one's going to take my whole drive, but uh the topic is around uh showing business impact. And the way that this post is written is like uh like I'm not going to do it justice in this conversation. So, it's kind of unfortunate, but this would be a great kind of thing to do in a YouTube video and I could share my screen and show you. But um I think it the language in it really speaks to why I see this being a challenge for this person. And so they the whole thing with their post is they're like I have to do a presentation in a couple of months to demonstrate my business impact so that I can get a promotion to senior or I don't know if it was to senior but to get a promotion.

And like I don't man I don't like I don't love how that's set up in the first place but that's not really the point. um they essentially say something along the lines of like I have to do this and they say like I have had a lot of business impact but then they go on and list out a bunch of things but the challenge and they're looking for some input on this right but the challenge and how they've phrased everything is that it's just a lot of like actions that they took And it's uh it it literally by listing a whole lot of things that way just absolutely does not explain impact which is like uh which is very unfortunate. Like I said, you kind of like having the the list in front would be super helpful, but it was like um you one of the closest things I can think of is like helping others.

Um and like yeah there is a lot of benefit to that but it's like you know shipped most lines of code did the most PRs um just like all these things where it's like those are those are activities that are probably acrewing to delivering value like probably but um but also not necessarily right like I could go write a ton of code a ton ton of lines of code. I could tell, you know, co-pilot go write whatever and like, hey, look, I landed all this code. But like, I mean, in a perfect world, if all of that code was contributing to actual delivered value to a customer, then great, then yeah, I would be having tons of impact. But it's not um there's a correlation and it's not a causation, right? like lots of lines of code does not cause uh you know impact or business value being delivered.

There is a a correlation that you know potentially and it's not a it's a correlation. It's not a guarantee, right? Like if you delivered tons and tons of business impact perhaps there could be a correlation where you also had plenty of code that was shipped to go along with it. So, I think one of the challenges with what this person's saying and uh is is really just like they're thinking about the things that they did and not like why that's helpful. And the the harsh way to like in my opinion harsh way to frame the question that helps you get to that answer is like for all those things that you're listing like why should someone care? It sounds like a like a harsh question. It's not to suggest like that that the thing that you're listening doesn't have value, but when you answer that question, why should someone care?

And you keep drilling into that, I think that's where you can start arriving at like answering that question for yourself, right? So, for example, you know, I I shipped the most lines of code out of people on my team. Okay? Like, why should I care? Well, that means like I was doing the most things. Okay, but like why should I care? Right? If you keep drilling into that, I would imagine you kind of get to this point where it's like, well, I built this and I built this and I built this. Okay. Well, why should I care? And when you start picking apart those things, well, it's like, well, this thing, this is the thing that like we had to go launch because it was going to impact a lot of customers. And okay, well, so tell me about how that impacted the customers, right?

And you you start breaking these things down and all of a sudden like you start getting to the point where this is the thing that I did that delivered value. Here was the value. Here's who it affected. Here's the the significance of it. Like to quantify it. And suddenly you realize like that we're at a point in the conversation where that has nothing to do with lines of code, how many PRs, how many design docs you did. It has nothing to do with it at that point. Does it mean that all of those things were not useful? Does it mean that you shouldn't have done any of those things? Like, no, absolutely not. It's not that's not the implication of that statement. It's just that those things on their own are not the business value. Those are not the impact, right?

It's like you could like I'm going to try to use like a devil's advocate example because I personally think that um that individuals that help we were literally talking about this today like I really truly believe that individuals on a team that can help other people on the team be more effective. I think that's like one of the best qualities of of an a software engineer and arguably of anyone working in a team, right? But you could make the argument, so what? You you helped 10 people on the team, like did that translate into value being delivered? um like on the surface like you actually can't really say that but like if you were to do that exercise I just explained where it's like you know well I was helping Timmy and Timmy was working on this thing and then Timmy was able to actually

make progress on this and and land this thing and that had impact like cool like you were part of that and also now you've enabled Timmy to help other people kind of do this thing we got to pass this guy I don't get it, man. You can't be driving below the speed limit on the highway. There's no Ain't nobody got time for that. Um, we all know that, right? Yeah. So, like that's one where I feel like that one feels kind of awkward to talk about because I do think that that's a really helpful thing for software engineers to focus on, but it gets harder to convey the the actual impact of that. Oh, come on. Let's go. This guy doesn't have lights on. This is crazy talk. How do you get on the highway with no lights like an absolute dummy? That's insane, man. Um, yeah.

And I like I wanted to talk about this topic because I think like it is a common challenge and like I don't I don't think that people make it um I don't think we offer a lot of support generally and like trying to help people navigate this. It's like you see it for people like oh you're writing a resume well you have to demonstrate impact like talk about your impact and it's like well how the hell do I do that? like what is tell me what it means, right? Like how am I supposed to do it if I don't understand what I need to be doing with that. And so I I do think that it's tricky for a lot of people. And I I don't think that we we as in, you know, uh whether it's managers, whether that's more senior developers, I don't think we do a good job in like helping people navigate that truly.

Um give me one sec. There's going to be a bunch of lane changes and I can't multitask. Don't beep at me. Okay, truck. You got to go past cuz you're not going to let me in. And then I got to get over one more. Okay. Um, so like I I get why someone like writing this post, I'm not talking about this to to be condescending to them. I just think it's such a good example where it's highlighting you can see that they're looking at all this stuff and going like, I know I did a lot of Like I know that. And they're probably right. And if you're thinking about this and going like, you know, I know I've done a lot of work. I've been keeping busy. I've been doing all the stuff that I'm, you know, been tasked with like focus on the right priorities because it's been assigned to you and you've been aligned that way.

And when you want to go talk about those things, you come up with a list the same way that's like here is all like the things that I did. It's not like the what you did. It's like why those things are valuable. And I often think that we miss this when we're talking about um like work streams, right? So like I've seen this happen so much and I I'm sure I've been guilty of it plenty and I you know try to do a better job with it, but it's like we're talking with people on a team and it's like okay well I'm ready for the next you know wrapping up my work. I'm ready to pick up the next thing. like what have we got? And it's like, well, this this is the next priority. And like we get into like here's how it here's what we need to do.

Here's how it gets done. Here's when we need it done by it. But like we we so often miss why. And um I think sometimes, you know, like I could I could say from my perspective, I I probably am sitting there going like, "Oh, I know why." Like it's obvious why. like to me maybe especially because I had to go through like a prioritization process. So like for me it probably is obvious why and I think it's easy to assume that it just must be obvious to other people. And I don't think that that's fair because I think more often than not like you could add a lot of value into someone's uh like work efforts by explaining why And so I'm saying this because depending on your role, right? Like if you're in a management position, like literally give this some thought like how often are you actually explaining to people why things are important?

Because I I would wager that for most of us, I don't have stats on this, but I would wager that most of the time we don't do a good job explaining why. And if you're a, you know, a software developer that if like I want you to think about this like think about the work that you're doing right now, do you know why that's important? And like if you're, you know, if the if the answer is like purely well because this is the next thing that has to get done or because it unblocks the next piece of work, like that's that's fine. Do you know why that's important? Do you know what what you're recruiting to with that work? Because if the answer is no, I I do really think that this is a good opportunity and something to to try doing more of like ask why.

And I don't I don't mean to suggest that's like, you know, someone saying here's the next priority. And you ask why in a way that's like um like you don't believe someone that it's a priority. Like why would I do that? Um but more like cool makes you know maybe on the surface makes sense what the ask is but like you know why why is this of value to the the customer or like to the the target audience like you you could ask what and why. Um but really trying to understand like why you need to go do that thing I think is helpful. Um, I think the other reason that I really like this is that the more comfortable that people get in conversations like that, um, the more that I think that people when they're hearing why, they can they can challenge it in a healthy way.

So, the goal, like I'm saying, the goal is not to like to be like, why why do you need me to do that? I don't want to do it kind of thing just to resist it. But it's like let's talk about why this you know this work stream is important and as you're going through it if you actually genuinely feel that how that work stream is structured and what that work is. If you're like looking at that compared to why that's supposed to be important and you're like I don't agree with that. Like if truly you think this is uh you know the reason that we're doing this to accomplish this goal now that you've explained it to me that's the end goal that we want. If you're like I don't think that this this work stream is the thing that gets us there. That's such an awesome opportunity to be like whoa whoa whoa before before we go down this path this is the goal you're after.

Let's you know maybe take a step back. Um, I think that when people aren't comfortable having conversations like this, like we can end up wasting a lot of time thinking like, hey, we prioritize this thing. This is why we think it's important. People go do it. And it's like, wait a second. Like, that actually wasn't the valuable thing to go spend time on. Um, I'm saying all of this because I feel like this helps build up an understanding when you want to talk about impact. Right now, when you're going through this list of things that you've done, it's not just I have a list of things that I did. A list of poll requests is not impact, right? Like that that list is not impact. However, if you can look at what you did like when you were completing those poll requests, what was that acrewing to?

Like what truly what is the the end user or whatever target audience that you're delivering value to? What was that value? What was the goal that you were trying to accomplish with that? And the goal the goal should not be like I had to I had to finish my my tickets for the sprint, you know. The goal is not because we needed to close 25 story points and I closed 15 of them. So like we got more story points done. That's not impact, right? That is that is a measurable thing along the way. It might be a a cor again like back to correlation. It might be a proxy for some type of impact. I think it's a poor proxy personally, but that's why it's like you got to dig deeper like of those story points, what are the things you actually delivered and then why do those things matter?

So, I think I'm going to be kind of going in circles talking about the same thing if I keep it up. I hope that makes sense. Um, so genuinely when you're trying to think through like what impact has my work had, there's nothing wrong with starting with like a list of like here is what I did. But um that's not like the impact is not demonstrated just by a list of things you did. It's like why do those things matter? So I think that why is a very important question and I just wanted to give you that reminder because if you don't know why you can be asking that earlier. So hope that helps. Uh I think again it's a post on experienced devs if you want to go check it out and scroll through. I can't remember the actual title but um I don't know by the time I post these videos it's like you don't have to scroll too far on experienced devs if you want to see it.

If you're watching this and it's super old, sorry. That's why you got to subscribe so you can see these videos as soon as they come out, right? That's a good reminder for you to subscribe. And if you have questions that you want answered on code, leave them below in the comments. You can go to code commute.com. You can submit questions anonymously that way. You can message Devleer or Nick Cosantino on LinkedIn. Uh, pick any platform. I go by Dev Devleer. you can send me a message there and I will uh happily keep you anonymous and uh try to answer your software engineering or career questions. So if you enjoyed that um I got other channels and stuff if you want to check those out. So Dev Leader is my main YouTube channel where I do programming tutorials primarily in C but there's a lot of AI tooling.

So if you want to see how I'm building stuff using AI um you can check that out. Those are like edited tutorials so you can uh not feel like it's totally totally me winging it in a car. Um there is the Dev Leader podcast channel. I interview other software engineers. You can hear about their career journeys and stuff like that. And then I do a live stream every Monday 7:00 p.m. Pacific. I generally take topics from this channel and we go over them together. And then I have Dev Leader Path to Tech where I do resume reviews. Um, this one I'm not as up to. I gotta catch up on some of them, but uh, yeah, you can send in RS. I review them for free. It's just like it's not the most in full transparency, it's not the most timely thing because I'm reviewing résumés for free to be honest with you.

So, um, yeah, I I would love if you check those channels out if they're helpful for you and I will see you in the next video. Take care.