Readit NewsEarly in my career as a software engineer, I developed a reputation for speeding things up. This was back in the day where algorithm knowledge was just as important as the ability to examine the output of a compiler, every new Intel processor was met with a ton of anticipation, and Carmak and Abrash were rapidly becoming famous.
Anyway, the 22 year old me unexpectedly gets invited to a customer meeting with a large multinational. I go there not knowing what to expect. Turns out, they were not happy with the speed of our product.
Their VP of whatever said, quoting: "every saved second here adds $1M to our yearly profit". I was absolutely floored. Prior to that moment I couldn't even dream of someone placing a dollar amount on speed, and so directly. Now 20+ years later it still counts as one of the top 5 highlights of my career.
P.S. Mentioning as a reaction to the first sentence in the blog post. But the author is correct when she states that this happens rarely.
P.P.S. There was another engineer in the room, who had the nerve to jokingly ask the VP: "so if we make it execute in 0 seconds, does it mean you're going to make an infinite amount of money?". They didn't laugh, although I thought it was quite funny. Hey, Doug! :)
I'd not be surprised to hear that this is complete nonsense, but it's a memorable story. A simpler version of this story is that people have steadily drunk less since WW2 when going out, and you're more likely to go out when away from home.
I was also going to hypothesize that players are significantly mentally equipped to cope with away pressures and their tactical shape stays more consistent regardless of being home or away.
Your framework’s intriguing. If it can map this to clear business outcomes (e.g., ‘X% faster delivery in 3 months’), I’d test it. What’s your angle—systems thinking, behavioral psychology, or something else?
P.S. For context: I lead eng at a Series B SaaS co. My ‘stuck’ example: Tech debt costs us ~20% velocity, but ROI arguments fail with revenue-focused execs.
I think someone had already mentioned that it would be useful to have this as an extension to scan existing installed extensions but would there be a way to scan just prior to extension installation?
I'm so glad I didn't have cell phones when I was a kid. I would have never been able to make it through school. Good luck.
I've worked as a software engineer and as a consultant and went from engineering to business back to engineering again.