How we communicate signals seniority

Counterpoint:

"When art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning. When painters get together, they talk about where to get the best turpentine." (Picasso, supposedly [1])

To be generous to OP, I think their point is about how to communicate in an elevator pitch, or a resume bullet point, or the first few minutes of an intro call. And in those contexts, OP is pretty reasonably correct.

What it comes down to is details.

The person citing numbers about growth, hiring, or whatever is proving they know the details of the work. And that's a great start.

The next step for the interviewer comes in following up to find out whether they actually know the details of how the work was done, why it was done that way, what was good or bad about how the work was done, and why it's good or bad.

A good follow-up question would be something like: "Great, please walk me through the story of how you took ${METRIC} from A to B, what you think went well, and what you think went poorly." That should yield a solid 10-15 minute (or more) discussion where the executive candidate can prove they have the ability to handle both minute details and grand strategy at the same time, as well as the discretion to know when they're supposed to be doing which one.

Failure to do this on the part of the interviewer is how a company ends up with so many sub-par executives. And a failure on the part of the executive to push themselves in this way, in the first place, is how our industry has ended up with so many sub-par executives.

[1]: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/10/20/turpentine/

Whenever I see numbers like that on a CV I am immediately skeptical. There's almost no possibility that the numbers you are listing were a direct result of your contribution. Also, you were probably part of a team, so it was probably a group effort. The other thing is, unless it really was all your idea, who cares how well the feature did?

I only skimmed down to the "Sign up for a 7-day free trial" Substack thing, and I already had to work hard at not throwing up in my mouth. Blessed be the random number generators that I don't work at a place like this.

The software industry has become swamped with suits optimizing their status and prestige.

100%. I've seen junior PMs fast track their careers by literally just always framing their work in terms of business outcomes. One of my reports went from entry-level to senior in 2 years by always tying her projects back to user growth or revenue impact, even if it was just bug fixes or UI tweaks. definitely a skill worth nailing early in your career.

This is exactly the kind of cringe-inducing content that I'd expect from a "PM career coach."

You can communicate understanding of the business without falling into BS slop.

Truly senior people have made such significant and real contributions that (a) their resume is mostly an afterthought and (b) the story

OK, so you admire consummate bullshitters who take credit for the combined efforts of dozens of people where they only played a part towards a larger effort. What do you want, a fucking cookie?

No, but this is how you fool non-technical people. You will not impress any technical person by skipping the "how".

It is funny since one can make outrageous claims on one's resume about impact without needing to prove anything. This doesn't work the same for the "how".

The only real decision a SW person needs to decide is whether to communicate their skill in SW or their skill in business.

Rustified a monolith with 99% SLA, SW.

Owned revenue stream that brought in 40MM with 20% YoY growth on 80% margin -> Business.

You can do either, but you probably don't have time to do both.

These tactics of slapping numbers and quantifiable metrics on resume bullet points really do remind me of the formulaic clickbait tactics on social media. Once everyone starts to do it, it leaves the same film of tacky bullshit everywhere. It's beyond actual merit and accuracy at this point.

Choice quote from this:

"""While it may be “useful” to do that refactor or redesign, or work on an annoying bug"""

Shortest but not sweetest time-capsule to an already-dead moment in our collective past, IMHO

> Based purely on the responses, who would you hire? Who would you consider for a manager role? Do you even believe this is the same person?

> The altitude of your communication signals your seniority and experience.

It's not mentioned anywhere which is the superior (to the author) response. This article is so vague that, at the end, I still could not tell which one the author preferred.

It's foolish to judge someone from a single statement. Give them something to do and see how it works out.

To me it just signals what a bullshitter you are. Most people cannot claim these "outcomes" because it takes a whole team. How do i know you made any contribution to those outcomes?

These numbers tell me the person who wrote them have a sloppy understanding of causality, at best.

I mean, I appreciate reading the concrete numbers because it gives a more detailed trampoline into interesting discussions, but don't for a second imply you, as an individual, had very much agency over the outcome at all. That would border on clinically meaningful hubris.

(I guess this opinion makes me low in seniority?)

For IT people:

"At a big IT company, I migrated the CRM to a new system and the revenue went up with 6%".

Right.

> Based purely on the responses, who would you hire? Who would you consider for a manager role? Do you even believe this is the same person?

Frankly, neither.

The first is intentionally written to be as dull and disinterested as possible, and so comes off poorly (presumably because it was designed to).

The second is a meaningless out-of-context number and corporate speak soup that doesn't really tell me anything about the prospective hire.

Obviously, this was written by and for executives in product orgs... and maybe it makes more sense there. But I'd balk at hiring anyone who talks like this into an engineering org, even at the executive level.

My BS-o-meter went off the roof reading this article