You do not have worth if you don’t understand impact?

“You do not have worth if you don’t understand impact.” that statement, which I heard in a recent meeting (not directed to me) kept me thinking all weekend.

For years as with most developers, we were focused on technical expertise thinking our design patterns, our quality of code, our PR, our commits are the single source of truth of our worth. We believed that our technical understanding and capabilities alone is enough to “sell” ourself during interviews or to management.

But the truth is, there is a huge gap in this mindset. The most expert developer who says “We optimized the SQL queries reducing the database query time by 60%” fell short from another developers who can say “We optimized the SQL queries which accelerated our report generation, allowing us to deliver the critical report submission 4 hours ahead of the customer dateline, mitigating a $100,000 fine”

Same technical effort, same feat, only the exception was that one recognizes a quantifiable impact it does to the company profit and loss (that the management are normally measured upon). This mind shift not only allows you to be more recognizable to the management but also for yourself to recognize that your work creates a huge impact.

So my call-to-action, in an attempt not to be too cliche; Is for developers to dive deeper and measure the impact that your work deliver, because truly your worth has always been there all along and it is about time we learn to recognize and articulate them.