Though I've never actually seen the mythical "bottom line," I've managed to contribute to it in a tangible way this year--or so I'm told. Apparently a project I worked on earlier this year (one I never blogged about) has been tweaked and put into production by the person who inherited it from me. It's actually making money. And now some of our international groups are interested in using it too.
Kick Ass!
It's been a while since I've been able to point at something specific and say "this makes money for us" as opposed to "I help us save money by doing..." To me there's a big difference there.
It's the little things sometimes...
Posted by jzawodn at October 13, 2003 05:02 PM
So it's the top line you're contributing to that you enjoy. If you've been saving money, that very much contributes to the bottom line.
congrats jeremy... I know how good it feels to 1) contribute, and more importantly 2) be recognized, even if not extremely publicly for that contribution.
there's a lesson in your weblog post for me as a manager, and I appreciate it.
Craig:
Guess who never took a business class? :-)
Let's just say there's a line somewhere. And I may have made it move a bit.
When I did work for ValueClick one of the best thing the CTO did for us developers were to always make it clear to us how what we worked on was important, how much money it would make etc etc. It helps motivation So Much[tm].
- ask
PS sorry for two fairly shitty FPs in one day -- not sure what it was; probably that yesterday was my first day back after paternity leave.
You should consider working at a startup. With a small-scale operation you can't help but feel like you're making lines move with most things you do. Tends to give you the good feeling you mention a lot more than at a well established big company.
Of course then the tradeoff is you're always on the edge of your seat about job security. :)
Ivan:
Yeah, I've been tempted by startups on many occasions. Very tempted, in fact.
What kind of companies have you looked at (or been enticed by)? Also, why do you stay at Yahoo? You do some stuff on the side anyway, so its not like you're not participating in small-scale ventures, you're just not doing it full-time.
One of my friends just started work at Google in NYC, and he's been loving it, but I don't think he was ever a very entrepreneurial person. Still, some of the things he describes about working at Google tempt me somewhat (since I'm looking the other way, from a start-up to an established job).
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. :)
Jeremy, if you wanted to sound really smart you'd call it generating "green" dollars as opposed to "brown" dollars (another way of expressing top/bottom line, but sounding like you've got an MBA when you say it!).
I had a similar experience this week as we retrofitted our bookstore with new terminals, a new layout and all new processing equipment. Sales were up by 128K this week, which is great and truly makes you feel valuable.
All in all our department is now saving (brown dollars) or generating (green) nearly 5M$ in cash. Not bad on income of 25M$/year.
Keep at it and feel free to be tempted by startups, just approach it as you would any other job: something you'll enjoy, something you're good at and something that is worth the risk.
Contributing to the bottom line is easy.. it's making withdrawals that's hard.
