The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler

Author:Chad Fowler
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2009-04-15T12:00:54+00:00

HOW MUCH ARE YOU WORTH?

112

25

How Much Are You Worth?

Have you ever stopped to consider exactly how much you cost to the

company you work for? I mean, you know your salary. That part is

easy. What about benefits, management overhead, training, and all that

other stuff that doesn’t necessarily show up on your paycheck?

It’s easy to get into the mode of just wanting more. It unfortunately

seems to be a basic human tendency, in fact. You get a salary increase,

and it feels good for a little while, but then you’re thinking about the

next one. “If I could make just 10 percent more, I could afford that

new....” We’ve all done it. At some point, the actual number becomes

abstract. It’s not about $5,000 more per year. It’s about making what-

ever the baseline number is go up. If we don’t get a satisfactory salary

increase one year, we become dissatisfied with our work and our com-

pany. “Why don’t they appreciate me?”

How much do you really cost? As I already mentioned, it’s obviously

more than your base salary. For the sake of discussion, let’s estimate it

at roughly two times your base salary. So, if you make $60k per year,

the company actually spends about $120k keeping you employed.

That was easy. Now’s the hard part: how much value did you produce

last year? What was your positive impact on the company’s bottom

line? We already know that you cost the company (in our imaginary

scenario) roughly $120k. What did you give back? How much money

did you cause the company to save? How much more in revenues did

you contribute?

Is that number bigger than twice your salary?

It’s a difficult exercise to go through, because it’s often hard to relate

every aspect of our work to the bottom line of the company. It may

even seem like an unreasonable question to you. “How do I know? I’m

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.