Understanding Your Business Value

The Basic Bet

On day one of starting a new job, you're typically generating zero value for the business in terms of solving customer problems. Regardless, you are paid your full salary. The company is taking a bet on you. The hope is that at some point you generate more value than the salary, perks, and other expenses: workspace, computer, internet, coffee, management overhead, and so on.

You should always aim to generate more value than those costs. That's how the business can afford to keep you. There are exceptions to this model but spoiler alert: it's politics and evil stuff.

When you start a new job, you are setting up your computer, getting access, installing software, getting to know the team, reading the docs, and so on. You are usually not solving problems that helps the business make money on day one. In fact, the collective company productivity may take a hit because others have to spend time onboarding you instead of doing their regular work.

If you have a fixed salary like most people, your day 1 compensation isn't different than your day 30. The company pays you for your potential, and the expectation is for your contributions to surpass your cost over time.

The S-Curve

Growth usually follows an S-curve. The S-curve takes different forms for different people. Companies usually have a deadline for the bet placed on you, known as the probation period.

Some people have a quick onboarding, maybe they were already familiar with the tech, product, operation model, or people. Some people barely make it, possibly due to poor onboarding, or the need to unlearn what they already know in order to learn enough to be productive at the new job. And unfortunately some people don't make it at all.

Your work performance and productivity have nothing to do with you as a person. A person with a great personality may have poor performance due to environmental mismatch, poor leadership, bad onboarding, biases, or discrimination.

Person E Problem

Some people objectively hurt the collective productivity of the company. If a person has a leadership position, they can hurt the productivity of an entire organization and cause serious damage before the company takes notice and acts. That's because leadership acts as a force multiplier and if the force is negative, it can hurt the productivity of many people. Assessing the performance of leadership positions is exponentially harder than an engineer at the leaf nodes of the org.

Why does person E do that? Several reasons: drive for efficiency (humans seek maximal pay for minimal effort), Dunning-Kruger effect (they may genuinely be unaware of their damage), difficulty measuring productivity, and perception (incompetent managers don't have a way to tell the difference between real work and fake work).

Internal Marketing

The opposite of person E is someone who is too busy doing the actual work to care whether it is acknowledged. This is way more common. If you're doing the work, make sure that it's also noticed, especially if you have long term plans to stay at the company.

There are many tools for internal marketing: demos showing what you've done, mentoring helping others grow spreads the word about your skills, weekly reporting to keep your manager close and in the loop, dotted reporting lines with key people across the org, asking for skip level meetings, and write-ups since documents travel far wider than face-to-face meetings.

It's important not to overdue it because it may backfire and come across as you don't have anything better to do than being your own personal cheerleader.

The Value Curve

Regardless of how efficient you are at your job, if it's not also effectively helping the company to solve customer's problems, it doesn't matter. Companies don't operate in vacuum. There needs to be a market to monetize, customers who are willing to pay for the solution, and a fit between customer needs at the price point they're willing to pay. Then there's competition and paradigm shifts that deprecate entire lines of business.

As an optimization machine, the company isn't motivated to give that bump voluntarily. Two conditions need to be met: the cost of losing you is higher than keeping you, and your elevated productivity is visible.

Key Takeaways

• Employment is a bet: you get paid for potential, company expects returns over time
• S-curve growth varies; probation period is the company's deadline to assess the bet
• Internal marketing matters: silent performers get overlooked
• Visibility of work plays an important role in whether you get compensated fairly
• The business model must support monetization for individual value to matter

Why Do I Care

This mental model has practical implications. Understanding that you're being paid for potential, not current output, reframes how you approach new roles. The early days aren't about proving value immediately; they're about positioning yourself to deliver that value.

The internal marketing discussion is uncomfortable but necessary. I've been guilty of assuming that good work would speak for itself. It doesn't. Finding a balance between visibility and authenticity is an ongoing challenge.

The S-curve is a useful frame for managing expectations. Some people ramp up quickly, others take longer. Neither reflects on your fundamental worth as a person. The probation period is a business constraint, not a judgment of capability.

Your Business Value