
Ask HN: How do you list your achievements without hard metrics? - djellybeans
I have skimmed through resumes, both real ones and examples, and frequently I come across achievements stated in numbers. &quot;Accomplished XX% performance increase saving costs of $XXXX for the company in the quarter&quot;<p>I&#x27;m sorry, but personally I find it hard to relate to this. I have worked for several companies as a software engineer, but there has been very little concern or motivation for management to track things meticulously by the numbers. The best I can do is ballpark estimates using words like &quot;dozens&quot; or &quot;30-40%&quot;. Are these metrics still acceptable to use in your job history?
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itamarst
You can think of the ideal resume entry as a little story: here's the
settings, here's why I did what I did, here's what I did, here's the outcome.

The goal is to have that story resonate with the reader: "Oh djellybeans went
and did this thing in a new product, and we're a new product and we have
similar problems, maybe they can do that for us!"

Accomplishments are the last bit of the story, and ideally you have all of
them.

Now, savings lots of money is great, and if someone measured it you can
include it. Consider measuring this stuff yourself, even if management
doesn't. But the real goal is to explain _why_ this matters, why it's useful,
why the reader should care, in a way that will match their concerns.

Here's an example from my resume, where I wrote a new config format for ops
team at an old employer. Here how's I might have all four of the elements of
the story:

1\. Setting: The ops team managed hundreds of servers with similar but not
identical configuration.

2\. Motivation: Noticing that this made configuring servers difficult,

3\. What I did: I implemented a prototype-based configuration system, where
one system's configuration could inherit that of another.

4\. Accomplishment/outcome: This allowed them to significantly simplify their
configuration, reducing opportunities for errors and unwanted divergence.

Notice that item #4, accomplishments, has no numbers. But it still explains
why the reader should care, and the things I might be able to help them with.

