[SassyGrapefruit]

I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of the actual park.

Why do I bring this up? Because this is how most worker's experience their organization. Stay in your lane, get that promotion, best case you get your boss's job. But how did that job come to be? Who setup the training that you took? Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.

It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully. Visit its other offices and learn what your colleagues do and why they do it. Especially as an engineer. You can literally write your own ticket. Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend. This took me on a little detour. That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

[nixpulvis]

But just like at state parks, tread lightly.

I've gotten in trouble before while exploring and then being accused of putting my nose where it shouldn't be. It can look like you're wasting your time looking for distractions, or trying to dig up dirt. Not everyone in all parts of your company is going to like you poking around. You also risk picking up new responsibilities if people catch wind that you might be offering help. This can be the start to a promotion and also a good way to just make your days longer for no additional compensation. Not all managers will respond to the leverage of cross department work you took on yourself, though they probably should.

That said, if you do it well, which is an art of it's own. I agree, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

[idopmstuff]

Agree 100% with this - I think in general people really like to talk about what they do, so if you come to them with an attitude of curiosity, they'll teach you a ton. I've had maybe a dozen people over my career ask me about what a PM does/how to become one, and I'm always happy to chat about it. In a few cases, I was able to get that person some involvement with the PM team (as an example, a couple were in customer support and became the support/PM liaison, who would present all the data on trends in customer issues to us biweekly).

But you do have those empire-building types who see everyone as trying to encroach on their turf. If you run into too many of those, I'd honestly suggesting looking for a new job - companies where a lot of people have that kind of attitude tend to be both not great to work at and also less than successful in the long run.

[HWR_14]

My friend got fired from his job for sticking his nose in other departments. Which is very strange because his boss told him to look at transferring into another department because he would have to transfer in the next six months or get fired. And the department he stuck his nose into offered him a lateral job. But because he failed to keep the bosses of each department apprised of where he was in the process, he trod on some toes and got fired before the lateral position could become official and it had to be an internal hire. Total mess.

[zhynn]

I had a teacher who was a ranger in yellowstone park. He would illustrate the danger of straying off the trail with this anecdote: Rangers are not allowed to wear polyester socks (or any socks made with synthetic fibers) because the geothermal activity in the park can change unexpectedly and yesterdays safe meadow could hide an unexpected layer of boiling mud without warning.

Unless you are one of the few people experienced with back-country trekking in active geothermal areas, stick to the roads and trails.

If you are unfortunate enough to be stranded in yellowstone, follow fresh game trails. They will be less likely to lead through boiling mud. On the other hand, the wildlife is unpredictable due to the massive population of stupid tourists.

Yellowstone is dangerous. Stay on the trails and roads unless you know what you are doing. And you probably don't know what you are doing.

[serjester]

I think this far more likely is influenced by your demeanor going into it. If you come off as arrogant or condescending people will rightfully be skeptical of your intentions. They'll assume you're trying to micro manage them and obviously you'll get pushback.

On the other hand if you come off as genuinely interested in what other people are doing with no ulterior motives, 95% of the time you'll get warm feedback. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that'd react confrontationally to a middle schooler asking about their job. Why? Because their intentions are innocent.

[2b3a51]

Just an observation: decades ago in industrial companies of some size it was the practice to move newly hired managers around systematically for (say) the first 5 years so they could see how the whole company worked.

[blowski]

Exactly. Be humble and eager to learn, but recognise others may be suspicious of your motives anyway.

Also, don’t be that engineer that tells all the other departments what they’re doing wrong, having done a couple of Udemy courses.

[mixmastamyk]

I used to attempt this often as well. Had a few minor wins, but typically I was met with polite indifference, told it was their department. Which is fortunately better than active sabotage.

One group was even bewildered I was able to integrate a department client app with their ticket database. Reduced necessary clicks by 95% or so. They didn't think it was possible. Yes, this is the caliber of folks working at a big corporation.

[samtho]

This is a good counterpoint (while not necessarily discouraging cross pollination). I ask parallel teams that I work with how best I can help them, which leads me into learning a lot about the different facets of the business. My experience with approaching this with curiosity and empathy will yield a more welcoming environment to learn more about the things you are not familiar with yet as you are clearly not being threatening and actually looking to build a working relationship that both of you benifit from.

This also goes both ways. I also offer to help people to learn more about my side of the organization, going as far as being a mentor. A former coworker, with whom I am still friends with today, I met at a previous role where she was in marketing but wanted to know more about the development side, having had no prior experience. I was able to get her started in software engineering. Fast forward 6 years, she’s now the lead automations engineer for a marketing company.

[93po]

I had this happen to me too. I started researching a solution for a different department and was told to stop and get back to my own work.

[bmitc]

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't wander off the path in Yellowstone due to the fact that there are grizzlies, wolves, and other such fauna.

[geph2021]

   Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.

I find this quite remarkable, and does not match my experience. Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to, and what that product portfolio revenue stream looked like, and what it meant to the business (right down to the product margins). For startups, pre-revenue, at least the "TAM" (total available market) that the product was targeting, and/or expected revenue projections were openly/regularly discussed.

[hinkley]

I feel like I have to disagree, on the grounds that many companies mistakenly label indirect profit centers as 'cost centers' and end up cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They strangle R&D and get outclassed in the market. They strangle infrastructure and get nasty surprises that tarnish their reputation.

And then there's mistaking users for customers. If you're a McDonald's customer you might think their money comes from trading hamburgers for cash, and you'd be wrong on any number of fronts. If you're a McDonald's competitor, you would know that they make more money from fries, and way more money from selling soda (hence the discount for a meal). But if you're the McDonald's corporation, you know that you make most of your money from franchisees, who happen to sell burgers and fries and oceans of soda. You're providing logistics and real estate acumen for most of your money. The general public is their customer's customer.

I don't know if they still do but Burger King used to 'steal' McDonald's real estate acumen by building Burger Kings as close to the nearest McDonald's as they could manage. Let them get 10% or whatever higher profits by getting the correct corner lot in the right neighborhood instead of the incorrect lot in the right neighborhood, meanwhile we save tons of money on market research.

[mindcrime]

Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to, and what that product portfolio revenue stream looked like, and what it meant to the business (right down to the product margins).

This sounds quite remarkable to me, and definitely does not match my experience. I've found that most engineers have an incredibly vague notion - at best - of how their companies make money. And it is, IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market", etc. And discussing revenue projections?!?? All I can say is, you've worked with some folks who do things very differently than the folks I've worked with!

[SassyGrapefruit]

Maybe specifically for product engineers, but does that extend beyond the specific product that engineer is working on. Do you think a network engineer knee deep in a data center knows the margins on all the products? I don't work for a fortune 500 but our revenue scheme and capital structure are complex. I could not profess to understand it in its entirety. We receive revenue from our products, managed services and support, one-off revenue streams, channel/revenue sharing arrangements, consulting, and on and on. This is for a lowly $120 million a year business look at a F500 earning $6 billion and I think it becomes opaque pretty quickly.

I think the majority of employees in most business do not have much visibility into the financial machine that justifies their existence.

[KineticLensman]

> Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to

I joined a company that was a privatised spin-off from a large civil service organization. A new CEO interviewed each department head, asking them how their accruals were doing this FY. A couple, allegedly, said 'Our what?' and were immediately shown the door.

The next CEO, by the way, asked 'how many engineers do we have?'. The inability to answer that also led to some corporate soul-searching and eventually some major re-orgs.

[vinayan3]

> 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of the actual park.

I'd say that's a win. We should be preserving as much as we can which really means most of us shouldn't be exploring more of the park which is mostly off trail.

I do get your point that people are coming to Yosemite and are not even taking advantage of the trails.

One point that should be made from this is that many people who are coming to the park don't really have the fitness, skills, and motivation to explore more of the trails in the park. Similarly, many people really aren't going to go explore at their companies because of skills, motivation, and time. Time is a major blocker for me because I can do more in areas outside of my focus but there are other life obligations and the need to rest to avoid burnout.

[coffeebeqn]

I don’t think the tradeoff really exists at most companies. Sure I could make our data departments life more difficult by pointing out they do a few dumb things but what is the outcome to me and my fellow engineers? I’ll at best get a pat on the back and have the data team be at least somewhat pissed off at me. Some random executive might get a bonus.. but why do I care?

[brodouevencode]

Wow, there is so much dissent in the replies here. Here are the top three recurring themes of those:

> You'll make enemies poking your nose around.

And? You make another worker in another department angry, so what? Managers in other departments are very inviting (unless they're up to no good, in which you'll be doing the company's owners even bigger favors by exposing them) because they want to be seen as having work that's necessary to the business. The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you.

> Did you get any of that $385,000? Of course not.

It would be nice to get a piece of that cost savings. My previous role was largely in finops, so this is near to my heart. Companies should give incentives for any proactive cost reductions and revenue generators. But that's not the point - you did the right thing by fixing something that was broken because you were genuinely curious.

> I don't have time for all that.

You have to make time to learn your company just like you have to make time to work out, learn new skills, network with people, and grow your wealth and family. Learning the inner workings of your company does pay off just like the others, maybe even more so than some of them.

FWIW @SassyGrapefruit I commend your efforts. You're the type of person I want on my team.

[devnullbrain]

>The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you.

That's more idealistic than my experience. I've seen team leads with a very strong sense of ownership. Also, if their mistake is responsible for a 6-figure overspend, it's better for them for it to remain hidden than to be revealed by someone else (especially a non-expert).

[throwawaysleep]

> I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization.

And your reward for that was? Were you rewarded? Did they give you 30K as a bonus? Or was it just the weasel words of "this will be considered favourably at performance review time."

I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping where I am), so it is not worth it to even write a ticket for it.

[SassyGrapefruit]

I don't know how your company works but at mine we have a profit target associated with our annual bonus. By eliminating that waste I am helping to ensure we hit that target so I get paid. Imagine if I let it slip and we missed our target by $200,000 that would be dollars coming right out my pocket.

[jrochkind1]

I'm curious, would you say any of your motivation and feeling of reward in your job comes from doing a good job, or helping your organization achieve it's goals? Or does your motivation and reward (what gets you out of bed, what makes your job tolerable or enjoyable) come mostly/only from maximizing your paycheck? Or other things?

[greedo]

Plus, if the waste is someone's pet project or initiative, you might get into trouble if you imply they had poor judgement in green lighting it.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

It's fun being a sysadmin sometimes. I tripped over a similar cost savings and instead of opening up a ticket I just spent 30 sweeping up the unneeded resources.

Later I ran the numbers and realized this alone covered about half my total cost to the company. You don't often get feedback that direct about your impact on the bottom line.

[flangola7]

It really is strange that the people doing the actual work don't automatically get most/all of the profits. If 10 of my friends were to dig, plant, and maintain a garden and then I gave them only them a small portion of its fruits and kept the rest for myself they would rightly be very upset with me.

[tengbretson]

Do you find value in having a good reputation?

[NegativeK]

That whole situation is gross.

[operatingthetan]

>That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

Hold on a sec, are you saying you found dead weight and then got leadership to terminate their employment?

[jrochkind1]

> Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend

I read it thinking they meant to their cloud platform bills.

But you bring up a good hypothetical regardless. This is why people are not necessarily overjoyed to have folks from other teams sniffing around... if they think you are looking for "inefficiencies" all the more so. Getting laid off isn't the only threat, making their job a lot harder/more unpleasant is also one. Or just being blamed for being bad at their jobs.

To the organizations bottom line, and perhaps to your bosses, it's all the same either way. Hey, you saved money. To your co-workers, obviously not.

You've got to build up trust, that you're looking to make their job more pleasant, not more unpleasant, or non-existent.

[foolswisdom]

It sounded to me more like they figured out a more efficient way to do their "process" that was a whole lot cheaper.

[webnrrd2k]

It's not clear, and I read it that way at first, too. But the op was looking at cloud computing costs so I'd bet that he just reduced cloud costs.

It seems like a bit of a stretch that he got anyone fired, but much more likely that they just scaled back on cloud services for that particular project.

[avalys]

I don't think that's what he was saying, but if he was, are you suggesting there's a problem with that?

[giantg2]

"It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully."

This hasn't been my experience. I've moved around a lot and have exposure to many aspects of the business and how things operate. I'm 10 years in and still a midlevel. Being more linear would have resulted in faster promotions.

"You can literally write your own ticket."

Not in many large orgs. Poking your nose in other areas is a good way to get your hand slapped.

[glitchc]

It depends on the organization's hierarchy. In flat structures, this is treated as a good thing, encouraged and will lead to promotions. In a strictly hierarchical organization, this may backfire. Other managers will not be supportive and your manager will be annoyed with your behaviour, leading instead to detailed task assignment and micro-management.

[123pie123]

back in the day when I was first starting out I had to do the odd audit (eg listing network ports or checking computer inventory numbers in offices - v boring)

one of the best things I did (which was dependant on how much spare time I had), was to ask the people I visited, what do you do? I tried to make sure I asked a mixture of low to high ranking people

The responses was amazing, with some people giving up loads of their time up to explain their jobs. I even made some good friends ouside the computer dept

[crazygringo]

> It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully.

No, generally speaking it's really not.

That takes time and effort away from the job you're actually getting evaluated on, and if your workplace is at all competitive (as most are), it's an incredibly easy way to waste your time and not get promoted.

Is it interesting? Sure. Is it to your advantage in that workplace? Almost never.

The main situation where it's a smart thing to do is when you intend to start your own company (or franchise in certain industries) and you're trying to learn as many best practices as possible. But then you're treating your employment as school, rather than looking for reward or promotion within.

[JustSomeNobody]

You can also start by making sure you're in all the meetings with other teams where your project and their project meet. Ask pointed questions in those meetings to gain understanding. Be friendly and courteous and helpful and they'll make sure you are in those meetings from now on. From there you'll get invited to other meetings that may be only slightly adjacent to your project. Again, be friendly, courteous and helpful. You will eventually get known for being someone with understanding and you'll find yourself in some rather important meetings after that.

[cphajduk]

The thing is... Pushing outside your lane is VERY often discouraged. The manager sees that any time outside of your lane is less time in "your managers" lane, where you help buml his KPIs/goals.

[Aeolun]

> Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

It’s a unique organisation that’s both complacent and willing to change that fact. More likely you’ll find resistance at every step along the way.

[senttoschool]

>It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully. Visit its other offices and learn what your colleagues do and why they do it. Especially as an engineer. You can literally write your own ticket. Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend. This took me on a little detour. That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

If you work in a corporation, this is a surefire way to create enemies inside the organization. No one likes a random employee from another team to poke into what they're doing and tell them what they're doing wrong.

[SassyGrapefruit]

maybe, but I'll keep doing it anyway.

[lifeisstillgood]

Ah, the days when you didn't have a manger asking for status updates daily on your deliverables that are vaguely defined. Having time to investigate interesting detours

I get it. But sometimes there are people focused on their 1% and see you as part of that.

[Zetice]

Er, isn't that kind of the point? That you should be aware of the real cost of you "investigating interesting detours"?

[Salgat]

I have a backlog of tickets and limited time for my family and personal life and interests. This isn't happening unless my manager is willing to lower my other workload.

[gardenhedge]

Wow, what are you going to spend that $385,000/yr on? /s

I don't see the point of your recommendation.

[SassyGrapefruit]

Corporate finance doesn't work that way. If someone sets something up that costs $500K a year and it can be done for $150K a year. $150K is the baseline thats how much it should have cost in the first place. Otherwise why wouldn't I set it up to cost $10million a year then retract to $150K then say "Oh gee I saved you millions of dollars you owe me!" We as employees have a responsibility to our organizations to ensure they are trim and healthy. It's how we grow and achieve bigger things.

I have been rewarded in the past and am confident I will rewarded in the future. The individuals that set it up kooky will be retrained to avoid that situation in the future. I feel bad for all the jaded folks they must live very depressing existences.

[giantg2]

CEO bonus

[megablast]

> 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road

Leaving the road sounds like something a communist who doesn't love their car would do.