As a hiring manager, most of the “Increased revenue by 27%” type lines on tech resumes are clearly awkward attempts to implement generic Internet resume advice. When was the last time a company attributed sales growth to some developer making a change? Don’t try to take credit for things that the company, as a whole, accomplished.
The two places I like to see specific numbers are when communicating project scale or demonstrating some quantifiable change that was directly attributable to a person’s work. Good examples:
“Reduced AWS bill by 40% by profiling server code and implementing strategic optimizations”
“Architected cloud backend to support 500,000 daily users”
“Reduced average page load time by 57% percent”
If there isn’t an obvious, direct relationship between the person’s actions and the business outcome then I simply ignore it. If the person can only cite company-level achievements that don’t directly relate to their work, I assume they’re reaching because they can’t otherwise demonstrate how they personally contributed.
The two places I like to see specific numbers are when communicating project scale or demonstrating some quantifiable change that was directly attributable to a person’s work. Good examples:
“Reduced AWS bill by 40% by profiling server code and implementing strategic optimizations”
“Architected cloud backend to support 500,000 daily users”
“Reduced average page load time by 57% percent”
If there isn’t an obvious, direct relationship between the person’s actions and the business outcome then I simply ignore it. If the person can only cite company-level achievements that don’t directly relate to their work, I assume they’re reaching because they can’t otherwise demonstrate how they personally contributed.