About the responsibility of performers
An article about the redesign of large projects, which led to the loss of the audience and, as a consequence, money, prompted me to tell about this small but instructive case . I would like to expand the boundaries of the problem and tell a story about the responsibility of employees to company owners, which, in fact, is absent in most cases.
Five years ago I had two classes on the Internet - I was a co-founder (since 2009) and a technical director in one multiregional Internet project where I owned a third (now it could be called the fashion word “startup”), and free time developed content projects of various subjects in order to sell permanent links from their pages.
Somewhere in 2010, an online store of electronics and home appliances, originally sharpened to Moscow and the Moscow region, began its work. After a year and a half for some reason I did not understand, most of his office was recruited in our town. A few dozen people were recruited, working both in technical departments and in promotion, a call center, and a team of several young and progressive marketers. And among these several dozen people, the majority were graduates of one faculty of the same university, simply because an HR specialist studied there.
I do not know who chose the strategy of maintaining prices in this online store is 20-30% higher than the market - the owners are from Moscow or our marketers. However, this young and successful team successfully poured up to 50-odd thousand dollars over two years on contextual advertising for two years, while spending on SEO-events another 10 thousand dollars per month (I obtained this data from a person from the team who initially understood where everything is heading and how it will end, he expressed his fears on this score, but for some reason he was not listened to, unless he was thrown out of the window like in a well-known Internet meme).
As a result, it turned out that in the organic delivery this online store was in the TOP of Yandex and Google in Moscow and the Moscow region, it was always at the top of the contextual advertising blocks for two years. But what a bad luck - for some reason, the consumer did not immediately fill out their basket with the necessary equipment and pressed the “place an order” button, and for some reason began to compare prices for similar goods in other online stores in the capital region. Naturally, he chose competitors, because their prices were at least 20% lower.
As a result, at the end of the second year of such success, the store owners began to suspect something, having lost more than a million dollars only on contextual advertising during this period. As a result, in our city, the whole team was dispersed, and this store exists now.
And if I have no complaints about technical specialists, they carried out the TK that the management put to them, then as for the marketing team ... I won’t blame anyone for plundering a part of the budget allocated for promotion, let's say no one paid a penny . But, as far as I know, all of them immediately after being dismissed from this project were employed in other companies, especially without losing either in positions or in salary.
Why is this coming out? Because they were hired by the same HR specialists on wages who do not care how their company works - does it incur losses or does it work with profit, winning new market percentages?
I do not call to ostracize such people, but someone should be responsible for the fact that the company actually worked for two years, skidding in place and losing market share? Or employees, if they do not rely on various options, stocks or bonuses, depending on the success of their company, should not be interested at all - is their company growing or slipping into the abyss? But still there is the concept of professional reputation.
I would like to discuss this case in the comments.
Five years ago I had two classes on the Internet - I was a co-founder (since 2009) and a technical director in one multiregional Internet project where I owned a third (now it could be called the fashion word “startup”), and free time developed content projects of various subjects in order to sell permanent links from their pages.
For those who do not know, I inform you that in 2010-2013 it was possible to become a dollar millionaire in link trading, if you approach this issue thoroughly and not be lazy. Then Google with Yandex will introduce various filters and bring down this market by an order of magnitude (if not more), and then it all flourished in RuNet.As for the Internet reference project, then up to eight people worked at the same time with us at a distance with the partner - this is the two of us, plus one programmer and several content managers with the designer. Why I focus your attention on my participation in the ownership of the project - in order to immediately identify my perspective, which differs from the views of a purely hired employee, whatever position he holds. In general, among a couple of dozens of friends from my city who had their business in Runet, I had some “expert weight” in the promotion of Internet projects — they consulted me, asked and so on.
Somewhere in 2010, an online store of electronics and home appliances, originally sharpened to Moscow and the Moscow region, began its work. After a year and a half for some reason I did not understand, most of his office was recruited in our town. A few dozen people were recruited, working both in technical departments and in promotion, a call center, and a team of several young and progressive marketers. And among these several dozen people, the majority were graduates of one faculty of the same university, simply because an HR specialist studied there.
I do not know who chose the strategy of maintaining prices in this online store is 20-30% higher than the market - the owners are from Moscow or our marketers. However, this young and successful team successfully poured up to 50-odd thousand dollars over two years on contextual advertising for two years, while spending on SEO-events another 10 thousand dollars per month (I obtained this data from a person from the team who initially understood where everything is heading and how it will end, he expressed his fears on this score, but for some reason he was not listened to, unless he was thrown out of the window like in a well-known Internet meme).
As a result, it turned out that in the organic delivery this online store was in the TOP of Yandex and Google in Moscow and the Moscow region, it was always at the top of the contextual advertising blocks for two years. But what a bad luck - for some reason, the consumer did not immediately fill out their basket with the necessary equipment and pressed the “place an order” button, and for some reason began to compare prices for similar goods in other online stores in the capital region. Naturally, he chose competitors, because their prices were at least 20% lower.
As a result, at the end of the second year of such success, the store owners began to suspect something, having lost more than a million dollars only on contextual advertising during this period. As a result, in our city, the whole team was dispersed, and this store exists now.
And if I have no complaints about technical specialists, they carried out the TK that the management put to them, then as for the marketing team ... I won’t blame anyone for plundering a part of the budget allocated for promotion, let's say no one paid a penny . But, as far as I know, all of them immediately after being dismissed from this project were employed in other companies, especially without losing either in positions or in salary.
Why is this coming out? Because they were hired by the same HR specialists on wages who do not care how their company works - does it incur losses or does it work with profit, winning new market percentages?
I do not call to ostracize such people, but someone should be responsible for the fact that the company actually worked for two years, skidding in place and losing market share? Or employees, if they do not rely on various options, stocks or bonuses, depending on the success of their company, should not be interested at all - is their company growing or slipping into the abyss? But still there is the concept of professional reputation.
I would like to discuss this case in the comments.