Impact = Environment × Skills
Audit your career by scoring the environment variables and skill variables that gate your impact.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
A career self-diagnosis framework built to answer 'should I stay, change, or leave?' objectively. Impact is the true output to optimize (compensation and level are downstream of it), and impact is a product of two multiplied inputs: your environment and your skills. You score each environment variable annually, in quarter-point increments, to spot honestly what is limiting you and whether it can change.
Origin
Created by Bangaly Kaba and shared in his blog post 'How to choose where to work and what to work on.' It came out of a personal struggle at Facebook where he felt he was working harder without seeing incremental benefit and needed an objective way to reason about his next move.
Core principles
- 01Optimize for impact, not compensation — pay and seniority are derivatives of the impact you drive.
- 02Impact = environment × skills; a weak environment can cap even strong skills.
- 03Score each variable honestly and dispassionately, revisiting every year.
- 04Your manager is the highest-leverage environment variable — they can move the other pieces.
- 05Name what is limiting you before deciding whether to change it or leave.
How to run it
- 1
Anchor on impact as the output
Reframe the goal from money or title to impact: the clarity you create about problems and opportunities, and your track record of delivering wins again and again. Compensation and scope follow from that.
Pro tip For a PM, 'creating the clarity that there is opportunity' in the right area is itself a form of impact, especially as you get senior.
- 2
Score the six environment variables
Rate each environment variable — manager, resources, scope, team, compensation, and company/team culture — on a scale where ~0 means you're in a bad place, 1 is neutral, and 2 means you're greatly benefiting. Use quarter-point increments and be brutally honest.
Pro tip Do this every year and also ask, for each variable, to what extent you believe it can and will change.
Watch out Not all variables are equal — weight manager most heavily.
- 3
Audit your skill variables
Assess your skills across communication, influence/leadership, strategic thinking, and execution. Communication tends to be the most impactful; identify where yours are lacking.
Pro tip Watch out for the 'great communicator, no substance' trap — build real execution under the storytelling.
- 4
Decide: influence, change, or leave
With environment and skills mapped, identify what you control. If a low variable can be changed, work with your manager to build a plan; if the confluence of variables is a structural bad fit, that is your signal to move.
Pro tip Before blaming a bad manager, spend time understanding what they are optimizing for — adjacent work on their plate may be yours to absorb for more synergy.
Watch out People don't leave a job, they leave a manager — but 'finding a new manager' is only one option, not the default.
In the wild
Running people recommendations with 30 engineers, Kaba had a great team and huge scope — but in some ways too much scope, compounded by two or three concurrent manager changes so he had no manager to lean on. He couldn't see the forest for the trees and was burning himself out.
→ He recognized it wasn't the team's fault — the confluence of scope and manager at once simply wasn't a good fit, which clarified his need to move.
Common mistakes
Optimizing for compensation
Comp is a reflection of the input (impact), not the thing to chase. Chasing the output instead of the input misallocates your effort.
Not being honest in the scoring
The framework only works if you dispassionately name what's limiting you; flattering yourself or the situation defeats the purpose.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product managers and operators feeling stuck who need an objective, repeatable way to decide whether to stay, push for change, or leave.
Not ideal for
Someone who already has clear signal and simply needs to act — the scoring overhead adds little once the decision is obvious.
From the transcript
“there's impact that you're really trying to drive and that is the thing that is the most important and the impact is only achievable by…”
“it's not compensation compensation is a reflection of the input the impact that you're having”
“manager is the most important variable in the environment because a great man manager who is empathetic who is aware of what's”
“I assign a score in quarter point increments”
From the episode
Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact
Bangaly Kaba (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Instacart)