Appreciation post: I picked the small project over the big promotion and it worked out

My boss offered me a team lead spot, but it meant dropping a data cleanup project I started. I chose to finish the project, even though my friends said I was crazy. It took about three months, but I found a huge error in our old sales reports. Now the company is using my new system for the whole west coast office. Has anyone else turned down a promotion for something they felt was more important?

3 comments

3 Comments

paigesullivan18d ago

You said you found a huge error in the old sales reports. How did you even know to look for something like that? Were you just fixing the data and it popped out, or did you have a hunch something was wrong from the start?

cameronmurray18d ago

Actually it was a bit of both. I was cleaning up the 2019 Q3 data because the numbers looked too perfect, like rounded to the nearest ten grand every time. That made me dig deeper, and I found a whole product line from the Austin office that was being counted twice in the totals. It wasn't a hunch at first, just routine work, but the pattern felt off once I got into it.

jennyp1911d agoTop Commenter

So you just get a feeling when numbers look too neat, right? I read a blog post once about how round numbers in reports can be a red flag, which totally lines up with what cameronmurray said. It's like your brain notices the pattern even before you know why. Makes me wonder how many other old reports have little mistakes hiding in plain sight.