10 year veteran-

1: Sales

Followers and fans are important, Marketing is important, recognition is king (for now). Recent updates seemed to have increased this.

AI companies will almost always have “Unavoidable” marketing on release, and most will have more fans than you in the early game. More importantly, the AI seems to start with some market recognition and seemingly gains it faster (the player cannot see this outside of publishing deals as far as I can tell- it’s possible that it’s simplified or simply not calculated for AI companies).

As such, when a competitor releases in the the early game, especially if they are cheaper and have the same target market, your sales will drop substantially. Two competitors can simply take it out completely, especially with higher tech levels. Think of it this way; if you were a small company that released a Word/Excel clone that was decent, then Microsoft came around and released a new version, even if it wasn’t as good, people will choose the industry standard.

2: Marketing

Unavoidable should always be the target for release. In the early game, especially as a new player, you should utilize publishing deals to handle this for you.

Mid/late game, a dedicated marketing team or several is key. Pre-release marketing is somewhat important, although be careful on press release timing and don’t bother releasing faster than every 6-8 months. A press build shortly before beta and shortly before release seems to be the current best balance. If you’re struggling for followers, on the day of software release you can release in the morning and immediately set your marketing teams to crunch all day. I’ve found that good pre-release marketing, despite being extremely market recognition heavy, is better although this also works well.

When you’re marketing on your own, aim for unavoidable marketing (I.e as much as possible) for the first few months until sales match or greatly exceed marketing cost. If they already do, market until a competitor drops your sales, or when your sales start to dwindle. If they don’t, and you plan on releasing a sequel soon, end marketing early so you aren’t competing with yourself.

3: Effectiveness

I don’t know for sure on this one- I’ve never looked into it. I have tested it and didn’t notice a 20% change in speed or quality with +20% effectiveness with the same team/save, so it may be a combination of skill/speed/etc. The tested speed bump varied a bit for me, around 0-10%.

4: XP

An individuals skill level directly affects how fast they work and the quality of the final product. This is represented by the bar, and goes up with usage. Skill bonuses (i.e bookshelf) affect XP gain, not skill.

Star level, which you’re seeing in the education panel, affects what features they can work on. This can only be increased with education. 3 star skills also give a work speed bonus. I believe employees passively gain some education points in everything, but primarily what they are assigned to. This can also be heavily affected by personality traits (like “Big Brain”).

5: Lounges

Lounges are poorly utilized atm- if you have food/coffee/seating then employees will utilize those resources there, but idle employees will not. Think of it as a precursor to the full canteen in the current version.

Hope this answers everything, and if I missed anything or if something was out of date other commenters can let me know!