Can You Lose Your Job If Your SEO Doesn't Translate To Conversions?

Many of you work as SEOs in-house, many as independent contractors and many for yourselves on your own web sites. Those who have to answer to a boss, does your SEO work get judged on ranking of pages or based on if those rankings ultimately lead to a conversion?

Kim Krause Berg posted a thread at the Cre8asite Forums asking this question. She asked, "Does Your Job Depend On Conversions?"

She asks specific questions based on her experience working for management:

1. Is your dependent on ROI? In other words, if your SEO work does not translate into a certain set of criteria, do you lose the job?
2. What are the criteria for ROI as managers see it? Is it higher revenue, rank, traffic, what?
3. Anyone: What are the typical expectations for meeting ROI? For ex., if an organic plan doesn't seem to be working, how long does it take to decide this?
4. Anyone: Are conversions just something SEO's make happen or does user experience web design play a part in the overall marketing plan?

Let me make it simple. If you rank your client/boss in the first position for all the keywords he wants to rank well for, but ultimately the conversions are not there, do you think you'll still have a job in a year for now?

Here is my more basic poll:

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.