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Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

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Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#21

Post by throwawayjava »

virgilp wrote: post #15
throwawayjava wrote: post #7

> This is why I struggle with scenarios where people discuss pay and work without considering value. Counter-point: firms exist. If I'm the one figuring out how to create value, why the hell are the C suite, middle managers, and investors getting 99% of the profits? So no, in the context of a large firm, it's definitely NOT an engineer's job to figure out how their skills align with market demand. And that's the whol…

But, to continue your analogy - if you're asking me advice on how to make ends meet, then it absolutely is my business to chide you for the expensive lattes you buy daily. The point discussed in the article is very valid: you need to be perceived as "delivering value" - otherwise, your compensation will suffer. That's the whole reason why you earn well working in finance - not because "only the smartest make it there…

I encourage you to read the original question that the author of this post is ranting about, where the question asker who's being chided in this post makes literally exactly the observation you make in your second paragraph: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/7mgp1m/h...

The author of that post does understand these trade-offs and is asking the best way to maximize wrt his constraints. So this article just misses the mark.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#22

Post by rileymat2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
throwawayjava wrote: post #7

> This is why I struggle with scenarios where people discuss pay and work without considering value. Counter-point: firms exist. If I'm the one figuring out how to create value, why the hell are the C suite, middle managers, and investors getting 99% of the profits? So no, in the context of a large firm, it's definitely NOT an engineer's job to figure out how their skills align with market demand. And that's the whol…

> getting 99% of the profits? Profits by definition are calculated after labor costs are deducted, so employees get 0% of the profits in salary. However, take a look at your company's accounts and see how much of the gross revenue is paid out as wages and salary. It'll be a big chunk. There's your share.

Many words have several definitions. Some more specific and some more general as used by the public. You are right in an accounting sense, but not in the complete definitional sense.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#23

Post by throwawayjava »

avip wrote: post #20

I'm pretty surprised to read this. I did not observe any statistically significant correlation between "creating value" and "compensation". The examples are so overwhelming I feel it's on the OP to exemplify his rather false assertion: - Big corps pay loads of cash to research centers that provide exactly zero value to customer. - If you don't man up and negotiate no one will bump your compensation just because you'r…

"Who's the real customer?" often has a non-obvious answer.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#24

Post by JoeAltmaier »

The customer pays the company for some perceived value. It may not even be real. But given that it is, the Engineer may contribute to the process, or the testing, or the coding. Which are useless to the customer and not even perceptible. Consider: if the same product were delivered without testing, would testing be valueless?

No, its the whole enchilada that the customer pays for. The Engineer is a part of the product but so is the guy on the loading dock, and in the mail room, and sweeping the floors.

No we have to look elsewhere for compensation justification. This religion (born out of the Agile process?) that only work contributing to customer needs has 'value' has got to go. Its false on the face of it.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#25

Post by josephg »

Nokinside wrote: post #19
bitL wrote: post #9

Real-world: - you increase value; your bosses team up with each other and claim the credit; you might even get booed for some minor deficiencies whereas they will be boasting about their achievements - you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source; parasites are waiting in the open, incorporate your code to their commercial offering, never paying you anything; your bonus will be rude complaints about bugs in you…

> you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source ; parasites are waiting in the open This is not you being generous or them being parasite. BSD type license is not "hint hint GPL type honor code". You need to communicate what you want from others trough the license. If you use non-AGPL or non GPL open license that's a sign that others can exploit your work for commercial purposes without contributing back money o…

Yes. Just to hammer this point home, I release most of the code I write under a BSD license in the simple hope it'll be useful to someone. I don't care if you make money from it (Cool! Tell me about it!) and for 80% of the projects I've written I don't actually want any of your patches. I'd often much rather people fork my work and maintain their own fork.

If this isn't your jam, the MIT/BSD licenses aren't for you. Go GPL or something.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#26

Post by throwawayjava »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
throwawayjava wrote: post #7

> This is why I struggle with scenarios where people discuss pay and work without considering value. Counter-point: firms exist. If I'm the one figuring out how to create value, why the hell are the C suite, middle managers, and investors getting 99% of the profits? So no, in the context of a large firm, it's definitely NOT an engineer's job to figure out how their skills align with market demand. And that's the whol…

> getting 99% of the profits? Profits by definition are calculated after labor costs are deducted, so employees get 0% of the profits in salary. However, take a look at your company's accounts and see how much of the gross revenue is paid out as wages and salary. It'll be a big chunk. There's your share.

Sorry, but I think that this view is both obviously wrong and actively harmful. It's an example of where going with textbook definitions actually obfuscates reality.

Highly compensated managers are taking a share of profit, often quite literally (look at how VP and above positions are compensated). But always indirectly -- you can't tell me a 7-8 figure salary "isn't a share of profit". That's obvious BS. And if my own compensation is a share of profit in the same sense (which, a port of it literally is), then my observation that non-engineers get 99% of that share is still accurate.

Anyways, and much more importantly, this is pretty tangential to my original point. The point is that if I'm an engineer at a large firm, it is NOT my job to do the MBA thing. The entire premise of a firm is that the author of this post is wrong.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#27

Post by wwalser »

sumeno wrote: post #11
bitL wrote: post #9

Real-world: - you increase value; your bosses team up with each other and claim the credit; you might even get booed for some minor deficiencies whereas they will be boasting about their achievements - you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source; parasites are waiting in the open, incorporate your code to their commercial offering, never paying you anything; your bonus will be rude complaints about bugs in you…

You must have worked at some really terrible companies. While I don't doubt this is the case at some places the places I've worked haven't been like this at all.

Yeah, reading stuff like this is depressing.

It's completely reasonable to understand and be cautious of the these things happening, but coming to the belief that this encompasses the whole of reality is unfortunate. (maybe that's not what gp meant…)

It's important for engineers to understand that they have options. If you're being mistreated, move on — if people are claiming credit for your work* there are places that you can go where this doesn't happen. You have a skill that is in-demand and under supplied, take advantage of that fact while you can.

* This happens on a spectrum, some engineers have a skewed view about how much credit builders should receive. It takes a wide array of skills to market, build, and sell successful products. The best leaders that I've worked publicly credit "the team" for successes and themselves for failures but this can only happen when the leader in question has high trust in their board and investors.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#28

Post by WalterBright »

rileymat2 wrote: post #22
WalterBright wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting 99% of the profits? Profits by definition are calculated after labor costs are deducted, so employees get 0% of the profits in salary. However, take a look at your company's accounts and see how much of the gross revenue is paid out as wages and salary. It'll be a big chunk. There's your share.

Many words have several definitions. Some more specific and some more general as used by the public. You are right in an accounting sense, but not in the complete definitional sense.

If he did conflate "profit" with "gross revenue", I was explaining that indeed he was getting a share of it. And frankly it is impossible to have any sensible discussion about business and be confused about what profits are - the only definition that has meaning is the accounting definition.

It's like discussing newtonian mechanics and confusing momentum with energy.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#29

Post by zzzcpan »

avip wrote: post #20

I'm pretty surprised to read this. I did not observe any statistically significant correlation between "creating value" and "compensation". The examples are so overwhelming I feel it's on the OP to exemplify his rather false assertion: - Big corps pay loads of cash to research centers that provide exactly zero value to customer. - If you don't man up and negotiate no one will bump your compensation just because you'r…

There is no correlation between creating value and compensation, as compensation is set by a job market, where companies compete for workers with each other. It really doesn't matter how much value is created as long as the worker doesn't have a better choice.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#30

Post by gaius »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
throwawayjava wrote: post #7

> This is why I struggle with scenarios where people discuss pay and work without considering value. Counter-point: firms exist. If I'm the one figuring out how to create value, why the hell are the C suite, middle managers, and investors getting 99% of the profits? So no, in the context of a large firm, it's definitely NOT an engineer's job to figure out how their skills align with market demand. And that's the whol…

> getting 99% of the profits? Profits by definition are calculated after labor costs are deducted, so employees get 0% of the profits in salary. However, take a look at your company's accounts and see how much of the gross revenue is paid out as wages and salary. It'll be a big chunk. There's your share.

so employees get 0% of the profits in salary.

Bonuses, profit sharing and raises are all things that exist. So while technically correct, you are actually completely wrong.

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