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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

#41

Post by bitL »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #37
bitL wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for the companies considered "the best" in our industry with Glassdoor rating >4.5 at various stages of their lifecycle. This was happening everywhere, with singular pockets of progressive parts of company that were immune to that. At worse companies you can directly observe sexual or financial relations between managers and subordinates and resulting quick path to success as well, demoralizing the rest. Tec…

Glassdoor is fascinating for all the wrong reasons. I've now worked in charity/community, private sector, and government, for big, small and medium. During my last switch (from private back to government), i noticed what I'll call the "reverse glass door" effect while browsing their profiles. It was weak but it was there. That is to say, if i had to take all the employers, consultancies and corporations I've had to d…

OK, ignoring signal from Glassdoor, there still might be some correlation between how well the workplace is perceived (unless is some Russian/Chinese/Indian company where everybody must love the company or else) and how much you might enjoy it. Usually bosses are the main reason people quit so there is a lot of variance between different teams.

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

#43

Post by ACow_Adonis »

WalterBright wrote: post #28
rileymat2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's just objectively false.

Other fields use the words profit, not just accountants. Economists and philosophers, at the very least, have a claim to it too, and they do not in any way conflate the meaning with the accounting definition. Indeed, we would argue that the accounting definition is the one that is conflated with the thing we actually care about (which is why the phrase "paper profits" even exists).

And its also quite clear he didn't "conflate" the meaning, but used it exactly as intended.

Most people, I'm assuming, can quite clearly see that he captures the idea that surplus value/revenue, of which the resulting wages are a non-deterministic and variable part to some degree. That upper management of the firm take a percentage of this slice of the pie, whilst lower down labour also gets a slice, and that the notional "social justification" for why upper-management gets a greater slice is being white-anted away as the lower downs are supposed to take on their responsibilities without commensurate compensation.

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

#44

Post by WalterBright »

gaius wrote: post #30
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.

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.

All the money the company disburses, whether it be bonuses, profit sharing, or salary, all comes from the same checking account.

Trying to infer an injustice by the what the check is called has no point.

The purpose of accounting is to organize and understand where the money comes from and where it is going and where it is allocated, and to compute the tribute owed to the government. But a check written to someone is a check is a check, since money is fungible.

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

#45

Post by dboreham »

zzzcpan wrote: post #16

This is really dishonest and disrespectful to people. Most companies are dictatorships, where all of the profits that come from maximizing value to customers do not go to employees. Employees have absolutely no say in it whatsoever and in fact are paid for their time for the sole purpose of not sharing profits with them.

True but they also get to not share in any losses.

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

#47

Post by mnm1 »

The value I can deliver is strictly limited by the sales department these days. In the last four years, I have increased the value proposition of the business 100x-1000x (hard to know for sure, but not less than that) with my team's contributions (team of 2), yet I have not gotten a raise. No matter what I do, if we don't sell more, the value does not increase. So why should I care about the value I'm delivering when it does not affect my pay whatsoever?

Let's face, it almost all jobs are like this. Certainly all startups that are running on others' funds. Certainly all big corps. The author here is talking about a very small percentage of companies where individual contributors can actually contribute to the value of the company and the company reciprocates in value to the employee (pay). The one company that I worked in where this was the case, gave decent single digit raises. Hardly commensurate with value, but not bad.

In other words, there's no reason to focus on value provided for an employee at most companies because such focus is either unrewarded or almost unrewarded.

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

#48

Post by WalterBright »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #43
WalterBright wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's just objectively false. Other fields use the words profit, not just accountants. Economists and philosophers, at the very least, have a claim to it too, and they do not in any way conflate the meaning with the accounting definition. Indeed, we would argue that the accounting definition is the one that is conflated with the thing we actually care about (which is why the phrase "paper profits" even exists). And…

> Other fields use the words profit, not just accountants.

Sure, but we're talking about accounting here when discussing business profits. People are free to make up their own definitions of things, but that makes sensible discussion impossible.

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

#49

Post by throwawayjava »

WalterBright wrote: post #48
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just objectively false. Other fields use the words profit, not just accountants. Economists and philosophers, at the very least, have a claim to it too, and they do not in any way conflate the meaning with the accounting definition. Indeed, we would argue that the accounting definition is the one that is conflated with the thing we actually care about (which is why the phrase "paper profits" even exists). And…

> Other fields use the words profit, not just accountants. Sure, but we're talking about accounting here when discussing business profits. People are free to make up their own definitions of things, but that makes sensible discussion impossible.

It really doesn't. The majority of commenters here understood my original meaning, and this entire thread about the definition of profit isn't even relevant to the point I was actually making.

Being so fickle about definitions that you miss the broader message, however, does make sensible discussion impossible.

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

#50

Post by eeks »

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…

Can’t agree more. OP argument only holds if “value” is an absolute and objective concept and if everyone in the company is measured by it.

It just does not work like that. It’s a simple maximization problem. If your ideal is science and engineering and good code then your value will only be recognized by people who share the same ideal and these people are usually not the one distributing money.

If your ideal is making money then you will do everything in the book to make sure that the ones that distribute it mostly distribute it to you. That means taking credit, over promising, transferring blame, sabotaging careers, networking, shmoozing, etc...

Sounds familiar? That’s the ABC of the corporate world. That’s why most large companies end up being steered by incompetent people (Peters principle, IOW the last level you can reach before your incompetence really shows and shmoozing is not enough anymore).

If money is what you are after, either stay in a big Corp and forget about technical excellence or start your business and pray. Or, realize that there can be other form of rewards than money for your excellence.

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