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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

#81

Post by throwawayjava »

WalterBright wrote: post #72
throwawayjava wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let me try another way. P = profits, R = revenue, S = salary, E = expenses: P = R - S - E Every dollar you get in salary is a 1:1 drop in profits. Any bonus B you get, P = R - (S + B) - E is the same. You might expect from this, then, that if you're offered a S+B package, the S would be lower than what you'd get with a pure S offer, by the expected amount of B. And you'd be right. I've been on both sides of the negot…

> Let me try another way

Please... I understand your pedantry, and I don't care. This is a silly conversation.

Do you have any thoughts about the role of engineers in a firm and how the existence of firms relates to the article's thesis? That's a much more interesting and relevant topic for discussion than the fact that words sometimes have more than one definition.

So if not, let's kill this thread. I used the word "profit" in a way different from how it's used in Accounting 101. For that I am profoundly and eternally sorry, but not sorry enough to continue an off-topic and unenlightening conversation :-)

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

#82

Post by indemnity »

jondubois wrote: post #56
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…

Yes, I don't like how some people try to rationalize the circus that really goes on. In reality, for most people, it's chaos, it's random and it doesn't make any sense... For a select few people everything just happens to work out; then these 'survivors' feel compelled to lecture everyone else about how everything works... In reality, these 'survivors' know nothing about how things really work because their personal…

I’ve experienced both sides, this is 100% accurate.

When I lucked out it was right time, right place, getting noticed, and I saw the opportunity for what it was.

When I struggled I’d busted my ass for a few years with no recognition.

In both instances I’d done the same thing with wildly different results.

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

#83

Post by throwawayjava »

late2part wrote: post #79
throwawayjava wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your salary is your share of the profits in any pragmatic sense. Okay, so I'm getting a tiny fraction compared to everyone else. Again, this is a fairly pedantic tangent and no matter how we define these things, my observation seems to be accurate. Again, this sub-thread about the definition of profit is both tangential and unrelated to my original point. I think the standard accounting definition is pretty usel…

This is all explained here: https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Vo...

Really? I think the theories that I'm drawing on here -- about the role of the firm and so on -- are much more neo-classical than Marxist.

Maybe you're confused by the second paragraph of my post. That wasn't intended to be read with any sort of moral indignation or as a suggestion that engineers ought to capture more of that value. Rather, it was a sincere question and the answer was "you've traded your ability to capture that value for the ability to work in an environment where you don't have to think strategically about the business and can focus on your engineering work".

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

#84

Post by pqh »

k__ wrote: post #70
WalterBright wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing work-for-hire, the company implicitly owns whatever it is you achieve and was paid for. If you want to own it, start your own company!

True. Founding a company is the only way to shape your own success.

Though you're more likely to shape your own failure. Let's be real.

That's not to say don't try, but be aware of the full picture.

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

#85

Post by throwawayjava »

WalterBright wrote: post #44
gaius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Oh, I might now see why you're being so pedantic about the definition of profit.

When I asked "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?", I wasn't trying to make a moral point. It's not intended to be read with an indignant tone, but with a curious tone.

In fact, at the end of the post, I answer this question: because the engineer in a large firm has (perhaps) traded a bit of the value they create in order to be insulated from business decisions, allowing them to focus on engineering instead of on running the business.

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

#86

Post by devingoldfish »

The claim that "we get our money from our customers" is, on its face, wrong. Of course we're paid by the company, not the customer. The simple truth this article misses is that your wage is simply the price of your labor, and it is the firm that is paying it. The "value you add for customers" (however that might be measured) really doesn't come into the picture. The job market is competitive, and the amount your company pays you is primarily determined by how much they would have to pay someone else to do the same job.

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

#87

Post by the8472 »

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…

Well, between and around AGPL and BSD there's a lot of configuration-space left unexplored.

How about an L-AGPL that so that the source of a component must be published without extending to the whole work?

Or maybe one that requires any changes made (patches) must be made available to the public under CC0, even if you only use it internally?

It's a pity that modified licenses are basically treated like plague spots, nobody wants to touch them. This conservationism prevents exploration of alternative development models.

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

#88

Post by ryanto »

devingoldfish wrote: post #86

The claim that "we get our money from our customers" is, on its face, wrong. Of course we're paid by the company, not the customer. The simple truth this article misses is that your wage is simply the price of your labor, and it is the firm that is paying it. The "value you add for customers" (however that might be measured) really doesn't come into the picture. The job market is competitive, and the amount your comp…

> the amount your company pays you is primarily determined by how much they would have to pay someone else to do the same job.

This is true, but the thing you're missing is that there's not many folks out there that can add value for customers. That's why engineers who create value get paid so well, which is the articles point.

I've noticed that engineers that get paid the most tend to understand the technical and business trade-offs that come from decisions they make.

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

#89

Post by hinkley »

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.

Sturgeon’s law.

If it haven’t worked at a terrible place, and you’ve worked more than four places, then congratulations, you won the lottery.

(If you haven’t worked more than, say, six places, you probably have no business telling anybody how the industry is).

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

#90

Post by dreamfactored »

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…

If you get recognition as the golden goose, many companies will promote rather than kill. Getting recognition is a part of figuring out where value is added .
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