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Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…
Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
If you can save 99% on cost, but sell at the same price, you've got a 10,000% profit, isn't it?
Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
You can hire any number of consulting firms or smart engineers that can tell you how to lower your AWS bill, or get rid of unproductive employees. It's much harder to figure out how to grow your business by 2x.
Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
If you can save 99% on cost, but sell at the same price, you've got a 10,000% profit, isn't it?
Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
If you can save 99% on cost, but sell at the same price, you've got a 10,000% profit, isn't it?
Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
It's much easier to save money than it is to make it, and that's why revenue is valued more. You can hire any number of consulting firms or smart engineers that can tell you how to lower your AWS bill, or get rid of unproductive employees. It's much harder to figure out how to grow your business by 2x.
And I assure you that growing revenue by 100% is far easier than cutting costs by 100% (while maintaining current revenue).
Also, there's a human element to it. I'd venture that most CEOs would much rather the company make more money than have to lower bonuses and benefits, cut down of office space and fire employees.
Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
If you can save 99% on cost, but sell at the same price, you've got a 10,000% profit, isn't it?
Tech doesn't usually measure COGS, because the cost of another user on a website is near zero.
I will say that I don't really agree that profit center/cost center is less clear terminolgy or doesnt have the right boundries. I'd argue the opposite. It's a pretty direct description of why any distinction exists at all. It's also pretty inuitive that its preferable to be in a role tied to how the company generates money. Line/Staff terminology requires nice blog posts to explain what those things are. Maybe in a military context it makes sense because there is no profit center per se, but for industry, using line/profit terminology is just a whitewash of profit center/cost center, which is imo the real distinction.
Of course the classification of profit/cost is not perfect as there are jobs kind of in the the middle, like say if you are an internal recruiter (you recruit profit center people too so...) but I don't think those roles are easier to classify as line/staff either.
Calling a software engineer (swe) 'Staff' because "working on non-core product" is indeed different from the standard corpororate 'Staff' prefix as a step/level of the ladder (within an org working on either core or non-core product) "swe, senior swe, staff swe, senior staff swe, principal swe, distinguished swe, fellow swe, senior fellow swe" I would have like to see mentions of both kinds of 'Staff swe' in the arti…
The article is titled The “Other Kind” of Staff SWE. Presumably the “first kind” is the definition to which you are referring
Staff in the modern military means you're a careerist. It's the last rank that you can't be forced out without advancing, and might not be expected to advance at all.
Staff has different kinds of connotations depend on officer and enlisted. Staff officers would never lead from the front. That's O1-O3s job, those people are actually trained by enlisted careerists before they ever get to lead. In the enlisted ranks, Staff starts with E6 (Staff Sgt) and they are typically platoon commander's. By contrast with officer ranks, Staff Sgts will still go on patrol.
The officers metaphor is a bit relevant to software. It's rare for Major+ to actually work in the field (unless they're highly specialized like an Air Officer). These are basically executives. On the enlisted side Corporal through Staff are your immediate leaders that the company recognizes. Corporal is the first working leader as a team lead, Sgt lead multiple corporals, and Staff Sgt can lead multiple Sgts. This can vary by +-1 rank.
I do think software does need to shift more the direction of the military where working leaders hold the majority of team direction and influence from a systemic level. Ultimately, Staff Enlisted are entrusted with direct responsibility for how and when things get done; they also (generally) have the most direction over the platoon. The biggest component I'd like to see is managers being trained by software careerists before they're ever allowed to lead a team.
Edit: my experience is colored by the Marines, which focus on small team leadership and cross training. YMMV.