Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
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Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
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Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#2I work on a product that has been built over 25 years. Lots of the work I did years ago is to ensure the product longevity.
Lots of the work I do now is to ensure it lasts another 25 years. Thats good, but its only the start of "my work".
It's up to me to "sell" that benefit to upper management. There's no point in assuming they'll figure it out by accident. Part of my job is enumerating the value I add.
By all means work on technical debt. But be sure to make a compelling case as to how the eradication of that debt will impact the project over the next decade. Try and throw in immediate results as well (faster, more reliable, reduced support) but more importantly translate that into terms that measure the improvement in cold hard cash.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#3> They throw themselves into various pieces of work that don’t make money ... better screenreader support
Truth hurts lol.
This I think is where Capitalism is at odds with a lot of people's intrinsic values. Accessibility unarguable improves people's lives and many people are in software to make the world better but yeah if you want to make as much money (or maybe just more money) doesn't mean working on even a useful item; just a much demanded one.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#4This sort of thing is why I decided to do research so I could work at universities and small startups! I figured that way I could be away from the corruption and selfishness that exists in large tech companies.
Then my whole department got defunded. More fool me.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#5> They throw themselves into various pieces of work that don’t make money ... better screenreader support Truth hurts lol. This I think is where Capitalism is at odds with a lot of people's intrinsic values. Accessibility unarguable improves people's lives and many people are in software to make the world better but yeah if you want to make as much money (or maybe just more money) doesn't mean working on even a usefu…
https://x.com/ben_el_baz/status/1908063819966067048
Corollary : This is also the reason why people (i.e. Wall Street) who are close to / handle the money earn more money. Drinking straight from the firehose.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#6This sort of thing is why I decided to do research so I could work at universities and small startups! I figured that way I could be away from the corruption and selfishness that exists in large tech companies. Then my whole department got defunded. More fool me.
Even many of those small startups are in the pocket of some unfavourable characters.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#7> They throw themselves into various pieces of work that don’t make money ... better screenreader support Truth hurts lol. This I think is where Capitalism is at odds with a lot of people's intrinsic values. Accessibility unarguable improves people's lives and many people are in software to make the world better but yeah if you want to make as much money (or maybe just more money) doesn't mean working on even a usefu…
That is why laws like the ADA exist: to give companies a financial incentive to make their products accessible.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#8Replace "profitable" with "popular with management" and you're right on the money. Just don't get caught holding the hot potato when the wind shifts. And good luck figuring out when that is.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#9This sort of thing is why I decided to do research so I could work at universities and small startups! I figured that way I could be away from the corruption and selfishness that exists in large tech companies. Then my whole department got defunded. More fool me.
I’ve also found some small companies have even worse politics and infighting than large companies.
Having a great boss+team in a large company is probably the most ideal — at least while it lasts.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#10I work on a product that has been built over 25 years. Lots of the work I did years ago is to ensure the product longevity. Lots of the work I do now is to ensure it lasts another 25 years. Thats good, but its only the start of "my work". It's up to me to "sell" that benefit to upper management. There's no point in assuming they'll figure it out by accident. Part of my job is enumerating the value I add. By all means…
How do you put numbers in there usually?
I'm facing an issue at work where an important factor should be done to correct a serious design mistake, but it doesn't get in the way of any feature. It's probably the cause of a lot of loss of development time over the lifetime of the project, but I don physically know how much of a boost will it give to development.
I know it will, but I wouldn't feel comfortable without quantifying.
I have some rough idea for approaches to this, but would appreciate some external input as well