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Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

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Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#11

Post by ajuc »

lesuorac wrote: post #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 usefu…

I worked at a company that makes machines reading books/press/whatever to people with impaired vision (or altogether blind).

It wasn't the best paid job, but the satisfaction when you can talk with someone who uses your product daily for obvious life improvement beats any cozy bank job.

This is a huge underdeveloped market BTW, and as the populations worldwide age it's only going to be more and more important.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#12

Post by 6510 »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #10
bruce511 wrote: post #2

I 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 q…

I only do small solo projects but the value from maintainable code depends on how often it needs to be updated.

If management comes with new [crazy] ideas and/or feature [cruft] every other week it should be easy to prefer a warehouse with ready to use components over a scrap yard. If you need a set of usable tires a few times per year the scrap yard will provide. If you need a set of tires 20 times per day you want at least 200 sets of each kind stored in a convenient place. You probably live some place in between.

edit: Also, timing is everything. Write down everything you want, add the pony. Wait for the right moment when their head is not raging with 50 deadlines.

Most important imho is to not want anything but explain what options they have. If they want faster results they might be able to get them by attacking the technical debt.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#13

Post by FirmwareBurner »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #9
mirawelner wrote: post #4

This 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.

>I’ve also found some small companies have even worse politics and infighting than large companies.

Also matches my experience and I think I can explain why.

Small companies usually have tight social cliques (for better and for worse) which also translates to group think, more gossip, and less diversity of though as most people working there likely know each other form before or went to the same schools, worked at the same company before, etc.

Therefore if you don't click from the start with the core "gossip" group on all wavelengths, then your career prospects in the company are fucked.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#14

Post by pjc50 »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #10
bruce511 wrote: post #2

I 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 q…

> How do you put numbers in there usually?

Make them up. If you're uncomfortable with this, ask ChatGPT to make them up for you. Most places don't have any real way to measure productivity or rate of feature delivery, so as long as you promise a reasonable number (5-10%) they have no way of contradicting you.

Incremental refactoring is also the other classic way to do this. Slip bits into other tickets until you've slowly dragged the ship around. But it's not always possible.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#16

Post by hansmayer »

bruce511 wrote: post #2

I 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…

I get your point at the basic level, but as engineers and managers, we need to stop this nonsense. Think deeper about why do you need to "sell" your work inside (some) companies ? Could it be because those companies are full of people who somehow occupy important positions without understanding the basics of the engineering work. What's the value such busywork managers are adding, besides the anti-value of layers of explanatory communication and wasted time? The busywork folks should be working to understand where their salaries are coming from, not the engineers. Note that I am not saying all managers are useless (its also a part of my job), it's the people-and-ideas-managers who are useless in the technical setting. The point about technical debt should be a non-issue, why the hell would you have to explain that the technical debt is a bad thing? Did we not clear this issue many times over and establish zero technical debt as an engineering ideal a long time ago? Well it is because some person with 1/4 of your experience and competence somehow got lucky and talked themselves into one or two hierarchical positions above you. We need to start a pushback across the industry and stop allowing former accountants and humanist science graduates into "leadership" roles in IT.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#17

Post by dave4420 »

hansmayer wrote: post #16
bruce511 wrote: post #2

I 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…

I get your point at the basic level, but as engineers and managers, we need to stop this nonsense. Think deeper about why do you need to "sell" your work inside (some) companies ? Could it be because those companies are full of people who somehow occupy important positions without understanding the basics of the engineering work. What's the value such busywork managers are adding, besides the anti-value of layers of…

There’s a difference between management knowing that it’s worth paying off tech debt in general, and management knowing that now is the right time to pay off this piece of tech debt in particular.

Why pay off tech debt A and not tech debt B? Is this really more urgent than implementing feature C?

I have some financial debts, but I prioritise paying off some over others, and even allow myself to buy myself nice things instead of paying off the mortgage early. The same principle applies with tech debt, except I have to justify my choices to my bosses instead of to my girlfriend.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#18

Post by kbrkbr »

mirawelner wrote: post #4

This 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.

Well, I left academia 20 years ago, because of the perceived corruption and selfishness. I guess you just need to be lucky, no matter where you go.

Good luck anyways, I hope better times are on the horizon.

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