It's very surprising to me that this needs to be said - but maybe that's because I've mostly worked in, let's say, 'resource constrained' environments. You focus on the stuff that keeps the money coming, or people start losing their jobs.
Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
21–30 of 184 posts
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#22Replace "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.
Haha, that's the most practical way to put it compared to the theoretical blog post.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#23I think this is a problem that arises from people working in these gargantuan organisations where individuals can't see how their work contributes to the success of the organisation. They perceive the organisation as a construct built around social relationships rather than a construct that exists to drive some change in or generate profit from the surrounding economy, because they can't see how their work drives that change or generates that profit.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#24My pet peeve in this area that pretty much always gets overlooked by technical people even if they're somewhat experienced in management and business, is compliance. It's always good and profitable to adapt to and preferably implement representations of laws and regulations, including 'soft' rules, like standard contracts, established business practices, non-compulsory laws, things like that.
Even if no customer today cares about something, a form of employee compensation that is a bit unusual, say, or 'reversed' VAT declaration in invoicing, or whatever, if large actors in your segment do, and that's most likely the case, then you should at least build things based off the formalities in the local jurisdiction so that when your sales people get a big prospect on the hook you'll have an easy time adding what they need.
It can also shield from legal or financial liabilities if someone gets angry at you, and your lawyer will be happier and possibly cheaper if they know you understand your legal environment. If you're doing an exit buyers will also appreciate good compliance, just like they appreciate other forms of risk management.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#25I think this is a problem that arises from people working in these gargantuan organisations where individuals can't see how their work contributes to the success of the organisation. They perceive the organisation as a construct built around social relationships rather than a construct that exists to drive some change in or generate profit from the surrounding economy, because they can't see how their work drives tha…
Or they’re not trying to understand how it works
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#26Running companies like this is how you end up with the current state of Boeing. Only valuing engineers who are directly earning you profit and firing the ones who only have an indirect role in your profit centers.
> If your work isn’t clearly connected to company profit, your position is unstable
You know what really makes your position unstable as an engineer? Delaying a product over "safety" concerns, thereby doing work that's clearly connected to preventing company profit. Only young, bright-eyed engineers would be naive enough to bring up safety concerns right?
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#27I 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…
Could it be because those companies are full of people who somehow occupy important positions without understanding the basics of the engineering work.
Every company I've ever worked at has more work that they would like to do than they have engineers to do it. The problem often isn't that they don't understand why fixing technical debt is important, it's to decide if fixing that particular technical debt right now is the best use of these resources right now. Also they might also know things that I might not know, like long term plans for and the relative profitability of different projects, which will affect how they make decisions. No point in spending effort fixing technical debt if that project/department is already slated for closure.
Also maybe it's a US vs EU thing, but at every engineering and IT company I've ever worked in Europe, the person two steps above me was basically always an engineer or at least has a science or technical background.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#28Running companies like this is how you end up with the current state of Boeing. Only valuing engineers who are directly earning you profit and firing the ones who only have an indirect role in your profit centers. > If your work isn’t clearly connected to company profit, your position is unstable You know what really makes your position unstable as an engineer? Delaying a product over "safety" concerns, thereby doing…
> Or even worse, engineers who are preventing you from making profit over "safety" concerns.
Ugh, this.
After doing SRE for nearly a decade and being utterly pigeonholed, I've come to believe it's more accurately placed in the "controlled opposition" bucket than anything about either reliability or engineering.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#29Replace "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.
And make sure your bosses boss knows who you are and how good you are, so that they'll want to keep you when your boss ends with said potato.
Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Could it be because those companies are full of people who somehow occupy important positions without understanding the basics of the engineering work. Every company I've ever worked at has more work that they would like to do than they have engineers to do it. The problem often isn't that they don't understand why fixing technical debt is important, it's to decide if fixing that particular technical debt right now i…
> Every company I've ever worked at has more work that they would like to do than they have engineers to do it
I've worked at a couple of BigTechs, where there were between 5-20x more engineers than actual work. The trade-offs are... strange in that world.
> Also maybe it's a US vs EU thing, but at every engineering and IT company I've ever worked in Europe, the person two steps above me was basically always an engineer or at least has a science or technical background.
I haven't found that to be common in the US. I've had a number of front-line managers who were (somewhat) recent engineer conversions, rarely had anyone above that level who was.