Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

seangoedecke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 184 posts

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#31

Post by jeffparsons »

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…

One way to communicate this is in terms of _schedule risk_, rather than straight-up lost productivity. E.g. for a particularly troublesome design flaw, you might estimate that for any given 4-week project there's a 20% risk of the project blowing out by an extra week due to that flaw.

Depending on the stakeholder(s) you're dealing with, approaching it like this (as risk assessment/management) might help to convey the short-term impact of a long-term problem.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#33

Post by em500 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #13
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Sayre's law: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#34

Post by PeterStuer »

"At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company"

You would think that, but decades of experience have disproved that.

Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical.

Most are (more or less) aware that somewhere technical engineering in software is needed, but they feel that as a threath rather than an asset. If engineering is not a commodity, they fear being called out for not being in touch with the grounded reality of the business, and fear the unpredictability this entails for their own operation.

So they will tend to treat engineering like a commodity, generic and interchangable at will, and even deliberatly not recognize differential contribution by engineers to the company's success.

This is also why once non-technical management has consolidated, rising from engineering into management will become very difficult, often requiring you deny your technical competences.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#35

Post by moolcool »

cjs_ac wrote: post #23

I 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…

But the relationships are what affords that change though, isn't it?

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#36

Post by aaomidi »

CrossVR wrote: post #26

Running 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…

Yeah. Company culture like the one mentioned in this document is toxic and will inevitably cause the company to fail.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#37

Post by tybit »

> At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company

If you look at what it actually takes to get promoted at most tech companies I’d say this isn’t generally true at many big tech companies.

Being on a very lucrative part of the product may not get you as much “impact” on your promotion packet as if you are working on a platform/infra touching the whole org. Even if that platform isn’t generating the company much money even indirectly.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#38

Post by ozim »

PeterStuer wrote: post #34

"At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company" You would think that, but decades of experience have disproved that. Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical. Most are (more or less) aware that somewhere technical engineering in software is needed, but they feel that as a threath rather than an asset. I…

But also company actually is much better off when it is not held hostage by couple of technical employees.

Also every employee should be able to quit at any time and not affect business.

So I disagree describing all like it is some evil scheme - that’s how businesses work.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#40

Post by saagarjha »

ozim wrote: post #38
PeterStuer wrote: post #34

"At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company" You would think that, but decades of experience have disproved that. Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical. Most are (more or less) aware that somewhere technical engineering in software is needed, but they feel that as a threath rather than an asset. I…

But also company actually is much better off when it is not held hostage by couple of technical employees. Also every employee should be able to quit at any time and not affect business. So I disagree describing all like it is some evil scheme - that’s how businesses work.

Is it better when it's held hostage by a couple of non-technical employees?
Post reply on HN