Knowing where your engineer salary comes from • Hacker News Board

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#41

Post by jgeada » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 12:51 PM UTC

OK, now explain where management's salary comes from.

They don't produce anything, at best they're taste arbiters and at worst parasitic middle men that happen to control the budget; funny how that always means they get more of it.

The best long term performing companies are run by technical people that happen to be competent managers. As soon as the professional managerial class takes over they quickly figure out their most profitable move is to cheapen out on engineering and trade in the future for bonuses right now; they'll be long gone when the company craters.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#42

Post by virgilp » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 12:56 PM UTC

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.

There's a subtle but very important difference between making sure nobody is a "single point of failure" or bottleneck (heck, most great engineers will actively work with management to make sure they're not single points of failure!), and recognizing that engineers are not fungible resources and should not be treated as such.

I do agree that it's simpler for management to pretend that they are, and that's why great management is insanely rare. But great management, like great engineers, can make a huge difference in the success of a company / project.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#43

Post by dirtybirdnj » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:13 PM UTC

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…

I think your comment can be boiled down to "management doesn't respect engineers"

That's the fundamental problem. Some MBA or book somewhere convinced people that respect and dignity were optional. Once they realized they could apply this to more than engineers they started painting the entire world with this bullshit.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#44

Post by agentultra » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:18 PM UTC

Mackenzie’s analysis holds a grain of truth and remains too simplistic.

If you work at a company whose notion of value is purely dividends, get out.

The aviation industry didn’t get profitable without regulation. Safety is a big part of the value generated. Spending on safety is not spending money putting more butts in seats and selling more tickets faster. But few people will choose to fly if the risk to their safety is too great.

Software does have similar responsibilities. People hate losing their money, having their private data leaked, having their entire production run screwed up because of a software error. It can cost a business a lot of money. Cutting corners to bring new features to the table doesn’t exactly add to the value the company brings to their customers. You also need to respect their privacy, do what's required to avoid security errors, programming errors, etc.

Update: This article, and Mackenzie's advice, is decent if you're trying to survive at such a company and you can't get out yet.. for reasons. But I would aim your career towards getting out at some point because such a company will never value your work.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#45

Post by throwaway98797 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

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…

make those with power like you and rewards will flow

relation to company profitability is optional and often times counterproductive

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#46

Post by Clubber » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

dirtybirdnj wrote: post #43

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…

I think your comment can be boiled down to "management doesn't respect engineers" That's the fundamental problem. Some MBA or book somewhere convinced people that respect and dignity were optional. Once they realized they could apply this to more than engineers they started painting the entire world with this bullshit.

I think they take them for granted not realizing that things can get much worse. I think they do this because they don't understand it. Ever been on a call with a company and they have to tell you, "You'll have to call back, our systems are down." This can cost millions an hour.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#47

Post by hnthrow90348765 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:31 PM UTC

dirtybirdnj wrote: post #43

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…

I think your comment can be boiled down to "management doesn't respect engineers" That's the fundamental problem. Some MBA or book somewhere convinced people that respect and dignity were optional. Once they realized they could apply this to more than engineers they started painting the entire world with this bullshit.

Personally I think it's just their social circles that reinforce this, not the boogeyman MBA stuff. Because at some level, yes, they can be intimidated by technical people and this is a defense to avoid the "why am I even employed" spiral.

It would be nice if they could meet us half-way on the technical stuff. They regularly merge architects and sysadmins into developer roles making us learn more stuff.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#48

Post by t43562 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:35 PM UTC

I have often ended up working on the billing system - nobody cares if it functions and I don't know why. It pulls in the money every month and if it makes mistakes the company loses money.........!!!!.....

In the same companies people do care about the UI ...even when it has about 2-3 unique users per day. I won't explain how this translates to being able to function as a company at all - just to say it does because most selling is actually through salespeople.

So what I get from the OP's dose of "realism" is that everything is about perception and hopes for the future etc. The things that are making money now are assumed to be able to carry on doing so forever without attention. Just as some people buy a car and never look after it. When the day of disaster comes they're surprised.

Some companies implement new features to make a sale. So there's a continual struggle to complicate an already complicated system......but you're not allowed to refactor or spend time upgrading from gcc 4.3 or whatever because that's not work that leads to a sale. So each new feature takes more and more effort of course....and when you lose developers their replacements don't understand the convoluted codebase so bugs can't be fixed and customers don't renew their contracts.

So you do need to work for profitable companies rather than the kind of slow motion car-crash companies that are trying to do something which cannot really support itself.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#49

Post by chrisweekly » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

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…

"zero technical debt" is a pipe dream. Not all tech debt is equal; think "low-interest student loan or mortgage" vs "high-interest credit cards or payday loans".

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#50

Post by t43562 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #27

hansmayer wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

Sometimes they're looking for the next big product that will make millions but IMO they never really stack the odds of that working against the chance of losing current business through not updating, improving their current offering to make it e.g. more sticky.

Hence you work on "huge priorities" and then they turn out to attract 2-3 tiny customers....Meanwhile you have horrendous problems with things that do sell that make them inconvenient for your customers such that they will be delighted to go elsewhere the moment they find out that your competition does it better.