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Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

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Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#101

Post by nyeah »

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…

This is an important point. But it doesn't conflict severely with the article.

Sure, to first order, and in the short term, engineering work is often valued more or less at random. The valuation is driven by factors that we can't predict (or that we would really rather not predict).

But to second order, and in the long term, engineering work is often valued according to whether it makes money. Often enough that it's worth paying attention to the article.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#102

Post by nialv7 »

sauercrowd wrote: post #20
nialv7 wrote: post #19

I have no words. this is just… so sad.

Which part?

The part where employee whose work improves the life of people around them (by refactoring, work on tech-debt), or the life of people around the world in general (open source, accessibility, etc.) isn't rewarded financially. And somehow capitalists want me to believe people working to advance their own self interests will collectively benefit the society at large.

Also the part where employees have to constantly justify their own existences. I just want to work on interesting things and be left alone.

(To be fair I am exaggerating a bit, and I think the author is, too. I don't think the reality is as bad as presented.)

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#104

Post by shalmanese »

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…

> Think deeper about why do you need to "sell" your work inside (some) companies

Mainly to prove you can sell, not that they can buy. Selling involves understanding the customer's needs, their tradeoff preferences, your value prop and being able to reflect that back to them. The minimum bar for successful selling requires you to demonstrate a certain degree of competence and due diligence that provides assurance that you're able to operate autonomously with trust.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#105

Post by blurker »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #95
blurker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most great engineers will actively work with management to make sure they're not single points of failure! Sure, but that is a load bearing "great" for sure. Not every company is staffed with great, selfless engineers. I'm an engineer and I've worked at companies with engineers who actively resisted making themselves not a single point of failure because it gave them control and job security. I think it's not uncom…

The company not being able to run without you doesn't mean you have job security, it just makes the company hurt more when they fire you based on someone's spreadsheet.

Tell that to the gatekeeping engineers who think otherwise.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#106

Post by ryandrake »

swiftcoder wrote: post #30
dagw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 engin…

> 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.

Never seen that in my life, and I've worked at small, medium, and huge companies. Sounds wild. So they actually have zero bugs in their bug tracker, and no feature on deck waiting to be built? What do they do all day?

Typical case I've seen at many companies is: Team has N engineers, with a rough capacity to fix N x 2 bugs per week. Bugs come in at a rate of N x 3, and the bug backlog is N x 80 and constantly growing until the team does periodic "bankruptcy" ritual where they mass-close N x 50 bugs that they admit they'll never get to fixing. Repeat forever.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#107

Post by bentcorner »

arijo wrote: post #96
tqi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they're right, and at a certain point engineering is a commodity?

Perhaps that was true 50 years ago, but in an increasingly complex technological world, problems simply cannot be solved without increasingly advanced engineering skills.

[dead]

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#108

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #45
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

[deleted]

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#110

Post by sunrunner »

harrall wrote: post #74
dirtybirdnj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Software engineers tend to downplay artists, designers, marketing and product. Frankly everyone downplays someone else based on their social circle. The only people who don’t have wide social circles but most people don’t.

"Everyone thinks their job in the Silo is the most important. Mine actually is." -- Juliette Nichols (also some Software Engineers)
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