Knowing where your engineer salary comes from • Hacker News Board

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#161

Post by fatnoah » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #86

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…

> Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical. Comments like these make me remember that the tech world is very big and companies come in many different shapes. I haven’t had non-technical management below the CEO level in many years.

It's multilayered. I've had technical and non-technical bosses at large and small companies, and the universal thing that made them "good" or "bad" was whether they gave me sufficient context and trusted me to get the work done. The best ones challenged me in good faith and provided honest feedback.

Even stranger was the experience of my company being acquired by a large name-brand tech company. My manager (Director) and their manager (VP) were the worst kind...non-technical and second guessing everything in silly ways. Meanwhile, the co-founder and CTO popped into our tiny office one day because they were in town, rolled up to my desk and said "hey, you're fatnoah, right? I have some questions" and then pulled me into a conference room where we went deep on our entire tech stack. He got everything the first time and understood the how and why of what we built and why.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#162

Post by nitwit005 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

> I regularly see stories like “I convinced my idiot bosses to finally let me do only tech debt work, and would you believe they fired me after a few months?”

> “it’s so unfair that I haven’t been promoted - look at all this amazing accessibility/standards/open-source work I’ve been doing!”

Stories like these might exist, but I genuinely haven't seen a story like either case.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#163

Post by lamp_book » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 11:18 PM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #149

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…

Admiral Rickover was likely the single most competent engineering manager in the last century and wrote this: Doing a Job https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. Therefore, a manager must make the work challenging and rewarding so that his people will remain with the organization for many years. This allows it to benefit fully from their knowledge, experien…

Reminds me of Steve Jobs on consulting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4CNB80SRc

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#164

Post by eVeechu7 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 11:49 PM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #149

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…

Admiral Rickover was likely the single most competent engineering manager in the last century and wrote this: Doing a Job https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. Therefore, a manager must make the work challenging and rewarding so that his people will remain with the organization for many years. This allows it to benefit fully from their knowledge, experien…

Chief executives are so often transients.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#165

Post by folkrav » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 12:34 AM UTC

Anecdotally, working in profit centres (and being a productive member of said centres) somewhat protected me from large layoffs, but that’s pretty much it. There isn’t much otherwise that ever shielded me (or any of my team members, as a team lead somewhat involved in these decisions) from being expensive line items, in the eyes of people some levels above my pay grade taking business decisions looking at a balance sheet.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#166

Post by Fruitmaniac » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 2:24 AM UTC

I think the biggest career mistake engineers make -- myself included -- is assuming your contributions will be automatically recognized when in fact the amount of credit you receive is equal to how much you contributed multiplied by the amount of attention you draw to it.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#167

Post by Fruitmaniac » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 2:30 AM 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'm an engineer with an MBA and they definitely don't teach in business school that respect is optional. It's just something bad managers do all on their own.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#168

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 3:13 AM UTC

"What are tech companies?"

The author never answers this question. He suggests that small groups of people run them but he does not elucidate what are tech compaines.

If a so-called "tech" company is not profitable, and this may comprise the vast majority of them, then the "engineer salary" comes from VC money. Essentially, a loan. The author omits this simple truth as well.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#169

Post by hansmayer » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #114

hansmayer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is why I said it was an ideal, something to strive for. Since we are in lecture-mode here, ever heard of objectives and key results? Think that would be a more fitting alternative to your black-and-white metaphor of low-interest vs. payday loan ...

It's not an ideal. There is an optimal level of technical debt to maximize shareholder value. Eliminating all technical debt makes no more sense than eliminating all financial debt. Used effectively, debt is a powerful lever. The trick lies in finding the optimal level based on incomplete information, and many corporate managers aren't very good at this.

By stating it should be zero, it is literally, by definition an ideal. That is not something you can decide on. Maximising shareholder value? Now, that is an ideal which is a root cause of many evils today.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#170

Post by hansmayer » Tue, Apr 08, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #104

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…

> 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…

No, actually. He said it was a part of his job because they did not understand his work? So we are back at square one here, why do people not understanding engineering work, end up managing engineering work?