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Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

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Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#111

Post by Clubber »

hinkley wrote: post #89
sumeno wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have worked at some really terrible companies. While I don't doubt this is the case at some places the places I've worked haven't been like this at all.

Sturgeon’s law. If it haven’t worked at a terrible place, and you’ve worked more than four places, then congratulations, you won the lottery. (If you haven’t worked more than, say, six places, you probably have no business telling anybody how the industry is).

My first job was a terrible place. My second job was a boring place, my third job was a great place, then BOOM dot bomb. My forth job was a great place until we got acquired, then it turned into a terrible place. My sixth job was the same as the fifth. My 7th job is both great and terrible at the same time.

For me, small companies are great places, but once they get acquired by large companies, they turn into horrible places.

I guess for some people, they feel the opposite about small vs. large companies.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#112

Post by [deleted] »

agentultra wrote: post #94

I sometimes wonder if the vulgarity of capitalism forces us to think this way. You don't see lawyers, doctors, or capital-P engineers thinking this way. They have to think about the state of the art and practicing their craft with the utmost attention to detail. Anything less would be unprofessional. And yet we programmers hear this story time and again: you don't matter, your craft doesn't matter: _all_ that matters…

[deleted]

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#113

Post by wwalser »

bitL wrote: post #31
wwalser wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, reading stuff like this is depressing. It's completely reasonable to understand and be cautious of the these things happening, but coming to the belief that this encompasses the whole of reality is unfortunate. (maybe that's not what gp meant…) It's important for engineers to understand that they have options. If you're being mistreated, move on — if people are claiming credit for your work* there are places th…

I wanted to point out that this happens very often; Game of Thrones nor House of Cards aren't completely fiction and people change rapidly when a potential wealth gain is at stake. The dominance game is very real and people probe for your weaknesses all the time, trying to exploit them and hack you for their benefit. Cover your back at all times and never put all your eggs in one basket. Push to become independent as…

I believe what we've both said accurately reflects our own experiences. I'm sorry you've experienced this. I encourage all, should they ever feel this way, to seek greener pasture as my own experience leads me to believe that this can be completely avoided.

All the best.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#114

Post by thwos213112 »

bitL wrote: post #9

Real-world: - you increase value; your bosses team up with each other and claim the credit; you might even get booed for some minor deficiencies whereas they will be boasting about their achievements - you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source; parasites are waiting in the open, incorporate your code to their commercial offering, never paying you anything; your bonus will be rude complaints about bugs in you…

"- you work for minimal salary and generous equity; when push comes to shovel, CEO will kick you out of the company due to "company problems" and claim your equity; bonus to the threat to your existence will be burnout from overworking and lack of credit"

I have personally seen this more than a couple of times. The worse I have seen is the CTO having worked for the company for a few years get fired and then his shares diluted away to nothing.

There is a correlation between these types of CEOs and hiring fresh grads. They are more susceptible to this type of brainwashing. Engineers with a few more years of experience having seen this are more wise.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#115

Post by Clubber »

WalterBright wrote: post #38
throwawayjava wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I think that this view is both obviously wrong and actively harmful. It's an example of where going with textbook definitions actually obfuscates reality. Highly compensated managers are taking a share of profit, often quite literally (look at how VP and above positions are compensated). But always indirectly -- you can't tell me a 7-8 figure salary "isn't a share of profit". That's obvious BS. And if my o…

The money paid to employees is deducted from the profits (or more precisely, profits are what is left after expenses and labor costs are paid). So your salary is your share of the profits in any pragmatic sense. This isn't MBA level stuff, any basic accounting course will explain it. In fact, I recommend anyone who cares about this sort of thing to learn basic accounting principles - it is simple, and highly useful k…

I think his point is engineers typically no longer get profit sharing bonuses while managers typically do. The author was suggesting to get paid more, find more value to create. This isn't even close to linear like it is with managers because of the lack of profit sharing to engineers.

I would argue that in most organizations, the culmination of engineering talent creates way more value than the manager, with rare exceptions. Most of the time, the manager can get wrecked by a train, and the engineers will continue to create value. If the manager built that team, he should get some credit, but most of the time, the manager is just a plugin resulting in more of a hinderance than a benefit. "Respect my authorit-a," type people.

Of course, if engineers would unionize, they'd get the profit sharing bonuses they used to get, but society? has convinced engineers that they get paid based on merit and the value they create, which they kinda do, but the ratio of compensation to value approaches nil and gets worse the more value they create.

For example, if I create $1M of value and get paid $100K in year one, then I create $3M of value in year two, do you think the company would compensate me $300K that year? Hell no they wouldn't, but the execs sure would get compensated for my value creation. Again, based on what the author is selling: if you want more compensation, create more value, well that's a load of horse shit for most engineer employees.

Some companies still consider top level engineers management level and will give them profit sharing accordingly. Small companies might give some sort of equity. I'd steer clear of companies that don't.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#116

Post by thwos213112 »

sumeno wrote: post #11
bitL wrote: post #9

Real-world: - you increase value; your bosses team up with each other and claim the credit; you might even get booed for some minor deficiencies whereas they will be boasting about their achievements - you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source; parasites are waiting in the open, incorporate your code to their commercial offering, never paying you anything; your bonus will be rude complaints about bugs in you…

You must have worked at some really terrible companies. While I don't doubt this is the case at some places the places I've worked haven't been like this at all.

That's not true. It happens in all types of companies. Its just not discussed as much as it would be considered disruptive and more likely to get let go as a result.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#117

Post by mitchellst »

agentultra wrote: post #94

I sometimes wonder if the vulgarity of capitalism forces us to think this way. You don't see lawyers, doctors, or capital-P engineers thinking this way. They have to think about the state of the art and practicing their craft with the utmost attention to detail. Anything less would be unprofessional. And yet we programmers hear this story time and again: you don't matter, your craft doesn't matter: _all_ that matters…

Programming craft does not matter because programming craft has no content. Doctors treat and fix bodily ills; their actions— the uses of their craft— are determined by the state of the patient. Similarly, lawyers' craft is determined by the content of the law. (The results can be encouraging or horrifying depending on whether the laws that apply to your time, place, and situation are just ones.) What determines the content to which a programmer's craft is applied? If it does not make money or serve the public good that your nonprofit addresses, why should your firm support it?

I say this as a programmer who likes writing beautiful code. Nevertheless, when we look around, we see no equivalent of charity hospitals for coders, where philanthropists donate wings and endow chairs to advance the state of the craft. (Not to disparage what we do have: CS Departments, GitHub, some open source foundations are awesome, but do not reflect similar public standing.) Our craft is not valued on its own terms because the broader society does not believe it is inherently beneficial to them. In a day when facebook and twitter throw our elections open to tampering, uber does... whatever uber does, and everyone's even more addicted to Netflix than they were to TV, can you blame them?

Lawyers are valued because they make society freer and fairer. Doctors enhance human dignity by caring for those made weak by sickness. Do you have an equivalently positive outcome for what our profession does when left to its own devices? If not, it's rightly difficult to appeal to the pieties of your profession with someone who does not share that profession.

This isn't meant to be a rebuke, rather, a reminder that good skills are unhelpful unless put to good use. If you don't like money as a means of keeping score on that, there's plenty of work in the public and nonprofit sectors.

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#118

Post by mitchellst »

zzzcpan wrote: post #16

This is really dishonest and disrespectful to people. Most companies are dictatorships, where all of the profits that come from maximizing value to customers do not go to employees. Employees have absolutely no say in it whatsoever and in fact are paid for their time for the sole purpose of not sharing profits with them.

I don't think it's disrespectful, because I think this is what the OP is saying. When considering how to make money in this business, you need to look at the company you're working for. He emphasizes that if it does not provide value, you won't do well there. If it's overly greedy, the same holds.

It's worth noting how good we have it: when you examine career salaries against years of school required and unemployment/failure rates (i.e., insurance salesmen can make millions, but most don't/can't.) then software engineering is one of the highest paid professions in the US. Could this be true if a controlling majority of employers were so greedy?

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#119

Post by vehementi »

hinkley wrote: post #98
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

I completely endorse the suggestion that engineers should learn to understand this concept. If you learn one thing in your career, it should be this. One of the differences between working at BigCorp versus working at SmallCo or VentureCo is that in the smaller companies the relationship is much easier to trace out. Dan Warmenhoven (when he was CEO of Network Appliance) had a wonderful way to very clearly explaining…

I’ve had coworkers confide in me that their value isn’t being seen. Some were really good, some were constant problems to be managed. I have seen this scenario you observed, and my standing advice is take a week off. If people are glad you came back then you are correct and you need a raise or more power or both. If they just ask you about your trip then your perception of your value is out of whack.

If they're glad you're back maybe you're a silo or bottleneck

Re: Fellow Engineers: This is where your money comes from

#120

Post by bitL »

thwos213112 wrote: post #114
bitL wrote: post #9

Real-world: - you increase value; your bosses team up with each other and claim the credit; you might even get booed for some minor deficiencies whereas they will be boasting about their achievements - you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source; parasites are waiting in the open, incorporate your code to their commercial offering, never paying you anything; your bonus will be rude complaints about bugs in you…

"- you work for minimal salary and generous equity; when push comes to shovel, CEO will kick you out of the company due to "company problems" and claim your equity; bonus to the threat to your existence will be burnout from overworking and lack of credit" I have personally seen this more than a couple of times. The worse I have seen is the CTO having worked for the company for a few years get fired and then his share…

Yeah, I've seen a CTO getting #%$^# as well; from 20% equity down to 0 after CEO got itchy feet. Both CTO and CEO were MIT graduates...
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