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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

#121

Post by dingo_bat »

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 increase value by x million dollars, get praise and a promotion and a 50% raise. But that raise is still only an insignificant fraction of x.

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

#122

Post by GuiA »

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).

Why six and not eight? Or four? My father has been a chemical engineer for the same company from ages 22-now (59) and is an expert in his (very) niche field, does that make him unqualified to speak about the state of the chemical engineering industry?

People's experiences are worth listening to even if they've just been in the workforce for a couple years.

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

#123

Post by mcrad »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
throwawayjava wrote: post #7

> This is why I struggle with scenarios where people discuss pay and work without considering value. Counter-point: firms exist. If I'm the one figuring out how to create value, why the hell are the C suite, middle managers, and investors getting 99% of the profits? So no, in the context of a large firm, it's definitely NOT an engineer's job to figure out how their skills align with market demand. And that's the whol…

> getting 99% of the profits? Profits by definition are calculated after labor costs are deducted, so employees get 0% of the profits in salary. However, take a look at your company's accounts and see how much of the gross revenue is paid out as wages and salary. It'll be a big chunk. There's your share.

You'll want to consider the main point of the article then ask yourself how much of revenue is paid out is agency costs. It's a big chunk in most companies.

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

#124

Post by coconut_crab »

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…

IMO, that's a bit too cynical. How could a business grow if it doesn't create any values at all?

Reality is more nuanced and what can be considered 'value' are harder to tell but overall I think one should always strive for excellence in making values for the society. My experience working in different jobs (most are non IT) is that as long as you can create values, there will be a suitable place for your ability.

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

#125

Post by eevilspock »

angersock wrote: post #40

"We get our money from customers" doesn't actually cover many other very real use cases. Let's try: - We get our money from bosses who want higher headcounts to justify their position. - We get our money from competitive poaching, so that if GOOG/MSFT/FB has us the other firms don't. - We get our money from salespeople tricking customers into buying our products. This deception is easier if the products actually meet…

> “We get our money from customers”

> We get our money from selling out users to drive advertising clicks.

Advertisers are the real customer and users the product and all that. This perverse incentive is the driver of most garbage on the web. And not only is the user sold out, they are manipulated by the advertising, the products (e.g. search results, news pages) are manipulated, and now elections are manipulated (Because Facebook et al designed to put the user first would not have spread viral bullshit).

Engineers need to put morality and social good above making more money. Greed is not the god that people should be worshiping and designing economic systems around.

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

#126

Post by zumu »

> If you want to spend your life crafting beautiful code with headphones on, you can absolutely do that. You will get paid just fine for that. But if you’re not influencing others and helping the broader team execute, you’re setting a ceiling on the degree to which you can contribute to the company’s output.

How does building a stable, easy to maintain, extensible product not help the broader team execute?

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

#127

Post by aidenn0 »

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…

I think you completely missed the point of the article. The point is that the total perceived value delivered to customers is the long-term cap on your salary.

Your company can't charge more than the perceived value delivered, and they can't pay you more money than they charge the customers.

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

#128

Post by doesnt_know »

burntsushi wrote: post #106
Nokinside wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are generous and do non-AGPL based open-source ; parasites are waiting in the open This is not you being generous or them being parasite. BSD type license is not "hint hint GPL type honor code". You need to communicate what you want from others trough the license. If you use non-AGPL or non GPL open license that's a sign that others can exploit your work for commercial purposes without contributing back money o…

> If you use BSD type license and others exploit it like it was intended to, don't complain. Uh. No. This is only valid if you interpret laws and ethics as one in the same. Maybe you do. That's fine. But not everyone does.

This type of reasoning is completely out of place in the context of a developer having full control of the license they release their own code under.

There are literally hundreds of different software licenses. You can just pick the exact one that matches your ethical world view.

There is no reason to pick one that doesn't reflect your intent, then being a passive aggressive asshole about it when others follow the license as described.

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

#129

Post by hinkley »

vehementi wrote: post #119
hinkley wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Certainly. But that sort aren’t the kind who intimate something like that in private. Everybody knows what they think of themselves. And in some cases they know what I think of them too.

I’ve been indispensable before. It’s a great feeling if you don’t know any better. But there are other ways to be indispensable besides holding all the important bits in your head and refusing to share it.

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

#130

Post by JSDave »

eeks wrote: post #50
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…

Can’t agree more. OP argument only holds if “value” is an absolute and objective concept and if everyone in the company is measured by it. It just does not work like that. It’s a simple maximization problem. If your ideal is science and engineering and good code then your value will only be recognized by people who share the same ideal and these people are usually not the one distributing money. If your ideal is maki…

This is why I think it's crucial to find a good engineering manager. He or she takes care of the politics for you and makes sure you're properly rewarded for your work. It lets you keep your head down and focus on tech.

They're usually a main contributor and value good code as much as you. They're surrounded by a set of engineers who have worked together for 5+ years. And most of these engineers have followed the manager from one company to the next.

If a company starts treating the group unfairly, they move on to the next company as a group.

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