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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

#131

Post by hinkley »

GuiA wrote: post #122
hinkley wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not when they’re invalidating other people’s experiences.

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

#132

Post by golergka »

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…

> 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?

Because you're guaranteed compensation as an employee. You will get your salary even in the firm loses money - you're not taking any financial risks.

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

#133

Post by edanm »

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…

"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."

That's ridiculous. Of course they think this way. How many doctors are working in a hospital doing the latest surgical technique, versus how many have opened their own office? Do you think opening a private practice means you concentrate more on medicine vs. administration?

They do it because it pays more.

Thinking programmers are unique in having to balance their profession and business is just plain wrong. It's true that most professionals might not think about it that often, but then again, most programmers don't think this way either.

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

#134

Post by lulmerchant »

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…

The problem with this argument, and most of the other disparaging (and borderline nihilistic) comments in this thread, is that it ignores the fact that competition is a two way street.

Delivering value to stakeholders is undoubtably an indicator for success in business. If your work environment isn't rewarding you for that in a way that satisfies you, then find one that will. If you are delivering value, then your company has to compete to keep you, just as much as you have to compete with your colleagues (and also the rest of the workforce in general) for what ever position it is that you want.

If you're not prepared to seek better opportunities, not only are you disadvantaging yourself, but by just putting up with whatever you're unhappy about, you're also disadvantaging every other person out there like you, by stifling competition, and setting the tone that you'll just put up with whatever bullshit comes down to you from management.

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

#135

Post by crdoconnor »

coconut_crab wrote: post #124
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.

>How could a business grow if it doesn't create any values at all?

He wasn't saying that the business doesn't create any value. He was saying that the people who created the value were not the ones rewarded for it.

"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."

I think it's easier to fit in if you either don't create a lot of value or you create a lot of value and expect your reward to be commensurate with somebody who who doesn't.

I think developer jobs are a bit different to most because the effects are amplified and the value is hard to recognize. It's possible for somebody who is very good to create a huge amount of value and not have it perceived and somebody who is not good at all to actively destroy value (e.g. take a good code base and turn it into a buggy technical debt ridden shitshow) and also not have it perceived. I've personally seen the latter happen and everybody just chalked up the resultant lost business to inevitable bad luck.

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

#136

Post by crdoconnor »

bitL wrote: post #97
dreamfactored wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get recognition as the golden goose, many companies will promote rather than kill. Getting recognition is a part of figuring out where value is added .

I've experienced both - being ridiculously pushed up for no reason as well as company attempting to destroy me after I gave them world-class products that put them on the radar (in medieval sense when they crippled some masters once they built something for them so that they couldn't build something better in another place). Both companies "famous & loved" by geeks. Both situations were stupid and I escaped both of t…

>company attempting to destroy me after I gave them world-class products that put them on the radar

I saw this happen once and the developer responded by gradually and deliberately making the code base as cryptic and hard to understand as possible.

Then he quit and development on the product essentially stalled.

Some part of me thinks that maybe programmers who have been royally screwed should take this route. It would offend my sense of professional pride to deliberately create a mess, but I can see the benefits of discouraging business managers from royally screwing the programmer.

That guy created a lot of programmer jobs, too. The project could easily have been a much higher quality and developed at twice the velocity with just 2 people if done right. Instead that code base ended up feeding 12 people's families.

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

#137

Post by tmp98676 »

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…

In reallity its not your problem if the company is not able to extract value from your work. Your work has a price they have to pay it weather they extract value or not. What if a terrible farmer buys a lamborghini tractor covered in gold then tells the person making it that the tractor only produced 10 dollars so he is going to pay for it 3 dollars. Some other farmer might get a lot more production from the same machine. Or what if i hire a team of nasa experts to build the most advanced and revolutionary nut cracking device then realize i just wasted a lot of money for nothing? Can i tell the experts sorry but nut cracking does not produce the value to justify the cost of the machine so you will not get paid. Its complete nonsense.

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

#138

Post by k__ »

meddlepal wrote: post #108
pqh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though you're more likely to shape your own failure. Let's be real. That's not to say don't try, but be aware of the full picture.

There are many definitions of success. A self sustaining business that doesn't make massive profits or have a vice grip on a market is failure in VC's eyes but by most folks standards would be a massive success.

Well, there are still companies that don't try to be massive growth VCs dreams and fail.

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

#139

Post by agumonkey »

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…

My conclusion: grow veggies at home, make solar concentrators and PV panels then learn to paint.

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

#140

Post by dgreensp »

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…

Yes, the original statement is totally reasonable:

Ultimately, I want a profitable product to be a byproduct of my excellent engineering, not have my engineering be just a means to an end, of getting to a profitable product.

In other words, “I want to work for a company that values engineering excellence.” And the reply is something like, “you don’t understand how business works”? It’s true that an understanding of the concepts in the article will help you recognize a good business so that you don’t go to work for a company started by engineers with no understanding of business themselves, but you don’t want to work for someone that has a knee-jerk reaction to bringing up engineering quality as something important, either.

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