What about HR? HR Tech is not working on software to create new products (research and development) or on software to sell said products to other people (sales/marketing), but it also isn't maintenance.
Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
131–140 of 265 posts
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which department are you talking about? If your department doesn't drive revenue, then the business leaders will see it as a cost center. It doesn't matter if you disagree with that perspective unless you can change their minds. How have you done that in the past, or hypothetically how do you think that might work?
It doesn't become any less nonsencial just because some business leaders who are still stuck in 1980s believe in it. Both profit centers and cost centers are supposed to increase profit, otherwise you wouldn't hire those people. If a department doesn't drive profit, then just axe it and stop wasting money on it. If you can't [1], then it actually drives profit, you just have no idea how. The fact that you can't set p…
You redefined cost / profit center as 'primary' or 'support'.
This is a circular argument.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#133In addition to knowing which bucket your salary comes from, I think it is also useful to know how your organization values building software. Because this affects your career just as much. * Is your company selling software development hours (consulting)? I'm this car you'll be valued for client relations skills and the ability to bang out acceptable software. * Is your company selling a software product (product com…
> Is your company selling something else that has a software component or that software enables (pretty much every other company)?
I'm not sure this is true? If my company sells food or clothing or shoes, they don't have a software component. I'm not sure what the breakdown is, but my gut feeling is "pretty much every other company" is wrong.
I work for a company that makes clothing and shoes. We have an enormous tech organization, but we aren't a consulting company, don't sell software, and don't put software into our products.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
thank you, maybe it is easier to understand when you ask whether business will halt and die if the system you are responsible for is down or suddenly absent or it is going to be a mild inconvenience. I think, defined like this makes it less ambiguous edit: fix msg
> when you ask whether business will halt and die if the system you are responsible for is down or suddenly absent This is a great way to put it. I also ask myself the question: "who are the rockstars" at a company. The folks that are celebrated. If it isn't a developer/engineer, you aren't at a category 2 company.
thank you, I've got something to think about.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The projects that cost money upfront (OPEX) and can provably reduce recurring costs (CAPEX) So you mean OPEX are upfront costs, and CAPEX are recurring costs?
Yeah, whatever mistakes the GP did, those names are the other way around.
Yes I did transpose them!!! I have since had coffee and am feeling much more on the ball, thanks for catching my error folks!!!!
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#136In addition to knowing which bucket your salary comes from, I think it is also useful to know how your organization values building software. Because this affects your career just as much. * Is your company selling software development hours (consulting)? I'm this car you'll be valued for client relations skills and the ability to bang out acceptable software. * Is your company selling a software product (product com…
Missing the hackernews part of product to research and development,: Is your company planning to use the exponential growth nature of software to enter into a overlooked niche or rapidly take over a existing industry? In that case, product development does not really catch the situation. Cause using the situation, closing time window till competition appears or funds run out, is way more important than the product or…
Seems like a variation of #1 where the rewards are probabilistic and lumpy. I agree that the motivations and resulting behaviors end up pretty different.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#137> Maintenance is always on the chopping block I wonder if someone or someplace figured a way to make software maintenance and support to be better valued. It's like, it's reasonably easy to market and sell internally the start of a project and consume from some internal investment (CapEx like) budget to make it, but once you have done all of that was in scope, you delivered, it's a lot harder to keep it going at the…
Maintenance is instantly a good business case if you can sell maintenance and support contracts to your customers. Of course you will rarely find that in B2C areas, but in B2B it is not uncommon.
Though that just kicks the can. We sell support contracts so everyone does a bunch of bug fixing as a matter of course, and that doesn't even get called maintenance internally. "Maintenance" is the refactoring or other tech debt quashing that the devs always want to do but which mostly isn't a priority.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#138In addition to knowing which bucket your salary comes from, I think it is also useful to know how your organization values building software. Because this affects your career just as much. * Is your company selling software development hours (consulting)? I'm this car you'll be valued for client relations skills and the ability to bang out acceptable software. * Is your company selling a software product (product com…
> Is your company selling something else that has a software component or that software enables (pretty much every other company)? I'm not sure this is true? If my company sells food or clothing or shoes, they don't have a software component. I'm not sure what the breakdown is, but my gut feeling is "pretty much every other company" is wrong. I work for a company that makes clothing and shoes. We have an enormous tec…
This is an article about software engineering - for software engineers. In this context it should not be hard to reason that companies that do not employ any software people are out of scope. Of course they exist.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#139In addition to knowing which bucket your salary comes from, I think it is also useful to know how your organization values building software. Because this affects your career just as much. * Is your company selling software development hours (consulting)? I'm this car you'll be valued for client relations skills and the ability to bang out acceptable software. * Is your company selling a software product (product com…
> Is your company selling something else that has a software component or that software enables (pretty much every other company)? I'm not sure this is true? If my company sells food or clothing or shoes, they don't have a software component. I'm not sure what the breakdown is, but my gut feeling is "pretty much every other company" is wrong. I work for a company that makes clothing and shoes. We have an enormous tec…
Logistics and e-commerce is a component of commerce (aka selling)
That said, you will absolutely be a cost center.
Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
#140Maybe someone who knows more about this stuff can enlighten me. From what I've heard there are actually only 2, opex and capex. If I recall correctly capex is better for the business because of how it gets treated in the accounting stuff. This naturally gives rise to the feature factory style work of a lot of dev jobs. Some reason like they can record capex spend as an asset with depreciation. Is this true?
This is close, there is more nuance to it, and a lot of it is going to be specific to your org. If you work in office, and there are accountants there go make friends. They are just another flavor of nerd, so you're gonna get along with them, and they have insights into the company that you will never get outside of the C level. IF you dont KNOW the answers to accounting questions, take some classes. Candidly this is…
Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) is the money invested up front, and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) is the money invested to operate the investment as you go.