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Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

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Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#151

Post by OJFord »

irrational wrote: post #133
mooreds wrote: post #3

In 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…

> If my company sells food or clothing or shoes, they don't have a software component.

E-commerce? I can't think of any chains without a website, or any large enough that 'company' seems apt that don't sell via it.

> 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.

Ok that's the 'or that software enables' isn't it?

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#152

Post by Gormo »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #116
Kudos wrote: post #80

Earlier 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…

The cost center vs. profit center concept has some utility for accounting, but overall it makes more sense to model the business as a modular system seeking a global optimum, a la Goldratt, rather than a set of separate sub-organizations each to be optimized separately.

In other words the business as a whole should be viewed as a singular profit center, and each department or project should be evaluated in terms of how much it contributes to optimizing the overall performance.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#153

Post by golergka »

mooreds wrote: post #3

In 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)? In this case, you'll be valued for your ability to deliver on or below budget and you'll never be the star of the show.

Trading companies are one of the very innovative in IT and offer software engineers salaries that are higher that FAANG.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#154

Post by michael_leachim »

jimbokun wrote: post #107
michael_leachim wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What category is Amazon? (the marketplace). It looks like a third category (company sells something else, but it has a software component supporting it). I am asking because I am working in a company with similar business model and I am trying to figure out what category does my work belong to. thank you. EDIT: fix msg

Over the years, Amazon has gone more and more in the direction of the software being the product. As an immense e-commerce site, the software enabling all the sales was the key differentiator to the competition. Then they brought in external sellers, making the e-commerce platform more directly a product. Then of course they started selling the infrastructure directly as a product, as AWS. Which of course relies on s…

thank you, so it more dependent not on a type of company but on how the company runs itself.

It can have its main product not in software, but it can bet on R&D in order to outrun their competition.

And the other way around is true too, that is how you get bad software products which somehow always stays afloat because of exclusive focus on sales.

I agree that AWS is indeed a software product, this one is obvious.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#155

Post by hooverd »

chadash wrote: post #127
michael_leachim wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What category is Amazon? (the marketplace). It looks like a third category (company sells something else, but it has a software component supporting it). I am asking because I am working in a company with similar business model and I am trying to figure out what category does my work belong to. thank you. EDIT: fix msg

Amazon is unique. If you look at their revenue, the vast majority comes from E-Commerce. But if you look at their profits, the majority comes from AWS. AWS is indisputably a software org, so it's clear that their senior leaders value software engineering. But I think that even Amazon's marketplace sees itself as a software org. From the early days, they always saw software as being a competitive advantage.

You can definitely tell the difference in priorities for end users between Amazon.com and AWS too.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#157

Post by golergka »

irrational wrote: post #133
mooreds wrote: post #3

In 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…

Retailers of all kinds employ enormous amount of data analytics, data engineers and software engineers.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#158

Post by OJFord »

irrational wrote: post #131

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.

Maintenance is a bad word for it, but the author clearly intends it to be in that category:

> Building internal tools can fall into this category.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#159

Post by hooverd »

a1o wrote: post #19

> 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…

I think it's because the biz types would sell the copper wiring from the office if you let them.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#160

Post by geodel »

gtirloni wrote: post #106
mlrtime wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They must know this. They also must know it will be harder to hire new people. They know this, right? Please someone tell me so. What time horizon are you thinking? People will forget '22/'23 layoffs very quickly. This is especially true if you made it through these last years, the market picks up and you want to move.

I have no doubt people will forget in time ( But anyone looking for a job ought to do due dilligence when things pick up again and at least set the correct expectations about how long their relationship with the company could last if the market turns bad again.

Why? If anyone frequented this or many other forums they'd know employers can terminate employee any time without any reason whatsoever. Leave the job with as little notice as possible because employers absolutely do not care for you. And when last year it did happen people here are feeling hurt as if forever job promise is broken.
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