231–240 of 265 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make bigger margins
> Make bigger margins if you can maximize margin on all fixed price work while not pricing yourself out of the market you will dominate software dev and also make millions selling books. hint: it's not that easy. handling fixed price software dev is like handling dynamite.
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…
Everything the company does should generate value.
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…
As a third bullet point person, never ever attempt to solve interesting technical problems. I’ve made that mistake, I’ve been asked into meetings and asked “how’s it going” then promptly told “don’t tell me the details.” Working in bullet point three means working on boring, forgettable solutions. You may find yourself making valid technical solutions that are political suicide.
If everyone else does the opposite, you can make a career out of making correct technical decisions.
Seems to work for me anyway.
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…
My experiences: 1) programmer in IT department of major newspaper: disregarded as IT geek. very small salary. the worst office spaces. 2) senior engineer in software startup: rockstar treatment, stock options, all the things you would expect as office culture 3) senior consultant at IT consulting company: must basically be a sales guy who writes good PowerPoints. Maximize billable hours. What ever you do dont complet…
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…
this. first company is good for starters to get to know others. third should be avoided if you want to stay in software and not transition to management. You will always be seen as a necessary evil, your problems not understood while others working on core products will be perceived as an asset. second one is the one to make a career in software dev.
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I already worked for companies where there were management changes at a crazy pace, I'm not sure that all of them got promoted and I have the impression that some of them might have been fired as well. I don't want to start a flame war but it's much easier to replace a manager than a technical person, a technical job is boring and most people don't want to do it while management relies more on soft skills, something…
Most people don't want to do technical jobs? That's not my experience at all. We've had vacant management positions for months because nobody wants to do that role. We'd get no volunteers internally and only a handful of suitable candidates would apply from outside.
It is really the minority who can do tech for the long haul.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 parts of organisation mentioned in the article have their own respective Operating Expenses (OpEx) and Capital Expenses (CapEx). OpEx is what you spend on day to day activities, and CapEx is what you invest into something that you will use long term. You can pay via CapEx or OpEx for the same exact result: e.g. if you purchase a car, that's CapEx, but if you rent it each month, that's OpEx. I'm simplifying, but tha…
The CapEx -> OpEx push is also heavily tax based. I can write off (generally) 100% of an OpEx expense today (or, as I spend the money). CapEx expenses become Assets, which are tracked and taxed , and the business doesn't get to write off that spend immediately - it turns into a 'depreciation' write off, spread over the useful life of the item (sometimes 5, 10, or more years). Real estate, vehicles, large equipment, e…
https://www.eisneramper.com/insights/tax/impact-174-software...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It all depends on the structure of the organisation, and how well managed it is. Imagine an organisation where developers are adding features to the service, where each new feature uses $1000 of disk space and enables $10,000 of new sales. And imagine the sysadmins buy huge file servers, each new file server costs $500,000 In a highly bureaucratic organisation, the sysadmins will cross-charge the developers for disk…
… and somebody gets the bright idea to replace the sysadmins with “managed cloud” and S3 file storage, leaving the sticker price as a “digital transformation” cost until they can work out the cross-org billing using an app someone built in their spare time to read itemized bills and re-bill internal budget numbers for their fair share of resources?
Not that I've bitterly seen multiple versions of that in my career or anything, this is still just purely hypothetical complaints department, eh?