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Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

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Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#51

Post by t43562 »

sanitycheck wrote: post #21

It's very surprising to me that this needs to be said - but maybe that's because I've mostly worked in, let's say, 'resource constrained' environments. You focus on the stuff that keeps the money coming, or people start losing their jobs.

Is that on the things that make money now or the speculative things you might make money on later?

Almost everyone is resource constrained in that the ambition of non-dev management is always 10x what they have the money to pay for. I take that back a bit - I haven't worked for FAANG so perhaps they do have more people than real work.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#52

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #45
PeterStuer wrote: post #34

"At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company" You would think that, but decades of experience have disproved that. Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical. Most are (more or less) aware that somewhere technical engineering in software is needed, but they feel that as a threath rather than an asset. I…

make those with power like you and rewards will flow relation to company profitability is optional and often times counterproductive

Basically, yes. You still should be able to make easy for those in power to argue that you 'deserve' it, but the dynamic is impossible to deny.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#53

Post by cdavid »

This article makes the naive assumption that "what is making money" is an objective thing.

Once a company reaches a certain size, basically once it has a financial planning department w/ different VPs owning their PnL, who is making money increasingly becomes a social construct. "how to get promoted" by spakhm is much more closer to how a large, successful org works IMO: https://spakhm.substack.com/p/how-to-get-promoted

I've seen this in my career multiple times. For example, when I was involved in search for some companies, we would demonstrate through A/B testing that we would make X more money per month. Executive team changed, they decided that "A/B test does not work and slows us down", the definition of making money changed, we overnight went from a money-aking org to a cost center.

Nowadays, most companies are pushing GenAI everywhere. Most of those things don't make money, and yet a lot of promotions will be obtained across the board until the tune ends.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#55

Post by t43562 »

jgeada wrote: post #41

OK, now explain where management's salary comes from. They don't produce anything, at best they're taste arbiters and at worst parasitic middle men that happen to control the budget; funny how that always means they get more of it. The best long term performing companies are run by technical people that happen to be competent managers. As soon as the professional managerial class takes over they quickly figure out th…

Absolutely. Some genius outsources IT to Malaysia....I ask for an IP address to be statically assigned to a test machine and the ticket is opened and closed.....next day the IP has changed. Repeat x20 till we give up - telephone calls and complaints notwithstanding. Someone closes 20 tickets and looks productive because that's the way they're being managed.

I bet the MBA who made this happen got a promotion and wouldn't understand how they crippled everyone.

I admit this is an old story but IMO it does show you how management by people who don't know and don't care screws a company quietly. That's a famous company that did in fact have a major problem.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#56

Post by t43562 »

poincaredisk wrote: post #39
sauercrowd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part?

If you don't want to feel like a cog in a heartless money making machine, all of it.

I wouldn't take it quite as seriously as it takes itself. These articles like to lay down a view of the universe as if it was the first and last word but I don't think it is at all.

We couldn't function at all if all companies failed to do work properly because of some odd decision about what's a cost and what isn't. If you have a toll bridge then fixing the bridge isn't a cost....unless you actually WANT it to fall down.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#57

Post by danaris »

dirtybirdnj wrote: post #43
PeterStuer wrote: post #34

"At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company" You would think that, but decades of experience have disproved that. Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical. Most are (more or less) aware that somewhere technical engineering in software is needed, but they feel that as a threath rather than an asset. I…

I think your comment can be boiled down to "management doesn't respect engineers" That's the fundamental problem. Some MBA or book somewhere convinced people that respect and dignity were optional. Once they realized they could apply this to more than engineers they started painting the entire world with this bullshit.

> Some MBA or book somewhere convinced people that respect and dignity were optional.

Whatever the origin, this is actually a very serious problem that afflicts our society at large, well beyond MBA culture.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#58

Post by xivzgrev »

Oof this article hits like a kick to the nuts.

Ive been unhappy with my career growth in past several years, and basically it’s because I worked on products / projects that did not make a ton of money.

I knew this intellectually of course, work on revenue generating things, but emotionally I gravitate toward such reasons that it’s good for customer, or this is high risk / high reward, it’s more interesting, etc.

If I had kept this heuristic as my North Star, I would be further ahead and making more money.

I’m not sure if emotionally I could have done it - I was offered a management position if I moved OFF a high revenue product, so that would’ve been hard to say no to. But in the long run, with hindsight, it would’ve been the right choice.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#59

Post by t43562 »

cdavid wrote: post #53

This article makes the naive assumption that "what is making money" is an objective thing. Once a company reaches a certain size, basically once it has a financial planning department w/ different VPs owning their PnL, who is making money increasingly becomes a social construct. "how to get promoted" by spakhm is much more closer to how a large, successful org works IMO: https://spakhm.substack.com/p/how-to-get-promo…

Thank you. "Spearheading" is always valued and the way to do it is to leave for some new initiative somewhat before everyone realises the current one is a turd. The blame then attaches to the people left holding the turd.

Re: Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

#60

Post by tqi »

PeterStuer wrote: post #34

"At successful tech companies, engineering work is valued in proportion to how much money it makes the company" You would think that, but decades of experience have disproved that. Most of management, past first-gen if the company was founded by engineers, is non-technical. Most are (more or less) aware that somewhere technical engineering in software is needed, but they feel that as a threath rather than an asset. I…

What if they're right, and at a certain point engineering is a commodity?
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