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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

#71

Post by michaelt »

mooreds wrote: post #27
jaymzcampbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but I can believe it - where I work the main business is consultancy style work but to support that work there's custom generic software developed to sell/license to clients as part of a value add and there's dozens of internal tooling to support delivery teams. We have developers that will move between all 3 of those areas depending on their current allocation to client work.

Sounds awesome! Thanks for illuminating me. How are these different work streams prioritized? At first glance seems like the last category would suffer unless someone was "on the bench".

Scarblac's mentions a company that only has 15 developers. That means time spent on internal tooling like, say, improving the CI system has direct benefits for the other 14 developers, all of whom probably report to the same boss.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#72

Post by SamuelAdams »

ponector wrote: post #41
georgyo wrote: post #38

I don't understand our modern tech culture of saying maintenance is the last on the list; always getting chopped and cut; never getting a decent budget. In 20 years and several different companies I have always heard this but never agreed with it. Sure, the company wants new features to market, but the company also wants things to freaking work. During layoffs and hiring freezes I have seen SRE type orgs fair better…

Both maintenance and testing are not valued by business. Because you cannot sell maintenance to the customer, you only can sell features. From the developer's point of view maintenance also a thing to avoid. You cannot put a maintenance as a shiny point to your CV. Everyone wants to see your achievements, projects you shipped, and with modern technology, of course.

It depends on your business and your clients. Maintenance in the form of compliance always sells, albeit begrudgingly. If maintaining various compliance requirements is required (like DoD), then maintenance budgets are usually flush with cash.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#73

Post by vsnf »

apwell23 wrote: post #69
vsnf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher up the org chat you report to is, the safer your position becomes. At one job, I reported directly to the still-reigning cofounder of a long lived company. Never have I felt a stronger sense of job security than that.

> The higher up the org chat you report to is, the safer your position becomes Last layoff at my company was predominantly of middle managagers and very few line workers. Even meta layoff was "the flattening". surprised by your comment. Is there any data supporting this?

No data, just an intuition about being closer to the power centers.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#74

Post by apwell23 »

vsnf wrote: post #73
apwell23 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The higher up the org chat you report to is, the safer your position becomes Last layoff at my company was predominantly of middle managagers and very few line workers. Even meta layoff was "the flattening". surprised by your comment. Is there any data supporting this?

No data, just an intuition about being closer to the power centers.

I guess that makes sense. Level 1 and 2 managers are not really closer to power centers despite being higher in the org chain.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#76

Post by michael_leachim »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #63
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

I think there is nuance here, even within a product company, not all software is equal. There's software to support core business (think ads in Google) and there's probably software to support internal dashboards (also in Google), I'm sure engineers working in ads in Google have much more leverage than those working in making dashboards for ops or some internal ticketing system. Conversely, I'm sure the companies we…

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

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#77

Post by verinus »

resonious wrote: post #57
verinus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually had a pretty good time at a third-category place. When you're writing software for a non-tech company, it means your customers are very close - often in the same building, working at the same time. You can watch them use the software, hear complaints in real time, and push solutions very fast. In my case, I might've been lucky, though. One of the co-founders had a CS degree and deeply valued the productivi…

ofc individual experiences might differ! it certainly depends on the company and leadership. From my experience in a bigger one understanding ended when leadership was needed in software areas, but leadership was recruited only from the other domain...

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#78

Post by verinus »

vanderZwan wrote: post #31
DeathArrow wrote: post #5

I think profit center vs cost center is a better model.

Why not combine them? Both give different insights that could complement each other, no?

But I think it has a lot to do with how profit is made: if you sell machinery for example that has a software part you are a cost factor, even if software is required to run it. Think of it as an in-house supplier that could even be outsourced. Not that I think it is feasible, but upper management does. And as long as they do, you won't rise far building software in such a company...

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#79

Post by bomewish »

gtirloni wrote: post #49
mooreds wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you have done differently? Built a better relationship with the middle managers? Kept your ear to the ground and left before the CTO did? Interviewed every quarter so you'd be able to leave and land elsewhere? Something else?

I think better relationship with middle managers and maybe leave with the CTO if it made sense (it didn't, in my case). I was too focused on doing things and assumed the CTO was taking care of "winning the hearts" of middle managers. He wasn't. It was a very top-bottom initiative and that rarely works when culture is involved. So yeah, I think I should have "managed up" so this initiative wasn't tied to the specific…

There's a troubling/fascinating implication here: generally we just want to 'do the thing', but it's rarely that simple.

Often to be able to just 'do the thing' you have to game out a bunch of this political/strategic stuff, and start maneuvering across those dimensions, in order to create or maintain the conditions under which you can just keep doing the thing.

Yet the more you do that, and the more you think in that way, the less of the thing you're doing...

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#80

Post by Kudos »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #43
DeathArrow wrote: post #5

I think profit center vs cost center is a better model.

I think it’s a nonsensical model. Every department is ideally responsible for both revenues and costs. If you can’t measure it, it is a problem of your KPIs. So the KPIs may be cost-oriented (and thus badly aligned), it doesn’t make the department itself a cost center.

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?
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