[HN Gopher] Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career a...
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Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)
Author : jckahn
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-12-22 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kalzumeus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kalzumeus.com)
| maverickJ wrote:
| It's all about positioning one's career where one has max
| leverage which lead to relative higher career earnings; hopefully
| converting some of this to cash producing assets.
|
| It's similar to other advice I have heard such as one's
| communication and general peoples skills tends to lead to
| favourable career success after a certain threshold.
|
| A great article on why one should not depend on technical skills
| alone is https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/dont-hinge-your-
| care...
| larsrc wrote:
| A d100 does have a 100 side, just like you can roll a nat 20 on a
| d20. True about rand(100), though. So be the die-rolling kind of
| geek:)
| HellDunkel wrote:
| If you need to hint towards ,,salesforce" in your pitch then
| something is fishy.
|
| Btw. whatever happened to understatement? Is that not cool
| anymore?
|
| Oh and Don't ever call yourself a systems architect unless you
| want to be ghosted by the programming people.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| This sounds like Dale Carnegie stuff. Dale Carnegie was a
| salesman; I wasn't, I was a technician (a programmer, if you
| like). I had six months of serious sales training, but sales
| isn't the trade I was made for, although I enjoyed working with
| salesmen.
|
| It's true that hirers expect you to sell yourself, beyond just
| showing that you're qualified for the job. But I don't mind
| saying I'm a programmer by trade, and good enough for the job
| you're offering. It's up to my manager whether I add $500,000 to
| the bottom line; in general, engineers/programmers/technicians
| don't get to choose what they work on.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Don't call yourself an Engineer unless you are licensed to do so.
| Most states have a professional licensing board to oversee the
| practice of Engineering. Here's the link to the one in my home
| state of Indiana.[1]
|
| I've been a programmer, system administrator and a machinist.
| I've never called myself an engineer, and wouldn't want the
| _criminal liability_ for doing so.
|
| I wouldn't call myself a "computer doctor" either for similar
| reasons.
|
| [1] https://www.in.gov/pla/professions/engineering-
| home/engineer...
| ffssffss wrote:
| The criminal liability is in lying specifically about having
| the PE license, for work that requires it. Nobody is going to
| prison for calling themselves an "engineer" on their resume
| when they apply for a job that itself is called "engineer" by
| the recruiter.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| Given that companies like Google have positions for "software
| engineers" or "engineering departments" and simultaneously
| hire armies of attorneys, I would have thought this would
| have come up. *
|
| * Not legal advice or proposed by a practicing attorney of
| any U.S. state.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Software "Engineers" have this magic spell called a EULA.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Why would you give that advice when the job titles are all "xyz
| engineer"?
| mikewarot wrote:
| I would simply not use the title anywhere. If I got an
| interview or offer, I would point out the problem with the
| job title at that time.
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| This is absolute madness. Just accept the game for what it
| is. If they wanna call software developers "software
| engineers", what do you have to gain by swimming uphill?
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| The irony is that it also applies to electrical and
| mechanical engineers that very often do not hold or
| intend to obtain a P.E.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| You would point that out to a serious, billion dollar
| company that is interviewing your for a software engineer
| position? Really? Maybe you don't realize how bad that
| sounds. That is actually pretty silly; it would be like you
| claiming to have secret knowledge or some kind of legal
| training superiority to a companies that employs or
| otherwise retains the services of an army of top tier
| attorneys.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I think people would find that really weird. Potentially
| "bad culture fit" weird.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Interviews are two way; if it really annoys somebody to
| be called an engineer when they aren't licensed or doing
| what they think of as engineering work, then... I guess
| it is a legitimate bad culture fit, right? If that's the
| hill somebody wants to die on, might as well get it out
| of the way!
|
| IMO -- I'd prefer not to be called engineer but we live
| in a capitalist world -- if someone is willing to pay
| enough they can call me whatever they want.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| People are free to attempt to break from society and
| never use money because of some crazy SovCit conspiracy
| too. But this was proposed as advice and presented as
| kind of some correct thing to do so it is quite available
| for criticism. It is a very strange, mercurial position
| that no one should really follow if they want to achieve
| goals discussed in the OP article, such as being
| financially successful in one's career.
| trentgreene wrote:
| You are very much legally in the clear to call yourself an
| engineer, even if your actual title is "Solutions Engineer"
| (i.e., sales).
|
| You cannot however represent yourself as a licensed
| professional (engineering or otherwise) without actually having
| that license. That's what's illegal.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I agree in sentiment. You're fighting a losing battle though.
| People like inflated, grandiose-sounding titles that make it
| sound like what they do requires a mysterious rare skill.
|
| We are builders, with some amount of analytical ability and
| creativity. We aren't much different from pipefitters,
| blacksmiths, or furniture builders, and we aren't any smarter
| than those people.
| [deleted]
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| This seems pretty hyperbolic. Are electrical engineeers not
| engineers since the majority of them don't get a P.E. Are you
| seriously that worried about criminal prosecution? That seems
| like a different kind of problem, if true.
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| Sour grapes from lower paying engineering disciplines that have
| been hijacked by certification organizations. I'm a software
| engineer. I earn triple what you earn as a civil engineer, and
| I don't have to pay a certification body for the title. I can
| also work in any state that I want, and I can move without
| second thought or recertification. Go cry about it.
| justusw wrote:
| Here in Japan you can hear someone calling themselves a
| software engineer, fresh out of a bootcamp. The original
| meaning of engineering has gotten lost over the time, diluted
| by a sense of self-importance.
|
| Imagine a world in which we let the bootcamp grads build our
| bridges and medical devices (Therac anyone?).
|
| I don't mean to be a gatekeeper. Keeping someone from
| practicing medicine if they won't get a degree is not
| gatekeeping by anyone's definition.
|
| ,,Trust me, I am a software engineer" just doesn't have the
| same ring as ,,trust me, I'm a doctor"
|
| The risk of criminal liability in many countries is most likely
| low, as long as you keep the anglicized term and not call
| yourself Ingenieur (engineer) in Germany or for example Gong
| Xue Zhe (kougakushiya, kougakusha) in Japan, both of which
| imply that you have a degree in engineering.
|
| To make things more confusing, the information technology
| qualification I possess in Japan called Ji Ben Qing Bao Ji Shu
| Zhe Shi Yan , loosely translated as fundamental information
| technician, is often translated using engineer instead of
| technician.
|
| Some countries do over software or information engineering
| degrees, with a professional body regulating them, but I find
| that to be the exception.
|
| The battle is already lost.
| [deleted]
| Archelaos wrote:
| This is very good advice, if you want to work in Germany. The
| general requirement to call oneself an engineer ("Ingenieur")
| is that a person has successfully completed a technical or
| scientific course of study at a German university or university
| of applied science with the duration of at least three years
| (full-time). Each German state has its own Engineer Law
| ("Ingenieurgesetz", IngG) for the details, which also include
| the regulations regarding the recognition of foreign
| qualifications and fines for unauthorized use of the title (for
| example, up to 25,000 Euro in Baden-Wurttemberg).
| analog31 wrote:
| Does this mean a physics degree qualifies?
| solarmist wrote:
| This is utter nonsense. Words always have more than one
| definition.
|
| Every term that has a legal (or precise subject-specific)
| definition also has a common-use definition. Engineer is no
| different, and the law knows and understands this.
|
| This is why the term licensed engineer is a thing.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Since we're generally sitting on top of a giant pile of semi-
| understood abstraction that doesn't have a real mathematical
| model and is often defined by matching legacy behavior (aka
| precedent), "Software Lawyer" could be a better name.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Naw, we should be honest about what we actually do, mostly so
| we can stop pretending our industry is good at what we do.
|
| We are "Framework and API plumbers" by and large, taking
| existing packages and just hooking them into each other.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Plumbing generally works despite being constrained by real
| world non-idealities and things like wear-and-tear.
|
| We belong with the lawyers, who are working in an entirely
| human constructed framework but have somehow fucked it up
| so bad that it has loopholes and undefined/unexpected
| behavior.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm not an engineer or a lawyer. ;-)
|
| Nobody's skirting the law. In most US states, there is a so
| called "industrial exemption," which allows you to do
| engineering without a license if you work for certain kinds of
| employers. I work for such a company, though I don't have an
| engineering title. But when we do offer a product for sale to
| the public, it goes to a third party for approval, and the
| people at that company who conduct the design review all have
| engineering licenses. The thing that will get you in trouble is
| offering engineering services directly to the public.
|
| Now in my state, there are only licenses for a small handful of
| engineering disciplines: Electrical, mechanical, power, etc. I
| don't know if it means that the rest of us can't call ourselves
| engineers at all, or if we're just unregulated. I've never
| tested those waters.
|
| From what I've observed, people with engineering job titles
| rarely do any hard quantitative engineering. Most of the work
| consists of organizing and arranging things, fitting things
| together, troubleshooting, etc.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Some good advice here, some things are rather dramatic. I do like
| the encouragement to highlight the value you bring to the
| company. But "don't call yourself a programmer" is a bit
| dramatic. Highlighting your ability to program is pretty
| important.
|
| The way I typically try to highlight my development contributions
| - if it isn't direct user-facing feature development - is to
| portray my software as internal "mini salesforce" for niche high
| value tasks for other employees. For instance at my first
| internship I automated manual tasks like thumbnail creation,
| searching and calculating market share of our company, and other
| tasks. It's fine to call yourself a programmer, just be sure to
| emphasize "I program X and Y that are crucial for teams A and B".
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > I was once reduced to tears because a minor academic snafu
| threatened my ability to get a Bachelor of Science with a major
| in Computer Science, which my advisor told me was more
| prestigious than a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
|
| I'd really like to know more about this distinction
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| so when will we declare this advice outdated? Or extremely
| limited.
|
| The first thing that is outdated, the advice is basically don't
| be a programmer be an expert in something the company needs. The
| thing is in the modern world the company often needs programmers
| more than it needs the other expertise, hence the big salaries we
| earn getting hired to solve problems.
|
| >There are companies which create software which actually gets
| used by customers, which describes almost everything that you
| probably think of when you think of software. It is unlikely that
| you will work at one unless you work towards making this happen.
|
| I mean, I've never done anything to try to be writing customer
| facing software but, aside from some international
| standardization work, that is all I have ever really worked on.
|
| I think between 2011 and now that stuff changed, and maybe it was
| already very well on the way to changing in 2011 but the person
| who wrote this wasn't aware it was changing.
| [deleted]
| strict9 wrote:
| _> You are not defined by your chosen software stack: I recently
| asked via Twitter what young engineers wanted to know about
| careers. Many asked how to know what programming language or
| stack to study. It doesn't matter. There you go._
|
| I generally agree with this point and many others in the article
| but when looking for a position the tech stack of a company
| you're interviewing with matters a whole lot.
|
| Using some older/unfashionable languages or maintenance-only
| frameworks indicates a lack of investment or interest in
| technology. It probably also indicates a lot as far as what your
| colleagues would be like and how much you'd learn from them.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I see your point, but Facebook had large collection of code
| written in php(still is?), and they are far from having "lack
| of investment or interest in technology."
| tinym wrote:
| To your point they also, like, wrote their own PHP
| interpreter. If you asked your Facebook interviewer about PHP
| you'd probably get an interesting answer!
| strict9 wrote:
| They are definitely the outlier and the version of php that
| fb uses can barely be called php when they more or less
| rewrote how it works under the hood.
|
| But this isn't a dig at php, just stating chosen
| languages/frameworks matter a lot. I think it speaks volumes
| about a company's tech philosophy if they still mainly use
| php and jquery for web development.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What about if they use Java or C++ or Erlang for production
| code, rather than, say, Go or Rust?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| To be fair back in the early 2000's PHP was one of the best
| options.
| notRobot wrote:
| And for many purposes, still is.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| You don't get it. The point of the author is that you want to
| be in the position where a company is hiring you, as a
| consulting business, to solve a particular problem they're
| having. That means having very large freedom in your
| implementation, as long as the problem is solved.
|
| What you're describing is basically being an employee. When
| you're an employee you typically aren't hired to solve a
| problem, you're there to fill a role. To fill the role you will
| need to fit whatever mold the employer wants, including tech
| stack.
| strict9 wrote:
| OK, but what I quoted was specifically advice on being an
| employee:
|
| _> Many asked how to know what programming language or stack
| to study. It doesn't matter. There you go_
|
| And I'm saying the language/stack absolutely does matter when
| it comes to advice for new developers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Note the blog post is from 2011. It mattered less then.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Right, it really doesn't matter--until you are interviewed by a
| shortsighted manager in a hurry, which is all too often.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| And isn't it a good thing that that manager helped you
| realize not to waste your time with that company?
| dnissley wrote:
| The problem with this is that each person's definition of
| older/unfashionable differs. Some people think of java that
| way! And I would say they're wrong. Cobol on the other hand...
| kache_ wrote:
| it's not about what language you're using
|
| it's about what you accomplish.
|
| that's in isolation of pretty much everything, even computers
| in general.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Using some older/unfashionable languages or maintenance-only
| frameworks indicates a lack of investment or interest in
| technology. It probably also indicates a lot as far as what
| your colleagues would be like and how much you'd learn from
| them.
|
| Not everyone is looking for the same thing. Over interest in
| new technologies cautions me that a candidate may be more
| interested in hype than finding suitable technology for a
| problem, it's a continuum, but sometimes you see a pattern of
| hit and run, trying new tech and then leaving projects behind
| (not even them knowing what happened to them, if it turned out
| to be a good decision long term)... that's not attractive from
| a business perspective where stability is valued.
|
| At the other end you get people who are not comfortable
| stepping out of the box they've made for themselves. You want a
| bit of both, it's good to be interested in new things and even
| consider them for use in production - but it must be
| accompanied with a healthy amount of scepticism and keeping
| your evangelism in check, because technology can be subjective.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| > Using some older/unfashionable languages or maintenance-only
| frameworks indicates a lack of investment or interest in
| technology.
|
| Not necessarily. Although many would consider C an older
| language, it's often the right language for the right job (e.g.
| network packet processing).
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| I perceive this as:
|
| - There is always a need for low-level programming, and there
| is not as much development of new languages, abstractions,
| frameworks, and libraries in the low-level space. Indeed,
| most of the time you don't want any abstraction, framework or
| library between you and the low level thing you want to do.
|
| - In the high-level programming space, there is a never
| ending race to climb higher and higher in the software stack.
| As such, all frameworks tend to be obsolete faster. Either it
| is replaced by the new high level hotness, or it gets stuck
| as a middle-level somewhere, below the new hotness.
|
| Because of that, low level things don't become outdated as
| fast.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| It could also just be that the population of Web developers
| is more prone to fads and churning framework after
| framework passing each off as serious technological
| innovation when they are typically just re-arrangements
| based on shifting opinions. So while, in this space,
| perhaps, "technology is changing all the time" but really
| it us just feverishly dog-paddling in place.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the tech stack of a company you're interviewing with matters
|
| Yes, this blog belongs to a (fairly large) class of "career
| advice the way the author wishes the world was rather than the
| way it actually is" blogs.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > Using some older/unfashionable languages or maintenance-only
| frameworks indicates a lack of investment or interest in
| technology. It probably also indicates a lot as far as what
| your colleagues would be like and how much you'd learn from
| them.
|
| Similarly, using a bleeding edge stack indicates the engineers
| are getting away with resume stacking and you can be pretty
| sure the product will be late, over budget and developers leave
| after a year because it turns out using any particular tech
| stack in and of itself doesn't mean you can create something
| useful.
| dang wrote:
| The main past threads appear to be:
|
| _Don 't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice
| (2011)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28234937 - Aug
| 2021 (89 comments)
|
| _Don 't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice
| (2011)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303181 - Oct
| 2019 (307 comments)
|
| _Don 't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice
| (2011)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12548043 - Sept
| 2016 (147 comments)
|
| _Don 't call yourself a programmer (2011)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015160 - Feb 2015 (84
| comments)
|
| _Don 't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice
| (2011)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8147008 - Aug 2014
| (44 comments)
|
| _Dont call yourself a programmer (2011)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4822015 - Nov 2012 (46
| comments)
|
| _Don 't Call Yourself a Programmer_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170766 - Oct 2011 (267
| comments)
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Don't Call Yourself a Programmer"
|
| I never have. I've always advertised myself as a guy who designs
| and develop products. Not always pure software for that matter.
| [deleted]
| DesiLurker wrote:
| I am not a programmer. I am .. Agent Cody Banks! ([?]#_#)
| neilv wrote:
| > _(P.S. You probably don't want to be first employee for a
| startup. Be the last co-founder instead.)_
|
| Not only for the better equity deal. In an early startup of a
| handful of people, there's already a power hierarchy _and_ people
| are still figuring things out.
|
| If a cofounder wants to pull a key decision out of their
| posterior which they know everyone else would disagree with, or
| wants a big career-building or fun startup thing to themselves,
| they still need informed consent of the other cofounders.
|
| This is a time when it might be very convenient for a cofounder
| to modify their idea of mostly-egalitarian startup team dynamics,
| to think of employees as, well, only employees. You being
| cofounder here helps keep everyone honest with themselves and the
| rest of the company, which can be good for everyone.
| mempko wrote:
| Don't be ashamed to call yourself a programmer. Alex Stepanov,
| who created hundreds of billions in value by creating the C++ stl
| calls himself a programmer.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I call myself a programmer, because it's one word rather than a
| paragraph, and it's the bulk of what I do.
| adalacelove wrote:
| Me too, specially in social settings. It nicely stops the
| conversation about work.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Trying to decide if you're being ironic.
|
| I find that even saying "I'm a programmer" in social
| settings triggers my counterparty to frantically start
| scanning the room for _anybody_ else to talk to.
|
| In social situations when that comes up I usually say
| something like "I work for <employer>" and then immediately
| try to change the subject.
| klabb3 wrote:
| This whole article is great advice for playing the career game,
| or "how to fit in and not get bullied at school". Note that it
| comes at a cost, and that cost may or may not be worth it to you.
|
| Note also that playing a game for a long time you forget that you
| are playing a game, and you start incorporating the rules of the
| game into your mind. Some people are more resistant to this
| effect than others, and some people share the same values in the
| first place. Others dislike who they become and either quit or
| become resentful.
|
| A big pile of money looks like the best thing in the world to a
| college grad. Playing a game you aren't passionate about can be a
| worthwhile compromise, especially if you don't have much
| financial safety. But never let anyone else tell you what game to
| play, that is your choice alone.
|
| If you have the privilege to choose what game to play, I
| recommend picking not by the rewards of the game - but based on
| how you like the rules of the game.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Great post overall, and great advice on picking your game.
|
| What I would add is: sometimes the thing which you want to do
| can't be done without some engagement in a game you don't like.
| It doesn't mean you have to give in and lose yourself entirely
| to the game, but you need at least pay enough attention to
| understand what's going on. The world is full of gatekeepers,
| often where you least expect it. Trying to avoid that reality
| can sometimes lead you to a worse place than just sucking it up
| and putting on a smile to get where you want to be.
| jckahn wrote:
| I'm willing to play the game as a survival mechanism. I'm not
| in tech (professionally) because of passion. I'm in it to
| survive and solve problems that having money can solve.
|
| I make open source software and give it away for free in my
| spare time because of passion. The fact that my job and my
| hobby are very similar is merely incidental.
| [deleted]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << (You laugh? I did this at a Java shop. The one-off Ruby
| project made the company $30,000. My boss was, predictably, quite
| happy and never even asked what produced the deliverable.)
|
| Oh boy. Ask for forgiveness later may work at a smaller joint,
| but willfully and knowingly bypassing existing policies can land
| you in a heap of trouble at a bigger corporate. The boss may be
| happy, because he is an idiot with no concern other than getting
| a bonus all the while security of the product ( and possibly the
| company itself ) is undermined by one coder.
|
| And I am saying all this as I am trying to convince my boss that
| Python may be better suited for some tasks than Excel ( long
| story, some stuff is kinda locked, but not completely ).
|
| Bottom line is.. some rules exist for a reason. Break those only
| if you understand why they can be broken ( and you are
| comfortable with explaining stuff should it fail in your lap ).
|
| Edit: Honestly, that one piece of advice makes me really start to
| appreciate why some things are the way they are.
| lucumo wrote:
| > Ask for forgiveness later may work at a smaller joint, but
| willfully and knowingly bypassing existing policies can land
| you in a heap of trouble at a bigger corporate.
|
| Interesting. I've found that the bigger the company the more I
| need to do that. In a small company I can actually discuss
| things with people and a motivated decision rolls out. In big
| companies I ran into one of two problems.
|
| 1. Many people dare to say no, but few dare say yes. I have
| seen discussions about spending half a day engineering time
| kicked up three management layers because it wasn't a pre-
| approved task. It was obvious to everyone that it needed to be
| done too.
|
| 2. People just not deciding. If you don't keep chasing a
| decision, nothing will happen.
|
| The political cost of a bad decision grows the higher up it
| goes. Make a bad decision as a grunt and you get chewed out a
| bit. As long as you were genuinely trying to help the company,
| it's nothing you can't get out of with a bit of charm and a
| willingness to learn. Make a bad decision a bit higher up and
| people start sharpening their knives. Sometimes it's better to
| just decide for your manager and give them plausible
| deniability.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > Sometimes it's better to just decide for your manager and
| give them plausible deniability.
|
| Exactly! I don't mind saying sorry. And as long as you get
| the results, it turns out that most people that matter don't
| really care about all the bogus policies you ignored.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > Engineers in particular are usually very highly paid Cost
| Centers, which sets MBA's optimization antennae to twitching
|
| disagree completely with this.
|
| I view scientists, engineers, programmers, and system
| administrators as a part of the profit center because they are
| intrinsically tied to value creation and value amplification.
| [deleted]
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Agree with your disagreement! Whether classified as cost center
| or profit center largely depends on the type of company or
| organization. For the first half of my career, I would agree
| with OP: that engineering was viewed as a cost center. However,
| after transitioning to a software company, me and my teammates
| were generating revenue.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Yeah this is an important point. Amazon viewed themselves as a
| software company almost from the beginning. Now a considerable
| portion of their business is from AWS because of that mind set.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| It depends if it is a software company or not.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The whole idea of a "cost centre" is nonsense anyway.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| A useful word for describing the optimization of something
| that adds shareholder value is appreciated by those who
| consider it.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > I view...
|
| well, you're not a MBA or a decision maker so your input here
| is mute. People are the means of production for a technology
| company and people cost money. This isn't complicated. And make
| no mistake, great measures are taken to minimize costs.
|
| Whether you label something a profit center or cost center is
| irrelevant to the authors point. The significance of the
| conclusion remains true regardless of the label used.
| [deleted]
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > I view scientists, engineers, programmers, and system
| administrators as a part of the profit center because they are
| intrinsically tied to value creation and value amplification.
|
| Its a perfectly sensible view. unfortunately not one shared by
| your typical bean counter. MBAs routinely buy out companies and
| gut the value creation parts to increase valuation for short
| term gain before pawing off the hollowed out shell to the next
| owner. its sick but widespread.
| solarmist wrote:
| It depends on the company.
|
| For software companies, sure! Unless you're in DevOps or
| DevTools then you're a cost center again.
|
| For an insurance company or restaurant, not as much. It depends
| on where the flow of money is.
|
| Things are changing though, so this is less true over time as
| software continues to eat the world.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| "You're not defined by your chosen software stack"...
|
| Boy this article is old isn't it.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| Timeless truths have a way of living on forever.
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