[HN Gopher] How many software developers work in non-tech compan...
___________________________________________________________________
How many software developers work in non-tech companies?
Author : tslmy
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-12-24 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lmy.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lmy.medium.com)
| mkoubaa wrote:
| "tech" is becoming a meaningless category
| henry2023 wrote:
| Technology as in "applied science" applies to every industry
| uoaei wrote:
| Definitely, but then, call it what it is. "Tech" companies
| are those who provide "tech" products, such as cloud hosting,
| software for managing tech stacks, etc. It's not merely
| "anything that requires software to run".
| verbify wrote:
| > I chose to not use the category of "Computer and Electronic
| Product Manufacturing", because it would include manufacturers of
| navigation systems (Garmin, etc.), which aren't really what would
| come into my mind when I think of "tech companies".
|
| I very much think of Garmin as a tech company.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| People don't think of the embedded systems category as "tech",
| but they should. When your car has 100 CPUs in it, it's in the
| tech category at least as much as in the auto category.
| badpun wrote:
| Exactly. Making of a navigation system seems much more
| technical than making a web-based shop (amazon.com).
| CharlesW wrote:
| I understand that we quickly take this stuff for granted, but I
| can't imagine categorizing a company building digital
| navigation systems and devices, which depend on a constellation
| of satellites encircling the earth, as "not a tech company".
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes, I stopped reading here.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Spoiler alert, there's only one more sentence after this, and
| it's of the "please like and subscribe" ilk, not any sort of
| conclusion.
| mikestew wrote:
| Thanks for saving me a click. Yeah, a product whose algorithm
| has to account for the general theory of relativity is no
| technical match for hooking up the Shopify API to my web store.
| Yes, I'm being dismissive, but come...on.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Do you think the average engineer at Garmin is spending their
| time thinking about the algorithms to interpret GPS signals?
| mikestew wrote:
| What difference would that make to the question at hand? Do
| you think the average engineer at Microsoft gives a whole
| lot of thought to Windows kernel development?
|
| But to answer your question directly: I would have no idea.
| Do you?
| kettro wrote:
| As a former Garmin employee, a surprising number actually
| do.
| code_runner wrote:
| I think the point is about if they are a tech company...
| and they are very literally a software and hardware
| company. It's not a question of what the average engineers
| day to day is.
| NavinF wrote:
| Which Garmin products require an engineer at Garmin to
| account for general relativity? Lots of products have GPS,
| but they use an off the shelf mixed signal IC that contains
| all the hardware and software required to implement GPS. As
| an engineer, you just feed augmentation data from a web API
| and receive a text stream of NMEA messages from the IC. It's
| literally glue code. The required skill set is the same one
| required to hook up the Shopify API to a web store (ie.
| "Software Engineer")
| golergka wrote:
| Would you consider a shop that sells GPS trackers a tech
| company too?
| mulmen wrote:
| To be fair ecommerce companies have to handle time zones and
| DST which is not easy. For the purpose of GPS general
| relativity is solved. Time zones are an unending problem.
| tslmy wrote:
| Make sense. Maybe I am just not very familiar with their lines
| of products. Let me come up with a more niche example.
| bdcravens wrote:
| This is why doom and gloom among the biggest "tech" companies
| (layoffs etc) doesn't necessarily translate to our industry as a
| whole. (though the particular mix of tech may be different)
| solardev wrote:
| Speaking from the other side though, many of my non tech
| colleagues are having a really hard time competing with laid
| off FAANGers who are flooding the labor market all at once. It
| doesn't just affect tech companies proper, but also everyone
| else working in the same roles elsewhere.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Wait... if Garmin isn't a tech company... what is? I'm so
| confused.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Maybe the logic is, they're a GIS company that happens to use a
| lot of tech. (This is sort of how I thought of it when I worked
| at a LA media company- we have hundreds of transcoders, gobs of
| storage, distribution via satellite and other means, but the
| software wasn't much more than hacked-together glue with fancy
| buzzword names that sales spouted to prospective clients. We
| were a media company that happened to need a lot of tech).
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Sure, I can get behind that. However, it's the other side of
| the coin that I still don't get. What would count as a tech
| company?
|
| Even AWS is just a rental company or private utility when you
| strip away, "happens to need a lot of tech".
| the__alchemist wrote:
| There's a 4-example definition of the article, which aligns
| with the context it's used in on HN often: VC-funded SAAS or
| web-service-hosting. I thought about this one and did a dive a
| few weeks ago when someone I met at a coffee shop asked me if I
| work in tech.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| This is the new definition of "tech," which basically means
| storefronts and social media.
| seydor wrote:
| Some companies are more equal than other companies
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I think it is more fair to say that traditional companies are
| evolving into tech companies. Every "non-tech" company I've
| worked for in the past 10 years have had a big push to get more
| digital, which has meant hiring software developers, IT people,
| setting up dedicated divisions to various IT tasks.
| uoaei wrote:
| That doesn't make them tech companies so much as it dilutes
| what "tech" means.
| j45 wrote:
| Nearly every business uses software on phones or computers.
|
| In that way every business is a software business and if
| they're serious about their business they will find ways to be
| a software and tech business to get things how they want or
| need for their competitive advantage.
| solardev wrote:
| I feel seen! I've spent my entire career as a web dev (15+ years)
| almost exclusively working for non tech companies: solar
| companies, nonprofits, museums, sustainability funds, etc.
|
| I loved it! The pay was much lower (50 to 100k), but generally
| livable, and the people were awesome -- folks from all walks of
| life, not all tech bros, a lot of women, etc. Good work life
| balance (I've worked a total of maybe 6-7 hours of overtime in my
| whole career), no weekends or holidays, no crunch. No bonuses or
| equity either, but that didn't bother me.
|
| But more than anything, I got to work in interesting verticals,
| whether it's alongside energy engineers, battery experts, world-
| renowned conservation scientists, archeologists, etc. People who
| love what they work on, making small but meaningful contributions
| to the real world (as opposed to like enshittified ad tech or
| crypto pyramids).
|
| Would strongly recommend, if you can get over the lower pay (like
| you don't have a family or mortgage yet) and the lack of prestige
| (you're just another minion in the machine, not a privileged
| SWE). It's a lot of fun, though you also lose the opportunity to
| work with experts in your field (who are usually at proper tech
| companies), exchanging depth for breadth. It's not for everyone,
| but I wouldn't have had it any other way.
| ioblomov wrote:
| My pre-startup career was in advertising (before the dominance
| of social networks) where salaries were quite competitive and
| the creative atmosphere made you forget the ad biz was still
| corporate America. Another huge benefit was complete technical
| autonomy: so long as you met deadlines, they didn't micromanage
| (because they lacked the domain expertise). I imagine corporate
| lawyers outside of law firms have a similar experience. All in
| all, trading the prestige for autonomy, greater work/life
| balance, and slightly less pay was well worth it.
| magic_man wrote:
| Those usually don't pay as well as tech company jobs.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| I'd rather not be treated as a cost centre and have non-tech
| business people second-guess everything.
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| Walmart has 1400 job openings with the word "software" in the
| title
| https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=r...
| pram wrote:
| Yeah I'm currently doing data work at a retail company. It's
| not bad at all. They've thrown money at seemingly every product
| that can be purchased with a support contract: Databricks,
| snowflake, Kafka, presto, rstudio, tableau, tibco, informatica,
| and so on lol.
|
| It's not "prestigious" but my resume has certainly accreted
| some fairly lucrative buzzwords.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I spent about 15 years doing SaaS and tech startups, then
| switched to working for a scientific non-profit. The first
| difference I noticed on my first week here was that, while they
| do produce software (thus me being employed) they do not have
| anything like a delivery process in place. There aren't product
| managers, nor really project managers as I recognize them either.
| Consequently, things which would have taken a month at the YC
| startup I came here from take six months to a year instead--no
| exaggeration. This has both pluses and minuses, as it can be
| frustrating just not making progress due to completely
| preventable holdups, but on the other hand I now have one of
| those jobs people talk about where they can work for an hour a
| day and still make all the deadlines with time to spare. I'm
| certainly not complaining, I've done years of crunch and I prefer
| this to the marginal salary I gave up.
|
| The second difference I noticed is that people actually
| understand what my company does, because I can say "we research
| [disease X]" rather than "we're building a best-in-class, b2b
| SaaS product/platform ecosystem that augments existing teams, but
| to be honest, we're just trying to demonstrate product-market fit
| for investors so we can get our second round, and ultimately get
| acquired by one of the big players".
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I think the big difference is not "tech vs non tech" but
| "software vs non-software".
|
| Software companies have beautiful margins. Their incremental cost
| is practically zero, their biggest expense is headcount for R&D,
| etc.
|
| Non-software companies have to deal with gross things like
| inventory, lead times, logistics, shipping, RMA, etc etc... You
| know, the dirty details of not having the luxury of literally
| just selling information/bits.
|
| Software companies great margins mean that employees can capture
| a larger share of that (because they create so much value).
| Lower-margin businesses can't, so the pay isn't as good.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-24 23:02 UTC)