Yes, developers are resources, what they produce needs to be of enough value to make up for the pay you supply them with. Which is why refactoring and rewriting is almost never on the agenda for management, because it often doesn’t bring in value.

In rare cases a piece of software is so bad, that rewriting it makes sense, because it means you’ll save development resources in the long run, but in my experience that’s rarely the case.

The best developers write good clean code with low dependencies and tests for things that matter, most developers aren great developers though, and things can almost always be made better, even if they are.

So it’s really about time vs results. A good example is RPA, it’s some of the most simple code around, but it’s often very hard to get it to take over 100% of a process. Your developer spends a few days to take over 80% of a manual process, but the last 20% would take your developer months of small adjustments.

That’s often not worth it, and refactoring is often the same.

If the system isn’t slow, and you can still add new features to it without breaking anything, then it’s not worth a refactor.

This doesn’t just apply to developers by the way, I manage a lot of different types of people, but they are all resources that I need to fit within my budget to meet the goals given to me by my management, who in term see me as a resource to meet their goals. We’re all cogs in the machine.

Yes. "Human Resources" is quite literal. Management discuss allocation of resources (i.e. engineers) to teams, open REQs (requisitions) for resources, etc.

Where I work, "Human Resources" is just in charge of benifits/payroll/etc. Assigning people to projects is done by the resource manager, a completly unrelated posistion.

I manage my team. When I discuss projects with my manager and the senior engineering leadership, they will almost always refer to staff as resources, e.g. "team X needs a SOA resource", "team Y needs extra QA resources" and so on. It's distasteful to me; I always refer to my team and other engineers as engineers or by name, not as "resources."

To balance things out, try casually slipping in the word "overhead" when talking about management.

I do that. Does not harm. They know themselves :). Good advice!

By the 'resource manager'. Point stands.

But, no place has HR assign resources.

It is a term to enforce the concept of humans as commodity in a commercial environment by the overhead.

That's pretty normal in the industry.

Had a client where the employees where stored in a table called "resources". Also felt very much like a resource there..

Yes. It (being called a resource) is common in Big companies where they literally see you as a "resource". This is worse when you are a 'resource' in a big service company.

No it is not. That is just project management language.

It is the culture of the company who makes the difference.

More precisely, your labor is the resource.

Swap out the word "resource" with "asset" if that helps. They're synonyms in this context. "A useful or valuable person."

Unfortunately, yes. We are just replaceable cogs.

I'm okay with this. They are paying me because the work isn't something that I'd do in my free time. I'm okay knowing that others can do my job as well as I can.

Its not art, it's a job. (to me)

I'd rather be a replacable cog than a crucial lynchpin. I prefer to look at my job in the same way. It's much less stressful that way.

Are you familiar with the term "human resources"?

What do you think HR is abbreviation for?