From a management perspective a company where software is not the product makes the software team is what's called a cost center. And companies love cutting costs. At a company where software is the product, the software team would be treated more as a profit center. In general, you want to be in a profit center, not a cost center. Hell, half our homework in accounting 102 was problem sets calculating if it was economically beneficial to outsource a given cost center - even at the most basic level cost centers are places that people want to cut.

Definitely. When an engineer is part of the “front office,” they’re valued and paid. When they’re part of the “back office,” they’re commoditized.

Has much less to do with software than strategy: maximize core competencies and minimize overhead.

> Companies where SW is the product value developers more I think.

And the IT budgets are different. Very different. On a related note, remember when some organizations had IT (and specifically web dev) under their marketing departments?