* Comp bands for are now targeting p50 averages rather than p75 or top of market. So you can't close new hires that are going competitors. And you can't give raises to your top performers
* The health benefits are less generous when renegotiated for the following year
* T&E that would have been approved - granted some maybe that shouldn't - but importantly some that should have for top-sales people, are no longer approvable. So your top sales people leave. Or similarly the accelerators or other measures are changed, that might look good on paper but rub top sales people the wrong way.
* Head-count isn't replaced, so teams have to take on more work
* Perks like conference attendance or hardware upgrades, which arguable aren't perks but investments in your team's productivity, are cut/limited
Agreed, but a gradual erosion can occur over the course of several years. PEGs and the operating company's management team have massive incentives to hit their growth metrics. If decreasing 401K contributions helps management hit their EBITDA target, many would argue that they should do exactly that. However, the impact of these decisions accumulates over time and can eventually derail a company's performance.
Which is why companies can "grow" in accounting terms while actually being hollowed out as going concerns with a future.
Likewise with the planetary economy, which appears to be growing financially while in ecological terms it's almost literally eating its own seed corn.
A better approach needs a revolution in accounting. Current accounting practices are built on so many false assumptions they cannot possibly produce lasting long term opportunity, except for a tiny minority of exceptionally and unhealthily privileged people.
Few giant American companies have been as consistently successful as Intel. I can think of only Microsoft, one or two energy conglomerates like ExxonMobil, a telecom or two like Verizon, and maybe a bank like Goldman Sachs.
Something about staying in your lane while increasing opportunities in that lane seems to be a good long-term formula.
But overall, giant companies with 30 year runs of knockout growth and/or dividends like Intel are Cinderella stories. Google will be the next one to qualify in a few years I suppose.
Software engineers from a CFO perspective aren't any really different than plumbers or carpenters. It's just labor. Getting a cheaper rate on labor is far more beneficial to the company than say making sure it's employees are happy.
If the company could cut wages 50% across the board and then give the executives 20% raises for saving 50% in labor, they would do it in a heartbeat.
Can we think of a way to connect and individual’s creativity to money flow?
As an engineer I am most productive when I solve a business need without writing code. How can I associate my contributions with measurable profit?
Once that metric becomes anything close to a target the monstrosities it would bring ae horrific!
It's why most Fortune 500 companies run Java, so they can easily replace one person with another.
Whoa, citation needed. I’m fairly certain yhis isn’t true unless you are optimizing for just the next month.
Plumbing systems are extensively documented and well-understood. The equivalent situation in plumbing would be that the entire layout of the city's sewage system (or similarly, the construction plans for the company's headquarters) is only kept inside the heads of two senior developers, likely because the Powers That Be have decided that keeping accurate documentation is not worth the cost. Preventative maintenance and quality control are impossible, because nobody knows which pipes have been laid first and are the most at-risk from leaking.
Point being: everything is just labour. That doesn't mean software "engineering" should be allowed to fall so far below the baseline we expect from other engineering professions.
Do you sacrifice your own monetary benefit to save a company? But then what about your family?
I don’t think analysts are not smart enough or not caring enough. But institutionalized greed corrupts the integrity of everyone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel...
I'm gonna cosplay an "analyst mindset":
1. Need to measure costs and benefits of slashing benefits/pay.
2. A benefit-- slashing benefits/pay allows us to hit some obvious financial goal
3. A cost-- Uh oh, I don't yet know how to reliably measure any of the costs.
4. Good analysts don't take action without measuring.
5. I'm a good analyst.
Conclusion: I cannot take the action of slashing benefits/pay
The only way to make it work is to add a step "3b: cherry pick metrics for the costs of slashing benefits/pay such that the phony metrics justify the decision management already wants to make of slashing benefits/pay." But now we've shifted from "analyst mentality" to "the mindset of the little Beetle-like bureaucrats described by George Orwell in 1984."