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.
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.