Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.

This sounds quite remarkable to me, and definitely does not match my experience. I've found that most engineers have an incredibly vague notion - at best - of how their companies make money. And it is, IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market", etc. And discussing revenue projections?!?? All I can say is, you've worked with some folks who do things very differently than the folks I've worked with!

Absolutely.

What is almost certainly true is that a lot of engineers as well as people in a lot of other groups can't conceive of why the company needs all those people in digital marketing or finance or partner management or ...

A friend of mine used to be a management consultant for one of the big firms. On one memorable project she worked with senior executives of a large ($1b + revenue) non-tech company that had retained the consulting firm, to do an operational diagnostic. It became incredibly clear that many of these senior execs had never really read the company's financial statements in any detail, that they did not understand that the company was cash flow negative, and that they did not know that the company's debt load was increasing over time as it financed losses with bond issuances.

At the same time they were spending incredible amounts of money on luxurious office furniture and trappings.

Stories like this were common. Most managers knew their area, but did not learn about the business more broadly. (Could be selection bias with firms that hire management consultants!)

So, kudos to the engineers who read these and have a rough idea of their company's financial position and how the business works. It's not clear that this is the median experience.

I don't think Microsoft could just make Windows and Office and survive this long. So if you're not on those teams your chances of actually making money directly instead of being expensive advertising dollars are negligible.

Similarly if you're not working on adtech at Google. Your job doesn't actually make money. If you think about it too much you might not be that happy with how your life is going.

I'd agree they don't know those terms, but people do generally grasp the concepts.

People do present financials at all hands meetings. I've certainly discussed the revenue projections with people, because we all found them hopelessly optimistic. Flat line suddenly increases exponentially for no reason.

I think the majority of employees in most business do not have much visibility into the financial machine that justifies their existence.

I joined a company that was a privatised spin-off from a large civil service organization. A new CEO interviewed each department head, asking them how their accruals were doing this FY. A couple, allegedly, said 'Our what?' and were immediately shown the door.

The next CEO, by the way, asked 'how many engineers do we have?'. The inability to answer that also led to some corporate soul-searching and eventually some major re-orgs.

accruals: Larger companies especially do accounting on an accrual basis. So what most matters is when the service was delivered or the product sold--not when the cash was received. (Large companies care about cash flow too but cash is king at small companies.)

Basically what's being asked is "In what ways does our cash balance not reflect our income and expenses?" Perhaps more common would be ask about bookings but accruals is broader.

This is one of those annoying things where I can talk about either concept, but don't know the language that serves as a proof of competency.

Purely from the outside, I'd guess that yes they're asking for the discrepancy. Maybe they're asking for accrual revenue but I'm not sure I've ever heard the term used that way. I would expect someone would ask for bookings if that's what they wanted. (Which can get even more complicated for multi-year subscription deals.)

ADDED: It's been a long time since I got my MBA but, with all the data in front of me, if someone asked me that question, I'd have to ask what they actually wanted and, if they fired me a result, so be it.

And then there's mistaking users for customers. If you're a McDonald's customer you might think their money comes from trading hamburgers for cash, and you'd be wrong on any number of fronts. If you're a McDonald's competitor, you would know that they make more money from fries, and way more money from selling soda (hence the discount for a meal). But if you're the McDonald's corporation, you know that you make most of your money from franchisees, who happen to sell burgers and fries and oceans of soda. You're providing logistics and real estate acumen for most of your money. The general public is their customer's customer.

I don't know if they still do but Burger King used to 'steal' McDonald's real estate acumen by building Burger Kings as close to the nearest McDonald's as they could manage. Let them get 10% or whatever higher profits by getting the correct corner lot in the right neighborhood instead of the incorrect lot in the right neighborhood, meanwhile we save tons of money on market research.

I've gotten in trouble before while exploring and then being accused of putting my nose where it shouldn't be. It can look like you're wasting your time looking for distractions, or trying to dig up dirt. Not everyone in all parts of your company is going to like you poking around. You also risk picking up new responsibilities if people catch wind that you might be offering help. This can be the start to a promotion and also a good way to just make your days longer for no additional compensation. Not all managers will respond to the leverage of cross department work you took on yourself, though they probably should.

That said, if you do it well, which is an art of it's own. I agree, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

Also, don’t be that engineer that tells all the other departments what they’re doing wrong, having done a couple of Udemy courses.

But you do have those empire-building types who see everyone as trying to encroach on their turf. If you run into too many of those, I'd honestly suggesting looking for a new job - companies where a lot of people have that kind of attitude tend to be both not great to work at and also less than successful in the long run.

This also goes both ways. I also offer to help people to learn more about my side of the organization, going as far as being a mentor. A former coworker, with whom I am still friends with today, I met at a previous role where she was in marketing but wanted to know more about the development side, having had no prior experience. I was able to get her started in software engineering. Fast forward 6 years, she’s now the lead automations engineer for a marketing company.

On the other hand if you come off as genuinely interested in what other people are doing with no ulterior motives, 95% of the time you'll get warm feedback. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that'd react confrontationally to a middle schooler asking about their job. Why? Because their intentions are innocent.

This is way too little information to be meaningful.

Was he walking around talking to people in different departments about what they need, was he stealing paper from people's desks at night time when wandering around the building. Who knows.

One group was even bewildered I was able to integrate a department client app with their ticket database. Reduced necessary clicks by 95% or so. They didn't think it was possible. Yes, this is the caliber of folks working at a big corporation.

Unless you are one of the few people experienced with back-country trekking in active geothermal areas, stick to the roads and trails.

If you are unfortunate enough to be stranded in yellowstone, follow fresh game trails. They will be less likely to lead through boiling mud. On the other hand, the wildlife is unpredictable due to the massive population of stupid tourists.

Yellowstone is dangerous. Stay on the trails and roads unless you know what you are doing. And you probably don't know what you are doing.

Perhaps that is the problem (at least with some sectors: a close friend's partner's daughter has worked as a civil engineer with a couple of employers for a couple or three decades now - she can show you the roads she planned and managed the building of)?

Hold on a sec, are you saying you found dead weight and then got leadership to terminate their employment?

I read it thinking they meant to their cloud platform bills.

But you bring up a good hypothetical regardless. This is why people are not necessarily overjoyed to have folks from other teams sniffing around... if they think you are looking for "inefficiencies" all the more so. Getting laid off isn't the only threat, making their job a lot harder/more unpleasant is also one. Or just being blamed for being bad at their jobs.

To the organizations bottom line, and perhaps to your bosses, it's all the same either way. Hey, you saved money. To your co-workers, obviously not.

You've got to build up trust, that you're looking to make their job more pleasant, not more unpleasant, or non-existent.

It seems like a bit of a stretch that he got anyone fired, but much more likely that they just scaled back on cloud services for that particular project.

But yes, I would say behaving like an interloper in your org and getting people fired because you deviate from your actual job is highly problematic. After the news gets out about that behavior you can better believe they are going to get stonewalled in their actual role.

And your reward for that was? Were you rewarded? Did they give you 30K as a bonus? Or was it just the weasel words of "this will be considered favourably at performance review time."

I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping where I am), so it is not worth it to even write a ticket for it.

I figure people are motivated by different factors at work, in different proportions.

I could guess what you meant by that sentence, but I might get it wrong, and then where would we be.

But ok, are you meaning that sentance to suggest that what gets you going in the morning, what makes your job tolerable or pleasurable to you, is exclusively maximizing your income, and that you think this is the way everyone should be, because... uh... I'm still not sure how to relate that to your sentence/question/rhetorical question, honestly. Like, if your organization is interested in helping you achieve your goals, then are you motivated by something other than maximizing your income? Or still just by maximizing your income, either way? Are you telling us that your goals at a job consist of maximizing your income, and that's it? And this is true either way, regardless of whether the organization is interested in helping you achieve that?

If I work for a for-profit company you can't expect me to do extra work for free. If I wanted that type of life I would have gotte a job in another kind kf venture

Or is this a stupid question, because all jobs are equally intolerable to you, they all suck the same, there is nothing that makes one more tolerable or even pleasurable than another, at least not enough to matter, in your experience?

I'm just taking guesses.

I'm also curious how long you've been working in this field.

It's not that difficult. As I already said, if I didn't want money I would have worked as a volunteer or something

That probably describes many, most, or all people, but isn't an answer to the question I was curious about.

I am not sure why you are refusing to answer to my question while still engaging in the discussion, but I guess I should take it as an answer that, in fact, no, nothing at your job contributes to whether you find it more or less tolerable or even enjoyable than another, except how much you get paid?

I am also curious, although I assume you won't answer, whether you'd say you generally "like" your jobs or "hate" them, or just don't even think of them in those terms, or what. And still curious how many jobs you've had, and how long you've been working in the field.

I understand your mentality from low wage workers but I dont understand it from people in software who clear anywhere from 100k to 700k a year.

Apart from that, doing a good job is a character thing. You should do a good job for yourself, not try to fit in with the slugs.

From my experience if you have a track record of doing a good job working autonomously and you can demonstrate that you contribute directly to the business's financial interests people just leave you alone and if they don't there is a good chance the boss's of those people will tell them "just leave him alone". Be someone's golden goose and in most organizations you can do whatever you want.

So let me try to clarify what the other posters are saying to you.

It's not that pay is the only thing that makes a job tolerable or enjoyable. It's the fact that compensation/rewards do not necessarily follow nor reflect the work done.

So in the above cases, you do more work outside your intended role and find some kind of optimization that saves the company 250k/yr. And you make say $80k/yr. You have now provided almost 3x your salary in terms of economic value to your company but if they do not provide an economic reward for this effort, it acts as a demotivator. Though there could be other things that make the job tolerable or enjoyable, you potentially now are dealing with a poisoned pill. Nothing can counter that poison of being rewarded for such improvement than a good job, what else have you done for us today?

I seek non-monetary rewards. I like doing interesting and/or meaningful work. But I define what that means to me, and short of starting my own business, it is rare that an existing job will give me more interesting work than what I can do in my spare time.

Hence, the incentive is to maximize my spare time. Sure, I could look for an interesting project at work, but once you factor in all the organizational constraints (will not have much autonomy, must make money, etc), it's not even half as interesting as my own projects in my spare time.

So I optimize for spare time.

I care about two things:

1. My own pile of cash. I will work until I die, as I like the technical puzzles. But I also want the ability to casually walk away at any time.

2. The technical puzzles. I care about the code and doing fun things with it. Whether it goes to prod? I do not care. Whether it brings in new revenue? I do not care. I will push interesting new tech I want to learn and find some reason to make a case for it, even if it is not a sincere case.

Even if these optimizations and improvements are enjoyable, why would I spend my precious energy and focus on them if I'm not going to be rewarded appropriately? I would rather save my energy and focus for things I care more about.

Reward is also part of the enjoyment. If you are not being acknowledged and rewarded for impactful work it lessens the enjoyment of doing such tasks.

The employment is a means to funnel money to the valuable aspects of life.

Then there's the psychology of it: If enough other people work extra long hours to get those savings, they're not getting a larger bonus than me who isn't. When you scale this kind of reward incentive, what you'll get is most employees not bothering - they'll get the bonus anyway.

Later I ran the numbers and realized this alone covered about half my total cost to the company. You don't often get feedback that direct about your impact on the bottom line.

Reputation also includes playing a lot of games. You can casually claim credit in interviews for things you didn't do.

But in most of the work world, I get the same pay whether the crops I grow are bountiful and valuable or scarce and full of worms. I certainly don't get more converting a wormy field into a bountiful one.

So I just won't.

In a broader context, if you mean preparation of an area for development by landscaping it and running utilities and roads to it, that's done by other workers, not owners.

The owners aren't providing tools and plants either, those are being assembled, grown, and transported by other workers, who again should be receiving most/all of the profit. Obviously you need other workers to organize all of this which requires both finesse and significant self-responsibility, much like a heart surgeon or a civil engineer, but much like heart surgeons and civil engineers I don't see a reason for them to make more than 5-20x as much as the person with the easiest job.

one of the best things I did (which was dependant on how much spare time I had), was to ask the people I visited, what do you do? I tried to make sure I asked a mixture of low to high ranking people

The responses was amazing, with some people giving up loads of their time up to explain their jobs. I even made some good friends ouside the computer dept

I'd say that's a win. We should be preserving as much as we can which really means most of us shouldn't be exploring more of the park which is mostly off trail.

I do get your point that people are coming to Yosemite and are not even taking advantage of the trails.

One point that should be made from this is that many people who are coming to the park don't really have the fitness, skills, and motivation to explore more of the trails in the park. Similarly, many people really aren't going to go explore at their companies because of skills, motivation, and time. Time is a major blocker for me because I can do more in areas outside of my focus but there are other life obligations and the need to rest to avoid burnout.

I get it. But sometimes there are people focused on their 1% and see you as part of that.

Yes I love interesting detours - and frankly they almost always result in something useful - however converting that something useful into something that is used by the organisation is a different kettle of fish - that requires an organisation that is willing to see its failures and change on a significant level - which if were true probably would mean I could not spot the low hanging fruit.

Not sure where I am going except to say the Schumpter is probably right and that it's incredibly hard to move jobs thus any signalling via job market is muted.

I don't see the point of your recommendation.

I have been rewarded in the past and am confident I will rewarded in the future. The individuals that set it up kooky will be retrained to avoid that situation in the future. I feel bad for all the jaded folks they must live very depressing existences.

They don't try then claim "even I did try what would it get me? making some richy richer, no thanks". Ok so what the alternative? I'm just not willing to sit around complaining. Right now I don't feel like I'm being grifted and if I did I would quit.

This hasn't been my experience. I've moved around a lot and have exposure to many aspects of the business and how things operate. I'm 10 years in and still a midlevel. Being more linear would have resulted in faster promotions.

"You can literally write your own ticket."

Not in many large orgs. Poking your nose in other areas is a good way to get your hand slapped.

No, generally speaking it's really not.

That takes time and effort away from the job you're actually getting evaluated on, and if your workplace is at all competitive (as most are), it's an incredibly easy way to waste your time and not get promoted.

Is it interesting? Sure. Is it to your advantage in that workplace? Almost never.

The main situation where it's a smart thing to do is when you intend to start your own company (or franchise in certain industries) and you're trying to learn as many best practices as possible. But then you're treating your employment as school, rather than looking for reward or promotion within.

It’s a unique organisation that’s both complacent and willing to change that fact. More likely you’ll find resistance at every step along the way.

So add another reason for resistance.

Leaving the road sounds like something a communist who doesn't love their car would do.

If you work in a corporation, this is a surefire way to create enemies inside the organization. No one likes a random employee from another team to poke into what they're doing and tell them what they're doing wrong.

> You'll make enemies poking your nose around.

And? You make another worker in another department angry, so what? Managers in other departments are very inviting (unless they're up to no good, in which you'll be doing the company's owners even bigger favors by exposing them) because they want to be seen as having work that's necessary to the business. The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you.

> Did you get any of that $385,000? Of course not.

It would be nice to get a piece of that cost savings. My previous role was largely in finops, so this is near to my heart. Companies should give incentives for any proactive cost reductions and revenue generators. But that's not the point - you did the right thing by fixing something that was broken because you were genuinely curious.

> I don't have time for all that.

You have to make time to learn your company just like you have to make time to work out, learn new skills, network with people, and grow your wealth and family. Learning the inner workings of your company does pay off just like the others, maybe even more so than some of them.

FWIW @SassyGrapefruit I commend your efforts. You're the type of person I want on my team.

That's more idealistic than my experience. I've seen team leads with a very strong sense of ownership. Also, if their mistake is responsible for a 6-figure overspend, it's better for them for it to remain hidden than to be revealed by someone else (especially a non-expert).

2. It's a good thing for team leads to own their work, but if they're not comfortable with people poking around then they seem to be hiding something, and in that case I'll default back to the first point.