Re:Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light...
by timr on Monday December 16, 2024 @01:58PM
(#42434084)
> From a financial point of view, engineers are considered assets not costs
At Google? Perhaps. At most companies? No. At most places, software engineering is a pure cost center. The software itself may be an asset, but the engineers who are churning it out are not. That's part of the reason that it's almost always better to buy than build -- externalizing shared costs.
Just for an extreme example, I worked at a place that made us break down our time on new code vs. maintenance of existing code, because a big chunk of our time was accounted for literally as a cost, and could not be depreciated.
At Google? Perhaps. At most companies? No. At most places, software engineering is a pure cost center. The software itself may be an asset, but the engineers who are churning it out are not. That's part of the reason that it's almost always better to buy than build -- externalizing shared costs.
Just for an extreme example, I worked at a place that made us break down our time on new code vs. maintenance of existing code, because a big chunk of our time was accounted for literally as a cost, and could not be depreciated.