[tharax]

right, but then so does support - by making sure that your customers are happy and therefore recommend your brand and become repeat customers. so do your cleaners - by making the workplace a tidier building so that your other staff are more productive. every team ultimately is there to "facilitate" another team to work better and make more money.

where do you draw the line?

[adamc]

I think what you are showing is that generally accepted accounting practices may not be as revealing about the business as we would like. Operations that make the numbers look better may in fact harm your business.

I don't think this is news, but it seems to often be ignored.

[nkassis]

It's hard for cleaners to make a company more competitive and profitable by cleaning harder but it's not hard to see how better software can do so.

[GFischer]

Elaborating: both better software and better support can be competitive advantages.

Better cleaning, not so much - it's just a cost/requirement of doing business .

Some companies don't consider their software or developers to be sources of competitive advantage, and you should try to avoid those if your goal is to work on cool stuff and have better chances of making more money. Some people do like the challenge of maximizing operational efficiency and might get a good job that way, but it's harder and fraught with politics.