[bb88]

Cash is still King. The more cash on hand, the easier it is for the business to survive in an economic downturn, and the more dividends and stock buybacks can happen for the investors.

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.

[nickpeterson]

This line of thinking is wrong though, because software developers are more like writers than plumbers. You can fire the writing staff at a sitcom and hire cheaper writers but good luck, it will probably fail.

[andrei_says_]

The issue is that the bean counters count beans and not creativity.

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?

[bb88]

When you write an api, add "dollars_saved", for the amount of dollars your api is currently saving the company. CFO's love that quantitative shit.

[salawat]

Y'all are looking for quantitative Quality measures. Good luck. If you aren't sitting on top of Spend informed by actual company history, you're hosed, and most places are hush hush af about that.

[nickpeterson]

Code and documentation are debts, Features divided by lines of code is a good metric.

[rocqua]

Dear god.

Once that metric becomes anything close to a target the monstrosities it would bring ae horrific!

[chiefalchemist]

The brain drain starts with the turds starts to smell. Those most able to go will be the first to go. Things decline. More leave and so one.

[bb88]

If your primary output is software then maybe you're right. But in most companies software enables more efficient output usually in the form of products or services. A bank uses software, but it's profit is based upon banking... etc.

It's why most Fortune 500 companies run Java, so they can easily replace one person with another.

[Aeolun]

> Getting a cheaper rate on labor is far more beneficial to the company than say making sure it's employees are happy.

Whoa, citation needed. I’m fairly certain yhis isn’t true unless you are optimizing for just the next month.

[bb88]

Companies exist for the stockholders, not the employees or the public at large.

[_blu]

that's a myth. it's the opposite that is true.

[vinyl7]

It's hard to argue against it when I see companies becoming more and more consumer hostile (cheap products that break in a year or after warranty is up, slow buggy software, incomplete game releases, ads crammed into every open space, FANG cornering their markets, dark patterns, etc.)

[tremon]

Software engineers from a CFO perspective aren't any really different than plumbers or carpenters

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.