3 ms·

The inconvenient truth is that the business exists not to provide engineers with work they’re happy with or proud of but to make investors money. The good news

The inconvenient truth is that the business exists not to provide engineers with work they’re happy with or proud of but to make investors money. The good news is developer happiness is associated with increased productivity and reduced attrition which usually factors into the business calculus in a much bigger way.

klabb3 3y ago
> The inconvenient truth is that the business exists not to provide engineers with work they’re happy with or proud of but to make investors money. First that’s not always technically true because not all businesses have investors. But assuming that the primary purpose is to make money, even that’s not precise since there’s a massive difference on optimizing for ROI tomorrow vs next quarter vs when you retire and hand your business over to others. Or different metrics altogether like market share or “engagement”. Those are all conflicting goals and have changed a lot just in a decade. But even if you decide precisely which metric to aim for, there’s still a giant difference between primary purpose and only purpose. Simple things like a circuit breaker or a nail might be single purpose. But as soon as you step up almost everything is multi-purpose. A car, a house, even a hat have many degrees of freedom. A business has many unquantifiable components. Anyway, the point is that giving carte blanche to decisions labeled with “business reasons” is at best lazy, and at worst legitimizes a sort of pseudo religious cargo cult worship of the “business truths” of the current year. The truth is that nobody sits on magical predictive abilities, neither the 10x engineers nor the MBA grand poobahs. But it’s also clear that the companies with technical leadership and/or a high degree of engineering agency have been so successful in the last two decades, to the point of redefining the nature of business itself.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > not all businesses have investors. If I form a business and take no outside money, I am the investor, particularly in the context of GP’s point that “[businesses exist]…to make investors money.”
  - kdfjgbdfkjgb 3y ago
    what about nonprofits?
    - Davidbrcz 3y ago
      Nonprofits still need to break even or raise funds (membership fees, donations).
      - musicale 3y ago
        What part of that involves making money for investors?' How much profit are nonprofits expected to make?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
    So in that case, you're investing your time in return for money/happiness? Sounds like the same proposition as employees.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      And money to get the company started. Even before a dollar of revenue comes in, lawyers, accountants, and the state need to be paid, and someone has to front or pay for the real estate. And employees are guaranteed a wage, unlike founders. These differences are often overlooked, seemingly out of convenience for the argument.
  - musicale 3y ago
    Non-financial businesses generally exist to provide goods and services. If FedEx stops delivering packages and provides no other goods or services, does it really need to exist?
    - sokoloff 3y ago

klabb3 3y ago

> The inconvenient truth is that the business exists not to provide engineers with work they’re happy with or proud of but to make investors money. First that’s not always technically true because not all businesses have investors. But assuming that the primary purpose is to make money, even that’s not precise since there’s a massive difference on optimizing for ROI tomorrow vs next quarter vs when you retire and hand your business over to others. Or different metrics altogether like market share or “engagement”. Those are all conflicting goals and have changed a lot just in a decade. But even if you decide precisely which metric to aim for, there’s still a giant difference between primary purpose and only purpose. Simple things like a circuit breaker or a nail might be single purpose. But as soon as you step up almost everything is multi-purpose. A car, a house, even a hat have many degrees of freedom. A business has many unquantifiable components. Anyway, the point is that giving carte blanche to decisions labeled with “business reasons” is at best lazy, and at worst legitimizes a sort of pseudo religious cargo cult worship of the “business truths” of the current year. The truth is that nobody sits on magical predictive abilities, neither the 10x engineers nor the MBA grand poobahs. But it’s also clear that the companies with technical leadership and/or a high degree of engineering agency have been so successful in the last two decades, to the point of redefining the nature of business itself.

sokoloff 3y ago
> not all businesses have investors. If I form a business and take no outside money, I am the investor, particularly in the context of GP’s point that “[businesses exist]…to make investors money.”
- kdfjgbdfkjgb 3y ago
  what about nonprofits?
  - Davidbrcz 3y ago
    Nonprofits still need to break even or raise funds (membership fees, donations).
    - musicale 3y ago
      What part of that involves making money for investors?' How much profit are nonprofits expected to make?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
  So in that case, you're investing your time in return for money/happiness? Sounds like the same proposition as employees.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    And money to get the company started. Even before a dollar of revenue comes in, lawyers, accountants, and the state need to be paid, and someone has to front or pay for the real estate. And employees are guaranteed a wage, unlike founders. These differences are often overlooked, seemingly out of convenience for the argument.
- musicale 3y ago
  Non-financial businesses generally exist to provide goods and services. If FedEx stops delivering packages and provides no other goods or services, does it really need to exist?
  - sokoloff 3y ago