Your 2nd paragraph is dead on. Working at a company where you are viewed as an overhead expense, rather than as an R&D cost is no fun. It's the third tier soft

Your 2nd paragraph is dead on. Working at a company where you are viewed as an overhead expense, rather than as an R&D cost is no fun. It's the third tier software job, but there are a lot of these jobs out there. I'd put working for a company that sells software as tier one and working for a software consulting company as tier two. This is why those jobs are so subject to outsourcing, if you bring in another company to take over those functions, at least the employees of that company are working towards their core competency. One "solution" to this is to get more involved in the business or mission of the organization you support. Of course, the bureaucracy may resist this sort of move.