this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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I never understood it, but business owners seem to have utter contempt for the people who actually make their money. I'm not talking about support staff, I mean the people that if they stay home, dollars aren't getting printed for everyone else. In private EMS, the billing staff would constantly get parties and catering and gift cards and shit, while the crews actually running the calls and writing the billable reports got third-hand furniture, moldy stations, ambulances held together with a fucking wish, and constant bellyaching about how paying the crews minimum wage was costing the company too much money. I'm starting to notice the same pattern pop up between the dev team and the product team as my software company scales.
It's quite easy to understand, even though it's bullshit.
When the sales department has a good month and makes loads of sales, the business too has a good month. The activity of those individuals directly correlates to revenue on a month by month basis, so management are naturally going to be incentivised to give the sales team perks and bonuses as motivation.
In a given month the IT/dev department doesn't "generate" any money at all, they only cost. We know they generate value in other ways of course, because the product the sales team sell is surely built and operated by the dev team, but because the relationship is indirect management don't care to reward you.
Reward sales with nice perks -> Revenue goes up
Reward devs with nice perks -> Revenue doesn't change
So of course management doesn't see the benefit in giving more money to tech, because it doesn't seem like you get anything back.
Of course, the reality is that investment in tech will make the product and the business better and more profitable, but it takes months or years to see the impact of changes, and management has a short attention span.
Yeah, maintenance is undervalued.
> Things are going well
> Things are breaking