The reason why SWEs are catered to so much...

Apr 9 22 Comments

I finally realized the reason why companies are so 'desperate' to hire good SWEs and will do just about anything to retain the good ones.

Draw from the example of Instagram. 10 years ago, it was acquired for $1 billion and they only had 12 engineers!

As you can see, just a few A players can generate enormous amounts of business revenue.
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The real reason why SWEs are treated like gods:

Because they can be poached by another competitor, and then start building a product that directly COMPETES against their old companies.

/thread
#tech

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TOP 22 Comments
  • Yelp
    NW=181M

    Go to company page Yelp

    NW=181M
    You are forgetting the luck factor and being at the right place at the right time factor in Instagram story.
    Apr 9 2
    • Yup, so many SWEs are cranking out crap that never hits critical mass. Not necessarily their fault, but this also means they aren’t the only ones responsible for building a successful product.
      Apr 9
    • New
      WWDJ

      New

      WWDJ
      This 👆🏼
      Apr 9
  • Google
    Swettenham

    Go to company page Google

    Swettenham
    Yea, pretty much. Software scales up much faster than physical goods or human services can. So in the right situation, a team of SWEs can deliver many multiples of their compensation in business value. Of course, the right situation usually requires a bunch of other disciplines and some luck.
    Apr 9 1
  • Plaid
    squizzle

    Go to company page Plaid

    squizzle
    “10 years ago, it was acquired for $1 billion and they only had 12 engineers!

    As you can see, just a few A players can generate enormous amounts of business revenue. “

    IG had 0 revenue at the time…
    Apr 9 0
  • Financial Services Company
    nvftu

    Financial Services Company

    nvftu
    Nah the main reason is all companies raise money either from public markets or VCs and start in a rat race of growth. They need to try whole bunch of experiments to show “promising” projects to investors. All of these experimental work requires engineers.

    Meta makes money from FB ads and IG and yet have tons of teams in other areas, G makes money from search, YT and GCP and has tons of other teams.

    Some companies never make money but sell a promise.

    Engineers benefit from investors appetite for risk. When that goes down ie recession (flight to quality), layoffs will hit
    Apr 9 7
    • Indeed
      rsu-me

      Go to company page Indeed

      rsu-me
      That's way different from the types of stochastic fumbling around I'm talking about. We don't validate ideas up front well, we just A/B test or when we can't A/B test something small we just build some giant experience and drag it to market with a very vague plan about how it will make money.

      If you have a critical mass of clients LINED UP to pay you for a feature and the economics look good for you to build and maintain it hell yeah do it. There's always a risk of becoming a feature factory but small companies grow by delivering things their clients want.
      Apr 9
    • Financial Services Company
      nvftu

      Financial Services Company

      nvftu
      What Faang has working for them is the user base. So in fact a much better strategy is to be a copy cat, which Microsoft had done very well.
      In some cases like TikTok copying doesn’t work that well but majority of cases instead of innovating either acquiring or building once product market fit is proven is a better strategy.

      Amazon does tons of things. They innovate a lot. Has a very high success rate but again revenue comes from retail (fba mostly) + aws. Rest is side show. Prime videos is not comparable to netflix. Twitch is an acquisition, Alexa is mediocre etc. and this is the best big tech who can actually innovate.
      Apr 9
  • Cadence
    RrNr84

    Go to company page Cadence

    RrNr84
    Market/eco system is realizing two things
    1. Best A class engineer and team can be 100x more productive than average team/engineer.
    I have seen first hand. My top A+ engineers, as good as 5 other engineers in team.

    2. Scaling in value : one engineer can spend 1hr and can save 1000 hrs of average American time doing some repetitive task.

    Combined above two the software guys are worth it.
    Apr 9 2