[evujumenuk]

As an engineer — in other words: a salaried employee — you're already a businessperson. How do you negotiate for better total compensation or benefits if you reject knowing, and thus positively influencing, your worth to the company?

If you really don't want to engage in that sort of thing, I'm sure there's a lot of companies that'll let you be a fungible code monkey for pennies…

[proc0]

I get what you're saying but this is inherently a contradiction:

> As an engineer — in other words: a salaried employee — you're already a businessperson.

An engineer is NOT a business person. I don't recall business fundamentals in computer science classes... but I get it, most companies see full time employees as part of the business that they are responsible for.

The main problem I see is that it becomes an issue as to where the boundaries of the role is, and therefore pushes engineers away from their focus and that leads to more problems down the line. I've seen this so many times in my career and I can attribute it to the fact that orgs do not respect how hard engineering is, so they think they can have this role wear many hats, and then you have applications that are fragile and hard to work with. I get anyone can quit and find a better job, but that's besides the point. "Impact" is just a lazy way for businesses to define roles.

[evujumenuk]

Do you receive financial remuneration for your services as an engineer? Then I'd say you're engaging in an ongoing business transaction. As such, the parties to the contract this is happening under will each evaluate whether continuing the existing business relationship is worthwhile.

You may think that this kind of deliberation is outside of the context of what being an engineer is, but it's certainly not outside of the context of what being an employee is. If you wish to be an engineer and not be saddled with business stuff, don't demand compensation, or only token compensation, which is what I alluded to at the end of my last post. In the context of business, all parties need to constantly prove that what they're providing is worth more than what they're asking for.

You can work at a company that asks for "impact", and be given a degree of agency for determining which problems are worth solving, and solve them, hopefully leading to increased revenue, reduced costs, or reduced risks. Or, you can not do that, do whatever Jira asks you to do next, and have no case as to why the company should give you more money or indeed continue to employ you in favor of another engineer who can demonstrate more of an "impact".