Oddly enough, I usually hear this the other way around - that if you work on a product that makes the company money directly (shrinkwrap software for a software company, HFT shit for a financial firm, etc) that you'll generally be treated (and compensated) better than if you're in a supporting role.
Agreed. To clarify my previous point: when technologists work in supporting roles to businesses, the business-people-first management hierarchy mostly makes sense. After all, the parent business is the end customer.
Where engineers feel most repressed is when they are the ones directly making money for the company, but are being taken advantage of by "business people" who aren't making the company money.
You're right -- the people who work on products that makes the company directly are generally treated (and compensated) better at good companies. Imagine if these same engineers weren't treated well... I doubt they'd have much respect for their business-y colleagues/bosses.
Where engineers feel most repressed is when they are the ones directly making money for the company, but are being taken advantage of by "business people" who aren't making the company money.
(Disclaimer: I am a software engineer)
I think a lot of this attitude comes from lack of awareness of how the "business guys" do - indeed - make money for the company (even when the product is software.) It's easy for us techies to get so enraptured with the pure, raw technology that we miss the "other stuff" that matters; things like the fact that software doesn't jump off the shelf and sell itself to customers, the idea of assembling a "whole product," and how important that is to selling something, the importance of demand creation activities, the extent to which "business" functions like marketing and product management serve as a bridge between the customer and engineering, etc. If more of us engineers would look up and around and pay attention to what the biz guy and gals actually DO, and not just lean on tired old stereotypes, it would help a lot.
And, of course, the converse is true as well. Business folks don't necessarily understand what engineers do, and they also fall into thinking based on stereotypes.
In the end, we probably just need more dialogue between both groups and more shared understanding of the world around us.
The quintessential (business) terms for this are "profit center" and "cost center".
Next realize that the assignment of those terms is -- "standards" aside -- essentially arbitrary. One trick of senior managers "parachuted" in to "fix" things, is to start labeling things left and right as "cost centers". They then proceed with a -- very often, short-term -- plan to starve or kill them. Remember, their pay and bonus are dependent upon the next few quarters and not on long-term prospects.
Resulting advice: When you are in a "cost center", get out.
