Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to, and what that product portfolio revenue stream looked like, and what it meant to the business (right down to the product margins).
This sounds quite remarkable to me, and definitely does not match my experience. I've found that most engineers have an incredibly vague notion - at best - of how their companies make money. And it is, IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market", etc. And discussing revenue projections?!?? All I can say is, you've worked with some folks who do things very differently than the folks I've worked with!
I'd be a bit surprised if a sizable portion of engineers at a public company didn't have at least a rough notion of how their companies make money. It's right there in the quarterly and annual earnings reports. (And while reading SEC filings at a very detailed level is a skill you need to learn, the basics are pretty straightforward.) But maybe a lot of engineers just can't be bothered by any of that stuff. <shrug>
What is almost certainly true is that a lot of engineers as well as people in a lot of other groups can't conceive of why the company needs all those people in digital marketing or finance or partner management or ...
My experience (not specifically with engineers) is that very, very few people read the 10K, 10Q or other public statements of the company they work for.
A friend of mine used to be a management consultant for one of the big firms. On one memorable project she worked with senior executives of a large ($1b + revenue) non-tech company that had retained the consulting firm, to do an operational diagnostic. It became incredibly clear that many of these senior execs had never really read the company's financial statements in any detail, that they did not understand that the company was cash flow negative, and that they did not know that the company's debt load was increasing over time as it financed losses with bond issuances.
At the same time they were spending incredible amounts of money on luxurious office furniture and trappings.
Stories like this were common. Most managers knew their area, but did not learn about the business more broadly. (Could be selection bias with firms that hire management consultants!)
So, kudos to the engineers who read these and have a rough idea of their company's financial position and how the business works. It's not clear that this is the median experience.
It may be the case that those managers had no reason to care about the health of the company as long as they were able to extract personal short term value before it all blew up. I think that applies to most tech company employees over the last 15 years.
And admittedly the company I work for has monthly company meetings including quarterly ones that coincide with earnings. Certainly not everyone attends or watches the recording but they lay out results in a very digestible (and not tailored for external audiences) way.
> IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market"
I'd agree they don't know those terms, but people do generally grasp the concepts.
People do present financials at all hands meetings. I've certainly discussed the revenue projections with people, because we all found them hopelessly optimistic. Flat line suddenly increases exponentially for no reason.
If you've worked in startups before and then go on to big companies, you will have learned those terms, so it just depends on where your fellow engineers are coming from.
Still doesn't match my experience. Even in the startups I've worked for, engineers did not concern themselves with those kinds of details. Maybe it's a factor of just how early in the lifecycle a startup is when engineers join. Perhaps somebody who is there "day 0", before the first round is even raised, or maybe just a seed round, has a different perspective than somebody who joins after a C round or what-have-you.
I don't think Microsoft could just make Windows and Office and survive this long. So if you're not on those teams your chances of actually making money directly instead of being expensive advertising dollars are negligible.
Similarly if you're not working on adtech at Google. Your job doesn't actually make money. If you think about it too much you might not be that happy with how your life is going.
I work at Google on user facing product. I’m aware that my job is to make people like going to our website enough that they make searches for things that are sometimes ads. It’s the same as writing for a sitcom on tv. My whole purpose is to attract people with entertainment so they can be suggested to engage in some commercial activity.
This sounds quite remarkable to me, and definitely does not match my experience. I've found that most engineers have an incredibly vague notion - at best - of how their companies make money. And it is, IME, a vanishingly small set of engineers who would ever use terms like "product portfolio revenue stream", or "total addressable market", etc. And discussing revenue projections?!?? All I can say is, you've worked with some folks who do things very differently than the folks I've worked with!