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Comment by SamuelAdams | Hacker News Reader

> a software engineer in tech is the best job security you can get

Can you explain this? Anywhere I have ever worked (Fortune 500 orgs) I have always had an "at will" employment contract as a W-2 employee. They can fire me at any time for any reason. Furthermore, when budgets are cut typically the first group to go is the IT department, since they do not bring in any revenue, unless the company is selling IT products and services.

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I think there is a difference between working at a company where software is the product, vs a company where software only supports the main product (i.e. an IT department). Companies where SW is the product value developers more I think.

From a management perspective a company where software is not the product makes the software team is what's called a cost center. And companies love cutting costs. At a company where software is the product, the software team would be treated more as a profit center. In general, you want to be in a profit center, not a cost center. Hell, half our homework in accounting 102 was problem sets calculating if it was economically beneficial to outsource a given cost center - even at the most basic level cost centers are places that people want to cut.

Definitely. When an engineer is part of the “front office,” they’re valued and paid. When they’re part of the “back office,” they’re commoditized.

Has much less to do with software than strategy: maximize core competencies and minimize overhead.

> Companies where SW is the product value developers more I think.

And the IT budgets are different. Very different. On a related note, remember when some organizations had IT (and specifically web dev) under their marketing departments?

In case the OP doesn’t reply my interpretation is there is way more demand than supply so sure you’re “at will” but you could find another job quickly. As for fortune-500 and IT layoffs I imagine we are talking here about technology companies for which “IT” isn’t a line item to be cut but _is_ the business. Rules may be different at BestBuy or Bank of America but I bet not by much.

This. I haven’t been out of work as a developer in 28 years. And I’m definitely not in the top 5% of developers skill or intelligence-wise.

I am not the person you are replying to but I would imagine they mean "job security" as in if you get fired you can find another pretty quickly.

The “in tech” part I think was meant to say in technology/IT focused companies.

Oh, that's nothing to worry about. Any halfway decent software engineer who gets fired on Thursday should be able to just waltz into a new job the following Tuesday.

I keep reading that on Hackernews, so it must be true!

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