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Depends on the role - for a COTS type of software, they are certainly not - they are revenue generating. Consultancy? Same thing. Now for internal tool development or support, sure, but how many businesses can operate without one? How many can 10 years from now? 20?

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well considering we still live in the industrial age system of factory owners and factory workers (concept of managers and even lean startup has roots in car factories), I would find it very rare that a non monopoly software business would view their engineering team as profit generators.

software and everyone involved in it's development are becoming commoditized via open source or money being injected by venture capital or a non-monopolized industry over time ends up on certain standards and margin falls for everyone.

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