The Cost Center Trap
This is a really profound point about software.<p>The ironic thing is that this &quot;cost-center culture&quot; has even affected the mindset of individual software developers and how we think of our own work.<p>Most developers ONLY look at their work in terms of cost. ALL pros and cons arguments are really about ways to reduce cost. Consider the term &quot;tech debt&quot; -- nothing could be clearer. Yet discussions rarely ever take place among engineers at a company about how to maximize profit or increase revenue. In fact, I would argue there is a heavy cultural bias on most engineering AGAINST optimizing for revenue, as it is seen as something that motivates sales or product people to rush timelines and sabotage sound engineering practices.<p>The obsession with cost is baked into programmer culture in such a deep and foundational way, I&#x27;m skeptical will ever change, even if the accounting of software projects changes. If you perform a search for the word &quot;cost&quot; on the eBook for the Principles of Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz, you will find it dozens of times in various sentences about the urgency and critical importance of reducing costs, but the words &quot;profit,&quot; &quot;income,&quot; or &quot;revenue&quot; appear not even once. I&#x27;m not trying to make a point about POODR in particular, because this bias is only reflective of the culture as a whole.<p>You can certainly make the argument that it has to be that way, and engineering should be separated from revenue. I find it very interesting that, as a culture, we are only willing to speak about the monetary value of our work in negative terms.