Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the …

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!

Maybe specifically for product engineers, but does that extend beyond the specific product that engineer is working on. Do you think a network engineer knee deep in a data center knows the margins on all the products? I don't work for a fortune 500 but our revenue scheme and capital structure are complex. I could not profess to understand it in its entirety. We receive revenue from our products, managed services and support, one-off revenue streams, channel/revenue sharing arrangements, consulting, and on and on. This is for a lowly $120 million a year business look at a F500 earning $6 billion and I think it becomes opaque pretty quickly. I think the majority of employees in most business do not have much visibility into the financial machine that justifies their existence.

> Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to I joined a company that was a privatised spin-off from a large civil service organization. A new CEO interviewed each department head, asking them how their accruals were doing this FY. A couple, allegedly, said 'Our what?' and were immediately shown the door. The next CEO, by the way, asked 'how many engineers do we have?'. The inability to answer that also led to some corporate soul-searching and eventually some major re-orgs.

I feel like I have to disagree, on the grounds that many companies mistakenly label indirect profit centers as 'cost centers' and end up cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They strangle R&D and get outclassed in the market. They strangle infrastructure and get nasty surprises that tarnish their reputation. And then there's mistaking users for customers. If you're a McDonald's customer you might think their money comes from trading hamburgers for cash, and you'd be wrong on any number of fronts. If you're a McDonald's competitor, you would know that they make more money from fries, and way more money from selling soda (hence the discount for a meal). But if you're the McDonald's corporation, you know that you make most of your money from franchisees, who happen to sell burgers and fries and oceans of soda. You're providing logistics and real estate acumen for most of your money…