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

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.

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 ...

Or it's just damned uncomfortable. 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.

> 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.