You learn lessons over the years and this is one I learned at some point: you want to work in …

> You learn lessons over the years and this is one I learned at some point: you want to work in revenue centers, not cost centers. The problem is that many places don't see the cost portions of revenue centers as investment, but still costs. The world is littered with stories of businesses messing about with their core competencies. An infamous example was Hertz(1) outsourcing their website reservation system to Accenture to comically bad results. The website/app is how people reserve cars - the most important part of the revenue generating system. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32184183

I would go further and say that even at software companies, even for dev that goes directly into the product, engineering is often seen as a cost center. The logic is simple, if unenlightened: "What if we had cheaper/fewer nerds, but we made them nerd harder?" So while working in a revenue center is advantageous, you still have to be in one that doesn't view your kind as too fungible.

>> even when mine (that they had already approved) would save them 400K a year You learn lessons over the years and this is one I learned at some point: you want to work in revenue centers Totally agree. This is a big reason I went into solutions consulting. In that particular case I mentioned it was a massive risk management compliance solution which they had to have in place, but they were getting bled dry by the existing vendor, due to several architectural and implementation mistakes they had made way back before I ever got involved, that they were sort of stuck with. I had a plan to unstuck them at 1/5 the annual operating cost and better performance. Presented it to executives, even Amazon who would have been the infr vendor, to rave reviews. We had a verbal contract and I was waiting for paperwork to sign... and then Feb 2020... and then crickets.

I work as a consultant and tend to focus on helping startups grow their revenue. And what you're saying here is almost word for word what I often recommend as the *first thing* they should do. In many cases I've seen projects increase their revenue substantially by making simple messaging pivots. Ex. Instead of having your website say "save X dollars on Y" try "earn X more dollars using Y". It's incredible how much impact simple messaging can have on your conversion rates. This extends beyond just revenue. Focusing on revenue centers instead of cost centers is a great career advice as well.