Working in the profit center of a company is often enviable, but let's not forget that cost centers in large companies can also offer benefits in things like work/life balance.
I've also worked somewhere at a "lesser" company where I was firmly on the cost-center side of things, but my work was seen as absolutely business-critical, I was treated well, I survived all reorgs and department layoffs and had my salary tripled from the time I started.
Working in unsexy companies is a tremendous opportunity because if you're good at what you do, people literally think you work miracles.
Also that last statement hits way too close to home.
Also I used to work at an ISP too! :D
> I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser.
Yes, they did - bit difficult to argue good faith when you are calling people chumps.
Why not? That's a prevailing opinion.
SWE: Works for a startup. HN: RESPECT!
SWE: Works for FAANG. HN: Respect.
SWE: Works in an industry that's not related to the web. HN: Wait, what? I don't understand.
SWE: Works anywhere else. HN: Crickets.
You can get vibe of a company by asking if IT is seen as a cost center. If software is a competitive advantage you know that it's green pastures for your and yours. But places where culture holds back engineering, like being slow on the uptake of GIT or CI/CD which is often talked about online, these are places to be wary of. Those latter companies are either going to have growing pains or will die out as digitization starts to take them on.
Though in the context of this thread, I don't know a good question to ask in an interview to tease out that information when it's not already clear. If you simply ask "is IT/engineering considered to be vital to the business model or core to company success", everyone will answer yes regardless of how the IT/engineering is actually viewed.
I'm not even sure had I figured out exactly what that question should be if it would have helped that younger version of myself in the place that I was at, but it's still a useful lens moving forward if I have to stay in the "dark matter" parts of software development in the parts of corporate America that don't consider themselves software development companies.