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From a financial point of view, engineers are considered assets not costs, because they contribute to grow the valuation of the company assets.

The right thing to do economically (in capitalism) is to do more of the same, but faster. So if you as a software engineer or customer service rep can't do more of the same faster you will replaced by someone (or something) that alleggedly can.

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> From a financial point of view, engineers are considered assets not costs

At Google? Perhaps. At most companies? No. At most places, software engineering is a pure cost center. The software itself may be an asset, but the engineers who are churning it out are not. That's part of the reason that it's almost always better to buy than build -- externalizing shared costs.

Just for an extreme example, I worked at a place that made us break down our time on new code vs. maintenance of existing code, because a big chunk of our time was accounted for literally as a cost, and could not be depreciated.

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