Real-World SRE

Tech as a profit center and procurement

As mentioned earlier, depending on your company, tech can be thought of as a profit center or a cost center. Usually, if technology is the product you are selling, your team is a profit center, and if technology is helping your company succeed, you are instead a cost center. If this is rubbed in your team's face too much, it can feel like an insult. Engineers are builders and creative types, and some may feel unmotivated or depressed to be thought of as not an integral part of the company's success. This is utter nonsense, but it happens. One way to remove it from your team's mind is to fight harder for a larger budget. Often, engineers only notice the difference if they find that they cannot do things they ...