Stage 2 · Lesson 5 of 6
Cost centres, profit centres and location
Inside a company, a earns money, such as a product team that customers pay for. A cost centre spends money to support the business, such as internal tools, some IT, or a team maintaining an old system. In a squeeze, cost centres are easier to cut or move.
Location matters too. Many global companies have moved work to their own offices in cheaper countries, called (GCCs); India alone has well over a thousand. For engineers in Pakistan and India this cuts both ways: work may move towards you, but services firms cut people on the "bench" (between projects) quickly. TCS and Accenture both cut staff they said they could not redeploy.
Common trapnot knowing which kind of team you are on, or how long you have been .
A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 3 cheat sheet entries come when you add the roadmap to your account. Add it
Resources for this stage
Start with
- GuideFreeThe Pragmatic Engineer
Gergely Orosz
Free posts that explain how tech companies plan cuts, reorganise and decide headcount
Keep handy
Also worth your time
Questions that get your manager talking about priorities and the next quarter
- r/ExperiencedDevsGo deeper
How experienced engineers read reorganisations and decide when to move