When I retired, the software I wrote (forget about the data warehouses I built) was valued as a company asset at over $2M. It was state of the art data mining that I would put up against anything out there today. This is not merely ego. I see what is out there and I did better before I retired and I WOULD put my money where my mouth is.*
I admit that valuation massaged my ego quite a bit. It just never happens with a manufacturing company to value their software as an asset, let alone at that value. All of the other software we developed was not valued but was considered overhead – cost of doing business.
They hired a person who’s only job was to maintain those system. They contracted with me to write enhancements because it was beyond the ability of the person they hired.
Then the corporation decided to milk the company dry and sell off the parts.
A couple of years ago I heard the software I wrote was still working and still solid but no maintenance and no enhancements was being done. The company that bought that piece of the business didn’t see the value of it.
For some reason tonight I was wondering what the software is valued on the books now or even if the company is even using it. All in 8 1/2 years. Hmmm
*Case in point to the above: I saw a news report regarding how the government was looking into ways to track people who bilked the government out bazillions of dollars by making false claims for Covid relief. They highlighted how they were researching ways to track them down with “data scientists” and how they were finding some success. Crap. I build data warehouses that could accommodate the information collected and much, much more in the 1980’s let alone now. And, as for data mining to get the information they needed (in the report they used the fact of multiple filings using the same address), this could have been built in minutes if it wasn’t already available by default. I admit it was partially the software I used, but someone had to know how to build it right.
