Comment by btbuildem

Somewhat related -- our company has been making use of "R&D credits" (Canadian thing), basically getting the govt to subsidize the business. This never sat right with me, but we were a struggling startup so fair is fair. We've been bought out by a big American corp, and they continue to leverage this approach (why wouldn't they? it's free money!), but it REALLY bugs me.

Calling what software engineers do "R&D" seems such a stretch. You're not doing any research, you're not developing anything new. It's just a coincidence that the word "development" is in the job title. We're closer to factory workers than research scientists, by a lot. Just putting existing widgets together in well-defined ways to implement whatever business workflows.