Big companies don't post profits for tax avoidance reasons. They use various strategies to minimise profits - or ideally operating at a loss, so that they don't pay tax or very little. They also use this as an argument "look we don't make any money so we can't pay you any more", while at the same time you hear CEO buying themselves another supercar or a beach house.
Itβs the growth, not the profit. Software engineering is a lever for growth for businesses designed that way. If you can grow revenue by $100M by spending $10M on engineer salaries, it usually makes sense.
On the other hand companies with steady profits and little growth have no such expectations and try to pay as little as possible for the software engineers they do need.
