Actually, if the company isn't selling the software they build, what their software devs do is closer to building a factory rather than working in it.
Mostly developing software is about automating things that are expensive and slow to do manually. So, to stick with the factory analogy, it makes the factory a bit better and more efficient. If you stop doing that because it is too expensive, you fall behind with your factory.
Of course the whole issue in the US is that it outsourced much of what happens in factories to China and software has become one of the main things the country runs on.
Mostly developing software is about automating things that are expensive and slow to do manually. So, to stick with the factory analogy, it makes the factory a bit better and more efficient. If you stop doing that because it is too expensive, you fall behind with your factory.
Of course the whole issue in the US is that it outsourced much of what happens in factories to China and software has become one of the main things the country runs on.