I was in an organization where they decided to cut the "indirect labor" cost, which for some reason included secretaries but not engineers. So, fewer secretari

I was in an organization where they decided to cut the "indirect labor" cost, which for some reason included secretaries but not engineers. So, fewer secretaries means more of the tasks they used to do for engineers, the engineers now had to do themselves. So, instead of one secretary doing travel expense reports for a couple dozen engineers, and doing them efficiently and well, you had a couple dozen engineers who don't do it often enough to know how, doing it badly and over a much longer (and more highly compensated) time. Multiply this by many different kinds of administrative tasks.