7 ms·

Lots of the SaaS products we use mean we don't have to hire more employees. So I'm not sure if dollars per employee is a meaningful stat.

SargeZT 7y ago
It feels like the more meaningful measure would be the change in profit over the change in SaaS utilization.
phkahler 7y ago
No, total cost would be a better measure since there is no per-person cost to the SaaS provider. If you have 10,000 employees that's $100M per year in expenses. If you're just renting payroll, purchasing, etc software for that price it'd be far cheaper to roll your own, or pay a few people to work on OSS full time.
- fludlight 7y ago
  Rolling your own payroll is about as good an idea as rolling your own crypto.
  - say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
    However, if you roll your own crypto payroll, the risk of one project perfectly offsets that of the other. It's a perfect hedge.
    - wglb 7y ago
      Ah, but what if they add rather than cancel?
      - kaetemi 7y ago
        Two negatives make a positive, right?
  - tehlike 7y ago
    If rolling your own crypto, you mean cryptocoin, that sounds like a great idea to increase wealth :)
    - cercatrova 7y ago
      Cryptography not cryptocurrency.
      - tehlike 7y ago
        That was the joke.
  - rodgerd 7y ago
    It depends whether payroll theft is part of your business model, or something you're trying to avoid.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    One large company (170k employees) I worked at switched from an in house payroll system to an external month. Second month was a disaster in the end they had to physically cut the tape on the last remaining partially destroyed copy - about 20% got paid on time.
    - fludlight 7y ago
      Switching a large enterprise software system is almost as time consuming, expensive, and error prone as developing a replacement in-house. You would have experienced substantial problems even if it was in-house -> in-house-rewrite or external->in-house or external-a -> external-b.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- owenmarshall 7y ago
  > If you're just renting payroll, purchasing, etc software for that price it'd be far cheaper to roll your own, or pay a few people to work on OSS full time. This is the kind of hubris I come to this site for.
  - adwf 7y ago
    Hubris is half of software development ;)
    - adjkant 7y ago
      Is the other half the hole of legacy support you dig yourself into supporting the bad decisions and naive assumptions you made driving with that hubris?
      - WoahNoun 7y ago
        Nah that's when you leave the company and leave some intern to clean it up so they can develop their own sense of hubris over your bad decisions. And the cycle repeats.
- _jal 7y ago
  We wanted to build our own payroll system, but engineering is too busy milking the cows to restock the fridge to learn the tax code for multiple countries.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
    Has anyone thought about asking engineering to implement or build an interface for someone else (business side?) to manage country level differences in taxes?
    - thestepafter 7y ago
      I would be interested in engineering something like this, my email is in my profile if you want to share more.
- nradov 7y ago
  Read up on the history Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3). The team worked for 7 years and although they achieved some technical goals they never managed to deliver a working payroll system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compensation_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... Payroll is harder than it looks due to all the edge cases. For example, it is literally possible for an employee to have so many payroll deductions including court-ordered wage garnishment that net pay would be negative. How do you handle that in all legal jurisdictions where the company operates?
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    > For example, it is literally possible for an employee to have so many payroll deductions including court-ordered wage garnishment that net pay would be negative. How do you handle that in all legal jurisdictions where the company operates? By issuing a error and demanding that a human deal with it. Obviously.
    - nradov 7y ago
      Surely you jest? If that was a serious comment then you obviously have no understanding of the business and legal requirements for payroll systems.
      - a1369209993 7y ago
        If you're legally required do your payroll with a buggy computer system rather than manually (and not even "this specific buggy computer that we gave you", just any old buggy piece of crap), then, uh, I don't really know what to say to that. My condolences, I guess? If you mean it's impractical and error-prone to do payroll manually, well that's the point of automating >99.999% of it. For the remaining <0.001%, someone is going to have decide how to deal with it, and I'm sceptical that a programmer seven years ago will know better than a lawyer today what the legal requirements today are.
        nradov 7y ago
runforthehills 7y ago
For a lot of companies I think it's actually the key to being able to expand and hire in the first place. Most startups aren't choosing between "should I hire someone to do this, or buy a solution?"--they're choosing between "Can I do this by buying a solution or do we go without? (either this, or something else because we need to build this)"
stiray 7y ago
Just an interesting idea, if no one wants to have employees (lets face it, they are a mess, they waste oxygen, they fart, producing CO2, are corona virus friendly, produce road accidents... and you need to pay them so they can live) maybe everyone is having wrong bussiness plan. Whole world should transform to produce only SAAS products for SAAS people as they are the only customers who will in long term still have money to buy SAAS. /s This is becoming a joke. In my whole life I didnt buy a one single software product, that is based on subscription model (unless necessary as there are ongoing costs for its development like antiviruses (which I dont use, but this is another story)). Why? As it tells me, the product is at the end of its inovative phase and has nothing more to offer. I am fine with paying for update hunderds of dollars if, and only if, i need the added functionality. Or in different words Microsoft Office 97 was more than enough for 99% of its users (I dare you to install it and find something that you miss, it wasn't perfect but it did get the job done). But there is more. I wont pay for cloud products either. Why? I believe that what is giving you the "edge" is your knowlidge. Using, for instance, gmail is taking you the chance to increase it. Yeah sure, time to market, but if you stick to DIY logic, this is not going to be a problem (I can set up a mail server with left hand while coding with right hand... and offer it as a SAAS to those that ignore DIY and earn extra bucks ;) /s ). If you ignore the lack of knowlidge, you will end up always paying to someone else or stuck in a problem that wouldn't be a problem if you wouldn't be ignoring it for so long. Not to even go into lack of inovation and reinventing / copying the solutions that were solved long time ago, but this is just another story.
- cercatrova 7y ago
  I like your first sentence, but unsarcastically. Companies should always strive to do more with fewer employees by automating them away. As for the rest of your argument, most people are not like you, as they will not want to spend time setting up their own mail server. For companies this is doubly true, as they will likely spend more money setting it up, maintaining it, and upgrading it, than the subscription actually costs.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Horizontal integration of business processes means a lot of external stakeholders have you by the balls.

SargeZT 7y ago

It feels like the more meaningful measure would be the change in profit over the change in SaaS utilization.

phkahler 7y ago

No, total cost would be a better measure since there is no per-person cost to the SaaS provider. If you have 10,000 employees that's $100M per year in expenses. If you're just renting payroll, purchasing, etc software for that price it'd be far cheaper to roll your own, or pay a few people to work on OSS full time.

fludlight 7y ago
Rolling your own payroll is about as good an idea as rolling your own crypto.
- say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
  However, if you roll your own crypto payroll, the risk of one project perfectly offsets that of the other. It's a perfect hedge.
  - wglb 7y ago
    Ah, but what if they add rather than cancel?
    - kaetemi 7y ago
      Two negatives make a positive, right?
- tehlike 7y ago
  If rolling your own crypto, you mean cryptocoin, that sounds like a great idea to increase wealth :)
  - cercatrova 7y ago
    Cryptography not cryptocurrency.
    - tehlike 7y ago
      That was the joke.
- rodgerd 7y ago
  It depends whether payroll theft is part of your business model, or something you're trying to avoid.
- walshemj 7y ago
  One large company (170k employees) I worked at switched from an in house payroll system to an external month. Second month was a disaster in the end they had to physically cut the tape on the last remaining partially destroyed copy - about 20% got paid on time.
  - fludlight 7y ago
    Switching a large enterprise software system is almost as time consuming, expensive, and error prone as developing a replacement in-house. You would have experienced substantial problems even if it was in-house -> in-house-rewrite or external->in-house or external-a -> external-b.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
owenmarshall 7y ago
> If you're just renting payroll, purchasing, etc software for that price it'd be far cheaper to roll your own, or pay a few people to work on OSS full time. This is the kind of hubris I come to this site for.
- adwf 7y ago
  Hubris is half of software development ;)
  - adjkant 7y ago
    Is the other half the hole of legacy support you dig yourself into supporting the bad decisions and naive assumptions you made driving with that hubris?
    - WoahNoun 7y ago
      Nah that's when you leave the company and leave some intern to clean it up so they can develop their own sense of hubris over your bad decisions. And the cycle repeats.
_jal 7y ago
We wanted to build our own payroll system, but engineering is too busy milking the cows to restock the fridge to learn the tax code for multiple countries.
- omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
  Has anyone thought about asking engineering to implement or build an interface for someone else (business side?) to manage country level differences in taxes?
  - thestepafter 7y ago
    I would be interested in engineering something like this, my email is in my profile if you want to share more.
nradov 7y ago
Read up on the history Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3). The team worked for 7 years and although they achieved some technical goals they never managed to deliver a working payroll system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compensation_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... Payroll is harder than it looks due to all the edge cases. For example, it is literally possible for an employee to have so many payroll deductions including court-ordered wage garnishment that net pay would be negative. How do you handle that in all legal jurisdictions where the company operates?
- a1369209993 7y ago
  > For example, it is literally possible for an employee to have so many payroll deductions including court-ordered wage garnishment that net pay would be negative. How do you handle that in all legal jurisdictions where the company operates? By issuing a error and demanding that a human deal with it. Obviously.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Surely you jest? If that was a serious comment then you obviously have no understanding of the business and legal requirements for payroll systems.
    - a1369209993 7y ago
      If you're legally required do your payroll with a buggy computer system rather than manually (and not even "this specific buggy computer that we gave you", just any old buggy piece of crap), then, uh, I don't really know what to say to that. My condolences, I guess? If you mean it's impractical and error-prone to do payroll manually, well that's the point of automating >99.999% of it. For the remaining <0.001%, someone is going to have decide how to deal with it, and I'm sceptical that a programmer seven years ago will know better than a lawyer today what the legal requirements today are.
      - nradov 7y ago

runforthehills 7y ago

For a lot of companies I think it's actually the key to being able to expand and hire in the first place. Most startups aren't choosing between "should I hire someone to do this, or buy a solution?"--they're choosing between "Can I do this by buying a solution or do we go without? (either this, or something else because we need to build this)"

stiray 7y ago

Just an interesting idea, if no one wants to have employees (lets face it, they are a mess, they waste oxygen, they fart, producing CO2, are corona virus friendly, produce road accidents... and you need to pay them so they can live) maybe everyone is having wrong bussiness plan. Whole world should transform to produce only SAAS products for SAAS people as they are the only customers who will in long term still have money to buy SAAS. /s This is becoming a joke. In my whole life I didnt buy a one single software product, that is based on subscription model (unless necessary as there are ongoing costs for its development like antiviruses (which I dont use, but this is another story)). Why? As it tells me, the product is at the end of its inovative phase and has nothing more to offer. I am fine with paying for update hunderds of dollars if, and only if, i need the added functionality. Or in different words Microsoft Office 97 was more than enough for 99% of its users (I dare you to install it and find something that you miss, it wasn't perfect but it did get the job done). But there is more. I wont pay for cloud products either. Why? I believe that what is giving you the "edge" is your knowlidge. Using, for instance, gmail is taking you the chance to increase it. Yeah sure, time to market, but if you stick to DIY logic, this is not going to be a problem (I can set up a mail server with left hand while coding with right hand... and offer it as a SAAS to those that ignore DIY and earn extra bucks ;) /s ). If you ignore the lack of knowlidge, you will end up always paying to someone else or stuck in a problem that wouldn't be a problem if you wouldn't be ignoring it for so long. Not to even go into lack of inovation and reinventing / copying the solutions that were solved long time ago, but this is just another story.

cercatrova 7y ago
I like your first sentence, but unsarcastically. Companies should always strive to do more with fewer employees by automating them away. As for the rest of your argument, most people are not like you, as they will not want to spend time setting up their own mail server. For companies this is doubly true, as they will likely spend more money setting it up, maintaining it, and upgrading it, than the subscription actually costs.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Horizontal integration of business processes means a lot of external stakeholders have you by the balls.