4 ms·

I've been on both sides so I understand your perspective. Everyone wants to sell on _value_ and in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey,

by gav 6y ago

I've been on both sides so I understand your perspective. Everyone wants to sell on _value_ and in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey, if we spend $10,000 on this, we save $100,000 in employee hours". That should be the easiest decision in the world, especially if you could come back in a year and figure out it was really $105,000. However budgeting in just about any organization I've been involved in doesn't work like that. You ask for $10,000 and there's no budget for it. Even if there is, there's no guarantee that next year you're not going to have to "tighten belts" and "sharpen pencils".

crankylinuxuser 6y ago
> However budgeting in just about any organization I've been involved in doesn't work like that. You ask for $10,000 and there's no budget for it. Even if there is, there's no guarantee that next year you're not going to have to "tighten belts" and "sharpen pencils". So.. a bigger question. Why doesn't budgeting work like this?
- curryst 6y ago
  The time savings is theoretical. If the employees that you saved time from are hourly, you can just cut some hours and probably save money. Although you have to offset that with reduced morale if you cut employees/hours. If you're saving time for salaried employees, you probably can't just cut hours. Now you have 1,000 spare man-hours this year, what do you do with them? If you saved 1000 employees the same amount of time per day, each of them has an extra 13.7 seconds per work day. A basically useless amount of time. If you freed up that time from only 100 employees, each gets an extra 20 minutes a day, which is an actually useful amount of time, almost 2 extra hours a week. Assuming that you have saved a significant enough amount of time per employee, then the question becomes do you actually have productive work for them to do? You only saved money if you were going to hire people that you no longer have to hire, if those employees can create something with that spare time that generates revenue, or if you saved enough time that you can fire employee/s. It's the same concept as discounts. Yes, discounts can save you money, but only if it was something you were going to buy anyways. It's like buying a new phone because it's 20% off. If your old phone was on it's last leg or you were going to buy one anyways, you saved 20%, yay. If you have a brand new flagship phone and you buy a new one just because it's 20% off, you haven't actually saved anything.
swyx 6y ago
right. the money has to come from somewhere. you dont get an "employee hour rebate" from employee hours saved. maybe you should, but in reality it doesnt happen. anyway employee productivity claims necessarily get taken with a huge grain of salt. need to hit people over the head with the benefits.
nmfisher 6y ago
> "in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey, if we spend $10,000 on this, we save $100,000 in employee hours". That should be the easiest decision in the world, especially if you could come back in a year and figure out it was really $105,000." In an ideal world, yes. In the average large organization in the real world, though, very few people care about "saving employee hours". Particularly in middle management. When a team's workload falls by 50%, there's rarely a magical stream of "useful work" that arises to replace it with. More likely, the team just sits around twiddling their thumbs; you either need to fire them, or concoct some busy work for them (defeating the point of the exercise in the first place). Middle management are never going to gut their own team, because their headcount is what justifies their own position. This is also why your organization never has the budget for $10,000 - any money defaults to headcount, because headcount entrenches managerial authority. Unless you're selling to C-suite (and can quantify the headcount reduction), "saving employee hours" is a terrible sales proposition for large enterprises.
- ntr-- 6y ago
  > When a team's workload falls by 50%, there's rarely a magical stream of "useful work" that arises to replace it with. Yes, there is. It's known as "addressing technical debt".
  - vkou 6y ago
    Yes, but what's the customer revenue gain from it?
    - ptman 6y ago
      not revenue gain, but https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/5-arguments-to-make-managers-care-about-technical-debt/ https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/5-arguments-to-make-ma...

by gav 6y ago

crankylinuxuser 6y ago

> However budgeting in just about any organization I've been involved in doesn't work like that. You ask for $10,000 and there's no budget for it. Even if there is, there's no guarantee that next year you're not going to have to "tighten belts" and "sharpen pencils". So.. a bigger question. Why doesn't budgeting work like this?

curryst 6y ago
The time savings is theoretical. If the employees that you saved time from are hourly, you can just cut some hours and probably save money. Although you have to offset that with reduced morale if you cut employees/hours. If you're saving time for salaried employees, you probably can't just cut hours. Now you have 1,000 spare man-hours this year, what do you do with them? If you saved 1000 employees the same amount of time per day, each of them has an extra 13.7 seconds per work day. A basically useless amount of time. If you freed up that time from only 100 employees, each gets an extra 20 minutes a day, which is an actually useful amount of time, almost 2 extra hours a week. Assuming that you have saved a significant enough amount of time per employee, then the question becomes do you actually have productive work for them to do? You only saved money if you were going to hire people that you no longer have to hire, if those employees can create something with that spare time that generates revenue, or if you saved enough time that you can fire employee/s. It's the same concept as discounts. Yes, discounts can save you money, but only if it was something you were going to buy anyways. It's like buying a new phone because it's 20% off. If your old phone was on it's last leg or you were going to buy one anyways, you saved 20%, yay. If you have a brand new flagship phone and you buy a new one just because it's 20% off, you haven't actually saved anything.

swyx 6y ago

right. the money has to come from somewhere. you dont get an "employee hour rebate" from employee hours saved. maybe you should, but in reality it doesnt happen. anyway employee productivity claims necessarily get taken with a huge grain of salt. need to hit people over the head with the benefits.

nmfisher 6y ago

> "in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey, if we spend $10,000 on this, we save $100,000 in employee hours". That should be the easiest decision in the world, especially if you could come back in a year and figure out it was really $105,000." In an ideal world, yes. In the average large organization in the real world, though, very few people care about "saving employee hours". Particularly in middle management. When a team's workload falls by 50%, there's rarely a magical stream of "useful work" that arises to replace it with. More likely, the team just sits around twiddling their thumbs; you either need to fire them, or concoct some busy work for them (defeating the point of the exercise in the first place). Middle management are never going to gut their own team, because their headcount is what justifies their own position. This is also why your organization never has the budget for $10,000 - any money defaults to headcount, because headcount entrenches managerial authority. Unless you're selling to C-suite (and can quantify the headcount reduction), "saving employee hours" is a terrible sales proposition for large enterprises.

ntr-- 6y ago
> When a team's workload falls by 50%, there's rarely a magical stream of "useful work" that arises to replace it with. Yes, there is. It's known as "addressing technical debt".
- vkou 6y ago
  Yes, but what's the customer revenue gain from it?
  - ptman 6y ago
    not revenue gain, but https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/5-arguments-to-make-managers-care-about-technical-debt/ https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/5-arguments-to-make-ma...