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I think it's a bad thing for the lower ranks and a really good thing for leadership. Frugality can mean being penny wise pound foolish. Not buying tools people

I think it's a bad thing for the lower ranks and a really good thing for leadership. Frugality can mean being penny wise pound foolish. Not buying tools people need, building things when you could buy them, and settling for less. It's hard to evaluate people on frugality without it being about cheapness. I would argue buying top of the line monitors, software, computers and chairs for your engineers is the frugal choice with the best mid and long term value for your money, but will it look like that to others? Likewise I've seen cultures where the CTO had to approve buying a $50 replacement laptop charger - that's just a waste of time. That said, leadership should be very deliberate in how money is spent. Taken too far, you can end up with a bunch of high cost low value tools. For example many times I've seen AWS bills where a few weeks of work means millions in savings per year, or tools that cost $10s of thousands per month but are only used by 1-2 people. And that adds up.

malavwarke 6y ago
nice insights, thanks for sharing. Yup investing time & money properly without just considering cheapness/pricing can go a long way.
goldcd 6y ago
Just to follow on from that - I think the thing that irritates is 'cheapness' rather than lack of overt generosity. To give a couple of examples. The office was kitted out with poor monitors - cheapest Dell sold. Some people bought their own but most people were fine with them - they're just monitors and they're 'fine'. Then a small group were rewarded with 'premium monitors' as a prize for some internal competition - and this did cause annoyance, as it recognized that the company knew it was being cheap. Second example. "We're getting new chairs!" Supplier dropped off half-a-dozen different models for us to try out and then we collectively chose our favourite. Except we couldn't have it, as it was too expensive, and we got the "second choice". Now that second choice was amazing compared to what they were replacing. An office full of premium ergonomic chairs cost the company a small fortune - but decision was tainted with cheapness. We weren't worth the chair we'd chosen. If they'd just pulled the chairs they couldn't afford from the competition, it would have cost the same and made us happy.
- malavwarke 6y ago
  well said frugality shouldn't be for cheapness. Thanks for sharing.
  - mindvirus 6y ago
    Most important is how you stop frugality from becoming cheapness. If one of your values is frugality, you have to figure how people are evaluated on it. The big risk I see is it becomes about spending the least money, not spending money with the best long term return.
    - walshemj 6y ago
      One of the factors I feel in the collapse or Marconi was the obsessive penywise pound foolish attitude of its CEO.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >If they'd just pulled the chairs they couldn't afford from the competition, it would have cost the same and made us happy. That just seems like a very poorly executed trial. Clearly the company should have decided on its price limit up front and brought in chairs that conformed. It's not even really unreasonable to decide that the price of Mirra 2s (which are perfectly good chairs) is fine but Aerons is not. But, in that case, don't bring in Aerons for people to try.

malavwarke 6y ago

nice insights, thanks for sharing. Yup investing time & money properly without just considering cheapness/pricing can go a long way.

goldcd 6y ago

Just to follow on from that - I think the thing that irritates is 'cheapness' rather than lack of overt generosity. To give a couple of examples. The office was kitted out with poor monitors - cheapest Dell sold. Some people bought their own but most people were fine with them - they're just monitors and they're 'fine'. Then a small group were rewarded with 'premium monitors' as a prize for some internal competition - and this did cause annoyance, as it recognized that the company knew it was being cheap. Second example. "We're getting new chairs!" Supplier dropped off half-a-dozen different models for us to try out and then we collectively chose our favourite. Except we couldn't have it, as it was too expensive, and we got the "second choice". Now that second choice was amazing compared to what they were replacing. An office full of premium ergonomic chairs cost the company a small fortune - but decision was tainted with cheapness. We weren't worth the chair we'd chosen. If they'd just pulled the chairs they couldn't afford from the competition, it would have cost the same and made us happy.

malavwarke 6y ago
well said frugality shouldn't be for cheapness. Thanks for sharing.
- mindvirus 6y ago
  Most important is how you stop frugality from becoming cheapness. If one of your values is frugality, you have to figure how people are evaluated on it. The big risk I see is it becomes about spending the least money, not spending money with the best long term return.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    One of the factors I feel in the collapse or Marconi was the obsessive penywise pound foolish attitude of its CEO.
ghaff 6y ago
>If they'd just pulled the chairs they couldn't afford from the competition, it would have cost the same and made us happy. That just seems like a very poorly executed trial. Clearly the company should have decided on its price limit up front and brought in chairs that conformed. It's not even really unreasonable to decide that the price of Mirra 2s (which are perfectly good chairs) is fine but Aerons is not. But, in that case, don't bring in Aerons for people to try.