4 ms·
Let's say X engineers making 200k a year work on this. This is a 5x return on your money in 5 years if it took 8 people working the full year to complete it.
by piyh 6y ago
Let's say X engineers making 200k a year work on this. This is a 5x return on your money in 5 years if it took 8 people working the full year to complete it. Sounds like a solid business case to me.
- dheera 6y agoYou also need to subtract the value those 8 people could create if they worked on something else.
- Closi 6y agoYou don't - If you do that you are double counting the cost of the engineers (If they were working on something else, you wouldn't account their salary against this optimisation).
- arthurcolle 6y agoThis is unknowable
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoThat makes sense if all engineers are fungable, and you are never limited by engineering capacity.
- johncena33 6y agoYou also have to keep in mind that this work was interesting and it probably helped to keep few rockstart engineers from leaving.
- b3kart 6y agoAgreed. At this level of competition for top talent you need to pamper your staff, which includes letting them work on the kinds of projects that they’ll proudly mention on their CVs, even if it’s not the highest priority project business-wise. I am sure a company like Dropbox can afford to do this once in a while.