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Let's say you hire two engineers, both at 50% salary. They will be strictly worse than a single engineer on 100% salary. To make it worthwhile for a small compa

Let's say you hire two engineers, both at 50% salary. They will be strictly worse than a single engineer on 100% salary. To make it worthwhile for a small company you're looking at more like a 50% discount for 4 days work. Not a good deal imo.

josephwegner 5y ago
> They will be strictly worse than a single engineer on 100% salary Citation needed. I don't think this is an obvious conclusion. There is certainly some threshold where it becomes less efficient (40 engineers, 1hr/week each??), but I'm not sure 20hr/week is a clear threshold.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Basic economics. Some examples is equipment, mentoring and knowledge transfer. Two engineers have to do that individually, they have separate equipment sometimes in the realm of thousands of dollars. You might spend tens of thousands on employee time getting people ramped up. You also have to factor in that more people means more communication channels. Smaller teams are going to be more efficient because they can all talk to each other. For some organisations the salary can be less than half of the total cost to hire an employee. Two identical people who already have ramped up, have free equipment, etc...? Maybe.
  - Y3VzdGFyZA 5y ago
    Just playing devil's advocate: * People don't work effectively for 40 hours every week 100% of the time. Perhaps 2 people working 20 hours allows greater utilization of the time with less waste because each person is fresh for greater parts of the work week. (We'd need multiple well designed studies and attempts to find the right amount of time). * All the onboarding and upfront costs you mentioned are legitimate, but small in the grand scheme of things. Once onboarded, hopefully they are creating value. Two people onboarding together could also take some of the load off a mentor as they could help each other. * Not all engineers are equivalent. Some might have a ton of database experience, another could be more ops oriented, and a third might have great algorithmic thinking. All can be good engineers for the role. But if you had 2 or all 3 then maybe the increased diversity of experience and skills can make the work progress faster with a higher quality. * More people meaning more communication channels is a real concern. It's also something you have to deal with at some point. Management in general is about finding ways to work efficiently, and just like any other scenario you'd take this one into account when deciding how to work. Figure out smaller specializations, or chunk work in ways that compliment the team, or structure documentation/ideas/communication in a way that can be picked up by others.
des1nderlase 5y ago
With my 10+y of industry work, 7y as EM, I'd choose 2 engineers in most cases.

josephwegner 5y ago

> They will be strictly worse than a single engineer on 100% salary Citation needed. I don't think this is an obvious conclusion. There is certainly some threshold where it becomes less efficient (40 engineers, 1hr/week each??), but I'm not sure 20hr/week is a clear threshold.

throwaway3699 5y ago
Basic economics. Some examples is equipment, mentoring and knowledge transfer. Two engineers have to do that individually, they have separate equipment sometimes in the realm of thousands of dollars. You might spend tens of thousands on employee time getting people ramped up. You also have to factor in that more people means more communication channels. Smaller teams are going to be more efficient because they can all talk to each other. For some organisations the salary can be less than half of the total cost to hire an employee. Two identical people who already have ramped up, have free equipment, etc...? Maybe.
- Y3VzdGFyZA 5y ago
  Just playing devil's advocate: * People don't work effectively for 40 hours every week 100% of the time. Perhaps 2 people working 20 hours allows greater utilization of the time with less waste because each person is fresh for greater parts of the work week. (We'd need multiple well designed studies and attempts to find the right amount of time). * All the onboarding and upfront costs you mentioned are legitimate, but small in the grand scheme of things. Once onboarded, hopefully they are creating value. Two people onboarding together could also take some of the load off a mentor as they could help each other. * Not all engineers are equivalent. Some might have a ton of database experience, another could be more ops oriented, and a third might have great algorithmic thinking. All can be good engineers for the role. But if you had 2 or all 3 then maybe the increased diversity of experience and skills can make the work progress faster with a higher quality. * More people meaning more communication channels is a real concern. It's also something you have to deal with at some point. Management in general is about finding ways to work efficiently, and just like any other scenario you'd take this one into account when deciding how to work. Figure out smaller specializations, or chunk work in ways that compliment the team, or structure documentation/ideas/communication in a way that can be picked up by others.

des1nderlase 5y ago

With my 10+y of industry work, 7y as EM, I'd choose 2 engineers in most cases.