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> I'm not going to do a team-by-team breakdown of teams that pay for themselves many times over because there are so many of them, even if I limit the scope to

> I'm not going to do a team-by-team breakdown of teams that pay for themselves many times over because there are so many of them, even if I limit the scope to "teams that people are surprised that Twitter has". I assume Dan means that "teams that pay for themselves" are teams where the total cost of employing the team is <= the decrease in company expenditure that can reasonably be attributed to the team. If that is the case, two things come to mind: 1. What is the likelihood that that company expenditure would have decreased without the team? (over time bugs/improvements are fixed/implemented by other employees or outside parties (open source)) 2. If instead of spending money on the team that decreased expenditure, the company had spent money on a team that increased revenue, what would the relative difference be for profits? This may be complex because the cost to process a byte of information using the same process almost always gets cheaper over time (am I wrong?).

droopyEyelids 5y ago
The trick is to realize this is a gray area that can't be measured precisely, and >as a leader, your organization will find evidence to support whichever argument you favor< It takes a special type of MBA brain to imagine you can projet the future enough to forsee the outcome of outsourcing a "cost center" and putting that budget into a team that will define their metrics in increased revenue.
bluGill 5y ago
> What is the likelihood that that company expenditure would have decreased without the team? (over time bugs/improvements are fixed/implemented by other employees or outside parties (open source)) Don't forget the time part of this. If the issue is fixed, but not for 2 years, that needs to count for having the team. Nobody is giving real numbers, but reading between the lines you can guess that some of these changes are saving $100,000/month to the company, so 2 years is $2.4 million dollars, and you are assuming you get the change at all. Most of the above savings are on the electric bill: computers use less power, and therefore need less AC to cool them. Some of it is also that the company buys less computers.
feoren 5y ago
> 2. If instead of spending money on the team that decreased expenditure, the company had spent money on a team that increased revenue, what would the relative difference be for profits? Why not both?

droopyEyelids 5y ago

The trick is to realize this is a gray area that can't be measured precisely, and >as a leader, your organization will find evidence to support whichever argument you favor< It takes a special type of MBA brain to imagine you can projet the future enough to forsee the outcome of outsourcing a "cost center" and putting that budget into a team that will define their metrics in increased revenue.

bluGill 5y ago

> What is the likelihood that that company expenditure would have decreased without the team? (over time bugs/improvements are fixed/implemented by other employees or outside parties (open source)) Don't forget the time part of this. If the issue is fixed, but not for 2 years, that needs to count for having the team. Nobody is giving real numbers, but reading between the lines you can guess that some of these changes are saving $100,000/month to the company, so 2 years is $2.4 million dollars, and you are assuming you get the change at all. Most of the above savings are on the electric bill: computers use less power, and therefore need less AC to cool them. Some of it is also that the company buys less computers.

feoren 5y ago

> 2. If instead of spending money on the team that decreased expenditure, the company had spent money on a team that increased revenue, what would the relative difference be for profits? Why not both?