8 ms·

Really? $250/user/year, for how many users? There was recently a thread about someone asking about password management solutions for an organization of 10k emp

Really? $250/user/year, for how many users? There was recently a thread about someone asking about password management solutions for an organization of 10k employees, and someone recommended 1Password, which I already find hard to believe it could ever make financial and operational sense. [0] Now, these prices from GH can make sense if you are a team of 10-50, but I wonder what would be the point where it wouldn't take a bean-counter to say "can't we just hire someone else do that in-house, part-time? It would cost as much or less, but at least we would have a lot more control over the system and we wouldn't be at the mercy of a company that treats us as cattle." I see on your profile page you are on Matrix. Would you mind if I add you there to chat (or add me @raphael:communick.com)? Seems like your company could have so many different cheaper and better solutions for their needs, I've been thinking for a while whether there could be a market in "open source strategy consulting". [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31582161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31582161

throwaway787544 4y ago
Bean-counting enterprises do all kinds of annoying shit to deal with the GitHub cost, like automatically disabling user accounts after 30 days if unused, or multiple orgs.
- hanifbbz 4y ago
  How does multiple orgs reduce costs?
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I suppose it’s about setting different tiers depending on the orgs. For instance a higher tier for the org with your main dev repos and deployment/CI system, and more basic tier for orgs with your translators’ and QA team’s repos, etc.
  - throwaway787544 4y ago
    Limiting number of licenses and requiring business justification, so one part of the org can't on-board 50 users that probably never need to commit anything. I imagine at some point GH might get variable pricing like NewRelic where you pay less for a read-only user.
zamalek 4y ago
Go ahead, I have it public for a reason :).
mbesto 4y ago
> a thread about someone asking about password management solutions for an organization of 10k employees, and someone recommended 1Password, which I already find hard to believe it could ever make financial and operational sense. Ha, these costs are a DROP in the bucket for businesses at 10k employees. > "can't we just hire someone else do that in-house, part-time? It would cost as much or less, but at least we would have a lot more control over the system and we wouldn't be at the mercy of a company that treats us as cattle." Good luck with this. You're missing things like: - Maintaining the software (upgrades, etc.) - Maintaining the hardware (you buying bare metal? cloud? who's upgrading servers? etc.) - Hiring/firing costs - Do developers want to work with a system that isn't GitHub and be productive? - etc. etc.
- atonse 4y ago
  Yeah it’s odd to read this. Even $20 a month is not worth wasting time over. It is a margin of error compared to the salary of that user. 1Password for 10k users? What would that be, 80k/month? There are probably pretty big volume discounts too. Payroll for 10k people is like $30m-70m.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    This kind of logic I would expect only from a bean-counter, and a bad one to be honest... Why would anyone pay $80k/month to solve a problem that could be solved with 0.5 FTE? Not just that... if I'm working at the IT department of this company (surely they have one) and hear about such deal, I'll have three thoughts: 1. Can I do it myself? Give me a raise and I'll take the extra responsibility. Everyone wins. 2. If they are throwing this much money out of the window, I'll go knock on my managers door and ask for a raise. 3. If they say they can't give me a raise for any bullshit reason, I'll immediately lose trust in upper management and I'll start looking for a job the next minute.
    - mbesto 4y ago
      > This kind of logic I would expect only from a bean-counter, and a bad one to be honest And your logic is so out of touch with reality that I don't know whether you're trolling or not.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
> I've been thinking for a while whether there could be a market in "open source strategy consulting". It does exist, but not suprisingly people who want to pay less usually aren't keen on paying lump sums (if at all) someone who could teach them on how to do it.
jnsaff2 4y ago
250 per year for people who get paid say 250k per year. So that is 0.1%, I'm sure the productivity boost from GH can be greater than that for knowledge workers. Even for people getting 25k the productivity boost could be more than 1%. That said this kind of support turn around is just bad and should be called out forcefully.
Beldin 4y ago
> Now, these prices from GH can make sense if you are a team of 10-50, but I wonder what would be the point where it wouldn't take a bean-counter to say "can't we just hire someone else do that in-house, part-time? It would cost as much or less, $250/user/year; for $50k yearly salary is 200 users. I don't think $50k salary is a lot. On the other hand, I've heard you should roughly double salary costs to approximate cost to employer (including all overhead). So then a $50k/yr local gitlab (or somesuch) admin only becomes viable salarywise at 400 paying users. And if you have 400 users dependent on that one employee for their daily work, you need backup. At least another .5 FTE - so 600 users before the business case makes sense salarywise. So that's not really soon - if you're reaching that size, you want professional support, not what a team of 1.5 employees can cobble together.
- rglullis 4y ago
  There is another thing that goes in favor of SaaS: Capex vs Opex. Most of these expenses are tax-deductable, so from a bean-counting point of view the number would have to be a lot higher than the sticker price. But when I say "hire someone else to do it", it wouldn't have to be an employee. It could be a consultant, it could be a third-party IT support service. I really don't think that this kind of work would require a FTE. You'd be hiring someone to get the initial setup and you'd just run a support contract for the solution to ensure that things keep going. I think such a system you could be paying less than what the vendor charges and you also get more control over your operations.
- krab 4y ago
  The level of risk and needed effort also scales with the user base. So supporting local Gitlab or similar for 20 users is more like a 0.05 FTE, whereas it can easily be 0.5 FTE or more for 100 users.
pavon 4y ago
Self-hosting Gitlab typically consumed about 1/8 FTE for projects I've worked on, which comes out to 50-100 users break-even point, depending on your sysadmin salaries.

throwaway787544 4y ago

Bean-counting enterprises do all kinds of annoying shit to deal with the GitHub cost, like automatically disabling user accounts after 30 days if unused, or multiple orgs.

hanifbbz 4y ago
How does multiple orgs reduce costs?
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I suppose it’s about setting different tiers depending on the orgs. For instance a higher tier for the org with your main dev repos and deployment/CI system, and more basic tier for orgs with your translators’ and QA team’s repos, etc.
- throwaway787544 4y ago
  Limiting number of licenses and requiring business justification, so one part of the org can't on-board 50 users that probably never need to commit anything. I imagine at some point GH might get variable pricing like NewRelic where you pay less for a read-only user.

zamalek 4y ago

Go ahead, I have it public for a reason :).

mbesto 4y ago

> a thread about someone asking about password management solutions for an organization of 10k employees, and someone recommended 1Password, which I already find hard to believe it could ever make financial and operational sense. Ha, these costs are a DROP in the bucket for businesses at 10k employees. > "can't we just hire someone else do that in-house, part-time? It would cost as much or less, but at least we would have a lot more control over the system and we wouldn't be at the mercy of a company that treats us as cattle." Good luck with this. You're missing things like: - Maintaining the software (upgrades, etc.) - Maintaining the hardware (you buying bare metal? cloud? who's upgrading servers? etc.) - Hiring/firing costs - Do developers want to work with a system that isn't GitHub and be productive? - etc. etc.

atonse 4y ago
Yeah it’s odd to read this. Even $20 a month is not worth wasting time over. It is a margin of error compared to the salary of that user. 1Password for 10k users? What would that be, 80k/month? There are probably pretty big volume discounts too. Payroll for 10k people is like $30m-70m.
- rglullis 4y ago
  This kind of logic I would expect only from a bean-counter, and a bad one to be honest... Why would anyone pay $80k/month to solve a problem that could be solved with 0.5 FTE? Not just that... if I'm working at the IT department of this company (surely they have one) and hear about such deal, I'll have three thoughts: 1. Can I do it myself? Give me a raise and I'll take the extra responsibility. Everyone wins. 2. If they are throwing this much money out of the window, I'll go knock on my managers door and ask for a raise. 3. If they say they can't give me a raise for any bullshit reason, I'll immediately lose trust in upper management and I'll start looking for a job the next minute.
  - mbesto 4y ago
    > This kind of logic I would expect only from a bean-counter, and a bad one to be honest And your logic is so out of touch with reality that I don't know whether you're trolling or not.

justsomehnguy 4y ago

> I've been thinking for a while whether there could be a market in "open source strategy consulting". It does exist, but not suprisingly people who want to pay less usually aren't keen on paying lump sums (if at all) someone who could teach them on how to do it.

jnsaff2 4y ago

250 per year for people who get paid say 250k per year. So that is 0.1%, I'm sure the productivity boost from GH can be greater than that for knowledge workers. Even for people getting 25k the productivity boost could be more than 1%. That said this kind of support turn around is just bad and should be called out forcefully.

Beldin 4y ago

> Now, these prices from GH can make sense if you are a team of 10-50, but I wonder what would be the point where it wouldn't take a bean-counter to say "can't we just hire someone else do that in-house, part-time? It would cost as much or less, $250/user/year; for $50k yearly salary is 200 users. I don't think $50k salary is a lot. On the other hand, I've heard you should roughly double salary costs to approximate cost to employer (including all overhead). So then a $50k/yr local gitlab (or somesuch) admin only becomes viable salarywise at 400 paying users. And if you have 400 users dependent on that one employee for their daily work, you need backup. At least another .5 FTE - so 600 users before the business case makes sense salarywise. So that's not really soon - if you're reaching that size, you want professional support, not what a team of 1.5 employees can cobble together.

rglullis 4y ago
There is another thing that goes in favor of SaaS: Capex vs Opex. Most of these expenses are tax-deductable, so from a bean-counting point of view the number would have to be a lot higher than the sticker price. But when I say "hire someone else to do it", it wouldn't have to be an employee. It could be a consultant, it could be a third-party IT support service. I really don't think that this kind of work would require a FTE. You'd be hiring someone to get the initial setup and you'd just run a support contract for the solution to ensure that things keep going. I think such a system you could be paying less than what the vendor charges and you also get more control over your operations.
krab 4y ago
The level of risk and needed effort also scales with the user base. So supporting local Gitlab or similar for 20 users is more like a 0.05 FTE, whereas it can easily be 0.5 FTE or more for 100 users.

pavon 4y ago

Self-hosting Gitlab typically consumed about 1/8 FTE for projects I've worked on, which comes out to 50-100 users break-even point, depending on your sysadmin salaries.