You seem to be extremely fixated on the exact number of 12. Any number short of 100 junior dev-days does not even warrant considering the word “crazy”. Multiply

You seem to be extremely fixated on the exact number of 12. Any number short of 100 junior dev-days does not even warrant considering the word “crazy”. Multiply all the numbers by 8 for all I care, it does not affect the conclusion that you should be doing a cost-benefit analysis, not dismissing it out of hand. Tens of thousands of dollars is a worthwhile price to pay for quality tooling that offers modest improvements; not big, modest. You need to get to around 500 dev-days per developer in tooling before you get into “the probability this makes sense is almost certainly zero, so just dismiss it out of hand as too expensive”. That is hundreds of thousands of dollars per developer before we actually get into economically unjustifiable land. And again, you are not distinguishing between what is economically sound versus the cost-benefit analysis of specific products. It is economically sound to spend a additional 10 K$ per developer you have in the Netherlands for tooling that offers a 30% productivity improvement (actually, it is economically sound to pay a great deal more, but that requires a more exhaustive analysis). In other words, if you find a tool that you believe (including all factors like legal, licensing, whatever) actually provides a 30% overall productivity improvement then you would be economically foolish not to purchase that product for 10 K$/yr per developer. Note that I already incorporated all objections into your belief of a overall 30% improvement, we are starting from the assumption that including all caveats you are nearly certain you will get a 30% improvement. But again, this depends on actual products meeting those parameters. Maybe all of the paid products suck. Fine, then they all fail the cost-benefit analysis. But that is because the benefit was not there for the cost, not because the cost is outrageous. Those are different fundamentally different concepts and should be treated differently.