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As margins slim in our industry, which they will, would you rather have management understand the true costs of things or would you rather have over-hiring foll
by williamcotton 3y ago
As margins slim in our industry, which they will, would you rather have management understand the true costs of things or would you rather have over-hiring followed by mass firing?
I already fill out hourly timesheets as I work in legal services and we bill clients by the half hour, albeit just for external purposes.
This isn’t just Taylorism. I’m also describing Activity-Based Costing, a key component in managerial accounting for high complexity services and products with lots of fixed costs.
Most non-VC backed companies engage in such practices.
This if course needs to:
1.) come from the top down. The CEO should be doing the same thing, and
2.) have an incentive structure tied directly to profits and “public” reporting.
Buy-in from the entire organization is required and everyone must be motivated to keep costs under control.
Look at the efficiency of software developers for Formula 1 teams. Any additional costs in that division impacts time spent in the wind chamber, etc, because there is a cap if $190 million per team.
They are motivated to win and their costs are constrained by the format.
Motivation for organizational cost analysis must be shared amongst all employees.
- shermantanktop 3y agoThat’s very industry-dependent. I worked in a tech company that acquired a creative production company, and the tech leadership attempted to impose a metrics-based approach to what was a traditional creative process. That process had obvious signs of waste, including a high failure rate, excess travel expenses, etc., when compared to averages. The result of this approach, centered on metrics, ranking, making lists and using “objective data”? They almost killed the golden goose. The successes dropped off and the averages declined. The tech side finally had to back off, and those people are back to acting like they always did.
- williamcotton 3y agoI’m talking about simple costs! Putting dollar values on activities, not weird Git rankings, OKRs, etc.