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0 pointsbluegatty1d ago0 comments

That's a very upside down way to think about it.

The question is: "are staffers $14 / mo more productive with it, than the free version?"

The answer may also boil down to satisfaction, support calls, other things, aka 'total cost of ownership' as well.

Not 'But it costs $X million!'.

Companies will spend a fortune giving staff the right monitor, or chair, but literally don't think they're smart enough to know the dam tool they use all day?

Let them pick their chat software, like they pick their monitors.

0 comments

kstrauser1d ago

This is exactly right. You're going to pay a dev on the order of $10,000 per month, then make it harder to do their job to save $14? That's idiocy.

The person responsible for picking our work laptops asked me for advice selecting our new Macs since our old model was being replaced:

"Do we really need to spend an extra $1000 for 64GB of RAM instead of 24GB?"

"That'd save us $300 per year, or about a dollar a day, over the deprecation schedule, and it'd make our devs slower. We spend more than this to have lunch catered."

"You know... good point. 64GB it is, then."

And that's how we opted for beefy machines on this hardware cycle. The guy I talked to is extremely smart and competent, but just hadn't looked at it from that angle. Once he saw it, he instantly bought in. There are dumb ways to save money with massive negative ROI, and cheaping out on basic equipment and resources is one of them.

lossyalgo1d ago

My company doesn't OK basically any software requests, even cheap stuff :( We also don't make anywhere near $10k/mo (not USA). REcently got a new dev machine and it had 512GB m2 SSD and 16GB of RAM. I had to order 32GB but I had to explain why: to run docker images (and i'm hitting limits with 32GB constantly). I had to wait 2 weeks for the RAM upgrade. I wanted a bigger SSD but it would have taken longer and I needed to upgrade ASAP. It doesn't even have a USB-C plug (but a SD card slot, good grief).

mulmen1d ago

Careful, at some companies that kind of talk leads to discontinuing catered lunch.

kstrauser1d ago

I would not be working at one of those companies in the first place.

Mashimo1d ago

> You're going to pay a dev on the order of $10,000 per month,

Mhh, far from it.

mulmen1d ago

Monitors are a personal choice. My monitor doesn’t force anyone else to install yet another a chat app to talk to me. The choice of chat app has to be made centrally, or at least at an organizational level.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsbluegatty1d ago0 comments

That's a very upside down way to think about it.

The question is: "are staffers $14 / mo more productive with it, than the free version?"

The answer may also boil down to satisfaction, support calls, other things, aka 'total cost of ownership' as well.

Not 'But it costs $X million!'.

Companies will spend a fortune giving staff the right monitor, or chair, but literally don't think they're smart enough to know the dam tool they use all day?

Let them pick their chat software, like they pick their monitors.

0 comments

kstrauser1d ago

This is exactly right. You're going to pay a dev on the order of $10,000 per month, then make it harder to do their job to save $14? That's idiocy.

The person responsible for picking our work laptops asked me for advice selecting our new Macs since our old model was being replaced:

"Do we really need to spend an extra $1000 for 64GB of RAM instead of 24GB?"

"That'd save us $300 per year, or about a dollar a day, over the deprecation schedule, and it'd make our devs slower. We spend more than this to have lunch catered."

"You know... good point. 64GB it is, then."

lossyalgo1d ago

mulmen1d ago

Careful, at some companies that kind of talk leads to discontinuing catered lunch.

kstrauser1d ago

I would not be working at one of those companies in the first place.

Mashimo1d ago

> You're going to pay a dev on the order of $10,000 per month,

Mhh, far from it.

mulmen1d ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse