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Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

isitworththecost.com

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Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#81

Post by moonsu »

projektfu wrote: post #13

I like the idea, but a lot of other factors are missing from the analysis. 1. I’ve yet to find a service that saves 5 hours per week per employee. How do I estimate the actual savings in time? 2. Work expands to fill available time. Will my employee use that time to the company’s advantage? 3. How much does this increase or decrease my personal time required as supervisor? 4. From a financial point of view, I’m still…

> 4. From a financial point of view, I’m still paying the employee and the service, so either I need enough services and time savings that I can eliminate a job, or the service has to have positive ROI of its own.

More likely, there's other work that the employee could be doing that will help your company grow

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#83

Post by dijit »

mattmanser wrote: post #80
dijit wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a bad faith comment I don't know where to begin. Of course no reasonable person is saying that you have to compare against the worst thing, that's stupid- I was simply stating that I've seen things that have easily quantifiable returns. I'm comparing it against the 'nothing' that I would otherwise have. If you're comparing something then that's yours to compare, and this is a tool for doing that. if you'…

How is it bad faith? You're wrong, he's right. You can run your own code repository, people did for decades, and took backups home. These days you could just send one to A.N.Y.Other cloud service. It doesn't take 5 hours per week, and if it takes 5 hours per year I'd be surprised.

It’s bad faith because it speaks to the content of what I said and not the point.

I am one of those people who managed code hosting repositories: but it’s completely absurd to assume that code hosting was without any cost involved at all, and to remove all of the other integrated features too? No. Absurd.

And anyway. The point was making is that we are already paying for services that save us a lot of time- they are of incredible value, and thus universal.

And yes, you might not spend 5hrs a year on _just_ code hosting but code hosting and web view and merge request portals and issue tracking and so on- should those services not be provided somehow (or be provided by something like jira/swarm etc); would easily cost more than that in time.

Hell, even running gitlab is an hour/w job just ensuring that backups are well tested and CI machines are purged, running updates and so on.

It has a low cost, because it’s just one person doing it, but the overall _point_ was that we already have some services that save us time and the parent was not speaking about them.

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#84

Post by ori_b »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #66
ori_b wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you spend 5 hours per week per employee managing permissions in git?

Setting up and managing keys, spinning up new repos, etc. would suck up an inordinate amount of time. This was especially true when I worked at consultancies. Blocking developer work with “Sorry gotta wait on Todd to add you to the server and set you up on Git,” when Todd would avoid it like the plague because it sucked would lose a lot of time. If you averaged the time out, it may not have hit the five hour per week…

> Setting up and managing keys, spinning up new repos, etc. would suck up an inordinate amount of time.

The claim was 5 hours per employee per week. I found that it took far less than 50 hours a week when working at a 10 person company. And if it did, I'd question the competence of whoever was doing that maintenance.

I'd pin it at closer to 3 or 4 minutes per employee per week, with maybe 8 hours of setup once. That's still a bunch of work, but it's a whole different ballgame.

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#86

Post by lucideer »

dijit wrote: post #83
mattmanser wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it bad faith? You're wrong, he's right. You can run your own code repository, people did for decades, and took backups home. These days you could just send one to A.N.Y.Other cloud service. It doesn't take 5 hours per week, and if it takes 5 hours per year I'd be surprised.

It’s bad faith because it speaks to the content of what I said and not the point. I am one of those people who managed code hosting repositories: but it’s completely absurd to assume that code hosting was without any cost involved at all, and to remove all of the other integrated features too? No. Absurd. And anyway. The point was making is that we are already paying for services that save us a lot of time- they are…

> it’s completely absurd to assume that code hosting was without any cost involved at all

Noone in this thread is arguing this.

Your original post made some statements about services saving time, as matter-of-fact statements that are apparently self-evident. I replied saying that these statements are not necessarily self-evident nor always true.

It's possible that Github saves you 5hrs a week. This doesn't mean you can say that this is obvious and universal.

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#87

Post by dijit »

lucideer wrote: post #86
dijit wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s bad faith because it speaks to the content of what I said and not the point. I am one of those people who managed code hosting repositories: but it’s completely absurd to assume that code hosting was without any cost involved at all, and to remove all of the other integrated features too? No. Absurd. And anyway. The point was making is that we are already paying for services that save us a lot of time- they are…

> it’s completely absurd to assume that code hosting was without any cost involved at all Noone in this thread is arguing this. Your original post made some statements about services saving time, as matter-of-fact statements that are apparently self-evident. I replied saying that these statements are not necessarily self-evident nor always true. It's possible that Github saves you 5hrs a week. This doesn't mean you c…

I’m not sure if you’re intentionally missing my point or if I’m ineffective at communicating it.

I’m saying that services that are like GitHub are ubiquitous because they save time, easily 5hrs a week- and creating them anew would cost more than those services do if you buy them as a user (gitlab enterprise or github “pro”)

You can argue the minutia of “this service” vs “that service” but at the end of the day those suite of things save time.

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#88

Post by lucideer »

dijit wrote: post #87
lucideer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s completely absurd to assume that code hosting was without any cost involved at all Noone in this thread is arguing this. Your original post made some statements about services saving time, as matter-of-fact statements that are apparently self-evident. I replied saying that these statements are not necessarily self-evident nor always true. It's possible that Github saves you 5hrs a week. This doesn't mean you c…

I’m not sure if you’re intentionally missing my point or if I’m ineffective at communicating it. I’m saying that services that are like GitHub are ubiquitous because they save time, easily 5hrs a week- and creating them anew would cost more than those services do if you buy them as a user (gitlab enterprise or github “pro”) You can argue the minutia of “this service” vs “that service” but at the end of the day those…

I think I understand your point. And I disagree.

> I’m saying that services that are like GitHub are ubiquitous because they save time

Popular services are ubiquitous for many reasons, some of them based on actual value, some of them based on perceived value, and others based on things orthogonal to day-to-day value like organisational inertia, aspects of network effects, etc. They may save time for you. Others may have chosen the service for different reasons: either wise or ill-advised.

> easily 5hrs a week

Subjective. But also, more importantly, subject to error based on your metrics. How have you quantified time saved by Github?

> creating them anew would cost more than those services do if you buy them as a user (gitlab enterprise or github “pro”)

This is, I think, where you're missing my point. Of course creating them anew would cost more than those services do. That's not the question being asked here though. What's being discussed is whether using Github will save you time over not-using Github.

Not using Github does not necessarily mean maintaining an equivalent service itself, because that presupposes that the features provided by Github save you time as is. The only reason you would host an equivalent service yourself is if they definitely do, which isn't a certainty.

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#89

Post by lucideer »

throwaway43234 wrote: post #53
lucideer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure you have, albeit by another name likely. > GitHub/Gitlab as a service easily saves more than 5hrs a week. > I have custom slack bots that easily save me a couple hours a week in aggregate. > Then there’s services such as managed CI or, heck even things like the “search” function on a wiki, those are all things that can be provided by a service. These are three highly subjective, very unconvincing statements. I…

> notification queues ... which can add to an employees distraction load and decrease productivity when compared to a more basic code-host. If you think your employees would be less productive if they didn't have a queue of work items to address and co-worker comments to look at and respond to... let's just I wouldn't work at your shop. You running a room full of air-gapped code production units or something?

I think you're oversimplifying. There's a world of difference between "all notification queues decrease productivity" and "some notification queues can decrease productivity in some cases".

Seems something of a divide in interpretation of comments here between people who get subjectivity and people who insist everything is necessarily a binary.

Re: Show HN: Is It Worth the Cost?

#90

Post by lucideer »

mattigames wrote: post #47
lucideer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure you have, albeit by another name likely. > GitHub/Gitlab as a service easily saves more than 5hrs a week. > I have custom slack bots that easily save me a couple hours a week in aggregate. > Then there’s services such as managed CI or, heck even things like the “search” function on a wiki, those are all things that can be provided by a service. These are three highly subjective, very unconvincing statements. I…

> all which can add to an employees distraction load and decrease productivity when compared to a more basic code-host. Is a bit naive to think those features are the ones distracting the employees, when if you watch a developer at work 98% of the time-wasters are the strongly attractive ones: YouTube, Instagram, etc.

Dunno where you work, but this doesn't correlate in my workplace.
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