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Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

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Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#161

Post by lightshows »

jrs235 wrote: post #137
taleodor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Unfortunately, way too often I see execs saying "that's too expensive, we just have to do it manually" instead of using good tool. Then what happens is somebody making $100+/hour would spend several hours to do the job that would be covered by a tool that costs under $50/month.

It's easy to say "yes" and difficult to say "no". Becoming a financial steward comes by first saying "no" and only saying "yes" when the ROI worksheet is filled out, completed, and approved. If you want your manager to approve spending some money on tools you can help them by filling out your own preliminary ROI worksheet to show them why you think it's a no-brainer.

I am far too apathetic for that.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#162

Post by p_l »

briandear wrote: post #109
p_l wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also allows to pocket more money instead of paying it to employee. Remember, many people in USA believe that corporation has duty to increase shareholder value. And similar stupid ideas.

> many people in USA believe that corporation has duty to increase shareholder value. And similar stupid ideas. No more stupid than the idea that companies are supposed to exist solely for the benefit of the employee. Shareholders are the ones that put the money up to start and grow the company in the first place, so yes, there is an obligation to shareholder value. Don't like that? Then you are free to start a compa…

Shareholders take a risk in their investment, mitigated by making it more fluid as they can easily trade the shares compared to more traditional investments.

There's however no law that holds a figurative gun to the heads of corporation that their duty is to increase the value of those shares.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#163

Post by akhilcacharya »

jcelerier wrote: post #143
paxys wrote: post #8

If you are already spending >$200K per employee, spending another $10K to make them even 10% more productive is a bargain.

how many 0.0001% of employees does that represent though ? 200k is more than what the average CEO makes (gross) in france (150k€)

Include health insurance, retirement match, employer side payroll taxes, equipment, etc. I don’t make nearly that much but I easily cost my company more than that.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#164

Post by groby_b »

Retric wrote: post #94
genghisjahn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the list of awesome companies that succeed without managers?

Valve and other flat organizations arguably qualify. Various tiny small startups may qualify depending on what people mean by managers.

Valve is, by all accounts, a toxic cesspit that's ruled by various influential cabals. They still have a hierarchy, they just aren't explicit about it.

At least for Medium, "Holacracy" pretty much imploded. Zsppos switched from it to an internal marketplace - which is, oddly, controlled by excecutives.

Flat organizations beyond a certain size either move away from flatness officially, create unacknowledged hierarchy, or fail. I'm really not aware of a single large-scale example that still works.

This is much different for small orgs - there's something about org size that requires some sort of centralization. (I think it's communications overhead + complexity exceeding the limit of what a single person can keep in their mind. I'm not 100% convinced, but these are the pressure points I usually see)

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#165

Post by nekeo0 »

santoshalper wrote: post #153
nekeo0 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to encounter a manager who motivates me to get up and find a way to eat that day. Just because they are there doesn’t mean the achievements are due to them. There have been a number of attempts, tens of millions of dollars spent on one study alone, trying to quantify what technologies and people generate value. The meta-conclusion considering all the studies I know of (traveling and not looking them up), i…

What a pile of pretentious bullshit.

Yeah, well that’s just like... your opinion, man. Not a very interesting one. Par for the course online.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#166

Post by jcrawfordor »

humblebee wrote: post #86
jcrawfordor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What free software that enterprises were using has been replaced by SaaS?

IRC for Slack was one that happened at a company I worked at.

There were still internal costs related to running IRC though, assuming you weren't paying some provider to do it for you... not large internal costs, but I don't think on a radically different scale from Slack considering that you could also view a Slack subscription as covering a client with a lot more features than a typical IRC setup (sure you could run a web client, bouncers, services, but that's all increasing your internal costs).

I guess my point is that I feel like what GP refers to as "free" is actually just "developed/operated/maintained internally"... these commercial services are still by and large based on free software but you're paying someone else to do the work your internal IT capability used to do.

This couples with a general trend I've observed of organizations shifting their IT workload from inside to outside via PaaS/SaaS providers. This could be viewed as a form of outsourcing... in the '90s enterprises were moving their IT functions to India. Now they're moving them to a hundred different contractors, each supporting one system.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#167

Post by earthboundkid »

briandear wrote: post #109
p_l wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also allows to pocket more money instead of paying it to employee. Remember, many people in USA believe that corporation has duty to increase shareholder value. And similar stupid ideas.

> many people in USA believe that corporation has duty to increase shareholder value. And similar stupid ideas. No more stupid than the idea that companies are supposed to exist solely for the benefit of the employee. Shareholders are the ones that put the money up to start and grow the company in the first place, so yes, there is an obligation to shareholder value. Don't like that? Then you are free to start a compa…

Shareholders are only able to make contracts because the government uses guns to arrest people who break contracts. Don't like it? Move to an offshore oil rig, I guess.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#168

Post by marcosdumay »

rileymat2 wrote: post #110
brianr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the purchased software is worthwhile (i.e. it makes employees more effective; the company gets more output per employee expense dollar), this trend should actually increase employee pay. Higher output per employee allows a higher salary per employee while still being profitable.

Doesn't higher output per an employee lead to a change for demand of that type of employee, lowering pay? It always seemed to me the value an employee brings is the upper bound on pay (demand drops near 0 over that), but the pay is determined by supply and demand for that labor.

> Doesn't higher output per an employee lead to a change for demand of that type of employee

Yes, pretty much so.

> lowering pay?

Nope. Reality is way more complex than that.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#169

Post by _ea1k »

fishnchips wrote: post #149
_ea1k wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the ones that cost thousands to decrease productivity?

Immediately made me think of Jira.

That's funny, I was thinking of all of the things people pay even more for to replace Jira.
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