So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
You need to present a business case. Offer to give up the coffee.
Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
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Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#62So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
Wow, they must use expensive coffee beans.
Not really.
3 cups a day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month = 60 cups of coffee. If we say 15g of beans per cup means you'll use 2 one pound bags in a month which could easily be $20-$40.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#63Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#64Nearly right. I don't think many sales and finance people have that kind of authority either. That's why you see everyone using the company tools or free tiers. You need to sell to peoples bosses. Save time, make projects more transparent, take away freedom, that sort of thing. This is probably why Excel is so ubiquitous. Also that Excel is the most powerful tool that Corporate IT will let you have. Try and get Corpo…
Pretty much. Companies won't approve buying an individual book, but they will approve a subscription to a learning platform. It's too much work to approve all these random purchases, but if you don't review them, you end up paying for a bunch of unused subscriptions all over the place as well as people buying a ton of stuff that doesn't really benefit the company that much.
A learning platform that costs the same as a book per month per employee, and doesn’t have the book on it.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#65If your management doesn't get you the stuff you need to be productive your company is a failure. Move somewhere else.
The problem is who decides what really matters? Every department is biased towards their own needs. Upper management is usually clueless when it comes to technical needs, even if they've done the job before - because it was probably 10+ years ago.
I think it's less about does it really matter, and more about do we have a solution for this/is this something that will spread and we need to negotiate a price on.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#66Unless you can put on azure/AWS/Google cloud. I can't buy a pencil without approval, but I can spend thousands in our cloud without asking anyone.
Same and it's going to be a huge, uphill slog to get the right people to consider localstack. But if we purchase a corporate license the savings would instantly pay for it so I feel compelled to try even though it is isn't really my day job to do so.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#67It depends on the company. One company I worked for had a policy of "Just buy what you need that makes your work easier: books, licenses, and even hardware. Management time spent on decisions is too expensive, so we default to instant approval." Did developers go on a buying spree? No, the same amount of stuff was bought as before the policy. And it did make life easier.
Netflix?
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#68Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#69So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I wouldn't just approve an individual Copilot subscription either. The problem isn't the money, it's the copyright and whether trade secrets are being leaked. Those things can surely be solved, but it's far from trivial.
Okay imagine you’re an employee. You are ranked against your coworkers based on individual productivity, either explicitly or implicitly.
You can choose to either spend $10/month to get a big productivity multiplier, or you can play it by the book, not use it, and be the first one out the door the next time the company decides it needs to find efficiencies in a down market. What do you choose?
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#70So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I wouldn't just approve an individual Copilot subscription either. The problem isn't the money, it's the copyright and whether trade secrets are being leaked. Those things can surely be solved, but it's far from trivial.
The general gist I’m getting from this comment section is a general lack of awareness over DLP and security. The thing half these comments are complaining about exist for very good reasons.