On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 09:09:58AM -0800, Curtis Poe wrote: > For the cost of only $50 US a month, we've had short, but useful talks on > new Perl technologies and techniques. > > I'd love to hear other arguments in favor of keeping the meetings here and > spending the fifty dollars on those chairs (what a paltry sum for the > information won!). I'm very concerned about upsetting the stability of the > group as we have not missed a meeting in a year, but prior to that, meetings > were held every six months, at best. I don't want to throw this away now > that we've got it!
If you insist on looking at the cost/benefit to hiring new programmers, don't forget the indirect costs. At $600/year, if you save time in locating who you do (and don't) want to interview, the benefit will be in "increased productivity" (less time spent interviewing; less money spent on head hunters; more time spent programming). Alternatively, you can look at the benefit in terms of programmer productivity. At $50/month, you only need to recover $12/week. How much programming can you company buy for $12? About 1/4 man-hour (or less). If each meeting can save about 1 man-hour per month, then you're at break-even. My guess is that the benefit is much greater than that. At a recent DC.pm meeting, I gave an introduction to CVS. Most of the people in the group hadn't started using CVS and had wanted to learn for a good number of years. Anyone who started using CVS that month saved at least one man-hour of effort *that week*. Z.
