> You say "save". Management, at least here, would translate this into > "real savings" this by firing nine or ten developers. That is true > "saving". "Saving" money by not hiring a new employee is not "saving" > in their world view. "Saving money" is "reducing cost". It is not > "eliminating future costs". Productivity is the responsibility of the > individual programmer. Or, "a poor workman blames his tools!" (or lack > thereof).
I hear you, and I've heard that same argument many times. But it makes absolutely no sense to me. If we take the example of a company that spends 10 million dollars a year to employ 100 mainframe developers, and that company licenses a tool that improves productivity by 10%, that's a REAL saving of 1 million dollars a year no matter how you look at it. Less of course the cost of licensing the tool; let's use $8,000 a year as an example <g>. Once the tool has been licensed the company can immediately fire 10 employees and get roughly the same amount of work done. Doing this results in a REAL annual cost saving of $1,000,000 - $8,000 = $992,000. Alternatively they could let employees go through attrition and not hire anyone to replace them. For example, even if only one of their employees leaves and doesn't do so until 6 months from now the company would still have a REAL cost saving of $50,000 - $8,000 = $42,000. Meanwhile, their other 99 employees are all doing 10% more work. Even if the company keeps hiring people because they've got so much work to do, all of their existing and new employees will be getting 10% more work done. This means projects will be completed faster and at lower cost. If those projects are "charged back" to end users (as they usually are), that's a REAL cost saving. Maybe in addition to increasing productivity the new tool reduces things like training costs, printing costs, CPU costs, storage costs, and more. Again, these fit under the category of REAL cost savings. A lot of tools also have 'soft' savings that managers don't even think about. Maybe it helps solve production problems faster, which means there are less outages and customers are kept happier. Maybe it helps deliver new features to market faster than competitors, which helps the company thrive and gain market share. Maybe it keeps employees happy so there's less turnover and less rehiring and retraining. Maybe it reduces the need to spend millions of dollars switching from z/OS to some other 'more productive' platform. These and many more examples of 'soft' savings could be worth more than all of the 'hard' savings put together. To use an analogy, I pay an extra $5 a month on my phone bill for a long-distance calling plan. I don't have to pay that fee, but it saves me at least $50 a month in long-distance calling charges. Not paying the extra $5 would be foolish, and I think even children in grade 5 could understand that simple logic. Incredibly, this seems much too complex for many mainframe managers to understand. Dave Salt SimpList(tm) - try it; you'll get it! http://www.mackinney.com/products/program-development/simplist.html > Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 06:59:38 -0500 > From: [email protected] > Subject: Re: "Freebie" software > To: [email protected] > > On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Dave Salt <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 9:35 AM, DASDBILL2 <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > The loss of time is never "free." > > > > I couldn't agree more. If it costs $100,000 a year to employ a mainframe > > developer (salary, benefits, premises, etc.), then for every 100 developers > > a company employs it costs a staggering 10 million dollars a year. If a > > company can improve the average productivity of those workers by as little > > as 10% they'd save 1 million dollars a year for every 100 workers. But many > > companies would rather waste millions than spend a few thousand on tools > > that improve productivity. > > You say "save". Management, at least here, would translate this into > "real savings" this by firing nine or ten developers. That is true > "saving". "Saving" money by not hiring a new employee is not "saving" > in their world view. "Saving money" is "reducing cost". It is not > "eliminating future costs". Productivity is the responsibility of the > individual programmer. Or, "a poor workman blames his tools!" (or lack > thereof). > > > > > Dave Salt > > > > SimpList(tm) - try it; you'll get it! > > > > http://www.mackinney.com/products/program-development/simplist.html > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > > > -- > There is nothing more pleasant than traveling and meeting new people! > Genghis Khan > > Maranatha! <>< > John McKown > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
