How much are top executives of companies willing to spend on themselves to improve their own productivity? If it makes sense for them, it should also make sense for the "individual contributors". I once had a manager who, when I asked for company-paid business cards with my contact information, told me that he never approved the purchase of business cards for any of his direct-report developers because none of them ever traveled anywhere or came in contact with customers. I pointed out that since he had hired me, I had already had a one-week business trip to Johannesburg, a one-week trip to Tel Aviv, a nine-week business trip to Johannesburg, a one-week trip to a national CMG conference in Orlando, and was about to go to another huge trade show in New Orleans at which I was scheduled to give two technical presentations to our customers. He approved my request. I was silently picturing myself at the giant user-group trade show talking to customers after my talk: Customer: "Could I have your card, please?" My reply: "I'm sorry, but I don't have any. My manager won't approve the expense of business cards for any of his developers. But I can write down my contact information for you on the back of that napkin over there, unless it's wet." Bill Fairchild
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Salt" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, July 7, 2014 11:48:05 AM Subject: Re: "Freebie" software > 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. 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
