Re: Back to the Dark Ages.

[Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>]

>This is not a joke. My company is seriously thinking of taking this step
>because of the asrtanomical cost of kitting out each PC with all the
>software we need to do the job.

Well, either your work is worth little to the company, or nobody with any
say at your company has much business sense.

Do a little back-of-the envelope calculation:

- Let's say that you cost the company $60 per hour (excluding software
but including office space, benefits, vacation, etc.). Let's assume that
you are also worth $60 an hour to the company. (A conservative assumption
because in this case the company would make no profit from your work.)

- Let't further assume that you work 50% of your time productively, the
rest being spent on internal bureaucratics, water cooler chats, and other
unproductive things. (This means that you create $120 of value per
productive hour.)

- And let's finally assume that you will need twice the time working with
just one PC per office.

This means that the value that you create for the company per 40-hour
week drops from $2400 to $1200. If you have four weeks of vacation per
year, that comes to a deficit of $57,600 per employee per year - making
you share one PC per office means each of you creates that much less
value for the company. Does the software cost that much?

The actual numbers for your situation are undoubtedly different, but the
result should be similar. (If it isn't you probably don't really need at
least some of the software.)

Regards
Jan Henning

PS: This is not to say, of course, that switching to non-proprietary
software (i.e., Linux and Co.) wouldn't make good sense.


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Jan Henning
ROSEMANN & LAURIDSEN GMBH
Am Schlossberg 14, D-82547 Eurasburg, Germany

Phone: +49 700 0200 0700, Fax: +49 8179 9307-12
E-Mail: henning -at- r-l -dot- de, Web: www.r-l.de
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