in reply to Some recent DNA threads
Never overlook the “accounting reality” angle. Which says that (and I am very sorry to have to say it, in consideration of everyone involved): I don’t have to know what they are actually doing ... cheapest labor wins.
The simple reason why I say that “I am very sorry to have to say it” is that ... there exists a very influential segment of our business population that was trained-up in a hypothetical “business” world in which Companies™ make Widgets™. The only differentiator that actually matters, in their hypothetical world, is: unit labor cost.
In other words ... “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” You are (correctly!!) telling me that, not only do you know more than three people who cost one-sixth as much as you do, but you can accomplish more, too. But, the only thing that I see is “a way to reduce unit labor costs by 50%.” Even if those three people require half-again as much time to fumble their way through to an acceptable-enough solution, I have reduced labor costs by at least 25% and I have removed from the payroll, at a single stroke, one “cost center” that cost six times more.
Surely, I am due a fat promotion.
Yes, you are absolutely right that “it sucks to be any one of those three people!” But no one ever got rich by consigning people to a fate that they deserved. “The numbers say that,” not only have I just reduced labor-costs by a whopping 25%, but I have also eliminated the organization’s dependency upon one expensive labor-unit (with an atttitude...) and replaced it with a pool of labor that is more-or-less completely interchangeable. I have eliminated the business requirement for Shakespeare and replaced it with ... Haplorrhini. My business goal is to sell tickets, to fill every seat in the Old Globe Theater and to sell lots of wine in the process ... not to create a lasting work of literature.
Now, please!! Before you dismiss this posting as a rant and with “you must be an [!!] and obviously completely full of [!!!!]” ... I want you to please, for once: Stop and. Be afraid. Become very afraid. One hundred fifty years ago, you could have been an expert third-generation gunsmith who was utterly certain that Mr. Eli Whitney was similarly full of [!!!].
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