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Re:New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects by joshstrange on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:58PM (#25861849)
All my experiences around this have pounded into my brain that if I ever run my company or if I am an executive I will do everything in my power to make sure all the employees under me have the best tools to do their job. Labor is one of the most expensive costs, not empowering your employees to be the best they can be is just stupid and wasteful.

My dad ran a software consulting company eons ago and he had a new programmer start but he didn't have a laptop so my dad took him to Best Buy (that's where you bought computers back then) and told him to pick out a laptop. They guy picked one and my dad was like "How about this one, isn't it better?" and the guy said "Yeah, but it's more expensive". My dad bought the better laptop and gave it to the guy and told him it was his now (as in not the companies). That guy was over the moon and my dad told me that it was the best money he ever spent. Not only did he effectively "buy" a ton of loyalty with that move but he would make up the cost of the laptop in a week or so off that programmer alone (difference between what he paid the employee and what he billed them out at).

I also remember going to Sam's Club with my dad to buy snacks for the office. He kept snacks, candy, drinks, etc well stocked at all times and told his employees they could have as much as they wanted, no limits. Happy employees are productive employees, why more people don't get that I'll never know...

Re:New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects by joshAg on Thursday January 21, 2021 @01:51PM (#25862500)
Sometimes they do, but they just don't care that certain (or even all) employees are as productive as possible. They might even have a fancy graph showing how they're optimizing for some unit of productivity per unit of cost, so making employees more productive isn't worth it.

One of the best pieces of advice I got early in my career was "Whatever you end up doing, make sure the company sees you as a profit center rather than a cost center, because companies are much more free with their checkbooks to the people they think are directly responsible for making the company money," and though things aren't nearly that black and white, it's definitely been a good general principle.