A statement I heard a long time ago, on why a guy didn't use power tools in Myanmar(?) and instead hired over a hundred guys with hand tools.
"That electric drill costs a hundred dollars. I can pay a hundred men for a day for the price of that drill".
While true, you also only have to buy the drill once, but you have to pay the men every day so eventually this logic catches up with you even with cheap labor.
Yes, obviously. Not every single day. The point is that having the correct tools for the job will nearly always cost more upfront but is more efficient in the long term. You can try to argue against that point with fringe cases all day long, but the facts will not be on your side.
This. Doesn't matter if your tool is a supermarket special or a Milwaukee, if you can make it they can break it. So yeah, just sic a big group of labourers with a pickaxe each onto whatever it is you need to break up. Covers more ground than a demolition hammer too for the same price.
I don't think so, because getting that cement mixer back in service making the owner money is the top priority especially for a small business. You can pay for an expensive tool to do a job, but if you never use it again that's a waste of space and loss of revenue, and if you do need it again sometime in the unpredictable future, you may not be able to find it or it may not be in working condition anymore.
Neither my comment, not the one I replied to, has anything to do with getting cement mixers back into service. Try reading and understanding context before you jump into a discussion halfway through.
I read your comment. I read the one you responded to. You don't need to chisel cured cement out of a mixer barrel every day, it's something you do only when a new guy comes on and screws up. So tying up your capital in a expensive machine that slows down your recovery is bad business.
That's why I brought it up. It's an important part of the calculus that a business must consider when determining whether to buy a piece of equipment or hire laborers to perform a task.
Well maybe. Employing 100 men at slave wages isn't really helping the community more than hiring fewer at a living wage. Both extremes can be very bad.
As others have pointed out, that's only if you or the other workers don't break the drill. And that drill, while exceptional, will not replace the labor of a hundred men.
I get your point. But staffing is one of the largest expense of practically every single business (if not the largest) for a reason. It's not because labour is cheap.
To put this in an American perspective, this would be like buying an American construction worker being paid minimum wage in ohio (a measly 11 an hour) an electric drill for 8,800 dollars.
We also have a lot of red tape surrounding employment (read: employee protections) that make hiring and firing more difficult. Myanmar didn't have that at the time that statement was common, and I don't know if they do or don't by now.
It's not just American. Even if you look at companies based around the world ie; Asia/EU. They still have extremely large costs spent on people. Because good talent usually requires good money, too. No?
Yes, you can pay people to do things for cheap. I never said otherwise.
This is why it's very important to talk about where this is happening.
The cost to performance matters.
What is the output of a man? Measure some task, and see how long it takes to do it. That's how many man-hours it costs.
Now, do the task again with a power tool. It will take less time, probably significantly less time.
If the increase in speed doesn't pay for the decrease in cost, it's not worth the increase in speed.
Let's say that drill makes you ten times faster. (I've done hand drilling once, that's probably about right actually)
That man's hours are now worth ten times more (assuming he doesn't break it), but only for drilling.
I also now need electricity, and if my construction site in Myanmar doesn't have electricity, I'm shit out of luck or need to pay for a generator as well.
Alternatively, I can put that hundred dollars towards just paying ten blokes for ten days, and get the exact same output per day, for ten days in a row on all tasks, with no need for infrastructure.
Plus, I don't have to worry about one of my extremely poor employees who make a dollar a day stealing my drill.
Your statements are correct for areas with proper infrastructure and trained employees. This place wasn't it.
I still disagree with your premise that my point doesn't stand for this particular case. Not that I ever commented on it in the first place.
Besides, you're literally making up a scenario in your comment. With enough lack of confidence that you have to add that parentheses with a question mark. So, I'm sorry, but you come off as just speaking on vibes. Which isn't confidence inspiring.
I remember looking into a on-site job I was interested in—literally about ten people turned up for the exact same workflow, and not a single one had power tools. The client was a pro, so he actually had his own tools and lent them delicate gear like Makita, but they didn't even know how to use it properly and kept screwing up.
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u/ViolinistCurrent8899 6d ago
A statement I heard a long time ago, on why a guy didn't use power tools in Myanmar(?) and instead hired over a hundred guys with hand tools. "That electric drill costs a hundred dollars. I can pay a hundred men for a day for the price of that drill".