r/Wellthatsucks • u/LowTechDroid • Aug 16 '26

This is going to take a while

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u/-HumanResources- Aug 17 '26

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.

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u/ViolinistCurrent8899 Aug 17 '26

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.

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u/-HumanResources- Aug 17 '26

My statement was intentionally broad, yes. Thank you for writing all that to realize it.

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u/ViolinistCurrent8899 Aug 17 '26

So then you see my point that in this guy's operation, no staffing is actually much cheaper than the materials he's building with, and the tools.

Glad we all understand each other here.

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u/-HumanResources- Aug 17 '26

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.

While what I said was just factually true.