A "nice round figure" is suspicious. Shouldn't a well-researched investment cost an amount that sounds well-researched (i.e. a more precise figure and not something that seems rounded up to the nearest billion)?
How about some brief brainstorming on what else they might have done...
If I look at the rest of the company: shouldn't Microsoft be more interested in, say, shipping Windows 8 sooner and with more features? They could pay engineers $200,000 a year (a very nice salary) and contract FIVE THOUSAND of them for a single year with that billion dollars. I'm not saying that would be any more sane of an investment, but I can imagine quite a bit that 5,000 engineers could do: more work on robustness, more bundled applications, more hardware supported, more optimizations...tons and tons of good stuff. Heck, they could do all of that if they hired just 500 engineers and kept them for 10 years, instead of 5,000 contractors for a year. The scale of any billion-dollar investment is insane in those terms.
(This is an example breakdown only. Pick whatever breakdown you like if you don't think this is realistic. The point is, money goes a long way. Companies should take extra time to see if there isn't a better place to spend a few million.)
A "nice round figure" is suspicious. In an article no not really, in real life sure. If the purchase price had been 1,192,456,786.36 it would have been reported as 1.2 billion because the 36 cents are an unimportant detail.
I think the more important thing is how long would it have taken for them to start from scratch and build Yammer. Integrating the Yammer team and Yammer's products is going to take time as well so there are several variables there that need to be compared not just a simple back of the envelope pay a few guys a few years sort of thing.
shouldn't Microsoft be more interested in, say, shipping Windows 8 sooner and with more features? They could pay engineers $200,000 a year (a very nice salary) and contract FIVE THOUSAND of them for a single year with that billion dollars
Something something Mythical Man Month something something
> Something something Mythical Man Month something something
if you remember (or read the actual article), the mythical man month says nothing about the problem you quoted. It is often mistakenly taken out of context to mean that more people on a project doesn't make it faster.
Mythical man month actually says that a project already running late, won't be completed faster by adding more people at a later date, due to communication, and coordination problems.
If you planned out the work for 5000 people (a hellova plan!), then this problem won't occur...in theory.
>A "nice round figure" is suspicious. Shouldn't a well-researched investment cost an amount that sounds well-researched (i.e. a more precise figure and not something that seems rounded up to the nearest billion)?
This sounds more or a fallacy and less of an argument to me.
How about some brief brainstorming on what else they might have done...
If I look at the rest of the company: shouldn't Microsoft be more interested in, say, shipping Windows 8 sooner and with more features? They could pay engineers $200,000 a year (a very nice salary) and contract FIVE THOUSAND of them for a single year with that billion dollars. I'm not saying that would be any more sane of an investment, but I can imagine quite a bit that 5,000 engineers could do: more work on robustness, more bundled applications, more hardware supported, more optimizations...tons and tons of good stuff. Heck, they could do all of that if they hired just 500 engineers and kept them for 10 years, instead of 5,000 contractors for a year. The scale of any billion-dollar investment is insane in those terms.
(This is an example breakdown only. Pick whatever breakdown you like if you don't think this is realistic. The point is, money goes a long way. Companies should take extra time to see if there isn't a better place to spend a few million.)