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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

No. Suppose these 8 guys are paid $150k a year on average. Engineers, good ones at least, bring in more than they cost. In some cases like Instagram and Facebook, the ratio of users to engineers is in the millions. Google is similar. When you also bring into account the caché of someone like Rose, the lifetime earnings from that team probably well exceeds what was spent to aquire them.

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And how do you think the reasoning went during the telecom and internet bubbles? Hint: Exactly the same.

I encountered competing business plans which went along the lines of: Hire a team of 10 badass engineers, sell for $10-20M. It was a helluva time to hire people.

All employees should bring in more than they cost. Even the fry guy at McDonalds. Otherwise why would you employ them?

... in aggregate. there are lots of people in even small companies that work for "cost centers"...

Even "cost centers" are a net benefit, unless something is horribly broken.

Maybe you don't have the data to make that determination.

Maybe fries aren't profitable yet, but you're hoping to make them become so.

Maybe you have to have fries on the menu even though you make more money off soda.

I'm sure there are a few people that Google employs "Because awesome." The self-driving cars thing comes to mind, though I'm sure that could be explained by giving people another hour every day to sit on the internet looking at ads.

Currently all of the Google Maps data for the US (and increasingly, other parts of the globe) is generated in-house by the street view cars - they don't just generate the data for street view, they also generate most of the data for the actual road layout of the maps now, too.

If the cars drove themselves, instead of Google having to pay actual people to drive around every single road on the planet all the time, that would be a pretty huge cost saving, I would imagine.

Your argument assumes that that "caché" will translate into instant/increased earnings. That is far from a given.

caché = hidden http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cach%C3%A9

maybe what you really mean is "cachet" http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachet I know it doesn't have an accent

You are correct. I don't use the word often (apparently) and always thought the correct spelling for "cachet" was with the little e. Thanks for the tip!

Niggle : Cachet is the version that means 'prestige; distinction', caché is 'hidden' - both from 'cacher' (to hide, French).

cachet

>When you also bring into account the caché of someone like Rose

Caché with whom exactly?

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