Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 15 Dec 2005 13:10:00 GMT
Singapore airlines is petitioning the government of australia to allow it to fly between the US and Australia, making it the 3rd carrier to do so. Having have to pay the highway robbery they call a price several times, I’m interested in seeing the outcome of this
I see Qantas are using interesting tactics.
The promise of lower prices.. This is similar to me promising to give up smoking. While I might have the best intentions now when the pressure is on, as soon as people forget I’ll be outside the office lighting up again.
$10 billion in new planes (in 3yrs) + new jobs. An Increase in capacity will put downward pressure on prices (they need bums on seats). But there is nothing saying (and no way to enforce) that they will use these new planes on that route, and that the overall number of passengers per week will change. And for all we know they might build out the planes as ‘luxury’ models keeping the prices constant and putting extra features to justify it.
The upgrades are probably going to take place anyway. For all we know, they are going to spend the money and create the jobs REGARDLESS of what the decision is.
Getting their version of ‘jetblue’ to grab the cheap seats. Personally I like this option. It will give the vactioneer a cheap way to get to their destination, but it will do nothing for the business traveller, and may infact raise the price for him as qantas now can differentiate by plane type as well.
Qantas is a public entity, not a government organisation. How does it benefit the Australian public? (not the shareholders)
So for these 5 reasons I think Singapore airlines should be allowed to fly the route, and Qantas did this to itself by charging ‘what the market will bear’ for so long. If it wasn’t trying to milk the line for so long Singapore Airlines probably wouldn’t have thought to enter the market.
Posted in Business Related | Tags airlines, economics, negotiations, pricing, qantas | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Fri, 25 Nov 2005 14:54:00 GMT
I’ve heard stories that doing rails and django development can cause your productivity to increase by up to 3 times, and that they result in better quality code.
But what does this actually mean?
Well for the company hiring the developer, it means they get a product cheaper and faster. yep.. thats good.
But what does it mean for the developer writing the code?
What does he get out of it? usually a pat on the back, and another project to work on, and if he is lucky a small bonus at the end of the year.
Have developers been able to successfully negotiate with their bosses to get a share of that extra productivity or is that all going to the bottom line and the owners pockets?
Now.. If a salesman for the same company became 3x more productive you KNOW he would be knocking on his bosses door and renegotiating his deal to take into account his productivity increase, and if he didn’t get it would be out the door and in another job the next day.
Why isn’t it the same with developers? why isn’t there some kind of incentive scheme for them tied to their productivity, and also the end result. Sales and profits.
Most developers would approach this issue in the following way:
eg… assuming I get $50/hour.
If a product took 300 hours to code, I can do it now in 100.
I have just saved the company 200 hours..
That’s $10,000 just in my wages, and I should try and get more of that.
This isn’t right for a corporate developer. You (the developer) are a fixed cost. They have to pay you regardless. You need to approach it by thinking about 1 month of extra lead time where the company can be generating sales/revenue on that work is worth.
Remember when negotiating, don’t just think of your cost savings, think of that lead time as well.
When the project you are doing got intially proposed there should have been a ROI or some kind of benefit calculated.. you need to figure out how much that month is worth based on the ROI.
trust me .. your senior management is, they know what getting this done a month early means to their bottom line.
This kind of thinking isn’t new. This is how the construction industry works. They have LARGE bonuses if you can get the building up and usable before the estimated completion date.
BUT remember there are also penalties if you are late.
I think developers and IT projects should be rewarded the same way. I think people with ‘skin in the game’ perform better… and it will force the real ROI/benefit to be calculated more accuratly in the first place (ie.. less crappy projects that are just fluff)
Has anyone seen this kind of thing happen in their workplaces?
Posted in Business Related | Tags django, negotiations, productivity, rails | 7 comments | no trackbacks