I'm curious as to whether this general trend is a new one or if I'm just getting old:<p>1) user creates semi-controversial post (see: PHP sucks, nosql sucks, node sucks, semi-colons suck, time-is-money, ideas are worth nothing etc)<p>2) debated ad-nauseum with good points on both sides<p>3) within 24 hours, blog posts turn up which say almost the opposite of whatever was said in a) PHP works for me, time is worth nothing, nodejs/mysql is webscale, ideas are everything.<p>I can't help but feel that - much like this comment - it doesn't add much that hasn't already been said better elsewhere and is purely for linkbait purposes.
The laptop example used by Jack and echoed here is fair, but the most realistic one I can think of, as a bona fide non-rockstar and non-founder, is in-flight WiFi.<p>Prices have gone down quite a bit over the past year, but I remember being locked in an inner struggle with myself to spend $50 for two hours of WiFi.<p>The first line of thinking is: well, can I generate $50 in those two hours if I have WiFi? Chances are, yeah, you can -- but will you? I don't know if you've ever tried to get work done on an airplane, but I'm miserable at it; its cramped, loud, and just generally unpleasant. I might end up staring at a blank terminal for two hours.<p>But lets say we decide that we're going to be uber-productive and we'd spend those two hours coding away diligently. We value our productivity here at $50/hour, so buy spending $50 on wifi we gain $100 of productivity. The next question is: how productive would we be without wifi? Economic decisions aren't made in a vaccuum: a programmer can do an awful lot without WiFi -- and its up to your heuristics to decide if the bump in productivity is worth the $50.
This is an interesting counterpoint to the original time post; it's better to think about the amount of energy and focus you're putting into something, because in the end these resources are much more finite and variable than time.<p>Time is a known quantity, and at any one time you know how much time you or your employees have available (more or less). You can burn through energy and focus at very different rates depending on how you spend it. It's also not as measurable as time, which is why people like to just equate time to effort/focus, and then just measure effort based on time spent.<p>In reality, some people are better at spending their effort in short sharp bursts over a longer period of time, while other people prefer to spend it all once until a task is done or they run out of energy, and there's all sorts of people in between. This also highlights the importance of taking time to recharge, and making sure you have a reasonably balanced life.<p>I think this is the big reason for the success of some implementations of hammock driven development and paid company holidays in increasing the value generated by employees. In the end it's important not only to consider time spent, but also to consider productivity. A focus purely on time spent is what gives us 40-hour work weeks chained to a desk. Because logically the more time you spend at your desk, the more work you'll get done, right? We all know the fallacy of this type of thinking.
As Greg Brown sang, "time ain't money when all you got is time."<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-xWWFNJFJQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-xWWFNJFJQ</a>
The opportunity cost of wages not earned is not the proper tool with which to measure the amount of benefit your time provides to yourself and other humans.