They have saved _more_ than two hours per dev and week. There's a compound factor and now code can be more reliable (less outages or emergencies fixing bugs) etc. Also having a sane working environment helps engineers not quitting, which is very expensive if they are replaced.
replyThe freed-up time question is answerable when the work has clear metrics. A model test suite dropping from 6 minutes to 66 seconds saves developer time on every single run. Ten developers running tests five times a day, the math is straightforward.
replyThe problem is that most engineering work lacks that kind of before/after measurement. Not because it is unmeasurable, but because nobody set up the baseline. Profile before you optimize and the return on investment calculates itself.
If a test suite runs for either 6 minutes or 66 seconds I am not staring at it while it runs. I am doing something else. So that is not holding up my time
replyIf you have no feedback for 6 minutes, it will hold up your time.
replyIn such a clear-cut example, I think we have saved the two hours.
replyYes. You work 2 hours less, but what do you produce in those two extra hours? Can you say that your company now spends X dollars less or earns X dollars more? I don't think it can be that clear.
replyAnd what is your theory? That it’s better to not save those 2 hours since they will just go to waste anyway? Or that there is diminishing returns to saving work as people will tend to just spend longer on other things they were already doing? How can you be sure those 2 hours will not actually be used by most to do very productive things that in the end look like +4 hours in return??
replyNo. I am not saying that it is a bad idea to do this.
replyI am saying:
Given you have saved two hours per person per week
Then the value for the company is _not_ equal to two hourly salaries per week. The consequences are just not that simple.
You've freed up 2 hours per dev per week so they can work on something else that might generate profit. Even if they goof off for an hour, that's another hour doing something useful that they weren't doing before.
replyYou've also possibly saved some money by automating a task that was previously manual, reducing or eliminating human errors that could have compounding costs.
And as someone else pointed out, you've made the work environment a little better by not wasting the devs' time on a silly manual task, which might reduce turnover.