Hiring People means extending my time?

[Gerald]

If you don’t mind a very mechanistic perspective, maybe hiring people is more or less like acquiring capital machinery. Especially if you invest to train them.

[Carlos]

Hi.

It cannot be slavery because the employee is voluntarily giving his time and effort to the employer. No coercion involved.

[Francisco]

I think both: hired sell their capacity to transform inputs in a higher value output; time & knowledge & strength (some professions) are the variables intrinsic to the transformation process. Yes you extend “time” but also “knowledge” & “force” to the organization, but mainly capaciy to “transform” inputs in valuable outputs.

But I disagree about “no coercion involved”; that depends on your level of expertise, and if you are a ” medium or low-level” your strength on that trade is irrisory, you have to accept the trade you like it or not.

[Hendrik]

@kiocla I think you are spot on.

There is this calculation that was pretty eye opening to me.

Say you make 50usd per hour and you want to outsource all of your work that renders less than 50usd / hour, then you could hire 5 people and pay them each 10usd/hour and even if they are only a fith as productive as you are, it would still make sense to hire them.

[John Williams]

Right, because the work is still getting done. Only now, you have 100% of your time back to reinvest into more ventures.

[Willem Fourie]

If your skills are worth $50/hour, then someone accepting $10/hour will not have the skills to replace you

• This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by  Willem Fourie.

[Dorian]

It will be if the task $10/h person is doing is valued less than $50/h.

For example:

A consultant can charge his time $100/h. He needs to outreach people on social media to offer his service. It takes him 2 hours each day to do it.

He can outsource that task to a $20/h person and have two more hours for giving consultations. So he earns $160 extra in two hours ($200 income minus $40 cost).

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Dorian.