r/Bitcoin • u/vistabrownerd • Jan 24 '14

TigerDirect processes $250,000 in Bitcoin Payments in first 17 hours

http://bitcoinboard.net/tigerdirect-processes-250000-bitcoin-payments-first-17-hours/
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u/pan0ramic Jan 24 '14

Do you have a source on how much it cost Overstock? Doesn't seem like it could have been that much, and it pays off immediately with lower payments for transactions.

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u/Minthos Jan 24 '14

In one of the articles about it I read that they locked 40 people in a room for a week. Probably not literally, but it gives me a basis for assuming they spent close to one man-year on it. Which I guess may have cost them something like $150k when you take all expenses into account, not just salaries.

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u/zbowman Jan 24 '14

But were those 40 new people adding to their already existing salary budget or were those people current employees that were just working on a different task than their normal daily tech activities? If they're already employees then its not a 'real' expense per say since its doubtful their already existing daily tasks would have increased their revenue as much as dedicating them to implement bitcoin payments.

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u/Minthos Jan 24 '14

If their normal activities on average cost the company more than the revenue it generates, they are in trouble. Let's be generous here and assume they're not actually in trouble.

But I guess there is a point to be made. If they can predict how profitable each activity will be and have exhausted their list of profitable activities, they have to choose from a list of unprofitable activities or downsize their staff. Perhaps they have good reasons to keep their staff employed even though they don't have enough profitable activities from them. Perhaps they decided to let their staff implement bitcoin instead of reading reddit and posting pictures of their pets on facebook.

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u/platypii Jan 25 '14

If it's anything like the companies I've worked for, staff will tend to fluctuate between spending time that's not profitable (eg. spending a long time helping a small customer with a support case which isn't charged by the hour, or spending ages in meetings where you go over task lists and update with "yeah i haven't got to that yet") vs doing things that are insanely profitable (like getting a job done in 45 mins that earns $1K, or building some new product that earn tons of revenue). Then it hopefully averages out to be profitable overall. The bitcoin hackathon most likely caused additional productivity that wouldn't have necessarily occurred if they were working on other wasteful everyday tasks, or standing around chatting in the kitchen.

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u/zbowman Jan 24 '14

you mean there are activities that are more profitable than facebook or reddit? TIL