O Costs

Gaurav, Kunal and Harish will testify that I have now started pretending I'm a budding economist by asking them clarifications on opportunity cost problems [Smirking? See if you get this question right!] and slapping my head on failing to answer a question (in a "real quiz") on the invisible hand.

Incidentally, last week, I stumbled upon it in a very interesting context. This was from the Xooglers blog.

Sergey once asked a large assemblage of Googlers what our greatest corporate expense was. “Health insurance!” was one answer shouted back. “Salaries!” “Servers!” “Taxes!” “Electricity!” “Charlie’s grocery bills!,” came back others. “No,” said Sergey. “Opportunity cost.” He explained that the products we weren’t launching and the deals we weren’t doing threatened our economic stability more than any single line item in the budget. It became a regular call and response at staff meetings and added to the sense that no matter how hard we were working, success was slipping through our fingers. Rather than cause employees to feel defeated, however, it became a rallying cry to redouble their efforts.

Interesting mantra for a confirmed structured procrastinator like me.