Read up on Project Management. You're looking for Scope, Schedule, and Budget, in particular the S curve. You should be able to plot % complete against % spent for a sampling of projects, and demonstrate where the projects went off the rails. Then you can figure out why.

Usually it's because the scope was not well defined. and thus budget and schedule were not based on a realistic assessment of what it takes to achieve said scope.

And yes, I provide training for exactly this. A neat little tidbit:

Q: Of 700+ projects in a study, how many recovered once they were over budget at 15% completion? That is, if a job was over budget at the very beginning, what are the chances of completing it on time and within budget, based on 700+ projects?

A: None. Not a single job.

Ummm.... Have we already reduced the bill of rights to "I have the right to shoot you"? I swear there was something in there about speach. Can't quite remember; it's been a while.

Well, I can only go by my family. We use computers, mostly for email and web browsing. My kids use googledocs in school. When their desktop died, I got a cheap laptop with Windows 8 for them. After a couple of weeks, I see my daughter using my wife's computer. So I asked "Why?" Turns out she can't use windows 8, hates the interface, and wants something that works.

One Xubuntu CD later, she has a working laptop that now gets used all the time, and it "just works".

Most people *don't care* what's inside. They just want it to be a part of the background so they can browse, do their stuff, and surf the web.

Try it some day. My car logs GPS coordinates, speed, direction of travel, outside temp, nearest landmark, and elevation every minute. Now you could falsify this with enough effort, but seeing as my car also takes a picture of the road at the time it records the other information, it would be nearly impossible, since you'd have to get the same picture in the correct weather conditions at the same (or different) time of day.

I'm sure the Tesla records things like SOC, engine output, current drain, braking effort, battery and outside temps, speed, throttle position, and pretty much everything else, a lot more often than than once a minute. To falsify this effectively would take a huge effort, as all of the data would have to be consistent, and that's incredibly difficult to do.

OK, but what do you use a tablet for? "Serious" work, or facebook, youtube, maybe some light email or a movie. So I think I'm OK in comparing a cheap laptop that's mostly used for that v. a tablet that's mostly used for that.

$1,100???? My daughter just got a Lenovo, about 3 lbs, 15" screen, delivered for $350. Why would I want to spend 3x the money for a smaller screen and a worse keyboard?

I can equip most of my family with nice laptops for the price of one Surface. :headscratch:

Yes! Motion can do this and much more.

Not. The schools hide the actual cost by shifting costs around.

For example, our "free paid for by by athletic money" athlete study facility is actually costing the university $2M / year - and this is "hidden" in the maintenance and janitorial budgets. Sure, the tutors are paid for and the facility was donated, but the maintenance, upkeep, and cleaning still falls to the university. And apparently our sports prima-donnas don't feel any need to keep their facility clean, as the janitorial budget for that building is substantially higher per square foot than other buildings.

And that's not rationing? If you have money, you can get it. If you don't, die. That's pretty severe rationing in my book.

That must be why the CIA ranks the US 51st in life expectancy, well behind almost every European nation.....

There is rationing here in the US along economic lines. Try getting medications or medical care with no insurance and see how well that works for you.

Yes, this.

It was actually pretty funny. Our team had cultivated our clients and we were quite profitable. We got bought by this other company with the bonus plan. Pretty much all of us quit within a year.

At bonus time, one of our more outspoken engineers opened his bonus envelope, marched into the manager's office, slapped it on his desk, and yelled: "What am I supposed to do with this? Take my wife to McDonalds?" I hadn't laughed that hard since.

I worked for a company that based your annual bonus on the amount of overtime you put in. Not productive, mind you, just hours. At the end of the year, they would tally up the hours you worked, and those with the most hours at their desk got the biggest bonuses.

Being new to this, I asked my boss: "If I do everything right, and my project never needs rework, and my clients are happy, and all my projects are profitable, and I go home on time every day, will I get a bonus?" "No."

"If I screw up, my projects are late and over budget, and I'm working a lot of hours because my clients are pissed at the low quality of work I do, and my projects constantly lose money because I'm an idiot, will I get a bonus?" "Yes."

True to form, my bonus for the year was $50, in spite of being one of the most profitable employees in the organization. I left shortly thereafter.

Yeah, that. Really, if you have to ask a bunch of strangers on the internet for advice I'd wonder about your skills. Unless you want to see if there's some cool tech that maybe you missed.

My sister and her husband are full-time sailors, right now somewhere in the south pacific. They went through a lot of gear testing and research before building their boat. They have picked out pretty much everything themselves; I would not trust gear on a voyage like that that i have not personally test.

Me, I backpack, and do the same thing. Everything in my pack has been tested under controlled conditions, I carry backups (map + compass to back up the GPS), backup stove if the primary fails, etc.

Not only do you have to have the right gear, you also have to know how to use it when tired, stressed, in the dark and in adverse weather.

Now if you're asking about unnecessary gear (entertainment, etc) then I can understand. But basic survival gear?

was in leaving a job I loved to take a job that sucked but paid a lot more. 2 years of that job almost killed me.

Now on the other hand, if you're really serious, take a handful of people in the new company out to lunch. Buy them pizza, and talk to them. About life, interests, girlfriends, families, and see if they're a good fit. Don't talk to your bosses, talk to your peers in the new company, and the people who would work for you. That's the people who can help you make the decision.