[h0p3]

There are people whose lives are improved by having an extra cent to spend. Seriously. It is measurable, observable, and real. It might not have a serious impact on the vast majority of people, but there are people who have very, very little money or have found themselves on a tipping point that small; pinching pennies alters their utility outcomes.

[InDubioProRubio]

https://xkcd.com/951/

Also, if you micro-optimize and that becomes your whole focus and ability to focus, your business is unable to innovate aka traverse the economic landscape and find new rich gradients and sources of "economic food", making you a dinosaur in a pit, doomed to eternally cannibalize on what other creatures descend into the pit and highly dependent on the pit not closing up for good.

[samastur]

No, they really aren't. Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time.

I admit my opinion is not based on first hand knowledge, but I have for years worked on projects trying to address poverty at different parts of this planet and can't think of a single one where this would be even remotely true.

[h0p3]

> Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time...I admit my opinion is not based on first hand knowledge...

My opinion, however, is based on first-hand knowledge. I've been the kid saving those pennies, and I've worked with those kids. I understand that in the vast majority of cases, an extra penny does nothing more. That isn't what your original comment above claimed, nor is it what you've claimed here. My counterexample is enough to demonstrate the falsehood. Arguing that there are better ways to distribute these pennies is another matter, and I take that seriously as well.

[imtringued]

>No, they really aren't. Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time.

Assuming a wage of $35/hour, each second is worth 1 cent. To save 1 cent you only need to reduce the time spent waiting for computers by a second across the entire lifetime of that person.

Now here is the beauty of this. There isn't just a single guy out there doing this. There are hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, doing it.

[fragmede]

The beauty of math is that you can throw numbers around and multiply and divide them and do silly things with them.

The average human life expectancy is 77.5 years, or 2.4457e+9 seconds. If you divide that by, say, 1 billion daily active users of Google, you get 2.445. So if you work at Google, and optimize a slow process, and save every user 1 second, once, you've saved 2 lives. If you're a Microsoft and make boot up take 1 second less across their billion or so devices, same thing.