[a_c_s]

Then there would be no technical support staff - upgrading computers generates $0 new revenues and has significant costs.

Clearly there is value in not forcing developers to use 15 year old machines, but it isn't so clear to quantify.

Since whomever 'quantifies' this data then has enormous influence as to what projects are worked on, you risk just shuffling around the politics: instead of fighting over what projects to work on it becomes about how many dollars each project is worth.

[vladimirralev]

Unless you discount the expert time saved per year. This is actually a real metric. How do you think they calculate the budget for tech support? They measure time wasted in tech issues, multiply by the expert wage and then start doing a binary search up and down to see what optimizes the cost at average salary increments. Of course politics corrupt the process eventually.