Be careful how you try to present any ROI arguement. There are a lot of purchases that could be made to help the bottom line over time, but are no good right now if your company doesn't have the cash or venture capital is restricted. You may be able to prevent wasting a certain amount of time per day/per programmer, but there are other factors:

1. Does your boss expect you to just work longer hours without extra pay because you're on salary?
2. You boss thinks each programmer already has several minutes of unproductive time, so you might as well be compiling at the same time.
3. Your company can't find any more billable hours or additional work to justify the time savings. More productive hours may not directly create revenue.
4. Projects are not behind, so why bother saving the extra time? (Would be hard to believe.).

Part of me thinks you're arguing with an idiot or someone who has been beaten up too often and has developed penny wise and pound foolish thinking. I don't agree with the arguements I presented nor do I know if you're boss thinks this way.

The slow computers are probably another symptom about the problems with working for this company. Your boss is giving the impression he just doesn't care to try and make employees happy. It's not all about money. There are other 'perks' he could offer that don't require as much company cash (e.g. flex-time, telecommute, free muffins on Tuesday, allow you to try and find other solutions/buy just one machine for compiling.).

Be careful how you try to present any ROI argument. There are a lot of purchases that could be made to help the bottom line over time, but are no good right now if your company doesn't have the cash or if venture capital is restricted. You may be able to prevent wasting a certain amount of time per day/per programmer, but there are other factors:

1. Does your boss expect you to just work longer hours without extra pay because you're on salary?
2. You boss thinks each programmer already has several minutes of unproductive time, so you might as well be compiling at the same time.
3. Your company can't find any more billable hours or additional work to justify the time savings. More productive hours may not directly create revenue.
4. Projects are not behind, so why bother saving the extra time? (Would be hard to believe.).

Part of me thinks you're arguing with an idiot or someone who has been beaten up too often and has developed penny wise and pound foolish thinking. I don't agree with the arguments I presented nor do I know if your boss thinks this way.

The slow computers are probably another symptom about the problems with working for this company. Your boss is giving the impression he just doesn't care to try and make employees happy. It's not all about money. There are other 'perks' he could offer that don't require as much company cash (e.g. flex-time, telecommute, free muffins on Tuesday, allow you to try and find other solutions/buy just one machine for compiling.).