Err, in this instance I don't think they were directly comparable.
We always had the impression somebody far up the chain would be looking at the spreadsheet and thinking about where they want to invest further. It may have been our imagination.
In fact, now that I think about it, probably the opposite was happening because a lot of effort when into growing the Marin Studio in California which I'm sure would have been even more expensive per head than us.
Meh. This is what overseas management do to Australian subsidiaries all the time. They don't worry about the profits made by the employees, what they tend to believe is "It's Australia, we get tax incentives to work here, there's no way Australia workers could be as productive as U.S. workers."
Then they try to introduce business practices that only work in the U.S. and consequently fail. I've seen it time and time again.
While I'm a US worker, I managed a team in Bulgaria. Initially I synchronized via email, chat with each team mate. Met once a month for architectural review over video.
Management hoisted that we had to do stand ups over video chat daily. It was done 9PM EST, and 5AM their time. The time was picked to match my managers PST schedule. There was also the weekly backlog grooming, biweekly poker plannning, etc.
Working with that team, a European Sales team and on site European vendors. The two things I've seen is our meeting culture grates on them. Secondly my American team mates, I don't want to say looked down. But consistently commented, on lack of devotion and effort of other counterparts.
We always had the impression somebody far up the chain would be looking at the spreadsheet and thinking about where they want to invest further. It may have been our imagination.
In fact, now that I think about it, probably the opposite was happening because a lot of effort when into growing the Marin Studio in California which I'm sure would have been even more expensive per head than us.