Hi, GMAT Club. Thanks for your continuous help. Could you please and give feedback on my AWA for me, please?

PROMPT:

The following appeared in a memorandum from the director of research and development at Ready-to-Ware, a software engineering firm.

The package of benefits and incentives that Ready-to-Ware offers to professional staff is too costly. Our quarterly profits have declined since the package was introduced two years ago, at the time of our incorporation. Moreover, the package had little positive effect, as we have had only marginal success in recruiting and training high-quality professional staff. To become more profitable again, Ready-to-Ware should, therefore, offer the reduced benefits package that was in place two years ago and use the savings to fund our current research and development initiatives.

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

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The argument claims that the current package of benefits and incentives that Ready-to-Ware offers to professional staff is so costly as to drop the profit of the company. Furthermore, the argument states that the package had little upside on recruiting and training of high-quality professional staff and should be discontinued as to allow budget to fund research and development initiatives. Stated in this way the argument manipulates the facts and conveys a distorted view of the situation. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

First, the argument readily assumes that the reason for the decline in profit is the increase in costs related to the current package of benefits, introduced 2 years ago. This statement is a stretch since correlation does not necessarily mean causation. For example, a hypothetical company could have decreased its profits in a two-year period but have implemented a profitable program that was not as impactful as to offset other declines in profit. In short, the argument could have been much clearer if it explicitly quantified the direct impacts of the cost increase on profits.

Second, the argument claims that the package had little positive effect because the company did not have success in recruiting and training high-quality professional staff. This is again a very weak and unsupported claim as it assumes that the reason for success in the package is only in one metric. Furthermore, a significant part of the results on recruiting and training is realized only on the long term. If the argument had evaluated more options through a longer term, then it would be more convincing.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reason and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts. In order to assess the merits of a certain situation, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. In this particular case, the argument could have elaborated more on the drivers of drop in the company’s profit and positive impacts of the package. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.

sweetlyimproved - I see you have followed the chineseburned AWA template to the letter. As written, your essay can fetch you a score of 5 and above on the test. However, I still have a concern with the overall length of the passage. At 366 words, you may want to add in some more substance to each paragraph, in order to elongate the overall passage. It's good that you have a minimum number of grammar errors. Also, I would advise you to allocate 2 min of proofreading at the end of the section to rule out a few errors and improve style. All the best.
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