It's also kinda hard to measure how much a bit of hardware helps or hinders a user.
I guess it's something like cost vs average needs. If most people can do most things without too much difficulty then you're mostly good?
Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#32No post body was provided.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#33I've been stuck with a older, underpowered dev machine but in compromise I've also been given a VM in the cloud to work with. It has way more horse power for way less cost than any comparable laptop. At this point it feels like they just don't want to manage physical devices anymore and want the flexibility of renting whatever compute resources are needed for development.
Edit: The actual day to day experience is not so bad with vscode and the right plugins.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to explain to both friends and romantic partners that it’s absolutely insane to penny-pinch on certain things. Pepper, for example. I always buy a good pepper grinder with the best quality whole peppercorns in it. The difference it makes to a dish is just incredible. This costs something like 3 cents per meal instead of 1 cent.
Here's how I like to put it: "No one faults a mechanic for buying high-end tools and top of the line equipment. I program for a living, how is buying an expensive computer any different"?
Oh, but they do!
The cost of cheap tools can be a fraction of a well-made tool. On paper (ie. the only way in which a manager can compare them) they have identical functionality. So why spend 100x more?
Even if you then have to replace them more often, it's not likely that they need to be replaced 100x more often. And even if they do, that's not in this year's budget, so you can deal with that problem later, while saving a bunch now.
The intangible cost of crappy tools is very hard to measure in a way that can compete with the dollar cost in a manger's mind.
And so similarly, you get two extremes of developer culture: Aeron chairs, standing desks, subtle lighting, and good machines or crappy desks, left-over chairs, 7/11-style lighting, and cheap laptops.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#35Well, in my case, I have been using laptops for development for at least ten years. I can easily afford a real powerhouse desktop, but I have deliberately chosen laptops. Most of the time, I don't need a huge amount of power. I'm not rebuilding the Linux core, every time I compile; usually an app. For my server work, all I really need, is an FTP connection, a browser, and a text editor. The reason that I prefer lapto…
I very briefly had an M1 Pro laptop (unfortunately it came with a faulty keyboard, so now I'm waiting another month for the replacement to ship), and I was blown away by how fast it is. My daily driver is currently the 2015 MacBook Pro, and I hadn't realised what I was missing.
Looking at benchmarks, it turns out that the M1 Pro is actually a full 8-9x faster than the 2015 model at multicore workloads (which most dev workflows will be): twice as fast single core, 4x more cores + 2 efficiency cores!
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#36I once took a contract for a FAANG that had me on the shittiest piece of DELL Optiplex Dell had ever plexed. You could not have sold it for negative dollars. It took me easily 2x longer to do everything I needed to do. The contract paid out about $150,000, so the high-end graphics lappytop I needed that would have cost them $3,000 cost them $75,000 instead. This does not account for my lost sanity. Fury. Rage. Tempes…
Wouldn't you normally supply your own equipment for a contract?
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#37I once took a contract for a FAANG that had me on the shittiest piece of DELL Optiplex Dell had ever plexed. You could not have sold it for negative dollars. It took me easily 2x longer to do everything I needed to do. The contract paid out about $150,000, so the high-end graphics lappytop I needed that would have cost them $3,000 cost them $75,000 instead. This does not account for my lost sanity. Fury. Rage. Tempes…
Wouldn't you normally supply your own equipment for a contract?
The manager was a creepy ass creeper who wanted your machine tied to his machine so he could observe you whenever he felt like it. Yes, one of those.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's how I like to put it: "No one faults a mechanic for buying high-end tools and top of the line equipment. I program for a living, how is buying an expensive computer any different"?
Oh, but they do! The cost of cheap tools can be a fraction of a well-made tool. On paper (ie. the only way in which a manager can compare them) they have identical functionality. So why spend 100x more? Even if you then have to replace them more often, it's not likely that they need to be replaced 100x more often. And even if they do, that's not in this year's budget, so you can deal with that problem later, while sa…
Some people find it virtuous to make do with a lesser whatever. This can happen for a number of reasons, usually a very painful personal experience or a type of severe brainwashing (your parents convince you walking a mile to school is virtuous, so now you do the same).
If you find yourself having an eloquent long winded discussion with such a person, explaining to them they aren’t saving money by foregoing the soda at a night out (it’s cheaper to buy water after all), looking around the menu for the best value, half of which they can definitely take home (at this point I start to wonder if it’s theater, and even if it is theater, you’d have to be sick to even take part in such theatrics), I don’t know, what’s there to discuss. You almost want to throw a wad of $500 at their face.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#39Because the people making the decisions are not the same ones doing the work.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#40I buy all my developers new MacBook Pro's every 18 months. Partly b/c I am (was) a developer and also I understand time/value/money and there is ZERO point in wasting time because of a few $1,000 laptop over a couple years.