Do they have cloud budget?
Slow dev machine is a deal breaker for me. I ask about dev machine quality in the interview bc I hate being bound by the machine I'm on. It's hard enough to focus on tasks, if I'm constantly having to take coffee breaks to compile things that shouldn't take that long it would drive me (more) crazy.
Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
51–60 of 71 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#52Not necessarily a bad thing. Your users are probably using potato computers. Make your app and dev environment work there too.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#53Years ago at one of my first job as a tech lead, our boss wanted give us the same computers as the people who will be using the application (this was a Windows desktop application). His argument was that we should experience the application running on the same hardware as the users will experience it.
I had to go into a long discussion explaining that we need to run a whole bunch of development tools besides running the application and therefore need much more powerful computer. I also explained that, if he makes developers that will by the hour, work deliberately slower, it will cost him more in the end. I think it was this final argument that won him over.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#54I 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…
I got a crap PC that literally exploded 2 weeks after I started working for a college in the IT dept.
I just brought my old PC and joined it to the domain. No one had a problem with it for some reason. (It was the wild west out there)
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#55>a Core i5 laptop with 16GB of ram running at 1.6GHz Not arguing that's enough, but it is probably better than the average customer laptop. So if you do get a much higher-end machine, it's worth making sure the app runs okay on something less capable than that.
That is a valid point, but in my case I am developing backend services. I work on 3 services, so most of the time I have 3 instances of Visual Studio running. Then outlook, chrome, git extensions, Notepad++, sometimes Word/Excel/PPT/Adobe Reader. I would also have some background stuff running like Service Fabric, Docket etc. This laptop is down to a crawl under this load.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#56Not necessarily a bad thing. Your users are probably using potato computers. Make your app and dev environment work there too.
This argument is correct only if you're testing the end-user component on the dev machine. I work on backend services.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#57There are a number of answers: 1) they are cheap 2) they don't like you and have given you the crap machine 3) they want you to create stuff that runs on a machine similar to the target audience of your product. So you'll build stuff that works on less speedy machines of all of those options its mostly 1, then two, and very very unlikely 3
Well, they are paying me a shitload of money as salary. That is what that doesn't make sense to me.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#58cause it's cheaper
Not really. A really, really good laptop can be given for 1% of the cost of paying the developer. IMO, it would be best to provide the best tool for the trade.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#59Well, 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'm running on an LG Ultrawide (49-inch, 5120 X 1440) monitor That sir is a super ultra-wide. I salute you!
Stretches across my whole desk.
Apple just started supporting the full resolution, natively, a couple of releases ago.
It's spoiled me rotten.
Re: Ask HN: Why do companies issue crappy machines to developers?
#60I 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…
I had a similar situation when working for Amazon as a non-Amazon employee. Super shitty laptop. My theory is that they want shitty laptops because it dissuades people from keeping them, and hypothetically keeping sensitive information on them. They were also treated rather disposable in my experience too.