A good thing in my opinion. 95% of the tools are worthless. In a lot of cases a personal preference of a dev. Not a shared one. And sometimes sold by a sales representative to a dev. Important to have a guarden.
Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
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Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#32Nearly right. I don't think many sales and finance people have that kind of authority either. That's why you see everyone using the company tools or free tiers. You need to sell to peoples bosses. Save time, make projects more transparent, take away freedom, that sort of thing. This is probably why Excel is so ubiquitous. Also that Excel is the most powerful tool that Corporate IT will let you have. Try and get Corpo…
Excel is ubiquitous because literally anyone can use it. Unlike a database, there is a direct visual representation of what you’re building. It is included in all m365 licenses and has been relatively cheap for a perpetual license for years.
As for allowing WSL for sales, have you ever actually worked with someone in sales? At 99% of companies, even the most technically literate sales person can just barely send an email attachment without help. What exactly do you think they’re going to do with WSL??
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#33I only had this issue the one time while I was an employee: I wanted a Thinkpad, but management insisted I got a shitty Dell. In the end, they got me a Thinkpad. Other than that, whenever I've asked for a book or some tool, I simply got it, even expensive split keyboards. Now that I'm self employed, I just buy what I need. Which isn't much, really. Very few "developer tools" are useful enough to spend money on, let a…
If you have to ask, then you don’t have authority.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#34So true. Getting a Copilot subscription for $10/mo was an uphill battle. My daily supply of coffee alone costs the company more that that.
You guys get coffee? /s
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#35Correct - and this can be extended into any ML/AI team within a company too. The folks wanting to build something advanced or innovative will never have the authority themselves to get the tooling they need. Writing from experience here, my team wanted to get a application (or even a trial of a particular application) that would help with LLM hosting and model building, and it had to go up to SVP level to get sign-off.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#36I only had this issue the one time while I was an employee: I wanted a Thinkpad, but management insisted I got a shitty Dell. In the end, they got me a Thinkpad. Other than that, whenever I've asked for a book or some tool, I simply got it, even expensive split keyboards. Now that I'm self employed, I just buy what I need. Which isn't much, really. Very few "developer tools" are useful enough to spend money on, let a…
If you have to ask, then you don’t have authority.
If you get what you ask for without fuss, then it's not an issue. It becomes an issue if you have to slog your way through corporate bureaucracy^H^Hzy to get basic things.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#37A good thing in my opinion. 95% of the tools are worthless. In a lot of cases a personal preference of a dev. Not a shared one. And sometimes sold by a sales representative to a dev. Important to have a guarden.
Important for what reason?
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#38I only had this issue the one time while I was an employee: I wanted a Thinkpad, but management insisted I got a shitty Dell. In the end, they got me a Thinkpad. Other than that, whenever I've asked for a book or some tool, I simply got it, even expensive split keyboards. Now that I'm self employed, I just buy what I need. Which isn't much, really. Very few "developer tools" are useful enough to spend money on, let a…
If you have to ask, then you don’t have authority.
It depends on how strictly the request is scrutinized. I can spend exactly 0€ myself. But when I request a new machine, the order is placed immediately.
On the other hand I requested three months access to frontend masters which was promptly denied citing I should use our Udemy subscription.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#39Selling dev-tools to devs is like selling toys to kids - you target the parents (or the paying CxOs in the company). One should learn from the likes of Slack, Postman, etc. -- make it the de-facto tools for the devs/users and make them happy, then they go and ask their parents/approvers to buy them.
Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority
#40It depends on the company. One company I worked for had a policy of "Just buy what you need that makes your work easier: books, licenses, and even hardware. Management time spent on decisions is too expensive, so we default to instant approval." Did developers go on a buying spree? No, the same amount of stuff was bought as before the policy. And it did make life easier.