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It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

blog.howardjohn.info

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Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

soft fraud mentality This isn’t about fraud anymore. It’s about how suspiciously managers want to view their employees. That’s a separate issue (but not one directed at employees).

If a company says you have permission to spend money on something for a purpose, but employees are abusing that to spend money on something that clearly violates that stated purpose, that’s into fraud territory. This is why I call it the soft fraud mentality: When people see some fraudulent spending and decide that it’s fine because they don’t think the policy is important. Managers didn’t care. It didn’t come out of…

This is disingenuous but soft-fraud is not a term I’d use for it. Fraud is a legal term. You either commit fraud or you do not. There is no “maybe” fraud—you comply with a policy or law or you don’t.

As you mentioned, setting policy that isn’t abused is hard. But abuse isn’t fraud—it’s abuse—and abuse is its own rabbit hole that covers a lot of these maladaptive behaviors you are describing.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#152
post #10

Employers, even the rich FANG types, are quite penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to developer hardware. Limiting the number and size of monitors. Putting speedbumps (like assessments or doctor's notes) on ergo accessories. Requiring special approval for powerful hardware. Requiring special approval for travel, and setting hotel and airfare caps that haven't been adjusted for inflation. To be fair, I know ple…

Every well funded startup I’ve worked for went through a period where employees could get nearly anything they asked for: New computers, more monitors, special chairs, standing desks, SaaS software, DoorDash when working late. If engineers said they needed it, they got it. Then some period of time later they start looking at spending in detail and can’t believe how much is being spent by the 25% or so who abuse the p…

Don’t you think the problem there is that you hired the wrong people?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#153
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was talking beyond just compute hardware. Stuff like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/womenintech/comments/1jusbj2/amazon...

All of OPs posts in that thread are blatantly Chat GPT output

You sound like a generated message from a corporate reputation AI defense bot

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#154
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company says you have permission to spend money on something for a purpose, but employees are abusing that to spend money on something that clearly violates that stated purpose, that’s into fraud territory. This is why I call it the soft fraud mentality: When people see some fraudulent spending and decide that it’s fine because they don’t think the policy is important. Managers didn’t care. It didn’t come out of…

This is disingenuous but soft-fraud is not a term I’d use for it. Fraud is a legal term. You either commit fraud or you do not. There is no “maybe” fraud—you comply with a policy or law or you don’t. As you mentioned, setting policy that isn’t abused is hard. But abuse isn’t fraud—it’s abuse—and abuse is its own rabbit hole that covers a lot of these maladaptive behaviors you are describing.

Fraud is also used colloquially and it doesn't seem we're in a court of justice rn.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#155
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the opposite. You're underestimating the scope of time lost by losing a few percent in productivity per employee across hundreds of thousands of employees. You want speed limits not speed bumps. And they should be pretty high limits...

I don't believe anyone is losing >1% productivity from these measures (at FANG employers).

Actually, just time spent compiling, or waiting for other builds to finish makes investing in the top level macbook pro worth it every 3 years. I think the calculation assumed something like 1-2% of my time was spent compiling, and I cost like $100k per year.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$3,000 standing desks?? It's some wood, metal and motors. I got one from IKEA in about 2018 for 500 gbp and it's still my desk today. You can get Chinese ones now for about 150 gbp.

The people demanding new top spec MacBook Pros every year aren’t the same people requesting the cheapest Chinese standing desk they can find.

I can understand paying more for fast processors and so on but a standing desk just goes up and down. What features do the high end desks have that I am missing out on?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#157
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of a good office chair is comparable to a top tier gaming pc, if not higher.

Not for an enterprise buying (or renting) furniture in bulk it isn’t. The chair will also easily last a decade and be turned over to the next employee if this one leaves… unlike computer hardware which is unlikely to be reused and will historically need to be replaced every 24-36 months even if your dev sticks around anyway.

Right, the employee with unlimited spend would want to sit in a used chair.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#158
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of a good office chair is comparable to a top tier gaming pc, if not higher.

Are there any FANG employers unwilling to provide good office chairs? I think even cheap employers offer these.

I think my employer hed a contest to see which of 4 office chairs people liked the most, then they bought the one that everyone hated. I’m not quite sure anymore what kind of reason was given.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#159
Depends on the workload.

I spent a few grand building a new machine with a 24-core CPU. And, while my gcc Docker builds are MUCH faster, the core Angular app still builds a few seconds slower than on my years old MacBook Pro. Even with all of my libraries split into atoms, built with Turbo, and other optimizations.

6-10 seconds to see a CSS change make its way from the editor to the browser is excruciating after a few hours, days, weeks, months, and years.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#160
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of a good office chair is comparable to a top tier gaming pc, if not higher.

Not for an enterprise buying (or renting) furniture in bulk it isn’t. The chair will also easily last a decade and be turned over to the next employee if this one leaves… unlike computer hardware which is unlikely to be reused and will historically need to be replaced every 24-36 months even if your dev sticks around anyway.

> computer hardware which is unlikely to be reused and will historically need to be replaced every 24-36 months

That seems unreasonably short. My work computer is 10 years old (which is admittedly the other extreme, and far past the lifecycle policy, but it does what I need it to do and I just never really think about replacing it).

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