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It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

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Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#221

Post by lukan »

Aurornis wrote: post #117
avidiax wrote: 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…

"$1,000 chairs"

Not an expert here, but from what I heard, that would be a bargain for a good office chair. And having a good chair or not - you literally feel the difference.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#222

Post by SoftTalker »

dingnuts wrote: post #208
dcrazy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it “soft fraud” when a manager at an investment bank regularly demands unreasonable productivity from their junior analysts, causing them to work late and effectively reduce their compensation rate? Only if the word “abuse” isn’t ambiguous and loaded enough for you!

Is this meant to be a gotcha question? Yes, unpaid overtime is fraud, and employers commit that kind of fraud probably just as regularly as employees doing the things up thread. none of it is good lol

The overtime is assumed and included in their 6-figure salaries.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#223

Post by sitkack »

userbinator wrote: post #46

I wish developers, and I'm saying this as one myself, were forced to work on a much slower machine, to flush out those who can't write efficient code. Software bloat has already gotten worse by at least an order of magnitude in the past decade.

Right, optimize for horrible tools so the result satisfies the bottom 20%. Counterpoint, id Software produced amazingly performant programs using top of the line gear. What are you trying to do is enforce a cultural norm by hobbling the programmer's hardware. If you want fast programs, you need to make that a criteria, slow hardware isn't going to get you there.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#224

Post by Hikikomori »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #215
the__alchemist wrote: post #198

Tangent: IMO top tier CPU is a no brainer if you play games, run performance-sensitive software (molecular dynamics or w/e), or compile code. Look at GPU purchasing. It's full of price games, stock problems, scalpers, 3rd party boards with varying levels of factory overclock, and unreasonable prices. CPU is a comparative cake walk: go to Amazon or w/e, and buy the one with the highest numbers in its name.

For games its generally not worthwhile since the performance is almost entirely based on gpu these days. Almost all build guides will say ‘get midrange cpu X over high end chip Y and put the savings to a better GPU’. Consoles in particular are just a decent gpu with a fairly low end cpu these days. The xbox one with a 1.75Ghz 8core AMD from a couple of generations ago now is still playing all the latest games.

Depending on the game there can be a large difference. Ryzen with larger cache have a large benefit in singleplayer games with many units like civilization or in most multiplayer games. Not so much GHz speed but being able to keep most of hot path code and data you need in cache.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#225

Post by alt227 »

margalabargala wrote: post #203
Aurornis wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s basic expense fraud. If a company policy says you can expense meals when taking clients out, but sales people started expensing their lunches when eating alone, it’s clearly expense fraud. I think this is obvious to everyone. Yet when engineers are allowed to expense meals when they’re working late and eating at the office, but people who are neither working late nor eating at the office start expensing their me…

Frankly this sort of thing should be ignored, if not explicitly encouraged, by the company. Engineers are very highly paid. Many are paid more than $100/hr if you break it down. If a salaried engineer paid the equivalent of $100/hr stays late doing anything, expenses a $25 meal, and during the time they stay late you get the equivalent of 20 minutes of work out of them- including in intangibles like team bonding via…

> Like you say, it's not really a gray area. It's a feature not a bug.

Luckily that comes down to the policy of the individual company and is not enforced by law. I am personally happy to pay engineers more so they can buy this sort of thing themselves and we dont open the company to this sort of abuse. Then its a known cost and the engineers can decide from themselves if they want to spend that $30 on a meal or something else.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#226

Post by AnotherGoodName »

enraged_camel wrote: post #220
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For games its generally not worthwhile since the performance is almost entirely based on gpu these days. Almost all build guides will say ‘get midrange cpu X over high end chip Y and put the savings to a better GPU’. Consoles in particular are just a decent gpu with a fairly low end cpu these days. The xbox one with a 1.75Ghz 8core AMD from a couple of generations ago now is still playing all the latest games.

>> For games its generally not worthwhile since the performance is almost entirely based on gpu these days. It completely depends on the game. Civilization series, for example, are mostly CPU bound, which is why turns take longer and longer as the games progress.

Factorio and stellaris are others i’m aware of.

Factorio it's an issue when you go way past the end game into the 1000+ hour megabases.

Stellaris is just poorly coded with lots of n^2 algorithms and can run slowly on anything once population and fleets grow a bit.

For civilisation the ai does take turns faster with a higher end cpu but imho it’s also no big deal since you spend most time scrolling the map and taking actions (gpu based perf).

I think it’s reasonable to state that the exceptions here are very exceptional.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#227

Post by alt227 »

master_crab wrote: post #149
Aurornis wrote: post #136

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 might come as a bit of a surprise to you, but most (really all) employees are in it for money. So if you are astonished that people optimize for their financial gain, that’s concerning. That’s why you implement rules. If you start trying to tease apart the motivations people have even if they are following those rules, you are going to end up more paranoid than Stalin.

> but most (really all) employees are in it for money

Yes, but some also have a moral conscience and were brought up to not take more than they need.

If you are not one of these types of people, then not taking complete over advantage of an offer like free meals probably seems like an alien concept.

I try to hire more people like this, it makes for a much stronger workforce when people are not all out to get whatever they can for themselves and look out for each others interests more.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#228

Post by necovek »

Aurornis wrote: post #117
avidiax wrote: 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…

If $20k is misspent by 1 in 100 employees, that's still $200 per employee per year: peanuts, really.

Just like with "policing", I'd only focus on uncovering and dealing with abusers after the fact, not on everyone — giving most people "benefits" that instead makes them feel valued.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#229

Post by shmerl »

Depends on what you need, but it's totally worth it if you want to spend less time say on compiling stuff.

Video processing, compression, games and etc. Anything computationally heavy directly benefits from it.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#230

Post by michaelt »

Aeolun wrote: post #152
Aurornis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well partly, yes.

But also, when I tell one of my reports to spec and order himself a PC, there should be several controls in place.

Firstly, I should give clear enough instructions that they know whether they should be spending around $600, $1500, or $6000.

Second, although my reports can freely spend ~$100 no questions asked, expenses in the $1000+ region should require my approval.

Thirdly, there is monitoring of where money is going; spending where the paperwork isn't in order gets flagged and checked. If someone with access to the company amazon account gets an above-ground pool shipped to their home, you can bet there will be questions to be answered.

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