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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

#121

Post by usrusr »

kmac_ wrote: post #40

It 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.

I really like that idea and I don't want to suggest that it can't ever work, but the sudden purchase frenzy that did not happen is far from the only failure mode. Leave it running a decade or two and things might look very different. Slow, invisible expenses creep and in the end you have a culture where those who spend a little slower than others are shamed into buying stuff just to make the others not look wasteful. There are many subtle mechanism at play that all facilitate expenses creep and there needs to be something pushing in the opposite direction. I'd rate it an unsolved problem.

Perhaps some generous budget limit, with a clear message that it's not intended to be fully consumed, and a clear rule that a certain percentage of whatever will be left at the end of the year is donated to some universally accepted good cause? Children and cute animals, please not religion. "You can get the book, no problem, but keep in mind that being the book means $5 less ponies!" (just don't make it manatees, you'd risk me working on a chromebook)

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#122

Post by bluGill »

al_borland wrote: post #116
jimnotgym wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I have been on the senior management team of several companies and have worked with sales. Your lazy stereotype is as bad a suggesting programmers all sit in dark rooms with starwars T shirts and Body Odour issues. I have seen sales people create very complex excel models, and use low code tools to build their own pipelines because corporate IT were too pig ignorant to help them. I have seen them use screen recor…

> because corporate IT were too pig ignorant to help them Is corporate IT the issue here, or is it that companies aren’t setup in a way for random teams to dedicate time to build and support things for other random teams? The people in corp IT have jobs and deliverables, and none of them are building tools for the sales team. I wouldn’t expect corp IT to build things for the sales team, anymore than I’d expect the sa…

IT is a cost center so management geduces their budget as much as they think they dare. When IT struggles to afford a good backu, system they can't afford to figure how to support whatever tool will help you.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#123

Post by npteljes »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #44
watermelon0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jetbrains tools are the same; you can buy personal subscription, and use the tools no matter where you work. If you have a subscription for 12 consecutive months, you get perpetual fallback license for version of the tools that were available at the start of the period.

Keep in mind you can't use personal license at work.

To elaborate, yes, Jetbrains allows for this, but the employer might not. At my company, personal licensed software are up for individual approval.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#124

Post by al_borland »

pflenker wrote: post #74

I have never even heard of a company where a single person on the level of an engineer was able to spend 100k without getting approval. Just ask for example sales persons on engineer level how easy it is to get 50€ for something they think will have a huge impact on closing a deal. They have the exact same problems.

According to our corporate portal, I have $100k of signing authority. Meanwhile, I can’t get approval for spend about $2k on flight and hotel to go to a conference that would be valuable for me. I’m going to end up paying out of pocket. I have co-workers who are afraid to order a new mouse when their current one is broken.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#125

Post by JonChesterfield »

itsArtur wrote: post #114
bjt12345 wrote: post #86

I purchase my own software licences and claim it on tax. Because it's a false economy. I've won awards at work, became indispensable on certain projects, and have been given pay rises, choose the work I want to do, through finding the affordable right tools for the job and purchasing them. My Jetbrains licenses are a classic example of this. I couldn't imagine refractoring code without it. If the cost cutting stopped…

im curious - what are some other examples?

Obsidian is a contender.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#126

Post by repeekad »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #71
redditor98654 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix?

Don’t hire idiots and assholes and this policy becomes pretty self policing.

This is the reason bureaucracy exists, the more people at a company the higher probably one of those idiots or assholes slipped through the cracks, at large companies you just have to assume they got in

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#127

Post by JonChesterfield »

There are tools out there that devs pay for themselves. That's an answer to the paperwork insanity. If the tool is useful enough relative to the price, go with direct to (developer-)consumer.

I know instances of that working for jetbrains, sublime, beyondcompare, matlab and obsidian. I can see web browsers and off site backup fitting that model.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#128

Post by al_borland »

zarzavat wrote: post #69
atq2119 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I wouldn't just approve an individual Copilot subscription either. The problem isn't the money, it's the copyright and whether trade secrets are being leaked. Those things can surely be solved, but it's far from trivial.

Okay imagine you’re an employee. You are ranked against your coworkers based on individual productivity, either explicitly or implicitly. You can choose to either spend $10/month to get a big productivity multiplier, or you can play it by the book, not use it, and be the first one out the door the next time the company decides it needs to find efficiencies in a down market. What do you choose?

Buying copilot on my own, using a personal account, would have me fired for violating our data security policies. No need to wait for a layoff.

I have access to it now, but it’s through the company with whatever policies they put in place through Microsoft’s enterprise offering.

Now that I have it, I don’t find it that useful. It has not been the productivity multiplier I was promised. A big part of this could be down to how the plug-in is built in VS Code. The tab key hijacking made me turn off suggestions. Based on the stats, only about 20% of suggestions are accepted. That’s too low a number to take control of a key used as often as tab.

Re: Problem with selling developer tools is that devs have no purchasing authority

#129

Post by jt2190 »

bjt12345 wrote: post #86

I purchase my own software licences and claim it on tax. Because it's a false economy. I've won awards at work, became indispensable on certain projects, and have been given pay rises, choose the work I want to do, through finding the affordable right tools for the job and purchasing them. My Jetbrains licenses are a classic example of this. I couldn't imagine refractoring code without it. If the cost cutting stopped…

> … claim it on tax.

How does a U.S. employee (exempt, W2 form) do this?

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