9 ms·
Worth it to build a PC for remote software engineer?
Question for remote software engineers/software developers who use their own custom built PC for work:
- Do you find you get a reasonable performance uplift from a desktop over a laptop?
- What's a good sweet spot in terms of price?
- How do you negotiate with your employer so that you can use your own hardware for work?
- How do you deal with switching between your PC and an employer provided laptop?
- Do you write of the expense on your taxes?
- How often do you upgrade?
I'm contemplating building a Linux-based development machine (gaming is not a consideration) for doing back-end web service development.
EDIT: fix formatting
- mattbillenstein 7y agoBig monitor or two is needed more than absolute top line cpu performance - I use a small nuc like system at work as a desktop. At home, I have a PC with a big monitor for gaming and I ssh to my macbook for dev work from that using the ubuntu shell.
- lliamander 7y agoCertainly screen real estate is important, but somewhat irrelevant to my question. I already have the monitor situation covered, so it's not like I'm having to make a trade-off between pixels and performance. Just to clarify: I'm not asking whether a workstation desktop is necessary. I understand that it's not. I'm asking to whether it is a good investment, and how people have made that work with their employer's IT policies.
- mattbillenstein 7y agoI don't know about IT policies, but I think any reasonably good IT org would just consider everyone's machine compromised -- owned by employer or employee both and take security measures commiserate to the needs of the business. Regarding it being an investment - if you think anything can make you more productive and you can get the business to pay for it - sure, why not? Could be a chair or a desk or a coffee maker or a computer.