9 ms·

About five years ago, a place I was working at was selecting a new laptop for all employees. Mine was up for replacement, so I was interested in what they were

by rvense 6y ago

About five years ago, a place I was working at was selecting a new laptop for all employees. Mine was up for replacement, so I was interested in what they were picking. They'd arrived at some god-awful Lenovo gamer model. It fit the performance and price point they'd decided they needed. I said I'd prefer to have something smaller with less Christmas lights. "Policy is everyone has to have the same laptop, and some people need more graphics power than the one you're asking for." Turns out there'd been some big thing back and forth already about size and performance and this was the compromise that nobody liked. "But why does everyone have to have the same laptop?" I asked. "Well, it's just policy. Every desk has a docking station, and we don't want to have to buy different ones." So I flipped the selected monstrosity over to reveal the extremely lacking docking connector at the bottom. There were some awkward laughs and I got my Thinkpad.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
I can only imagine the grin on your face :)
Bootwizard 6y ago
I did almost exactly the same thing at my last job. I'm a game dev and they provided us all with woefully underpowered MacBooks that didn't even have a dedicated GPU. The game engine was constantly crashing while working and making it very difficult to get anything done. I recorded the amount of time wasted on these crashes over the course of a week. I then proved to management that there was about 5 hours a week being completely wasted for me waiting for my machine to open applications after they crash. So after that we all got new MacBooks that were properly spec'd out for game development. I got to pick the specs :)
- VHRanger 6y ago
  Why would anyone ever do game development on Apple hardware? You're making iOS games?
  - mcraiha 6y ago
    Yes, iOS cross compile is a pain. And Unity is a bit more stable in Macs (YMMV).
    - VHRanger 6y ago
      Yeah this part is something that annoys me but lots of the Unity team is working on macbooks, even though it's only a relevant platform for iOS as far as the end user is concerned.
- JJMcJ 6y ago
  > So after that we all got laughed at and told to stay later and work weekends. At far too many companies.
  - Doxin 6y ago
    At which point you go "Fuck you pay me" presumably? Or am I alone in pushing back at underpaid overtime?
    - JJMcJ 6y ago
      > am I alone There isn't enough pushback, unfortunately.
robbyking 6y ago
I had the opposite experience once: at my previous company we were all issued mid-tier ThinkPads. Completely out of the blue we all received an email saying we'd be given a set budget and would be able to choose any machine we wanted. We went from 100% Windows to about 80% OS X within a week. They ended up giving the old ThinkPads away. (I put Ubuntu on one and gave it to my mom.) This was in 2012 or so, and because of that I was able to learn Objective-C and go on to work on the first version of our native app. It made me a stronger engineer, and allowed the company to have developers who were already familiar with the product and backend services work on native. It was win-win.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  That many people willingly moved to OSX? Why? Was it a graphics company?
  - db48x 6y ago
    Never underestimate the power of marketing.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    Are MacBooks any good for graphics? :-O
  - pak9rabid 6y ago
    OSX is great at getting the fuck out of the way and letting you get more work done in my experience (development work).
    - Shared404 6y ago
      I think it's just what you're used to. Put me in front of a Linux desktop, and I can just start working. Put me in front of a Windows desktop, give me 30 minutes to set up what I need, and I can start working. Put me in front of a Mac, and come back to me still yelling at it five hours later. I'm sure I could learn if it was worth the time to me, but I definitely wouldn't argue that it's superior (for me personally at least).
grogenaut 6y ago
This is literally my job. Amazon calls it Dive Deep/Earn Trust. I get called in constantly to "Remove Blockers". Part of it is just understanding why the policy exists and then getting a policy modification. While it's definitely an art, it's not as hard as a lot of people think, but you can't be afraid to escalate.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  This sounds like an awesome job. Literally paid to fix frustrating bureacratic processes. Like a professional user advocate paid to convince developers that the users do have a point and the request is not impossible.
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    Do you like firefighting and having uncomfortable conversations with people all the time.
    - Terretta 6y ago
      Welp, I need more of yous than two pizzas would feed.
      - kill_nate_kill 6y ago
        Shit, that's like .8 of me.
    - wayanon 6y ago
      Is this basically a Business Analyst?
      - grogenaut 6y ago
        Principal Engineer
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by rvense 6y ago

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

I can only imagine the grin on your face :)

Bootwizard 6y ago

I did almost exactly the same thing at my last job. I'm a game dev and they provided us all with woefully underpowered MacBooks that didn't even have a dedicated GPU. The game engine was constantly crashing while working and making it very difficult to get anything done. I recorded the amount of time wasted on these crashes over the course of a week. I then proved to management that there was about 5 hours a week being completely wasted for me waiting for my machine to open applications after they crash. So after that we all got new MacBooks that were properly spec'd out for game development. I got to pick the specs :)

VHRanger 6y ago
Why would anyone ever do game development on Apple hardware? You're making iOS games?
- mcraiha 6y ago
  Yes, iOS cross compile is a pain. And Unity is a bit more stable in Macs (YMMV).
  - VHRanger 6y ago
    Yeah this part is something that annoys me but lots of the Unity team is working on macbooks, even though it's only a relevant platform for iOS as far as the end user is concerned.
JJMcJ 6y ago
> So after that we all got laughed at and told to stay later and work weekends. At far too many companies.
- Doxin 6y ago
  At which point you go "Fuck you pay me" presumably? Or am I alone in pushing back at underpaid overtime?
  - JJMcJ 6y ago
    > am I alone There isn't enough pushback, unfortunately.

robbyking 6y ago

I had the opposite experience once: at my previous company we were all issued mid-tier ThinkPads. Completely out of the blue we all received an email saying we'd be given a set budget and would be able to choose any machine we wanted. We went from 100% Windows to about 80% OS X within a week. They ended up giving the old ThinkPads away. (I put Ubuntu on one and gave it to my mom.) This was in 2012 or so, and because of that I was able to learn Objective-C and go on to work on the first version of our native app. It made me a stronger engineer, and allowed the company to have developers who were already familiar with the product and backend services work on native. It was win-win.

jimmaswell 6y ago
That many people willingly moved to OSX? Why? Was it a graphics company?
- db48x 6y ago
  Never underestimate the power of marketing.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Are MacBooks any good for graphics? :-O
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  OSX is great at getting the fuck out of the way and letting you get more work done in my experience (development work).
  - Shared404 6y ago
    I think it's just what you're used to. Put me in front of a Linux desktop, and I can just start working. Put me in front of a Windows desktop, give me 30 minutes to set up what I need, and I can start working. Put me in front of a Mac, and come back to me still yelling at it five hours later. I'm sure I could learn if it was worth the time to me, but I definitely wouldn't argue that it's superior (for me personally at least).

grogenaut 6y ago

This is literally my job. Amazon calls it Dive Deep/Earn Trust. I get called in constantly to "Remove Blockers". Part of it is just understanding why the policy exists and then getting a policy modification. While it's definitely an art, it's not as hard as a lot of people think, but you can't be afraid to escalate.

Kinrany 6y ago
This sounds like an awesome job. Literally paid to fix frustrating bureacratic processes. Like a professional user advocate paid to convince developers that the users do have a point and the request is not impossible.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  Do you like firefighting and having uncomfortable conversations with people all the time.
  - Terretta 6y ago
    Welp, I need more of yous than two pizzas would feed.
    - kill_nate_kill 6y ago
      Shit, that's like .8 of me.
  - wayanon 6y ago
    Is this basically a Business Analyst?
    - grogenaut 6y ago
      Principal Engineer
- brokenmachine 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]