Let's stop comparing every single expense with the "fully loaded cost of an average US developer". Averages are skewed by higher end companies. There's some w

Let's stop comparing every single expense with the "fully loaded cost of an average US developer". Averages are skewed by higher end companies. There's some weird thinking that permeates these sorts of discussions that somehow every developer is $500k/year, because some facebook and google engineers get stock options. "It seems like it would be a win if it improved productivity and/or retention even a tiny little bit." Why? Perhaps your "seems like" is, in fact, wrong, and there's no measurable improvement in my you the latest gear every year. Perhaps you get a 1% 'productivity improvement' over the year - on 2000 hrs, let's say that's 20 hrs more of 'productivity' from you. But all the overhead - purchasing overhead, inventory management, network provisioning, security checks, your time in moving stuff over, reinstalling/upgrading your software, moving keys, etc - costs more than that mythical 1% of 'improvement' you might deliver. I bought my own RAM for a company-provided tower once, and a couple IT folks flipped out. But it did make my system measurably important, and cost me... $70 at the time (something like that) - went from swapping to spinning rust all the time to everything fitting in memory, and no swapping. But it ruffled feathers, even though the company was not out any money. Take the raise. Become an independent consultant. Charge more. Buy your own hardware, use what you want.