As well as just the hardware speed, I think for some it would also improve their motivation, and you may gain more from an employee in that. It also depends wh

As well as just the hardware speed, I think for some it would also improve their motivation, and you may gain more from an employee in that. It also depends what your doing, if you are after someone to produce great pixel perfect designs, get them some decent screens. If you have an app where the latest i7 and SSD can cut compilation time in half you can probably make a good gain there by not having the programmer get distracted each time they compile.