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I will never again accept a job where I must use a work-provided machine. I spend 8+ hours a day at work. Being forced to spend that time in some crappy, bloate

I will never again accept a job where I must use a work-provided machine. I spend 8+ hours a day at work. Being forced to spend that time in some crappy, bloated, locked-down OS is 100% a quality of life issue. If I can provision and manage the machine myself, fine. I'll even purchase the hardware. Prefer it that way.

gravypod 5y ago
You can also find a company that just buys you a computer you would like and gives you root on your machine, right? I've even had people build their own PCs when starting at startups because they wanted specific specs.
koolba 5y ago
Having a machine that is actually usable is orthogonal to having one dedicated to a job. Computers are dirt cheap, so have a separate one and it’s easy to keep your work products separated. As an added bonus, it gives you one more place to run bloated^Wmandatory Electron apps.
- maccard 5y ago
  > Computers are dirt cheap, so have a separate one and it’s easy to keep your work products separated. Not everyone has the same "dirt cheap" requirements for hardware for work; I work in games where a medium-range GPU is a requirement, and compiling large projects requires a much higer spec CPU (e.g. everyone on our team has at least a 3970x, which is ~$2000, and comes with a motherboard of $800). There's also space considerations - having two desktop machines works if you live in the US where houses are enormous; meanwhile I live in a 500sqft apartment with a 55 inch wide desk in my second bedroom - putting a second tower, plus extra power plus a KVM plus extra networking is a no-go.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  Building a decent computer (only desktop, without a good monitor or peripherals) equals to spending at least three months' salary for me, probably more. JFYI, not every part of the world lives like Silicon Valley. I'd rather keep my .gitconfig hacks and a single machine.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  I spent two months salaries to buy just the cheapest latest GPU and a mid-range monitor.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Having a machine that is actually usable is orthogonal to having one dedicated to a job. Depends on the job. Work machines are often unusable because of measures mandated by employers to protect IP. Especially with big employers, you can't just get a random physical or virtual machine and do work-related things on it, not without angering the IT or cybersecurity department.
Bilal_io 5y ago
Each has its pros and cons. I used my own machine while the work-provided laptop sat next to me the whole time until I was forced to use the provided laptop. On one hand, my life-work balance improved, on the other hand I loath the stupidly slow machine that seems limited in every aspect compared to my own.
dumpsterdiver 5y ago
> I will never again accept a job where I must use a work-provided machine. I spend 8+ hours a day at work. Being forced to spend that time in some crappy, bloated, locked-down OS is 100% a quality of life issue. If I can provision and manage the machine myself, fine. I'll even purchase the hardware. Prefer it that way. From experience, I totally understand your frustration - and to anyone in this situation, I would suggest leaving to a company that provides modern hardware. That being said, I humbly ask that you try to put yourself in the shoes of those who are charged with ensuring these machines remain complaint (contractual obligations that must be met). Meeting these compliance obligations means continued, uninterrupted business, and that business pays our salary. From a security/compliance perspective, I don't think it's unreasonable to do your work on a locked down machine if you are able to do your job, assuming that you have a modern machine that will plow through the overhead effortlessly. If you weren't provided with a modern machine though that can do this - get out of there as fast as you can.
- rofrol 5y ago
  Modern or not, still can bloated and locked down.
- thefr0g 5y ago
  > From a security/compliance perspective, I don't think it's unreasonable to do your work on a locked down machine if you are able to do your job Not at all. But from a security perspective I think it's also not unreasonable to request that my data isn't exfiltrated to some shady anti-virus company and my personal details aren't stored in a rancid (active) directory service.
- plorkyeran 5y ago
  Modern hardware isn't a panacea. My work m1 laptop went from the fastest machine I've ever used to painfully slow as soon as the antivirus garbage was ported to arm64 and I had to start running it again.
  - dumpsterdiver 5y ago
    It's really unfortunate how limited the current m1 systems are on ram. My current usage exceeds the available specs by far in that regard - 16gb, are they joking? There's nothing "pro" about 16gb of ram, that's pedestrian. You are absolutely right though, that no matter how good the hardware is there will always be bad software that manages to slog it down. I'm sorry that you have to deal with that.
peakaboo 5y ago
Exactly my feelings as well. And it has worked very well for me too. I use Linux and usually companies just let me run my own machine. It's been awesome. Everything set up exactly how I want it, with beautiful themes, colors and shortcuts.
_wolfie_ 5y ago
Depends on the workplace. I have company provided laptop (32G RAM, Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U) which was empty (well, Windows) and I just nuked it and install archlinux. There is no software provided by the company and no external control on the machine. So I just work-provided machine, but with my config and I just saved bunch of money since I did not have to buy it.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Did they not provide a VPN config? Or was it something you were able to re-setup yourself?
  - _wolfie_ 5y ago
    Yeah I've got openvpn config file and needed to configure 2FA for it. But again, that is just a config file, no software.
  - miohtama 5y ago
    VPN configurations are usually username/password/PK combos and work across all operating systems, including iPads and Androids and such.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      Maybe I'm thinking of Active Directory? I know there's something my company's IT department does on each machine that requires inputting a master secret and performing a kind of handshake with a central service.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I came to a new company and their laptop budget wasn't enough for a Macbook, which is the OS I'm used to. I mean I get that I may be coming across as a prima donna, but the provided hardware just wasn't good enough - and I'm not hardcore enough to spend my days working in vim over SSH to their development VMs, which also aren't fast enough. Anyway, I could work with my old macbook, but it's giving the ghost, the screen is fooked and getting that fixed is too expensive.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  MacBooks are weak-ass machines. It seems most developers are forced (or at least strongly-pressured) into using them by employers these days, but they're horrible for serious development. The performance is just bad, and they either sound like a jet taking off with fans in overdrive all day, or they throttle down to avoid overheating. Most developers I know work on apps deployed in a Linux environment, and have to jump through hoops to get a usable Linux-like environment locally. Docker can help a bit, but it causes even more performance problems on machines that are already being pushed to their limit. I've been working on MacBooks for work for the better part of a decade, in large part to keep my work and personal machines separate, but I was much better off when I just did work on my personal Linux machine. I also didn't have to deal with switching monitor inputs and KVMs and the clutter of a laptop taking up precious desk space.
alkonaut 5y ago
You probably exclude a large portion of possible workplaces if you argue that you need to keep their IP like a repo clone on a device they don't control. I doubt that will change any time soon. The kind of company you want to work for in that cases is one that just lets you buy whatever machine you want, with a budget that exceeds whatever you'd buy for your private one.

gravypod 5y ago

You can also find a company that just buys you a computer you would like and gives you root on your machine, right? I've even had people build their own PCs when starting at startups because they wanted specific specs.

koolba 5y ago

Having a machine that is actually usable is orthogonal to having one dedicated to a job. Computers are dirt cheap, so have a separate one and it’s easy to keep your work products separated. As an added bonus, it gives you one more place to run bloated^Wmandatory Electron apps.

maccard 5y ago
> Computers are dirt cheap, so have a separate one and it’s easy to keep your work products separated. Not everyone has the same "dirt cheap" requirements for hardware for work; I work in games where a medium-range GPU is a requirement, and compiling large projects requires a much higer spec CPU (e.g. everyone on our team has at least a 3970x, which is ~$2000, and comes with a motherboard of $800). There's also space considerations - having two desktop machines works if you live in the US where houses are enormous; meanwhile I live in a 500sqft apartment with a 55 inch wide desk in my second bedroom - putting a second tower, plus extra power plus a KVM plus extra networking is a no-go.
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
Building a decent computer (only desktop, without a good monitor or peripherals) equals to spending at least three months' salary for me, probably more. JFYI, not every part of the world lives like Silicon Valley. I'd rather keep my .gitconfig hacks and a single machine.
lobocinza 5y ago
I spent two months salaries to buy just the cheapest latest GPU and a mid-range monitor.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> Having a machine that is actually usable is orthogonal to having one dedicated to a job. Depends on the job. Work machines are often unusable because of measures mandated by employers to protect IP. Especially with big employers, you can't just get a random physical or virtual machine and do work-related things on it, not without angering the IT or cybersecurity department.

Bilal_io 5y ago

Each has its pros and cons. I used my own machine while the work-provided laptop sat next to me the whole time until I was forced to use the provided laptop. On one hand, my life-work balance improved, on the other hand I loath the stupidly slow machine that seems limited in every aspect compared to my own.

dumpsterdiver 5y ago

> I will never again accept a job where I must use a work-provided machine. I spend 8+ hours a day at work. Being forced to spend that time in some crappy, bloated, locked-down OS is 100% a quality of life issue. If I can provision and manage the machine myself, fine. I'll even purchase the hardware. Prefer it that way. From experience, I totally understand your frustration - and to anyone in this situation, I would suggest leaving to a company that provides modern hardware. That being said, I humbly ask that you try to put yourself in the shoes of those who are charged with ensuring these machines remain complaint (contractual obligations that must be met). Meeting these compliance obligations means continued, uninterrupted business, and that business pays our salary. From a security/compliance perspective, I don't think it's unreasonable to do your work on a locked down machine if you are able to do your job, assuming that you have a modern machine that will plow through the overhead effortlessly. If you weren't provided with a modern machine though that can do this - get out of there as fast as you can.

rofrol 5y ago
Modern or not, still can bloated and locked down.
thefr0g 5y ago
> From a security/compliance perspective, I don't think it's unreasonable to do your work on a locked down machine if you are able to do your job Not at all. But from a security perspective I think it's also not unreasonable to request that my data isn't exfiltrated to some shady anti-virus company and my personal details aren't stored in a rancid (active) directory service.
plorkyeran 5y ago
Modern hardware isn't a panacea. My work m1 laptop went from the fastest machine I've ever used to painfully slow as soon as the antivirus garbage was ported to arm64 and I had to start running it again.
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago
  It's really unfortunate how limited the current m1 systems are on ram. My current usage exceeds the available specs by far in that regard - 16gb, are they joking? There's nothing "pro" about 16gb of ram, that's pedestrian. You are absolutely right though, that no matter how good the hardware is there will always be bad software that manages to slog it down. I'm sorry that you have to deal with that.

peakaboo 5y ago

Exactly my feelings as well. And it has worked very well for me too. I use Linux and usually companies just let me run my own machine. It's been awesome. Everything set up exactly how I want it, with beautiful themes, colors and shortcuts.

_wolfie_ 5y ago

Depends on the workplace. I have company provided laptop (32G RAM, Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U) which was empty (well, Windows) and I just nuked it and install archlinux. There is no software provided by the company and no external control on the machine. So I just work-provided machine, but with my config and I just saved bunch of money since I did not have to buy it.

mikepurvis 5y ago
Did they not provide a VPN config? Or was it something you were able to re-setup yourself?
- _wolfie_ 5y ago
  Yeah I've got openvpn config file and needed to configure 2FA for it. But again, that is just a config file, no software.
- miohtama 5y ago
  VPN configurations are usually username/password/PK combos and work across all operating systems, including iPads and Androids and such.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Maybe I'm thinking of Active Directory? I know there's something my company's IT department does on each machine that requires inputting a master secret and performing a kind of handshake with a central service.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I came to a new company and their laptop budget wasn't enough for a Macbook, which is the OS I'm used to. I mean I get that I may be coming across as a prima donna, but the provided hardware just wasn't good enough - and I'm not hardcore enough to spend my days working in vim over SSH to their development VMs, which also aren't fast enough. Anyway, I could work with my old macbook, but it's giving the ghost, the screen is fooked and getting that fixed is too expensive.

caymanjim 5y ago
MacBooks are weak-ass machines. It seems most developers are forced (or at least strongly-pressured) into using them by employers these days, but they're horrible for serious development. The performance is just bad, and they either sound like a jet taking off with fans in overdrive all day, or they throttle down to avoid overheating. Most developers I know work on apps deployed in a Linux environment, and have to jump through hoops to get a usable Linux-like environment locally. Docker can help a bit, but it causes even more performance problems on machines that are already being pushed to their limit. I've been working on MacBooks for work for the better part of a decade, in large part to keep my work and personal machines separate, but I was much better off when I just did work on my personal Linux machine. I also didn't have to deal with switching monitor inputs and KVMs and the clutter of a laptop taking up precious desk space.

alkonaut 5y ago

You probably exclude a large portion of possible workplaces if you argue that you need to keep their IP like a repo clone on a device they don't control. I doubt that will change any time soon. The kind of company you want to work for in that cases is one that just lets you buy whatever machine you want, with a budget that exceeds whatever you'd buy for your private one.