On Jan 2, 2011, at 8:11 AM, Robert Casto wrote: > Joel Spolsky wrote about this quite a while ago. I even have a blog entry > about why developers should be given tons of hardware. > > It amazes me that they will hire a developer for $80k to $100k+ and yet will > only spend $1000 on a laptop or desktop for them to use. > > Joel bought SSD's for his developers when they were really expensive. His > logic was that it cut down on compile time and allowed for more iterations in > a day. That is definitely worth it I think but how do you convince management > that you need a $3000 machine while the VP has a $700 laptop and can do his > job just fine? > > Another problem is the build and support cost. I paid $2500 to build a server > and packed it with everything I could. That was 3 years ago and the machine > still has plenty of power that I haven't the desire to replace it yet. Will > probably be a couple more years. From HP or Dell though, that machine would > cost $4500+ and companies are not about to build their own machines and then > try to support them. > > The setup I had at Amazon I thought was ideal. They gave me a laptop and said > it was for connecting to the network, getting mail, and accessing my desktop > in my office. That was all they expected of the machine and it did that > really well. The policy on the desktop though was very nice. It is yours, do > what you need. Want a better video card, just get it approved. Want more > memory, just ask for it. Want a second Linux server for a project? Just get > it approved by your manager. I never felt a lack of hardware support while > there. This makes a developer feel empowered and capable of doing lots of > things. Why would any company want a frustrated developer? Companies should > give them every chance to succeed. They have jets and cars and other tools > for executives. Why not $4000 in hardware to get everything they can out of > the $80k+ spent on a developer?
We had a similar setup at Intuit for a long time. You had to have Windows to get to email and a few other applications. Most of us used NXClient to get to a Linux machine where we did our development. Now the company is purchasing beefy laptops and giving developers the choice of a Mac with 8GB of memory (so they can run a Windows VM for email) or a similar Windows machine where the developer would run a Linux VM. Since the company also has a way to easily create VMs on production quality hardware (it takes 5-10 minutes to create one) you can also deploy and test on more realistic machines. As far as IDE's go, Intuit has an IntelliJ license server so anyone can download IntelliJ and just start using it. If they want to use Eclipse they can do that too. It wasn't worth the effort to fight over which was the best IDE. Ralph -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
