Investments in your work equipment/tools, what would you expect?
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0x01AA wrote:
I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer.
I went and did the calculation. I did My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 (That's the calculation, right?) I don't want to reveal my salary but this would mean that the company had to spend $10,000 on my computer. That seems like an awful lot for the company to spend on my computer each year. :rolleyes:
Ok, ok; maybe an upper limit sould be set ;P But on the other hand, if you earn that much, why the tools you use to earn that, should not be in a relation. [Edit] Or are you a banker-CEO whose income has nothing to do with the work done. And work done, usually requires tools, except for banker-CEOs of course ;P
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No sorry, but for $2K you get only something simple from my point of view. I like to have 64GB memory for Windows and VS. I like also to have another 64GB of memory for let's say 8 VMs. And of course 1TB SSD ;)
Are you considering only list prices? For about $2K USD, the laptop which I just bought is a Lenovo ThinkPad P16s Gen 3, which has 32GB and a 1TB drive. Intel Core Ultra 7. Windows 11 Pro. Unsure if I could have increased the RAM, but I doubt I'll need more unless I begin doing some video editing -- which I might. As I mentioned in another post, I nominally got about 50% off through my employer -- the list price on the Lenovo site was greater than $4K USD at the time of purchase earlier this month. So far, I've installed SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition (free) and Visual Studio 2022 Pro -- there was a post about a deal on that a few months back. It does what I need so far -- e.g. some light SQL and C#
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No sorry, but for $2K you get only something simple from my point of view. I like to have 64GB memory for Windows and VS. I like also to have another 64GB of memory for let's say 8 VMs. And of course 1TB SSD ;)
I bought a pair of Beelink[*] SER5 Mini PCs with a Ryzen 5 (6 cores/12 logical processors) and 8GB RAM/500GB NVMe back in May; both have had a 64GB RAM upgrade and are now hosting VMs 24/7. I paid CAD$430 for *both* computers, and CAD$200 for each 64GB RAM upgrade kits. I already had a pair of 2TB SSDs (coming out of another VM host that I've since retired) to host my VMs. More than enough space - one's using 800GB and the other 1.4TB. As I'm writing this, one's running 7 lives VMs, the other 6; both are currently using 40-something GB out of their respective 64. In other words, they still have quite a bit of resources still available, and I don't exactly go out of my way to shut down VMs even if I'm not gonna be using them for a few days. It's "simple" enough in terms of system setup, but it's working out extremely well and the load on each is less than it was on the retired system they're now replacing. Sure, the CPUs aren't exactly latest-gen, but I don't feel like they're performing in a way that wastes my time. Windows and VS licenses are provided by my employer through the MS Partner program. (Oh, and the systems both came fully licensed with Windows 11 anyway) [*] If I ever spend money again on a full-tower system, 1000W power supply and stupidly power-hungry video card, it'll be my gaming rig.
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0x01AA wrote:
I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer.
I went and did the calculation. I did My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 (That's the calculation, right?) I don't want to reveal my salary but this would mean that the company had to spend $10,000 on my computer. That seems like an awful lot for the company to spend on my computer each year. :rolleyes:
raddevus wrote:
My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 ...company had to spend $10,000 on my computer. ...spend on my computer each year.
Wow! Congrats man! I put two and two together to figure out you have a 7-digits salary. In my neck of the woods you ain't gonna find many developers getting that. Either that, or you missed a zero in your computations :laugh:
Mircea
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No sorry, but for $2K you get only something simple from my point of view. I like to have 64GB memory for Windows and VS. I like also to have another 64GB of memory for let's say 8 VMs. And of course 1TB SSD ;)
$5k would be 5% of your $100k salary, not 1%. Just sayin'.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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0x01AA wrote:
I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer.
I went and did the calculation. I did My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 (That's the calculation, right?) I don't want to reveal my salary but this would mean that the company had to spend $10,000 on my computer. That seems like an awful lot for the company to spend on my computer each year. :rolleyes:
raddevus wrote:
I don't want to reveal my salary using a simple algebraic riddle.
FIFY :laugh: Any job openings where you work? I mean, dayum.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
- Thomas SowellA day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes) -
$5k would be 5% of your $100k salary, not 1%. Just sayin'.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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If you are employed as a programmer in a company, how much money relative to your salary is justified for work equipment such as computers? Licenses for tools excluded, as a programmer you simply depend on certain tools. From my point of view, I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer. Am I exaggerating? Thank you in advance.
0x01AA wrote:
I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer. Am I exaggerating?
That ratio would taper off the future up you go, for a dev at least, if you include stock options, etc. at a FAANG company. If you're talking base, gross salary then that seems on par for a salaried employee until you reach a threshold. Which I'll say the number is privately, but those talented few who know... know. I've seen some companies push cheapo laptops on a contractor though. But, if it's cheapo company and you're an employee, your salary probably sucks too. So, 1% holds. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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I don't think of it that way. But I will say that both "too little" and "too much" are to be avoided. One of my past employers -- to some extent -- spent "too much". In one case declaring that all ETL developers (such as I) were to use a particular tool -- the most expensive one available -- even though SSIS was paid for (included with SQL Server) and did everything we needed it to. They also bought each developer an MSDN subscription, which we didn't need. Knowing that an employer is willing to pay for what a developer asks for is good, but buying what the developer didn't request is a waste of money. Also the general observation that many things which are "free" are often not worth the price.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
I don't think of it that way.
Totally tangential side note, but the wealthy think in percentages. It's the poor/middle class that refuse to. It's actually very smart to think in percents as that changes much less frequently than inflation rates.
Jeremy Falcon
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0x01AA wrote:
I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer.
I went and did the calculation. I did My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 (That's the calculation, right?) I don't want to reveal my salary but this would mean that the company had to spend $10,000 on my computer. That seems like an awful lot for the company to spend on my computer each year. :rolleyes:
raddevus wrote:
I don't want to reveal my salary but this would mean that the company had to spend $10,000 on my computer.
See, I told you it would pay off to start male dancing. :laugh: :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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raddevus wrote:
My_Annual_Salary * 0.01 ...company had to spend $10,000 on my computer. ...spend on my computer each year.
Wow! Congrats man! I put two and two together to figure out you have a 7-digits salary. In my neck of the woods you ain't gonna find many developers getting that. Either that, or you missed a zero in your computations :laugh:
Mircea
He's joking; it was only $978,942. And wealthy people don't get paid in salary like that (at a job) because it's worst possible tax structure.
Jeremy Falcon
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If you are employed as a programmer in a company, how much money relative to your salary is justified for work equipment such as computers? Licenses for tools excluded, as a programmer you simply depend on certain tools. From my point of view, I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer. Am I exaggerating? Thank you in advance.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote:
I don't think of it that way.
Totally tangential side note, but the wealthy think in percentages. It's the poor/middle class that refuse to. It's actually very smart to think in percents as that changes much less frequently than inflation rates.
Jeremy Falcon
I wasn't dissing percentages themselves, but the comparison of percentages, which is fraught with peril. Which is pretty much what I was saying, though not very clearly perhaps.
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
the poor/middle class
Well, it's not a matter of class. The less educated of whichever class are easily swayed by misuse of statistics -- percentages, graphs, etc.
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I wasn't dissing percentages themselves, but the comparison of percentages, which is fraught with peril. Which is pretty much what I was saying, though not very clearly perhaps.
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
the poor/middle class
Well, it's not a matter of class. The less educated of whichever class are easily swayed by misuse of statistics -- percentages, graphs, etc.
Oh snap. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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Ok, ok; maybe an upper limit sould be set ;P But on the other hand, if you earn that much, why the tools you use to earn that, should not be in a relation. [Edit] Or are you a banker-CEO whose income has nothing to do with the work done. And work done, usually requires tools, except for banker-CEOs of course ;P
0x01AA wrote:
why the tools you use to earn that, should not be in a relation.
I think that's the main fallacy with your thesis. If two workers are performing the same job, it is reasonable to expect them to use the same tools/equipment regardless of how much they are paid to do it or how much the company earns from it. For the higher-paid worker, this would be a smaller percentage of income, but such a worker shouldn't complain about it. This is one of the problems inherent in trying to compare percentages.
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No sorry, but for $2K you get only something simple from my point of view. I like to have 64GB memory for Windows and VS. I like also to have another 64GB of memory for let's say 8 VMs. And of course 1TB SSD ;)
If you have a real day to day need for 8 VMs then I would expect you to need more than 1TB for storage. Although not sure why you need 8 VMs day to day. Only reason I can think of is a Microservice Architecture which is not actually keeping the interfaces between each Microservice clean. Thus requiring frequent multi-service debug sessions. And if that is the case then better if the company spend money on fixing that.
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If you are employed as a programmer in a company, how much money relative to your salary is justified for work equipment such as computers? Licenses for tools excluded, as a programmer you simply depend on certain tools. From my point of view, I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer. Am I exaggerating? Thank you in advance.
Wind the clock back to, let's say the late 1970s. We were earning on the order of $10/hr, $20k a year. Main memory (core in those days, 2.6uS cycle time!) we were celebrating coming down to $1/byte.* The rule of thumb then was that overheads - office/lab space, equipment, etc - ran at 2 x salary. One new hire at $20k meant $60k or more in the department budget. *Explains my empathy for those working with constrained resources, like @code-witch. Old brain-wiring dies hard.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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If you are employed as a programmer in a company, how much money relative to your salary is justified for work equipment such as computers? Licenses for tools excluded, as a programmer you simply depend on certain tools. From my point of view, I would expect at least 1% of my salary for my computer. Am I exaggerating? Thank you in advance.
Why some calculated value? You should have the tools you need to do your job to the best of your ability. I have a Raspberry Pi. Pico. :)
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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Why some calculated value? You should have the tools you need to do your job to the best of your ability. I have a Raspberry Pi. Pico. :)
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
I agree; my question wasn't really asked correctly (I'm not a native English speaker ;) ). What I wanted to ask: If an employee 'has to' get a new computer after 5 years (because IT requires it!), one shouldn't be petty and buy the cheapest one. One should invest a reasonable amount. Well, I guess I'm still failing at expressing myself in English ;)
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I agree; my question wasn't really asked correctly (I'm not a native English speaker ;) ). What I wanted to ask: If an employee 'has to' get a new computer after 5 years (because IT requires it!), one shouldn't be petty and buy the cheapest one. One should invest a reasonable amount. Well, I guess I'm still failing at expressing myself in English ;)
You do fine. I understood the gist of your question. I was a little flip. My thought is that a junior programmer and a senior programmer have pretty much the same needs as far as writing code goes, so salary is not necessarily the best basis for computers. OTOH, I had a client who sold part of their business. Fast Internet was not available there. The new company came into their new employees site, removed all the computers and put in terminals that used the home office server for all processing. That over ADSL. Really interesting when the database is 4 states away over a slow network. I worked in a corporate environment where the lead architect got the blunderbuss-8 system and the main coder got the SX system. That didn't go well either. Devs should get what they need, but sometime budgets get in the way. Back to my Pi :)
>64 It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
