[LeifCarrotson]

I can imagine a small niche for something like this. Big corps can end up with weird IT department restrictions and capex/opex inelasticity. There are a tragic number of professionals stuck with a cheap Dell thin-and-light laptop with a 1368x768 TN display and 6 GB RAM. They can absolutely afford a better computer, but they can't get IT/purchasing to give it to them. They're unincentivized to spend their own money on a nicer computer, and even if they did want to, they could never get it on the domain and approved with IT's spyware and antispam software. But they may have a small amount of opex, their direct manager could accommodate a monthly "I need this subscription to do my job". This results in stupidly expensive Todo-list collaboration subscriptions, and cloud computers that are more expensive than local computers, and IT-bypassed remote storage systems...it's not a rationally optimal state of affairs, more like a weird corner of the chaos of modern society.

[heipei]

Genuine question, but would the places that are that inflexible wrt to hardware upgrades have the flexibility to allow you to use a cloud service to perform your most sensitive work?

[hkt]

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. (The UK's IRS)

I worked there and they had these awful surface pros with hardly any memory. Their solution was to use AWS's hosted Desktop for Developers. It.. sort of worked OK.

This, by the way, was not just for a few people: because of Brexit there are thousands of people all working on making the new systems for customs etc work.

I suspect organisations that are undergoing digital transformation (as they are) will have this kind of setup. It was rife through the whole place: rubbish old IT stuff rubbing shoulders with modern SaaS.

[flukus]

I hate this setup. You generally need to have anything audio/video related on the laptop anyway and these are the most CPU hungry apps. Working through remote sessions suck and are high latency even on good connections, it's really noticeable for certain things like alt-tabbing and intellisense and it works awfully for multi monitor setups.

I suspect it's more so companies can pretend all their old rules about keeping data on site can remain. Still, it's better than going back to the office.

[hkt]

I gather HMRC's manchester office is famously bad: noisy, hot (without AC) and often with broken lifts and toilets.

Bless home working.