[mmcallister]

This is neat, but I think it's better to use your work provided device(s)/laptop for work, and your personal devices for personal things.

Obviously check your contract, and IANAL but people should be cognizant of the fact that your employer _may_ be able to retain copyright on personal projects if you use a work device (then again some contracts may even try to claim that they retain copyright for work done in personal time on personal devices)

[vinceguidry]

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.

[dumpsterdiver]

> 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.

[plorkyeran]

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]

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.

[gjasny]

Same here. Microsoft Defender is a real productivity killer. Cached C++ compilation now takes nearly twice as much time if the cache is hot. And git operations or she'll prompts take forever in large repos like LLVM.

[thefr0g]

> 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.

[vinceguidry]

I don't think it's reasonable to be forced to choose OSX or Windows. Not reasonable at all.

And I just... don't care anymore. I know it's not y'all's fault. It's the fault of the biz world which refuses to cater to any but the lowest common denominator. They could go for a solution that works with minimalist Linux systems so their sec suite doesn't conflict with my desired userland, like say a kernel extension interfacing with a daemon that just does the basics. Offer instructions and say you're on your own if you wanna go this route. Instead I get Carbon Black rammed down my throat. Which is better than McAfee but still. And McAfee still won't uninstall cleanly, and guess whether I have root access.

The problem is these companies simply don't want to work with their most capable and talented engineers. And, well, I just don't care anymore. These companies can just bleed talent to the free software sector for the next decade or two.

[rofrol]

Modern or not, still can bloated and locked down.

[_wolfie_]

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]

Did they not provide a VPN config? Or was it something you were able to re-setup yourself?

[miohtama]

VPN configurations are usually username/password/PK combos and work across all operating systems, including iPads and Androids and such.

[mikepurvis]

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.

[_wolfie_]

Yeah I've got openvpn config file and needed to configure 2FA for it. But again, that is just a config file, no software.

[koolba]

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.

[5e92cb50239222b]

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.

[maccard]

> 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.

[TeMPOraL]

> 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.

[lobocinza]

I spent two months salaries to buy just the cheapest latest GPU and a mid-range monitor.

[alkonaut]

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.

[Cthulhu_]

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]

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.

[gravypod]

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.

[Bilal_io]

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.

[peakaboo]

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.

[pjc50]

Never mind the copyright issues, if your employer gets hit by legal discovery all your personal files will end up in evidence.

(There was a thread about this recently which I can't find)

[zrail]

Oof. That's a compelling point that I hadn't considered. I recently removed all of my personal stuff from my work laptop, minus my dotfiles clone. I might just fork that onto my work GitHub account now.

[spondyl]

Author here (but not the poster) and I generally agree with that sentiment.

Personally, I do inquire about open source copyright clauses when applying for a job.

I don't do any development on my work laptop but I do push updates to my dotfiles and the notes section of my site from time to time which is mainly what I use it for.

As far as I understand, it is (was?) a big issue in California but I don't believe it was ever a thing here in New Zealand nor do I think it would hold up legally as I understand it.

As always, buyer beware of course

[gwbas1c]

> This is neat, but I think it's better to use your work provided device(s)/laptop for work, and your personal devices for personal things.

This is important when you are a salaried employee.

BUT: There's often very good reasons to do paid work on your personal equipment. If you're a contractor, if you juggle contracts, if you're a founder or an early employee...

[mplanchard]

Even keeping things separate, it can be nice to pull in your dotfiles, so if you consistently organize your computers in the same way, like with work stuff in ~/work or whatever, you can keep a checked in global git config that “just works” when you spin up a work box.

[notapenny]

Personally I'm with you on keeping your personal/work device separated, but many people I know surprisingly have only a work laptop. If you're a free-lancer, you also might not have two separate devices. I work fo a consulting company, some of our contracts don't provide laptops but do require al our activity to happen on an e-mail address provided by them. As a result my time committing is split between using my company's email and some other company's.

[talideon]

This is useful anyway. On both my work and personal machines, I have two directories: `~/projects/{work,personal}`. On my work laptop, I keep my dotfiles in `~/projects/personal/dotfiles`, and everything work-related (including my work dotfiles repo) goes in the other directory. It means I can keep the same set of configuration on my work and personal devices without a tonne of faffing around.

[whateveracct]

Sometimes at work, I have to contribute to my open source repos that are dependencies of my work projects. This blog post is relevant to that.

[kristjansson]

Shared config != shared machine