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by vineyardmike 1299 days ago
Many companies run dev work in a dedicated cloud VM.. incl well known companies like Google or Amazon.

You can run a constant VM with 2/4/8/128gb of ram or whatever you need. I use one at work for years and I think mine is 16gb of ram and it’s way over provisioned most of the time. Unlike how you might expect, treat the cloud vm like a work laptop not a production service. Let people write scripts that stay there, let people keep it on 24/7, available on demand, etc. It’s a cloud laptop not a production VM.
1 comments
Lio 1299 days ago
Depending on your workloads that sounds like a very expensive way to do development compared to just having a dedicated but efficiently set up work laptop.

Even giving people a headless Intel NUC to connect their laptops too would be way, way cheaper (assuming you're just doing development).

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vineyardmike 1297 days ago
Where I work, they used to give you desktop computers (pre Covid) for the workstation purpose, but post-covid they just provision a VM for you. Honestly, its probably cheaper in short-term and only mildly more expensive long term. No real IT work needed (since <cloud provider> handles the hardware), and automatic upgrades if more ram/GPU/etc is needed. Even a really big VM ($80/m) wouldn’t be crazy compared to the logistics of managing/storing/powering/networking a bunch of desktops across an office.
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robertlagrant 1298 days ago
This is what I wonder. A powerful local laptop is so useful - instant feedback; works on the train or any other offline/low-connectivity setting; the only engineer you need looking after it really is the one who has it.

Having said that, cloud development means you don't need big capex orders for laptops all the time, and it's probably easier to secure.

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