[chousuke]

So instead of a one-time cost, they'd rather bleed money due to lowered productivity? I don't know how much time you spend developing internal tools, but I'd expect the cost in lost time to surpass the cost of a few (possibly shared) development machines rather quickly.

[smacktoward]

Never underestimate the ability of managers to be penny wise and pound foolish.

[blueicelt2004]

...or the inability of developers to properly demonstrate to their managers why something is needed. simply saying it makes it easier is not enough, learn to sell and spin in a way that does not make you seem lazy and you will be surprised what you can convince people to do.

[malandrew]

Which is why I'm increasingly bullish on the idea that the best managers in the future are going to be engineers that learned management skills.

Historically, software engineers have been the minority of the worker bees in a company. As companies trend towards more and more technical folk at the bottom of the work pyramid (not just software engineers, but anyone doing highly technical work that increasingly incorporates ways of working that have been the status quo among developers), managers are going to need to be able to understand the technical side more and more.

We'll eventually reach the point where it will no longer be enough for a developer to spend inordinate amounts of time convincing the manager what the right thing is. That works for the low hanging fruit that most developers can argue for. Once most if not all of the low hanging fruit has been picked, not picking the higher hanging fruit will be as much the fault of the manager as the engineers that need to convince the manager of their importance.

There will come a time where technically competent managers become a requirement, not just a luxury.

[marcosdumay]

That's true. But managing a company is still the managers task, not developers. It doe not excuse them.