Isn't it about equal treatment? You can't buy one person everything they want, just because they have high salary, otherwise the employee next door will get salty.

▲

hamdingers 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I previously worked at a company where everyone got a budget of ~$2000. The only requirement was you had to get a mac (to make it easier on IT I assume), the rest was up to you. Some people bought a $2000 macbook pro, some bought a $600 mac mini and used the rest on displays and other peripherals.

Equality doesn't have to mean uniformity.

▲

Aurornis 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I saw this tried ones and it didn’t work.

Some people would minimize the amount spent on their core hardware so they had money to spend on fun things.

So you’d have to deal with someone whose 8GB RAM cheap computer couldn’t run the complicated integration tests but they were typing away on a $400 custom keyboard you didn’t even know existed while listening to their AirPods Max.

	▲	hamdingers 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's probably another reason why we were limited to a set menu of computer options.

▲

bobmcnamara an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I've often wondered how a personal company budget would work for electrical engineers.

At one place I had a $25 no question spending limit, but sank a few months trying to buy a $5k piece of test equipment because somebody thought maybe some other tool could be repurposed to work, or we used to have one of those but it's so old the bandwidth isn't useful now, or this project is really for some other cost center and I don't work for that cost center.

Turns out I get paid the same either way.

▲

dfxm12 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we're talking about rich faang type companies, no, it's not about equal treatment. These companies can afford whatever hardware is requested. This is probably true of most companies.

Where did this idea about spiting your fellow worker come from?

▲

loeg an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think so. I think mostly just keeping spend down in aggregate.