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.

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Aurornis 8 hours 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.

	▲	toast0 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I mean; looks like someone volunteered to make the product work on low spec machines. That's needed. I've been on teams where corporate hardware is all max spec, 4-5 years ahead of common user hardware, provided phones are all flagships replaced every two years. The product works great for corporate users, but not for users with earthly budgets. And they wonder how competitors swallow market in low income countries.
	▲	hamdingers 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's probably another reason why we were limited to a set menu of computer options.

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bobmcnamara 9 hours 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.