That is a massive red flag to me too. They are basically saying "you are identical to everyone else, and easily replaced."

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doubled112 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wanting to be able to use anybody's machine is very strange, agreed.

From a support/IT perspective though, the closer everybody's machine is, the easier the job is.

The last software shop I worked at, we had a default set of tools and configs. It was a known happy path. You were allowed to adventure off of that path, but you were mostly on your own.

	▲	MaulingMonkey 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Wanting to be able to use anybody's machine is very strange, agreed. Very useful if people are struggling to create reliable repro steps that work for me - I can simply debug in situ on their machine. Also useful if a coworker is struggling to figure something out, and wants a second set of eyes on something that's driving them batty - I can simply do that without needing to ramp up on an unfamiliar toolset. Ever debugged a codegen issue that you couldn't repro, that turned out to be a compiler bug, that you didn't see because you (and the build servers) were on a different version? I have. There are ways to e.g. configure Visual Studio's updater to install the same version for the entire studio, which would've eliminated some of the "works on my machine" dance, but it's a headache. When a coworker shows me a cool non-default thing they've added a key binding for? I'll ask what key(s) they've bound it to if they didn't share it, so we share the same muscle memory.
	▲	Alupis 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Devcontainers[1] or some similar technology are a must. Use whatever specific IDE you want, but the development environment itself should be identical across everyone on the team. No more "works on my computer" issues. The environment is always identical. [1] https://containers.dev/

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not_a_bot_4sho 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's quite common if you work in a team of engineers, or in a large company with many engineers.

Having consistent machine and OS and app configurations enables better (lower cost, higher reliability) scripting and tooling solutions in things like repos and infrastructure.

Not unlike consistency in language and compiler choices.

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bitwize 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having a consistent setup makes it easier for your organization's IT team to support you, troubleshoot issues, etc. It also makes it easier for you to collaborate with other members of your team, or even other teams. If your coworker Fred comes to you asking for help on how to refactor something, for instance, it will go much more easily if you're running the same IDE with the same refactoring tools.

Organizations establish and enforce standards for a reason.

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croes 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or they bust don‘t want to look after a dozen different tools and their security issues.