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Comment by the_watcher | Hacker News Reader

Developers are cheap in that they won't pay for something themselves if they have a remotely functional workaround. Development teams, however, are much less frugal about spending their employer's money to save them time and pain, and it's pretty easy to get management to sign off on purchasing something that will save their developers time, pain, or just plain make them happier.

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> and it's pretty easy to get management to sign off on purchasing something

Whooa, where is this mythical land of milk and honey, and can I but tickets to get there?

Do you work someplace that won't pay for Photoshop or even SublimeText (et al)?

I worked in companies that would try to avoid paying for those and companies that would never pay for those no matter what.

How successful were those companies?

I've worked for companies that would never pay for those, companies that would pay for pretty much anything if we made a case that it would help us, and my current employer, who will pay for things that we can prove delivers value, but don't default to saying "yes, we'll pay for," and who also audit every subscription they're paying for quarterly.

I work for a smallish company, as a developer. We get to choose our own tools. I think the reasoning is valid -- who would know better than the developers what actually will make them more productive?

In practice, I don't need to approve any purchase with management. I have a company credit card, and if I feel I need license for Sublime Text I'll just buy it.

But you are right -- as a private person I'm quite a bit more price sensitive about my tools than as a professional who is expected to deliver.

> it's pretty easy to get management to sign off on purchasing something that will save their developers time, pain, or just plain make them happier.

Managers will also pay to increase the quality of a developers output. This includes testing/QA and code review tools for example.

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