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Comment by nadam | Hacker News Reader

The most important things for me as a developer:

- Money (I have a family to care about)

- 'Interestingness' of the job: does it require creativity? Do I have ownership? Can I start things from scratch, or do I have to maintain an ugly overcomplicated buggy code full of EntrpriseEntiytyManagerConfigurationFactoryFacadeIntefaceBean-s created without any philosophy behind?

Hardware setup is not that important for me. Never was.

Also there is no war for talent yet. Firms in Silicon Valley did not realize yet that there is talent in other parts of the world for much cheaper than in Sillicon Valley. When the real war will begin, I hope we will gain access to better opportunities here in the east than now. (Now they mostly resort to the east if some noncreative work should be done. (So called 'offshoring'.))

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> Hardware setup is not that important for me. Never was.

Maybe that's because you've always had a decent hardware setup. I once worked for a company where the clueless management decided to save money by having fewer workstations than developers, and our department had to make sure they all looked in use, otherwise a management snap inspection might take even more away.

You could look that on the plus side and start doing a bunch of pair programming. I have started doing bits of pair programing and found it to be very productive.

As a programmer, all I need is:

1. Money (to not have to worry about it)

2. A challenge

3. A great team

As a programmer, all I need is:

1. Money (to not have to worry about surviving with basic treats from time to time)

2. A challenge

3. A great team

4. Equity (to make the sacrifice of #1 be a bet that pays off over time to more than offset the choosing of the harder path with a tighter belt)

Bah, I don't care about equity. I just want the work to be interesting and the pay to be high.

One place that a little more money on hardware can improve productivity is using two monitors:

  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/vibe.aspx

> Give someone a second monitor, let them use it for while, and then try to take it away. It just isn't going to happen. They'll never go back to a mono display.

I once had a two-monitor setup, and I dind't like it. Way too much clutter and information overload on the desktop. Managing that wide screen real estate is cumbersome. The view angle is too wide. You never know where the focus is, etc.

I peronally would prefer just one display with really good resosution.

> The first study revealed that the users' productivity increased by 9 percent. Further studies showed even greater increases - at times up to 50 percent for tasks such as cutting and pasting.

What a great productivity boost for a programmer! Yeah, copy-pasting is what we do all day long.

>Managing that wide screen real estate is cumbersome. The view angle is too wide. You never know where the focus is, etc.

Try two vertical monitors. It's awesome. (FYI: vertical monitors are sold as rotatable widescreen monitors; Dell sells them for sure).

But I have reverted to one widescreen monitor, and I like it--I like the focus.

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