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Comment by carom | Hacker News Reader

Google designs for Google. In their world everyone uses a latest gen MacBook with maxed out RAM on gigabit fiber.

The default is glinux, most of the company are using chromebooks.

First half yes, second half no. Everyone quickly finds out that chromebooks cant hack it spec-wise, even for simple chrome remote desktop.

As a software engineer at Google, I can say that all of my work is done on a Chromebook remoted into a gLinux desktop.

Macbooks are not allowed unless you get explicit exceptions for specific business reasons (QA iOS apps, iOS dev work, etc).

Did that happen in 2022? I'm a Xoogler as of spring 2022 and when I left everyone on my team used a macbook, several of them new macbooks, and I know several people got exceptions to get more powerful macbooks during WFH.

The latest chromebooks are actually really great*. Many of my team members who were on mac are switching back to ChromeOS for convenience.

* Great if you have a remote linux workstation to do the heavy compilation and test runs

The "On gigabit fiber" part is true, though.

Most engineers have work desktops which run GLinux and they also have macbooks.

I said the company, not engineers. And macbooks are used as chromebooks, I haven't used anything outside of Chrome/term. the dev environment is glinux. osx/m1 is not supported without getting exceptions and not worth the trouble.

Google has more end users on slow networks and old devices than almost anyone. Throttle your browser with the browser tools and see what loads quicker, google.com or a website of your choice. Once you've loaded google.com, do a search.

Does it matter from the server point of view?

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