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Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those puzzling things to me.

You own your life - why not spend your own money for the things that make you and your life better?

Who cares?

I worked at a job where I had a small, crappy monitor. I made decent cash. I just bought a large decent monitor and brought it into work. I ended up using it for many years. My life was significantly better. I've done that at several jobs since then, and NEVER regretted it, in fact it was one of the soundest decisions I've ever made. Also keyboard and mouse.

There are so many people using the default keyboard, the default monitor, the default tools.

If you push work to do it for you, you need to challenge the "everone gets a dell 19" monitor" b.s. If you push your boss, he might have to do justification paperwork.

Just become what you are.

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I think there's also an argument to be made that $20 per month is a bigger deal than some people realise. The issue isn't just _that one_ specific subscription you're paying for. The issue is how they all accumulate over time.. and eventually you find that your metaphorical bucket of money has turned into a leaky sieve. Not to mention all the services you forget to unsubscribe from even though they've ceased to provide enough value to you to make them worth while.

A one-off purchase is very different from making a hole in the bucket.

Obviously this all depends on how financially comfortable you are. But still.. time is money. Money you're spending today is time you're committing to work to earn back tomorrow.

Sure, but with some things, the increase in productivity pays off the price easily - you end up earning more, or working way less.

$20/mo for a subscription of NYT, or Netflix is not one of those things. But ChatGPT in many cases can save whole days of work over each month, so - especially when you're a freelancer, it will pay itself off.

> especially when you're a freelancer

I think that's the big qualifier here. The productivity paying off the price is only meaningful if your time and money are arbitrarily fungible for each other, and for most people they are not. There's a good chance they won't be able to find a way to convert that saved time into the corresponding $20+ needed to pay the bill. And if finances are tight, $20/month might be a deal breaker.

Even if you're a freelancer, if your projects have billing caps related to the number of hours you expect to work then you don't necessarily have adequate time/money fungibility. $20 a month also might not be worth the cost of going out and acquiring a new project.

But for anyone in IT or related fields? $20/month feels like a nobrainer if you're in the West.

It's like paying for Jetbrains IDEs. I'm a bumbling idiot writing Symfony and Wordpress code and PHPStorm is 150 Euros a year. It probably increases my productivity by that much per day.

If ChatGPT saves you more than 60 seconds a day, or makes you work more comfortable, it's easily worth $20.

> $20/month feels like a nobrainer if you're in the West.

I earn 2000€ per month as a C# dev in France, (assuming $1 == 1€) I just need a hundred subscriptions like that to have no money left at the end of the month. While I'll admit a 100 subs is a bit much, it's very easy to have 10 or 15.

> If ChatGPT saves you more than 60 seconds a day

Even if it saved me 4 hours a day I wouldn't be paid more.

If ChatGPT saved you 4 hours a day, you could be less stressed and have more time to do other stuff like exercise

No I would still have to sit at work waiting for the clock to be at the right time to be allowed to leave.

You're not part of the target market, then. Think of it like any other recurring service, e.g., pickup/drop off laundry. It costs way more than doing laundry at the neighborhood laundromat and doesn't save very much time, maybe a couple hours a week. But, if you don't enjoy doing laundry, and you don't have an in-unit washer dryer, it may be worth it.

If you really don't like using your brain to write, then why not spend a bit of money to offload some thinking to this service?

My point was that I'm not a rarity, not everybody makes 100k+ a year even in the "West", there are a lot of people like me that have to watch carefully what they spend.

You're severely underpaid, juniors with 1 year experience can get more in Poland after tax.

I have 14 years experience, same job. But as I said in another comment I have aging parents that I have to take care of and I live in a small town without opportunities.

I had found a high paying job in Switzerland that was close enough but it was canceled due to Covid.

Well, I'm talking about remote jobs which are absolutely prevalent here, so where you live does not matter.

2000€ per month? In France? That's slightly less than software devs earn in Poland, with way lower living costs!

Is this a norm in your country? Which part of France do you live in, if you don't mind me asking?

I live in Belfort in eastern France near the Swiss and German border. It's a small town, there's not many opportunities here but I have aging parents I have to take care of so I can't move.

And you decided to not work remotely and 10x your income instantly, because you'd miss your office and colleagues. Got it!

If it saved you 4hrs/day you could serve more clients if you we’re working as freelancer and therefor more than offset the cost.

If you’re an employee then use that additional 4hrs to focus on other things.

Everything is relative. I'm in IT - in fact in a decently high paying and relevant part of it, being a devops specialist - in the West (in Italy) and I make ~1700 euros a month, and this is with 10 years of experience in the sector. I'm not getting ripped off, this is by far the highest salary I've had and I make about as much as my parents do after working for 45 years.

I still cannot afford, after house, car and living expenses, to spend 20 euros a month for an AI chat app, or 150 a year for an IDE.

For reference, I do most of my work in standard vscode with almost no plugins and/or emacs, depending on what I'm doing, on the company provided dell/windows laptop. The only subscriptions, personal or work, that I pay for are netflix, spotify, xbox game pass, nintendo online and amazon prime - and we're thinking of dropping netflix and spotify lately since they're increasing prices and lowering in value.

So you making only 1700 euros a month? Sorry I think you are getting ripped off, as a programmer in Poland/Warsaw you would make around 5k+ euros per month. Change you work you are worth much more.

edit: This is funny just after i wrote this I've seen so many references to Poland in this thread. But yeah it's interesting as working in UK as developer in small company I was earning 2500 pounds after taxes (Liverpool). And I thought that it's a dream job back then. But it was 10 years ago. And I think I am rather average developer just on level III on 6 level scale. So right now living in Poland my wage expectation is around 6k euro as Backend Java developer.

> I'm not getting ripped off, this is by far the highest salary I've had and I make about as much as my parents do after working for 45 years.

You're absolutely getting ripped off if this a real devops specialist role (some companies use that word for manual server admins) and your employment history is not an indicator of anything. Only the market is and where are you in the salary range for a given role.

I'm an average dev from Poland (basically 1/4 GDP of Italy), working for a Polish, not international company (clients are international), having less than 10 years of documented commercial experience and I'm making about 5k EUR after taxes (converted from PLN) and I'm not even close to the cap.

At my first company I made about 500 EUR a month, and whilst the second paid me twice as much, it was still absolutely ripping me off.

You’re making 2.5x the UK average salary. That’s not what happens to an average dev in an average role here; are you a consultant or doing 100 hour weeks or have expertise in some specialist field?

The general average salary is low everywhere as most jobs don't require any kind of "higher" education, so of course devs earn more. I'm earning 4-5x of Poland's average but that's meaningless. I sure as heck don't earn more than an average UK dev, because I've worked with some of them and I know their rates.

I'm just a full-stack .NET + React developer working in a mid-sized city as a contractor (but that's complicated, because in Poland most companies basically evade taxes by hiring via contracts with the same benefits and responsibilities as regular employees). I work up to 40hrs a week just like a normal employee.

Just take a look at one of the many job boards and search for "devops" or my role which is ".net full-stack": https://nofluffjobs.com/pl

Most oscillate around 20k PLN gross, which is definitely a lot more than 1700 EUR. Some rates given by devs in this thread are shocking and something isn't right. 1700 EUR net (i hope net) would be 8k PLN which is about what my car mechanic friend without a degree earns in my city... and what I earned 1 year after my degree. It's perfectly fine to begin with, but we're talking about 10+ years of experience and that's baffling.

> But for anyone in IT or related fields? $20/month feels like a nobrainer if you're in the West.

Yes, I definitely hear you. If you're living well within your means then sure. But on the other hand, a shocking number of Americans don't live within their means and are strapped with credit card debt. In those situations even a small number of instances of this kind of "oh, it's just $20 / month" reasoning start to add up.

> It probably increases my productivity by that much per day.

Again, this doesn't matter if you're on the edge of cash flow positivity and can't actually turn that productivity into dollars. Your employer isn't going to pay you $20 / month more because they can't measure your productivity with that much granularity.

I see what you mean, but I wouldn't compare $20 for work to e.g. $20 for Netflix Pro Gold Premium; it's business vs entertainment.

You're probably right that it's a medium-term game for employees (if their employer isn't ready to pay the $20, which I assume they would be), but you will certainly be more productive and get things done quicker than others (and probably measurably so), which should give you a good spot for a promotion or negotiations. But of course, that only really works if you derive value from ChatGPT. If it's more of a "my work is easier but not faster or better", then it won't make sense.

For me, ChatGPT also has a psychological benefit. It makes me feel like there’s someone that I can fall back on when I‘m stuck. It might be wrong (often the bot is not super helpful), but this is not about rationality.

I'm finding ChatGPT may be wrong, but it's answers are often enough to point me in the right direction - particularly when I'm working in a new domain where I'm not yet experienced enough to be able to ask google the right questions.

Previously I'd fall back to asking in a forum and getting a (tbf) much better answer a few hours or days later, but ChatGPT may be enough to point me in the right direction in a few minutes

I had this happen then I was stuck on a small side project that was slightly out of my wheelhouse.

It wasn’t meaningful enough to spend a lot of time researching or to pay someone to solve it so I was just going to give up on it.

Asked ChatGPT and it was able to unblock me by pointing me in the right direction.

Now I have a working tool to solve a very specific problem of mine.

If I'm at work and stuck on a problem I can hardly afford to wait around for a few days to be unblocked by a lucky forum answer.

Well put, it’s really similar for me.

You should probably not be thinking about it in that way.

Anthropomorphising statistical models is a bad idea...

Oh I‘m not antropomorphising. It feels more like a GPS - a tool I wouldn’t like to be without when driving unknown places.

I work mostly alone on projects, at least currently. While I have friends I can bounce back general ideas on, it‘s hard to get good feedback on a small problem that I‘d be stuck with for, let’s say, 5 minutes.

So far, the choice has been between disrupting others‘ flow (who might not even work with the tech I‘m using), or exploring the issue myself. Problem solving is certainly not a skill I want to atrophy, but figuring out framework specific intricacies is more a chore than an interesting problem. A chore I can get stuck on. And that’s where the bot often points me in the right direction.

An example: I‘m dabbling in the PETAL stack with a side project, and Ecto‘s DSL still feels foreign to me. ChatGPT is actually really good at fixing my Ecto queries and recently made the suggestion to use the „dynamic“ function. It applied the function in a slightly wrong way, but that made me read up dynamic query building, which is already bearing fruit.

I could have read all of Ecto‘s documentation and wouldn’t need the bot, but that’s out of scope right now. I‘m currently working with native iOS, Android, JS/TS (Next), Flutter, and Elixir - if I read all the documentation, I wouldn’t write any code.

You meant "something to fall back on" instead of "someone". If you write it like that suddenly you're not anthropomorphizing anymore =)

I agree, I noticed this too late. Apologies to GP

We are anthropomorphizing NPCs in video games for decades - it's ok.

Yeah, they hate it.

Tools are an investment.

Entertainment is an expense.

Sure, there's wiggle room in each but in a nutshell, that's the framework.

> you end up earning more, or working way less.

Unless you are salaried?

Still might be worth it. My strategy for getting "raises" always was:

1. increase productivity 2. ask for a raise 3. profit or change company

and it worked pretty good last 7 years. Certain investments in tools definitely helped with that.

>>you end up earning more, or working way less.

Or you're just treading water.

Not everyone gains some super power productivity or an excess of free time when utilizing tools...

Some people just being able to actually scrape by BECAUSE of said tools.

Indeed. People in developing countries might learn what the public school system should have taught them, with a free private tutor that is ChatGPT or similar.

ChatGPT can't even reliably tell how many times a letter is in a word. I doubt it will be a reliable tutor

The ability to tell letter occurrence in a word is not a good measure for the quality of a large language model.

Anecdotally, it's less reliable when it comes to verifiable fact; but highly useful for brainstorming and sussing out creative solution.

Your results may vary.

That, and the thousands of numbskulls who waste their time trying to get ChatGPT to do math problems that a $1 calculator (or worst case, free Google Sheets) could do, is the most pointless waste of computing power, and I say this as someone who remembers Flash ads.

If you really are staring at strings and wanting those letters counted, you can easily ask it to write you a Python, JS, Ruby program that will do so, and in my experience for a task like that it will NAIL that task perfectly 100% of the time, and can even explain how it works to boot!

If a tutor tried to teach how to count letters instead of a useful skill I'd fire them.

Natural language is ambiguous and ChatGPT can handle that pretty well, if you want to count letters use Python or something.

When I tested it on subjects I knew, it gave better answers than teachers in my high school (Poland, but I guess it might be similar elsewhere in the West)

Also, a friend physicist tested ChatGPT on the basics of quantum physics and he was surprised at how much it knew.

IMHO the chat is at a level of 1st year university student - of any subject available. The only issue being that it always sounds super confident, even if it's wrong.

The public school system in my country still teaches that the tongue has areas sensitive to specific tastes.

Let's say you make $10 / hr. To break even, a $20 tool needs to save you 2h a month. Divided over 20 workdays and it must save you 6m per day. If a tool can't save you 10-15m per day, it doesn't deserve a "throughout the day" slot IMHO.

Which isn't to say that ChatGPT fits that bill for me - I think it requires too much supervision to save time. But people are too cheap about genuinely useful tools.

For me problem with many tools is subscription model, not that I have to pay. You build your workflow around a few subscription tools, then something bad happens. You need to cut expenses. Apart from shitty situation in general, your workflow falls apart and you're unhappy about lowered standard of living, making it more probable to further worsen your life. It simply feels bad.

That works out if you are a freelancer. Otherwise the $20 comes out of your pocket, and the productivity gains go to your employer.

The monetary aspect doesn't apply for many (most?) freelancers either. I work and bill the same amount of time every day regardless of how much I achieved. Brain fog day is worth the same as an uninterrupted flow day.

It does make me more efficient which is something I do care about.

If you're paid by the hour like that, doesn't saving 2 hours per week mean you are getting paid $20 less per week?

It's the opposite. A salaried developer on an agile team commits to a certain amount of work per sprint. If they can get it done in 2 hours less time, that's a net gain for the developer.

If anyone on this site working as a Dev is making 10/hr I question whether they can even navigate to the ChatGPT website by themselves in the first place. At a real number like 50/hr you only need to save 1.2 minutes per working day for it to break even. Which is trivially easy. You could save that by having ChatGPT write your emails for you alone.

When I tack on subscriptions I review other ones I cannot justify since you only consume so many services at once right? Then I cancel accordingly.

That's a good idea and probably a healthy habit to build! I might try and start doing that..

>>all the services you forget to unsubscribe from even though they've ceased to provide enough value to you to make them worth while.

I suffer from this. Currently paying $30/mo for midjourney but get zero value. need to go delete that sub.

On a website where the majority of people are SWEs living in HCOL areas where their daily lunch and coffee is probably $20+ the argument against a $1/day productivity tool seems lacking.

> The issue is how they all accumulate over time

Everything we spend money on has a price that is set by what we are willing to pay collectively. Just because you don't want to pay the price doesn't mean it's not the right price.

It's a bit amusing that we find any price objectionable considering this ChatGPT experience didn't even exist a few months ago!

With tillerhq.com, you can set up a pretty nice workflow to review your spending daily, weekly, or whatever cadence makes sense to you across all of your accounts, and it's only $79/year! :)

Why not just put all the subscriptions on one credit card and I dunno, spend 5 minutes at the end of the month reviewing the credit card statement to cancel subscriptions?

You are using a service, that must pay for infrastructure and personnel. How do you think a on-off purchase would cover it. Your salary you want every month on your account, but for the others, nah, not so important

except this is $20 a month with the expectation that it’s saving you time. it’s fundamentally different from say, netflix, where you pay for it and have to give it your time

If it saves my time working, it doesn't mean I get to spend that else where though. Just more work.

don’t… don’t let them know you are more productive, instead post more here

> How I went from working 40h/w to 38w/h, making the same money (medium.com)

You must have no deadlines.

Alternatively, they have far more work allocated than time saved would exceed.

And how much is it in your local currency that you’re getting paid for.

Well said

I think the monitor example is different from the ChatGPT example.

A monitor is relatively cheap, I would own it, and it will primarily improve my life and secondarily improve my productivity.

In contrast, with ChatGPT, if I'm working on a difficult programming job, I spend X time thinking deeply and Y time actually typing the solution. A system that can type for me is convenient but it may not speed things since I can only think so fast, so many hours a day. And the situation of renting a thing for $20 isn't just a constant expense but a bit of a feeling of being beholden - the price could be and probably will be raised, there is a pressure to get value out of the thing by using it more, etc.

And there's no guarantee that a code generator will make my life more pleasant - the time saved typing may be absorbed by meetings or whatever.

It's a bit like home automation or car dongles - some people might like never throwing a switch as they walk into a room but I think fewer people would see a benefit they'd pay for since they still have to walk into the room.

This is how I'm thinking about it. If I save an hour a week, will I really clock out at 4PM on Friday and say "in the counterfactual world without ChatGPT, I would still be working, so I'm free to clock out now". No, probably not. Will I work on another task for extra hour to productivity-maxx? Also, probably not. Probably the rest of my tasks will magically expand to fill that time. Or I will spend it fiddling around with something else of dubious value. There's a whole psychological element to it. If I was a perfect min/max-er and allocated my time perfectly based on ROI, I would probably already be a millionaire by some other means.

And it's good to keep in mind, the comparison is not $20 for ChatGPT versus nothing. It's $20 for ChatGPT Plus, versus my API-hacky-solution for $2, versus ChatGPT free, for $0.

Those are great arguments against everything that could make a persons job easier and increase their productivity.

No, and it's a bit frustrating when several people explain in great detail the components of a programming day and how they combine and what the combination tendency is and then someone comes back with the same "but mah productivity". It's also typical for a certain mindset, of course.

Anyway, a counter-example is that the arguments above would not be against some broad framework that reduces both the thinking and the writing needed to construct programs - say a combination of a good programming, a good software engineering framework and a management that forced client requirements into a structured format. That sort of thing can reduce the needed programmer activity in a project on both the low and the high level and none of the arguments above object to this.

> versus my API-hacky-solution for $2, versus ChatGPT free, for $0.

Haha, exactly my thoughts (https://github.com/rikhuijzer/ata). Davinci is nicer (more succinct) than ChatGPT anyway.

> there's no guarantee that a code generator will make my life more pleasant - the time saved typing may be absorbed by meetings

It'll be absorbed by reviewing the generated code, which you are ultimately responsible for. Is typing speed actually a bottleneck to many programmers, beyond certain point of expertise?

Seems to me like ChatGPT could assist you in the "thinking deeply" part just as much (or more) as it could help you do rote typing tasks. Or do you think your creativity is beyond its abilities?

The issue is once you buy a monitor for your work, they're then getting to rent it for free. If you need something to do your job better than they need to pay for it. You hurt yourself (financially) and you are contributing to a workplace culture where employees buy what they need. It's not just a monitor you're paying for!

To be clear, I am not judging you. You did what was good for you and took the path of least resistance, as we all do many times a day. I am just trying to answer your question of "who cares?" We should all care a lot about this!

I'm an in-house producer at a tech company. I own a lot of film and audio equipment. I made it very clear in my initial negotiation that my gear was to be used solely at my discretion that and within 12mo we will fully transition off of it. I also used it to negotiate a slightly higher salary. It would've been easier to just give it away, but then why would they ever stop? I could've easily slipped into a position where they just use all my film equipment rent free and then I am on the hook to replace it as it breaks at a faster rate. That's not right without proper compensation.

I don't care what they're getting as much as I care about what I'm getting.

If I have a nice dual-monitor setup, in a business where everyone gets a 19" Dell, I will be more productive. That will lead to more promotions, lower odds of being fired, etc. I will come out ahead. Plus, I'll be happier.

If my employer benefits too, how does that hurt me?

Fair enough! I don't fully agree but it's a matter of opinion ultimately. Was just answering your question as I see it.

I haven't worked in an office in years, but in my case it's travel. The company has travel policies that are what they are. If I'm going to spend my own money and points to upgrade to travel that is outside of policy, well I'll do that. I might object if company policy were to travel baggage-class but it's really not. So I'll pay out-of-pocket here and there.

For a while it was company policy that all international flights had to be business class.

It all got restricted due to covid, and I doubt they’re going back :/

I wouldn't mind getting fired if I worked for a corporation that can't even provide proper screens for employees. Not getting equipment from employer is only acceptable for startups low on cash.

Especially when you can get half decent 120hz ones for like $400-$600 now. If they can't pony up for that then there's a lot more to the story or they are going to be a pain in the rear to deal with whenever you need resoures.

There's sometimes more to the story.

Another lesson from my career: No place is perfect. Don't make simplistic judgements.

I didn't say there can't more to the story, but I'm not going to just assume they always have a good reason either. It's not a simplistic judgment, it's simply working with the information I have on hand. If they have a good reason for not giving me the resources I need to do my job better than I'm all ears. I sincerely mean that. Maybe they can't get me the $3000 thing I want, but a $1500 one instead that is a suitable compromise. That being said I'm not just going to hear "no" and then buy what I think I need for the company.

I've done a lot of work in nonprofits, education, and government domains, and this can be a bit cumbersome. My experience is that in most cases, this comes down to administrative or bureaucratic issues which make sense on an organizational level, but very little sense on an individual contributor level.

At an organizational level, it's often not so much about money as about fairness, controls to avoid corruption, IT/supplier overhead costs, or similar sorts of reasons. I've been in C-suite, individual contributor, and everything in between. To flip things around, it's often cheaper to by a standard $3000 thing than a non-standard $1500 thing. Equipment costs are much lower than labor costs.

From my perspective, given three choices:

1. Spend $2000 of my time and $2000 of my boss' time to make an exception for a $500 monitor purchase

2. Be less productive

3. Drop $500

Often, I pick #3. I like my manager, and I don't want to complicate his life over a monitor. That lets me complicate his life over more important things, by the way.

When I was a director, I'd occasionally even spend personal dollars to buy things employees needed too. Dropping $20 is often easier than making a case to expense $20.

I was a freelancer/production company owner for a decade. I worked with plenty of non-profits and such. I actually am very sympathetic to the many reasons their hands can be tied. I assure you this is not a lack of imagination or understanding.

That being said, this is not that situation. I am a salaried employee at a small tech startup. It's always either "we have the money/don't have the money" or "I don't see the point." Luckily the latter is rare because they trust my judgment. But in the case of the former, while i get it's about resources, I'm not going to make it my problem. I am not going to fund their startup with my hardware. Which is why they are reasonable with me and just change their expectations when the resources aren't there. Of course I always try to find a solution that accomplishes the goal because I want us all to succeed, but I am not going to do it the way they want if they can't pay for it and it will only happen on my own dime.

I think you're failing to make a distinction between equipment that is critical to your job and equipment that simply helps you by making it more enjoyable and comfortable. Yes, the company should buy the equipment that is critical. Could I actually do my job on a 19" monitor? Yes, absolutely. Could I do it at a desk with no personal effects or decorations? Yes, absolutely. Both the monitor upgrade and pictures of my kids are things that are worth the expense to me to make the job more enjoyable. Would it be nice if the company sprang for enormous monitors for everyone? Yes indeed, that would be something to applaud. Is it necessary? No.

My Red wasn't critical and they had a crappy camera on-hand so it's not like I couldn't have done the job, just so we are clear. I don't need my lights, or my primes, or any of my stuff. They had the very bare minimum. But it was garbage so I negotiated accordingly. And we all won in the end!

Negotiating an increased salary for the use of your capitalized equipment is a terrible use of resources. The fact that they agreed to that tells me that they detected it was a touchy subject for you and went the appeasement rout. If they cared about the equipment they would have preferred to purchase/finance it or lease it.

>The fact that they agreed to that tells me that they detected it was a touchy subject for you and went the appeasement rout.

It wasn't touchy, it was reasonable. I guarantee you not one engineer at our company uses their personal computer. It's no different than saying "I want a work computer." They were going to buy me film equipment but hadn't determined exactly what we needed yet and hadn't set aside enough resources (cash) for it yet. So this was a useful stopgap that worked for everyone. Plus it's not like I got 10k more or something absurd. It was a modest amount that made me happy and got them what they needed.

>If they cared about the equipment they would have preferred to purchase/finance it or lease it.

Wasn't for sale and neither of us wanted to get into a lease. Plus they absolutely made out like bandits if we put dollar costs on this. I was just happy to have some cash for using my gear that made my life easier while also establishing a precedent that my gear isn't there for them to joyride.

I also think a big factor is what kind of equipment we're talking about. If you expect the equipment's value to be impacted by the use, as your "my gear isn't there for them to joyride" comment touches on, this is a bigger issue. I would never use my personal computer (or expensive camera equipment) for work without some sort of compensation because that usage implies a certain amount of deterioration (physical wear/damage) and/or compromise (corporate software/policies imposed on my machine). This seems pretty negligible for a monitor.

I'm confused what you were disagreeing with me about then tbh. Sure you can argue a monitor doesn't rise to that level but clearly we agree that there is some line here, even if we don't agree on where it is.

Was I disagreeing with you? I don't think so. I was just making a distinction between the use cases since you objected to the monitor purchase by comparing it to the use of your camera.

Depends. With stuff like mice and keyboards it's really not worth bothering anyone, in my opinion. Those are personal preferences.

About monitors and larger stuff, you may argue. Employers can find and buy good ones in bulk, instead of making everyone individually spend hours being annoyed, searching and comparing and buying better equipment. Either way, for monitors the financial hit will be way less than 1% of a typical salary (okay, may depend on location, but a monitor lasts 5+ years).

I agree it has to stop somewhere. For me that would be stuff like Unity3D subscriptions, or tables, or FPGA tools and oscilloscopes. But monitors... shrug

> you are contributing to a workplace culture where employees buy what they need

This is nevertheless a great point. This culture is coming if it isn't here already especially when you add WFH to the mix

I’ve stuck to my guns a little more lately with WFH. When they want something done on a certain time table, if there’s some resource I know that they failed to get me and need, I remind them that it’s going to take longer because I don’t have ______ when they ask “why?”

Frankly, I’ve been surprised at the results. Generally, they just say “OK” and the matter is settled and I don’t have unrealistic expectations saddled on me. It’s what I like about my company, they don’t dance around things. There’s a lot of trust and open communication. Plus every now and then they give me what I need. Because they know I’m being honest and not just trying to buy myself new toys.

> why not spend your own money for the things that make you and your life better?

Objectively, a few reasons:

- You can't afford it.

- Paying for it doesn't let you "own" anything

- It's not reliable

- It's legal compatibility is not fully decided yet

- It can preclude opportunities for learning and even teach you entirely false things under the guise they are true

The list probably goes on, but I don't think we should buy everything that stands to make our lives better. If we applied that logic to everything in our lives, we'd all use computers from Skymall and eat food we see on QVC.

> If we applied that logic to everything in our lives, we'd all use computers from Skymall and eat food we see on QVC

Pretty sure GP didn't say "completely give in to all impulse purchases and cease to use your brain about the worth of things."

I agree with GP. I bought my own monitor. It's great. It significantly improves my workday, and I get to take it with me if I quit. It generally gets two reactions: first, "how did you manage to get a better monitor than everyone else" and second, "why would you spend your money to help the company?" Not sure how something that contributes directly to my comfort while performing my job is helping the company more than it's helping me, but whatever. Seems very much like cutting off your nose to spite your face to just stick with the standard monitor to avoid "giving" the company something. Same as the folks who spend time every month filing expense reports and having corporate mobile device management profiles on their phones so they can get reimbursed $20/month for their mobile data.

Also, a better monitor can improve my job performance which can lead to better reviews! Working effectively is important to your own bottom line.

> - It can preclude opportunities for learning and even teach you entirely false things under the guise they are true

An example? The OP was talking about purchasing a monitor/keyboard/mouse.

You own that monitor. Would you pay $20/month to rent that monitor with the potential for price increases and ads popping up on it occasionally?

There's something to "owning" a thing. You can resell it and rent it out, etc. It's an asset. SaaS is not an asset. It's a service.

I pay more than that for electricity and fuel. It's not strictly renting and there are no ad pop-ups, but it's a recurring expenditure and prices can (and did) increase. Once I use it, it's gone - I can't resell or rent it either.

It still makes sense for me to pay because I get more value compared to if I didn't.

I would gladly pay $20/mo for a high quality monitor service that randomly stopped by and improved the display on my desk periodically.

Reminds me of the Built to Spill lyric. “It's barely yours on loan What you think you own”

He/She owns the monitor. But the resale is instantly 10-20% of the purchase price once opened. So we're sinking money very fast either way - through owning or "renting".

When I worked at Amazon I brought my own monitor and chair. When I was leaving I put monitor on the chair and rolled it through security and loaded it into my car. Nobody asked a question, I’m still surprised many years later that security seeing somebody removing furniture and equipment from the building just shrugged at it :)

At another FAANG people would regularly tote around Mac Pros, monitors, or full desktop towers, including packing them in their car to work from home for a day or two. Security sees so many things, that just not looking suspicious (even without a badge) is often enough.

> Nobody asked a question, I’m still surprised many years later that security seeing somebody removing furniture and equipment from the building just shrugged at it :)

Not wanting to spoil it, I’ll just say that if you haven’t seen this show then you’re in for good laugh:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8d-bM-Whsmk

I’ve always brought my chair, monitor and keyboard to office. But I found ChatGPT to be inconsistent for programming tasks, sometimes it’s just wasting my time.

The question isn't really if $20 is worth it, the question is can you get 90% of the way there for much less? It sounds like he found a way, and of course he's going to do that.

In normal company, they will buy you a custom setup without problem.

In my experience most have standard equipment and some are so cost-driven they'll do anything to avoid any outlay whatsoever.

Spending $10k/month on your salary is fine, a 25k yearly bonus, no problem, but god forbid they’d need to make a one-off $5k purchase.

There's a big difference between a monitor that you pay and own for many years, and a $20 monthly subscription though. It's going to be really quickly much more expensive than a monitor …

I have no issues paying for thing I can use for a long time or re-sell if it turns out not being that useful, but spending money and investing time using cloud-based tools that can be discontinued by next month, thanks but no thanks.

Greek vs Roman work environment. The Greeks expected the craftsman to show up with his compliment of tools, sharpened and maintained. The Romans provided the bench, tools, and ensured they were sharp each morning before arrival of the worker. Both cultures produced marvels of design and construction.

I want a 5K 27 inch monitor but they aren’t affordable sans getting an iMac. I did buy my own 28” 4K (and we got my wife a nice 24” 4K) for work, but these are fairly affordable.

I wish I could do the same with my laptop, WFH would be better, but it is against security.

Connecting a screen is against security? Or procuring your own 28” laptop is?

The screen is fine, but connecting doing work with something other than the company issued laptop isn't allowed. It isn't really that bad in the winter, but in the summer the fan will go off a lot, a desktop would be quiter, and I would have room for a second large monitor (right now I'm at one large monitory + 16" laptop screen).

I buy my own laptop for work. Work will give me a good one, but I want a GREAT one. It’s the one tool I need to do my job, and I’ll be using it over 40 hours a week.

It’s a few thousand dollars, but I make a comfortable six figure salary, and I think it’s worth it.

Screw that. The employer wants me to dig trenches? They provide me with a shovel. The employer wants me to do computer work? They provide me with a computer. Quality of my work will be directly proportional to quality of the tool.

This is increasingly less feasible with fleet managed corporate devices.

You can let your personal laptop be managed, but it’d kinda be a waste of money right?

Quite often there's simply no profile for certain hardware/software configurations. And yes, good luck resuscitating it once it was bricked one Friday with a surprise lay-off.

I've been lucky to be working remotely, but if I ever go back into the office, I'll be bringing my own gear just like you.

Recently, I've been gasp paying for software. Open source and free tools have come a very long way, but paid tools can be better. Especially when those tools are used daily as part of the job.

The paid tools often have free usage, albeit with some limits, so they are still useful to the defaults.

For example, TablePlus vs SQL Server Studio. I'm not a DBA and most often just need to run a quick query or two to check things. In this regards, TablePlus is light years ahead. No need to load a dinosaur for that.

I'm a TablePlus fan as well, it's soooo good.

He IS spending his own money on something he finds useful-- the OpenAI API. NOT ChatGPT. He gets greater use out of the service, as the API isn't limited in its output the way ChatGPT is (no content filters), AND it's cheaper. Did you even read his comment>?

"Pay the billion dollar companies for solving problems that they created!"

"Consoom more tech hardware made in China!"

"Don't think too hard about your monthly expenditures!"

"Trust the science!!!1!"

Well you've convinced me, buddy.

I'm the opposite. I was using my laptop's build-in screen for months. My manager had to remind at every 1:1 for months to buy a monitor until I finally did.

Also that $20 should be tax deductable

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