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Comment by jmacd | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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