I got an M1 macbook pro from work, who through several layers of bureaucracy got me a 16 inch instead of the requested 14 inch, and with 8GB RAM instead of the requested 16GB. For running a huge data processing platform in containers, BI tools, powerpoint and excel, etc.

I would describe it as "no unexpected problems that aren't natural consequences of choices": Apple's memory and swap management is actually shockingly good under the circumstances, it does thrash the SSD a bunch, and it locks up hard if put to sleep under heavy memory pressure. One mitigation is just leaving it awake overnight before any critical demos, etc.

EDIT: I was wrong; it is a 16GB model, 32GB was the ask, performance is as described, it feels smaller; 8GB would probably be totally unusable.