Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

I was this kid in my day. I had an extremely high-end PC that I built myself (to date myself, it cost well over $6,000[0] and was a home-built 486DX50 (right when they came out) maxed out motherboard RAM (that might have been 16MB but memory escapes me), a Turtle Beach Wave Table Synth sound card, a video card capable of powering a display at 1152x1024 on a 16" CRT display. I ran a multi-node BBS on two 9600, then 16.8K modems.

Had it not been for the experience of "tinkering" with that PC and its predecessor (a ten year old 8088), I would likely have never become a software developer.

I had the honor of building a gaming PC for a neighbor kid and watched over four years as he (unbeknownst to him) became a very competent geek. A few years of tweaking settings in games to eek out a higher frame-rate, fighting with firmware updates, video card drivers, software updates and every other bit of mayhem that the words "I want to game on my PC" evoke, and you pick up a wealth of knowledge "by accident".

I hadn't talked to the kid in four years; met up with him, again, recently and I was blown away. First thing he does is pull a "Flipper Zero" out of his pocket and tells me about all of the crazy things he's done with it.

He is as capable as any systems guy I've ever talked to. He has no clue that he has this skill, either.

It was such a good experience that I opted to buy my son a decent gaming laptop to graduate him from consoles. Over the last year, the same thing has happened to him. This year, my daughter (she's two years younger) begged me to build her a desktop, so she's getting a really nice Christmas followed by a year of learning/frustration. :)

Oh, and the fam got a Flipper Zero this year, too. Can't have the neighbor kid have all the fun.

[0] I saved up the money to afford it by building computers for other people.

> Had it not been for the experience of "tinkering" with that PC and its predecessor (a ten year old 8088), I would likely have never become a software developer.

Now that I'm 25 years into my software career, one thing that absolutely blows me away is just how few software engineers in my teams actually own their own computers. It's less than 50% for my current team. Meanwhile, I'm the weirdo with several (gaming PC, gaming laptop PC, and general purpose MBP) in addition to my work laptop.

> It was such a good experience that I opted to buy my son a decent gaming laptop to graduate him from consoles. Over the last year, the same thing has happened to him

I went through that experience with my son as well. He's never shown great interest in being taught computer stuff, but did want to help with a PC build. Now, he's tech support for his friends.

The trend of people not even owning a laptop is fascinating. Smartphones are amazing devices, but how do people do that?!

Can't speak for OP, but we have a lot of people who request MacBooks at work and just do their personal activity on it. Saves them the $2k for the device and they don't have to concern themselves with it being lost, damaged or stolen.

This does lead to what can only be described as an acrimonious custody battle whenever we do layoffs. High rates of "lost" equipment returns led to us ransomwaring the things to hold their unsynced personal data hostage until they return the equipment.

> High rates of "lost" equipment returns led to us ransomwaring the things to hold their unsynced personal data hostage until they return the equipment.

Is that really worth it to get back what I would assume is on average a 3 year old laptop? Do you then re-issue this old, used gear to your new hires?

That aside, using your work equipment for personal stuff (or vice-versa) is just a really dumb idea.

Yeah, even if it's not official policy, we just basically write-off all laptops given to staff and then give them if there's a layoff.

In the rare case there's still a depreciable value on the books there is an additional severance payment equivalent to the final "value".

> That aside, using your work equipment for personal stuff (or vice-versa) is just a really dumb idea.

I see people say this all the time, but so far I have never seen any convincing arguments for why I should stop using my work laptop for personal use hah.

If you work for a company that has any kind of audits or certifications or regulation compliance or such (so, basically any company other than a recent tiny startup), your company computer is riddled with spyware that tracks every site you visit, all data in your files and buffers, may have keystroke recording, remote screenshots, and on an on.

Even companies that don't necessarily want this stuff will have it forced on them by this or that auditor soon enough.

And that's just the privacy angle.

If you were to work on any personal projects on that company laptop now you have an intellectual property mess on your hands.

> Is that really worth it to get back what I would assume is on average a 3 year old laptop? Do you then re-issue this old, used gear to your new hires?

It depends on the device. A 3 year old M1 MBP is virtually identical to an almost brand new M2 MBP. There's no need to chuck an M1 MBP in the trash (metaphorically and literally) just because it's "3 years old".

Now if it's a 3 year old low end Intel machine then I'd be more than happy if it went away.

It's less about the hardware itself and more about recovering/accounting for the data on it.

If we can attest that no IP left with them and the device is out of its service life, sometimes we'll let them keep it out of pity. Ironically the most frequent justification is recognizance that they don't own a computer and can't easily look for another job.

> High rates of "lost" equipment returns led to us ransomwaring the things to hold their unsynced personal data hostage until they return the equipment.

Sorry, but that's a pretty dick thing to do to someone who just got laid off, especially considering it could otherwise be a write-off.

I actually agree with you, and I feel terrible about it in every case (it sucks being forced to treat aggrieved colleagues as adversaries), but we've gotten shit from clients over the poor data stewardship on this issue. It's not just the employee's vacation photos and recipes on the device.

There are other factors too-- one new challenge terminations in a WFH world present is that after HR notifies them, the employee can simply not log out and still have access to the local filesystem...and external media. Or if they slammed the lid shut in anger, they'd later log back in to Windows using cached credentials in Airplane Mode.

So employees were regaining access and exfiltrating data indiscriminately. It's been much less of a clusterfuck if we just reset the FDE key once HR is done with them, then negotiate return of specific files they identify. (Sometimes we do let them keep the laptop too, after recovering their stuff and wiping the rest.)

It's not like most people are programming or writing Word docs on their phones. The most important thing they're doing is some form of banking. The rest of the time, it's just checking if things exist and sending messages to people. You don't need a laptop to do those things, though I personally prefer having the power of my Macbook.

> just how few software engineers in my teams actually own their own computers

That sounds fine, if there is no corporate spyware inside.

> Meanwhile, I'm the weirdo with several (gaming PC, gaming laptop PC, and general purpose MBP) in addition to my work laptop.

That has more to do with gaming than with software engineering, doesn’t it.

> That has more to do with gaming than with software engineering, doesn’t it.

I do use them for personal SW projects as well.

> That sounds fine,

Certainly, there's nothing "wrong" with that, but it does lead to specific scenarios, especially in cases of layoffs, where one could be in a position to not have a job or a computer to use for maintaining resumes, taking virtual interviews, etc. When I was laid off in 2022, there were several people that were panicking about that very fact.

You can get a very cheap chromebook for all that if there’s a need. I own my laptop, but have had friends who went through layoffs and just grabbed a cheap one to find a new job.

It doesn’t make sense to own a laptop unless you will regularly use it. Quite a lot of people I know, just don’t really use one outside of their work commitments. So your home hardware sits and collects dust.

I built my first computer when the “turbo” button was still a thing, and have probably built dozens more (for family, friends, and myself) in the ensuing three decades. These days I do the bulk of my non-work computing on an iPad with a Magic Keyboard, only pulling out the laptop when I need Fusion 360. If I get back into gaming I can see picking up a nice laptop, but for me the need or desire to own a desktop has passed.

Pretty much the same. I know in these circles we hate the fact that supermajority of people do their daily stuff on their phones, but it is what it is.

So what, they “get off” using their employer’s laptop as well?

Now that I'm 25 years into my software career, one thing that absolutely blows me away is just how few software engineers in my teams actually own their own computers.

I'm 15 years into my IT career and I'm amazed at how few of my colleagues seem to care about tech. They know their way around our company's instance of ServiceNow, or whatever their specific role demands of them, but there is very little curiosity, desire & wherewithal to branch out from their little space into something new.

This is most people, at most jobs, TBH.

TBF working a full time job has sucked the soul out of me. The last thing I want to be doing on my free time is be on more computers. I used to be a kid eager about technology but now I am actually a boomer. I have a hard time using smart TV's now a days.

People may have other things in their life that may mean they don't have the luxury of time to spare on these sort of things.

When I had kids all of my hobbies stopped. There is no time left for anything non-essential.

I simply no longer have the time - or frankly mental energy - for curiosity. Right now I am typing this while supervising bath time for a 3 year old.

If my experience is generalizable, it's going to get better when the kid turns 4. By 9 I was able to go back to spending real energy on hobbies, especially if I wake up early enough.

Hang in there!

Note: this seems like it only applies if you're putting your children into a school. If you're homeschooling that "free time" doesn't materialize. It also doesn't happen if you have two children (or more) a couple of years apart, as their school start and end times won't sync up except a few times over the course of > decade.

I had a friend gently remind me that the reason he can be prolific at writing music these days and i "can't seem to find the time" is because i've raised 2 and currently am raising a third, and if he had kids he wouldn't write music either. My youngest turned 7 this year. Older two are out of the house.

I felt that way when I was fresh out of school, now I find that my life is greatly improved by spending less time on (or thinking about) computers outside of work and more outdoors, doing some kind of physical activity.

A _lot_ of IT these days, at least at software companies, is more akin to retail work (inventory, rotation, shipping/delivery logistics, compliance and permissions management) than tech support. This also makes it an attractive vector for tech/trade colleges because they can directly map such experience to higher-paying, less-seasonal work than retail.

It's still a good foot-in-the-door role for people who still can't access education or job experience reqs for tech, but it's also now one of the roles where you can just park, work 9-5, get a better wage than retail, and not have to corral shopping carts. The tech end of internal IT support has moved more to SRE/ops roles.

Hardware company IT is marginally more interesting but it's still more interested in tagging hardware than understanding it.

When I'm in concentration mode for 8+ hours a day in tech, the last thing I want to do is fuck around with a misbehaving home lab. I used to have a server and switches and NAS and firewall etc. But got sick of troubleshooting unnecessary complexity. Now I've got a NAS and a desktop. My tinkering years are over and I just want things to work. That shit loses it's charm over time.

I have a similar story as many on HN do. I had been stringing 10BASE2 coax around my "home lab" for years before I realized people will actually pay me to play with my toys. Of course I then sunk all of that money into more toys for the home lab.

I now have a lot of friends with kids and some of them are teenagers. I've had some concern in my mind for a while now - their total knowledge of tech comes down to asking for a wifi password and watching prank videos (or whatever) on an app. When you ask them what they want to do when they grow up they say "influencer"... The most technical thing they know how to do is reboot "the router" when the internet is down. The second diagnostic step is to yell that the internet is down.

They're great kids and I'm not criticizing them but I've had some concerns that there might not be anyone around to keep the lights on when our generation is gone. In our day using a computer and getting on the internet had huge barriers to entry but that came with the benefit of an explosion in tech talent.

My point is it's great to hear there are still some nerdy kids out there getting under the covers!

People with the interest and skill to debug technical systems have always been a tiny minority

> They're great kids and I'm not criticizing them but I've had some concerns that there might not be anyone around to keep the lights on when our generation is gone. In our day using a computer and getting on the internet had huge barriers to entry but that came with the benefit of an explosion in tech talent.

I mean, thinking back to the '80s, I was probably one out of maybe 3 kids in my entire class who even had a home computer, let alone knew how to do anything more than play games.

Back to the '90s, many more classmates had computers, but only a tiny, tiny few of us knew how to program and edit CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Back to the early 2000s, I was the only person I knew with greater than a dial-up Internet connection or who knew the difference between a local and public IP address.

99.5% have always been laypeople, and that's OK. For every 200 kids today who only know how to ask their mom for the WiFi password, there's one who is setting up a home lab, and that's enough for the world's tech needs in twenty years.

Is this not how the generation before us felt about our inability to repair our cars and radios?

That's funny -- when my familiy was planning to move to a home that was being built, my Dad got out there before they put the drywall up and ran telephone and cable television to every bedroom. I followed in behind him with my punch down tool and put a shiny, new Ethernet port in every room, too.

This was 1993. There was no broadband. We almost went 10-BASE2 due to cost. I remember we had a Netware server and two computers. It was kind of overkill but it was fun!

Same exact path here, just a few years later. Tried gaming on my mom's Gateway, which led to building my first PC with a Pentium D, which led to a hobby of constantly buying/selling hardware on ebay and swapping stuff out, which led to an EE degree, and here we are.

No video games, no PC tinkering and overlocking, no EE degree.

What cool things did he do with his Flipper Zero?

Mostly exploration and a little mischief -- cloning his garage door opener, turning the smart board off (and on) on the teacher in class (similar to those keychain devices that roll through the off codes on TV IR remotes), trying to break into the NFC tag the Laser Tag equipment uses at the place we play.

I've since sent him some suggestions :)

how old are your kids?

This reminds me, I lost my flipper zero and need to find it

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