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Comment by fatnoah | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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".

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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