My consulting company not provide a laptop to me | Hacker News Reader

My consulting company not provide a laptop to me

6 pointstokyowiz11 comments

edit : i asked for a new one, and got it

If you require a laptop and they don't provide one then there can be a tax benefit to you (consult a tax expert). If you use your own laptop then they have less control over it. Potentially none. If you have one available and like it and they don't require you to install their corporate malware then that might be a bonus. If they do require you to install their corporate malware then that would be a huge issue for me.

On the other hand, I can't imagine a consulting firm not providing required equipment to their employees. As a client I would be very "sus" of such a situation.

yeah, they provided me a shit with 8gb of ram, i need at least 16 , but i prefer with 32, so i simple said that ill use one of my laptop. and yeah i should install vpn stuff, but no other shit, just the vpn for security reason.

So they did provide you with a computer?

> so i simple said that ill use one of my laptop

What did the company say? Did they allow that?

So they did provide you a laptop? Make sure you're not breaking company policies by using your own laptop instead.

Use the shitty laptop and provide shitty employment blame the shitty laptop for your shitty work and get on with your shitty life.

I've been in this position. Even though they don't own it they may try to exert control (install Windows or you'll be fired, which is what effectively happened to me).

Make them supply you with the equipment. Do not use your own.

What if the hourly rate is outrageous ?

I ran into an issue where my Mac basically wouldn't work for a remote job. Paid 1k for a gaming laptop and it was more than worth it.

I ended up making about 2x as much as I wouldn't of at a different job.

There's no hard rule here. If you had a job offer for 90$ an hour would you really pass that up because you didn't want to buy a Windows laptop?

Contractors are not consultants, but your point is still valid.

Unfortunately I saw a very small slice of that pie.

Under Canadian tax laws you can only claim consumables.

"The basis is that you can only claim what you use in the year. No office equipment like computer, desk, chair, printer, lamp is eligible; since you can sell the computer, desk, chairs later on, you cannot claim their expense nor their depreciation."

FYI, I'm not a Tax Expert (but paying for one...) and working remotely for a consulting company.

So where I would be more concerned is with _clients_ and their security requirements. Often we would run into really onerous requirements at my last consulting firm, so we would often get a laptop from the client themselves they could control and manage access to code, etc.

Otherwise you probably open yourself to all kinds of liabilities I wouldn't want to deal with.

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