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Comment by wannacboatmovie | Hacker News Reader

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If there's a $100,000 oscilloscope, then it's there to get used. Specifically, it's there to allow the >$100,000/year engineer to get their work done more quickly. And the engineer is there because the company thinks they're giving >>$100,000/year in value.

Yes, the scope can be taken home. That is both physically possible, and there's plenty of rational employers who would rather have the lab equipment at home with the WFH engineers adding value than in the lab collecting dust. Even if it means some of the equipment needs to be duplicated.

And taking lab equipment home doesn't mean sneaking it out in Jonny Cash's big lunchbox [1]. For some employeers it can be as simple as "hey boss, can keep the logic analyzer at my home office?" while others might have a more formal sign-out process. There are no doubt other employers where the answer is always "no", but in general it's completely possible to take equipment home without stealing it.

The idea of taking expensive things home isn't limited to the tech sector either. Consider trucking - it's common for employee truck drivers to take their $500,000 trucks home.

[1]: https://genius.com/Johnny-cash-one-piece-at-a-time-lyrics

The thing is, when it's taking millions of dollars in equipment to fit out a lab, many engineers are all sharing that equipment. It would cost many tens of millions of dollars to buy duplicates of all that nice equipment for every single engineer to have at home, plus many of those engineers won't even have space for the equipment at home anyway! I live in a relatively small apartment with my girlfriend. We struggled during the pandemic because we don't even have space for two proper work desks. We definitely don't have a bunch of extra space for lots of lab equipment.

There’s also a calibration cycle for much of that equipment that can run high hundreds for simple equipment to several thousand and often is done annually. That’s another cost that is snowshoed out across the multiple employees using a shared lab.

Things are pretty specialised and RF before you need a 100K oscilloscope. I have a 500MHz DSO, 16 channel logic analyser, 10 digit GPS locked frequency counter, 5 digit bench multimeter and a 2GHz AWG and I think it's not even 10K.

(I'd love 250K of test equipment all the same LOL).

Funny - in my case, I owned a nicer oscilloscope than my company was offering me anyway. Neither is worth more than a couple grand. I acknowledge that more expensive equipment exists, but I'll come back to that.

> There are insurance considerations too - your house burns down with $250k worth of test equipment inside, who is paying for that?

My employer already has insurance on their equipment, and I already have insurance on my equipment. I see no problem here.

Even if there was a problem, why do you expect ME to be saddled with the burden of a problem that clearly exists between my employer and their insurer? Why should I (and thousands of others) pay the cost of 20 hours a week in commuting, when my company and the insurance provider could spend a couple hours to fully think through their terms?

> There is a lack of critical thinking when it comes to extreme WFH arrogance.

I recognize that not everyone can work remote. At the time the shutdowns began, I was working for a defense prime in an airgapped lab. Obviously, I couldn't bring my equipment home. But, in that case, there was a reason for onsite work - national security. For most devs, there simply isn't a similar justification for onsite work.

None of what I said in my toplevel comment is intended to disparage anyone with a job that demands onsite work. Note how I never disparaged anyone in that situation, nor did I disparage anyone who runs a company where people are in that situation. I merely stated how much I like my situation, with some quiet jabs at companies too stubborn to afford the same benefits to themselves and their employees. Develop some reading comprehension before you start slinging accusations of poor critical thinking.

So I see it the exact opposite way. I see a staggering level of arrogance in Amazon's move to sequester thousands of people in an office who simply don't need to be there. It's detrimental to the workers' health and happiness, it's a needless cost on Amazon's behalf, it pollutes our environment, and it does jack to improve their product. It's just a power move.

You’ve come up with the most extreme scenario to make a point. Surely most of HN is not doing cutting edge electronic engineering that requires a $100K oscilloscope as a everyday tool.

The parent described the equipment as "fancy" and "specialized" which is not translated as "$500 garbage off AliExpress". There is nothing extreme about that scenario. It is in fact extremely commonplace anywhere that does serious engineering.

Yeah nothing extreme about going from $100,000 oscillators to $500 garbarage off aliexpress.

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