Why doesn’t every company buy developers the best hardware? – Programmers – Stack Exchange

The cost of employing a programmer in my area is $50 to $100 an hour. A top end machine is only $3,000, so the cost of buying a truly great computer every three years comes to $0.50/hour. ($3000/(150 wks * 40 hours))

So suppose you can save $2000 every three years by buying cheaper computers, and your average developer is making $60. (These are the most charitable numbers that I can offer the bean-counters. If you only save $1000, or $750, it only strengthens my case.) If those cheaper computers only cost you 10 minutes of productivity a day. (Not at all a stretch, I’m sure that my machine costs me more than that.) then over 3 years the 125 lost hours would add up to a loss of $7500. A loss of 1 minute a day ($750) would give a net gain of $1250, which would hardly offset the cost of poor morale.

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