99% companies have been using Windows for the past 30 years. I would gladly accept any job using Windows, even more if they paid well. I hate Windows way more than everyone else, but being unemployed is worse nowadays.
You assume they don’t already have a job and we’re just looking for other opportunities. Not everyone is unemployed before they apply for other jobs. If anything that is a good time to look as it gives you stronger position to negotiate from.
In the overwhelming majority of situations you cannot begin the onboarding process with IT while still working for a previous employer. Especially at this level of software engineering that would run afoul of moonlighting policies.
is what your describing technically possible? sure. Is it even remotely probable? Absolutely not.
Yeah but a senior engineer would just use an old personal linux laptop from home, they wouldn’t even bother bitching about the employer issued machine.
I haven’t found a company that enforces windows of everyone. Seems ridiculous. I would sign the contract then simply require a Mac because I don’t know how to use Windows. IT be dammed.
Smaller companies, maybe. But bigger companies will have a ‘Security and Compliance’ department which will force everyone to use a company-supported platform. It goes beyond OS too. Unapproved apps, even if you are allowed to install them, may not connect to company resources.
Managing centralized security and device management correctly on multiple OSes must be a nightmare. From EDRs to app and device provisioning.
You should do dev work in devcontainers anyway.
Not that it’s an excuse or that I’m happy with that, but I can totally understand why companies do that, and tbh I’d rather see a properly secured than have the option to run Linux.
But I’m biased, because I used to do Red Teamings, and the things I’ve seen…
Devcontainers work for Visual Studio Code when developers are more than happy to click their way through running builds and debugging problems. But, as someone whose workflow is optimized for the command-line, they can fuck off.
for a senior engineer position though? That seems counterproductive. I would expect it of one of the entry levels or non-it but forcing a windows ecosystem on a development or engineering sector screams red flag to me.
A senior engineer obviously needs (and knows how to handle) considerably more access to their workstation and company IT infrastructure than the average employee. On the other hand, I’ve occasionally read complaints from IT security types about engineers being way to eager to install sketchy stuff.
There’s some truth to those complaints. I might need to try out several libraries and tools to see what works best for a certain use case. Is that new one with 15 stars on Github actually safe? Are all of its dependencies? How many developers perform a task like that in a sandbox? How many of those perform a thorough audit before taking it out of the sandbox?
I recently quit a company that does. They hid that until after I accepted and started. I quit out of frustration after a couple weeks of having to listen the the fan all day due to their surveillance and telemetry running. They even disabled sleep mode, so you either had to leave that thing phoning home 24/7, or forcibly shut down every day. 10 minute boot time on a brand new laptop.
99% companies have been using Windows for the past 30 years. I would gladly accept any job using Windows, even more if they paid well. I hate Windows way more than everyone else, but being unemployed is worse nowadays.
You assume they don’t already have a job and we’re just looking for other opportunities. Not everyone is unemployed before they apply for other jobs. If anything that is a good time to look as it gives you stronger position to negotiate from.
In the overwhelming majority of situations you cannot begin the onboarding process with IT while still working for a previous employer. Especially at this level of software engineering that would run afoul of moonlighting policies.
is what your describing technically possible? sure. Is it even remotely probable? Absolutely not.
They would quit working at the old company before they start work at the new one. usually there wouldn’t be overlap.
Senior backend engineering definitely doesn’t see 99% windows adoption rate.
Yeah but a senior engineer would just use an old personal linux laptop from home, they wouldn’t even bother bitching about the employer issued machine.
How are they going to use a personal device when corporate policy locks that down?
They don’t use a personal laptop, and I’ve never heard of such thing for any company that has more than 10 employees. The security risk is huge
I haven’t found a company that enforces windows of everyone. Seems ridiculous. I would sign the contract then simply require a Mac because I don’t know how to use Windows. IT be dammed.
Smaller companies, maybe. But bigger companies will have a ‘Security and Compliance’ department which will force everyone to use a company-supported platform. It goes beyond OS too. Unapproved apps, even if you are allowed to install them, may not connect to company resources.
Managing centralized security and device management correctly on multiple OSes must be a nightmare. From EDRs to app and device provisioning.
You should do dev work in devcontainers anyway.
Not that it’s an excuse or that I’m happy with that, but I can totally understand why companies do that, and tbh I’d rather see a properly secured than have the option to run Linux.
But I’m biased, because I used to do Red Teamings, and the things I’ve seen…
Devcontainers work for Visual Studio Code when developers are more than happy to click their way through running builds and debugging problems. But, as someone whose workflow is optimized for the command-line, they can fuck off.
for a senior engineer position though? That seems counterproductive. I would expect it of one of the entry levels or non-it but forcing a windows ecosystem on a development or engineering sector screams red flag to me.
A senior engineer obviously needs (and knows how to handle) considerably more access to their workstation and company IT infrastructure than the average employee. On the other hand, I’ve occasionally read complaints from IT security types about engineers being way to eager to install sketchy stuff.
There’s some truth to those complaints. I might need to try out several libraries and tools to see what works best for a certain use case. Is that new one with 15 stars on Github actually safe? Are all of its dependencies? How many developers perform a task like that in a sandbox? How many of those perform a thorough audit before taking it out of the sandbox?
Yeah but MacOS has all the same security and group policy controls as windows.
Yeah but managing it fucking sucks.
I recently quit a company that does. They hid that until after I accepted and started. I quit out of frustration after a couple weeks of having to listen the the fan all day due to their surveillance and telemetry running. They even disabled sleep mode, so you either had to leave that thing phoning home 24/7, or forcibly shut down every day. 10 minute boot time on a brand new laptop.
Can you explain this disabling sleep mode thing? What does having the thing awake while it’s closed even accomplish?