The guy doesn’t want Windows but is ok with Mac. That’s… not how it works. At all.
but unpleasant, and you’ll be miserable the whole time.
on the one hand, mac is often virtue signaling for hipsters, on the other hand it is a unix system, so… it often works that way.
I think you’d find that many devs would opt for a Mac over Windows.
Hate both, but I’d run Windows over Mac any day (and I develop in both regularly since I have projects that require Windows and Mac, and will for a long time). But some of this is probably due to having to use the steaming pile of crap that is Xcode.
I work at a full MacBook shop and literally nobody uses xcode 🤷♂️ weird reason to be against it
It’s really the only viable option for iOS apps.
To be fair, I pretty much hate everything about the Mac, but Xcode is about the only thing I use it for, and it just gets worse with every release.
Then why use Xcode? Mac is essentially BSD under the hood so basically any Linux CLI tool works fine, and GUI applications work reasonably well with XQuartz or whatever it’s called these days.
There’s really no other reasonable way to build iOS apps. AppCode was a thing, but was retired a few years ago.
Ok… but we’re comparing Linux, Windows, and macOS. Talking about something that can only be done on one of them is kind of pointless. You said “I’d run Windows over Mac any day” and then shat on Xcode. That makes it sound like you prefer Windows because you hate Xcode. From my perspective - the context of things that could also be done on Windows - the solution is obvious: don’t use the tool you hate.
Why would you be forced to use Xcode? I’ve been a developer (just not Swift) for years and have never used Xcode.
Swift.
There really aren’t any other valid options for building native iOS apps.
Luckily, we don’t really do much native iOS dev anymore, so I’m just maintaining 3 apps, and not building anything new.
I only have to fire up the Mac for a few days every few months.
I don’t know anyone who uses xcode for anything but ios dev
That’s only thing I use the Mac for. Everything else is in Linux or a Windows VM (for Windows desktop apps that can’t be done outside of Visual Studio).
Explain why.
Both are big tech, donate to fascists, closed source, and a cancer to this society, the tech world, and open source.
unrelated, but I thought you’d never stop licensing your comments and posts
Yeah, but only one of them uses UNIX
Feathers are beautiful, but they can be devices of torture too
Most developers I’ve seen in the field don’t care about any of that. They care if the OS is stable and they can run their programs.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t care more, they absolutely should, but they don’t
I care if an OS can manage the running applications and their windows in a reasonable way, which MacOS cannot.
There are also enough people in tech who don’t know about Open Source.
The percentage increases as you go away from the software domain
Mac is based on Linux now
There’s a big difference between UNIX and Linux, and BSD can be very different from even other UNIX distributions. I believe macOS’ userland (definitely not the kernel) is based on FreeBSD 4.2.
The Darwin kernel is based on BSD… sort of. It’s a monstrosity hybridization of an ancient version of BSD and the Mach kernel.
:)
Linux is a BSD fork now.
If by “Linux” you mean “Unix/BSD” and by “now” you mean “for the last quarter century”, then yes. So, no.
Mac OS is my favorite Linux distro.
Mac is the compromise option
It’s a compromise if I’m not paying for it.
Still I hate that the basic, like copy, search… Use a different key. I can rebind them, but it’s at each keyboard config and makes it annoying when trying to learn new ones
Why would you not be very clear about this right at the start of the interview process so you’re not wasting everybody’s (including your own) time? If this is one of your absolute show-stoppers, then say so up front and we can either work with IT to get you what you want, or decline and move on to the next candidate.
You have a lot more negotiating power once they give you an offer because of the sunk cost.
Are you talking to the employer or the applicant, because it works both ways?
Windows is the PC operating system used by almost every organization. If you aren’t willing to work with it, you really need to be clear about that up front.
It’s like trying to get a job as a mechanic at an auto shop and telling them after the interview you refuse to work on Toyotas.
This is clearly in a field where that’s not true
“I only work on carbureted engines.”
Fair point, and taken. Interviews are a two-way street: the candidate should ask about everything that matters to them, and the company should ask about everything important they want.
To avoid situations like this, it’s best not to assume anything unless you ask first. Windows is the de facto standard in business, yes, but not everywhere and not in every industry.
If your work OS matters to you enough that you will pass on the job if you can’t pick, then you should ask. I would not want to hire someone who will be miserable in the job. And as a middle manager I probably don’t have enough pull to make an exception just for this guy anyway.
Rock stars play by their own rules and they will get whatever they ask for. For the rest of us, we just have to take what we’re issued.
Lmao, I was going to reply seriously until I realized what com we are in. That’s some good bait.
Do all your work in a VM on your OS of choice?
Devcontainers are awesome once you set them up properly, no need to run a VM.
What’s awesome about them? I learned a bit of programming before containers were a thing but didn’t keep up the skills, but I remember most of the concepts.
I mostly work in gamedev where they aren’t that much feasible so I don’t have much real experience working with them and I might be wrong but from when I looked into it a while back, it’s basically just a docker container that you specify in a .devcontainer file (at least for VSCode, but other IDEs probably have something similar) and when you need to develop, compile or run your code, it runs it in the container. It also doesn’t have to run locally on your machine, if you can run docker somewhere else (i.e on a more powerful shared server).
I can see several advantages (but I never really tested it in practice, so I’m mostly guessing) - containers are usually quick to start, you have the same and stable and replicable dev/build environment for all devs (since you just commit .devcontainers), so there aren’t some hidden dependencies and “works on my machine” shouldn’t happen too often. It also helps you keep your OS clean, so you don’t end up with 5 versions of python, 3 JDKs and 20gb of random NPM packages installed in your OS after 5 years of development - which is the most important advantage for me.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks.
They’re not awesome when your workflow revolves around the command line and you’re stuck choosing between wasting days trying to layer your configuration on top of the project devcontainer or giving up and using the unconfigured bash shell included.
It shouldn’t have to be a privilege to be able to turn down a job because of poor decisions management makes, but you can really only get away with this if you have options.
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.
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.
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?
Clamshell mode. External monitor, lid closed. My issue was that I could not tell it to sleep when not in use, because their IT disabled sleep to ensure their corporate spyware was always running.
That’s the part I get, but what does having the corporate spyware running 24/7 accomplish? What kind of telemetry would they even get out of that other than ip/location, which isn’t all that interesting.
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.
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.
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…
You should do dev work in devcontainers anyway.
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.
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.
Clients will have intellectual rights on anything produced for them. Removal of that data from their systems and storing it elsewhere will be a violation.
Using your own equipment other than maybe your monitor, mouse, or keyboard will be a no go. I don’t know of any serious workplace that would let you do otherwise.
Even if you are a self employed contractor you will need to remote in to their virtual environment and work in that.
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
deleted by creator
As long the company is ok I’m ok.
I’m not planning to input personal info on the work provided laptop anyway.
Yeah. Work laptop strictly stays work. Even when I have to travel for work I use my own computer to log into my United Airlines and Hilton stuff.
Sorry for the potato resolution
Should have used AI to up scale it
ducks
I use WSL at work, I pin max RAM and only leave one CPU running for the host OS. It’s still a nightmare. This upcoming week I’m finally deploying Redhat IDM so that myself and others can use their smartcards and the ancient AD infra to get linux workstations and jumpboxes. Microsoft did me a massive favor by raising our licensing pricing so now it’s cheaper to replace Azure AD.
Does anyone actually believe this post??? Because it reads like upvote farming.
Its posted in a humor sub soooo no
The employer? Albert Einstein.
Not really. My employer provides win11 too, but I do over 60% of my job on debian machines running in hyper-v. (the other 40% are administrative tasks and work restricted environments)
Not IT, but my dad said they lost a chemical engineering hire over this once, like 25 years ago.
To be fair they tried posting it on the Linux community on .ml and there were so many upvotes and positive feedback that it crashed the server. So they had to post it again somewhere more balanced to limit the impact.
Dude how many qualifications do you have that you can turn down a job offer in this economy over such a rather minor inconvenience?!
That isn’t minor at all. If I’m using a tool all day, it needs to be something that I’m comfortable using. Forcing me to use Windows is like taking my office chair and replacing it with a chair that has a lumpy cushion and broken casters.
I understand putting up with a shitty job situation because you need the money, but this is certainly not a “minor inconvenience”.
“Minor” inconvenience is not having a coffee machine in the dining room, it’s nothing like the culture of incompetence that permeates organization that are that severely vendor-locked.
Exactly, it’s a serious red flag.
If you’ve currently got a decent job, then you can afford to be suuuuper picky.
The best time to find a job is when you have a job.
I can say also as a senior engineer, I would never turn down another o ly because of this. It’s not my software I’m making, it’s the company. It’s not my things. If they want me to code on a pentium 3 I’ll happily do it, it’s their money. They want me to waste it on that, that’s on them.
Yea, but some of us would rather choose to enjoy the work. Paycheck and pleasure doing the job is where it’s at.
Theyre going to really struggle if they ever wanted to make an iPhone app with that policy lol.
Insane behaviour. Much as I hate Windows, for a “generous offer” I’d make it work.
if you had 2 or more options on the table, one that forces you to go to work in a Tuxedo and one that doesn’t, would you still claim it’s insane to turn down the Tuxedo offer?
If I’m being given the Tuxedo, I’m gonna make that look spiffy every day.
That said, Windows is in no way a Tuxedo.
Windows is more of a “your socks must be damp at all times while on the clock” policy.
Not exactly going to prevent you from getting your work done, but unpleasant, and you’ll be miserable the whole time.
Yeah, but if I’m paid for my time that’s only my time, being miserable requires extra payment.
You’d have to get two offers, accept one of them, start getting onboarded by the company you accepted, learn about the OS policy, without the second offer having expired. Maybe your experiences are different but based on mine that’s completely unrealistic.
Or maybe the second offer came in after having accepted the first one. That seems a lot more realistic, though extremely dependent on timing. But the most realistic scenario is, OP already had a job. But honestly if OP wasn’t just karma farming I’d expect them to have included the full story. So I’m pretty inclined to think this whole thing is bullshit.
I’d expect them to have included the full story.
- there is no reason for anyone to do that
- the “story”, if true, does not necessarily have to come from the applicant
- it may very well be bullshit, but the hints you chose to focus on are absolutely irrelevant
The email is not very professional. Rejection of Windows is fine, but that if that’s the kind of language the candidate uses at work, the company actually dodged a bullet.
What part of it is unprofessional? You specifically called out the language OP used - that seems totally professional to me. The overall message sounds like throwing a tantrum to my ears but that’s not what you called out. How do you think it should be worded?
I don’t see an issue with it. There are maybe a few things I would say differently, but every IT job I’ve worked has had poorer language in the documentation, even sometimes the ones we distribute to customers.
I would want to assume onlinepersona was joking, but maybe not.
BTW, in this case, being non-professional is referring to OOP telling the truth about his feelings.
Fuck off. He has principals and stuck to them, good for him.
You are arguing he should be more polite to some corporation that he owes nothing to. Fuck corporations, they do not deserve our time and labor 99% of the time.
Fuck capitalist professionalism.
Eh, we don’t owe politeness to our oppressors.
Your coworkers are not your oppressors. The people who own the company are. And maybe management if they’re assholes, but most people in management are just doing their jobs so they can get paid.
why tf would you apply there
Lmao mac elitists
I think this person actually wants to run linux, but they are using Mac as a test case.
They mentioned “install an alternative operating system” - which on hardware sold for Windows very much implies Linux.
But if Linux is a no, and even macos is a no - which is from a “big proper company” with support agreements and everything - then the company is obviously a lost cause who are set on windows for life for all time.
Meanwhile, the people at Red Hat are left asking, “are we a joke to you?”
I think this person actually wants to run linux, but they are using Mac as a test case.
They mentioned “install an alternative operating system” - which on hardware sold for Windows very much implies Linux.
But if Linux is a no, and even macos is a no - which is from a “big and proper organisation” with support agreements and everything - then the company is obviously a lost cause who are dead-set on windows for life for all time.
I’m just replying to see if you copy the same response, for science.
I think this person actually wants to run linux, but they are using Mac as a test case.
They mentioned “install an alternative operating system” - which on hardware sold for Windows very much implies Linux.
But if Linux is a no, and even macos is a no - which is from a “big and proper organisation” with support agreements and everything - then the company is obviously a lost cause who are dead-set on windows for life for all time.
I’m just replying to see if you copy the same response, for science.
I think this person actually wants to run linux, but they are using Mac as a test case.
They mentioned “install an alternative operating system” - which on hardware sold for Windows very much implies Linux.
But if Linux is a no, and even macos is a no - which is from a “big and proper organisation” with support agreements and everything - then the company is obviously a lost cause who are dead-set on windows for life for all time.
It’s what happens if you submit a comment and fall for the egregious lie that is Lemmy telling you it didn’t go through
Windows is shit for most things. Especially shit for development.
