Things are getting back to normal. I've recorded a video that's currently in editing. Actually I've recorded it twice because I screwed up the lighting so bad in the first that I had to re-shoot it. It's a bit of a special collaboration one so not sure when that'll land as it'll require some coordination.

BEAM Radio published the latest episode that I hosted where we had some of the RabbitMQ maintainers on to talk about their Kafka-competitor feature, RabbitMQ Streams. Thanks to Gerhard Lazu for putting me in touch with them. I thought it was a great conversation and I'm really curious to try some stuff with Streams.

I've added the new sponsor Bzzt, to the jobs page. This means I have positions for people who want to do Elixir in Sweden and the US right now. This new  opportunity does not require previous professional experience in Elixir but does require being in Sweden (maybe we could swing something in the nordics overall). West Arete is still on there and still open to candidates, I've sent some good people their way already so if you're eyeing it, get to it :)

If you want to know when new opportunities come up, you can keep reading this or sign up to the job-specific list.

I'm still open for more companies that want to find Elixir developers with my help and make their presence known in the Elixir ecosystem. More details here.

Stingy on the Tools?

Does your company provide employees with great tools for doing their jobs?

I've seen this handled a number of ways. At large companies, at a certain point, it makes sense to start to standardize on certain models and configurations for particular roles. I think it is a mistake if you make this inflexible and refuse to buy alternate configs or accomodate specific requests but I do sort of get that at scale it is convenient to mostly have a constrained scope of models and brands to maintain and manage.

At smaller companies I've seen it handled many different ways. I remember the excitement when we started our web and mobile agency in 2011 and we all got our first smartphones, we ordered some good but pretty sensible computers. Our co-founder splurged on the smartphones since we were going to build apps and it was time to get really into that. It was exciting!

Honestly I did a lot of company work for that agency on my own hardware and didn't think much of it.

When I went to work on the software product team of a company that sold computers to the education sector I really got a sense of what it felt like to get more than you would expect. They had the Apple displays. They got us essentially whatever MacBook we asked within reason. I never needed a PC but those were also available. I never felt like there was friction about getting something that would help do my job or make that process better. At some point I asked for an ergonomic keyboard, a better mouse, a laptop stand and got those as I needed them.

That is the company that has influenced my view on how to do things. They were also very charitable to their surroundings, customers and community alike were often offered to use their offices for events. It helped that it was a profitable business but more importantly they hired people that were ambitious, they bought equipment that matched that ambition, they attempted projects that were consistent with that vision. They wanted to be different in their sector and they definitely were. We sold gear and software products to the primary education and I can promise you that we employed more actual teachers than any of the competitors. The concept was cohesive and consistent. The company mostly walked the walk of the talk they talked. That has left an impression on me.

I just sigh when I hear about upgrade cycles and whether you can get the thing you want or need for your work. Especially for developers since I know our business and can speak to it with some insight. We are so much more expensive to acquire and continuously pay than any of the gear we typically ask for. It's a  drop in the ocean to make sure that we have a good setup. So if cash-flow is not an issue, do try to make sure your developers are more than comfortable. Limiting what you provide as far as hardware and software is concerned is such a pointless papercut to inflict on people you want to retain.

Don't overspec, don't enforce extreme gear on people. Some people thrive with the bare minimum or don't really care. But let people make a joyful choice within the bounds of your financial situation. If someone wants a build-server or something to experiment with, chalk it up to R&D. We rebuilt a plushy monkey into a very creepy teammate once. We all learned some about electronics, Raspberry Pi, Node.js and the Slack API in that side-project.

This is actually extra relevant with the recent release of Apple's new Studio line. I bet those displays are pretty nice.

There's been a lack of good quality high-resolution displays that fit with Macs for some time and this seems like a perfect thing to dock a MacBook to. Might be time to consider some good-looking displays for people. It'll be interesting to see how people prefer to do it. Stationary Mac Studio + an M1 MacBook Air for mobility or just a straight MacBook Pro that you can dock or bring as you like. Suddenly there are options on the Apple side. The PC display space mostly makes me sad becauseI can't quite get what I want.

If a company has the money but is stingy with providing good and slightly above reasonable gear to developers I think that's a mistake. The market has been absurd for years. This is one of the cheapest things you can do to exceed expectations. I also approve of setting some numeric budget for extra gear if you want to ensure fairness and take your input off the table. I think that's fine, just don't be stingy with it. I bet it pays off.

Have you been denied the hardware you require or do you get everything you ask for? I'd be curious to hear your stories and you can reach me at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

Thank you for reading, I appreciate your attention.

- Lars Wikman