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I don’t have the luxury of turning down jobs for windows, but I do draw the line at using it on my own systems. They want me to use it, they have to provide the hardware.
Man, imagine being in a financial situation where you could afford to turn down a job just because of if the OS you’d be using
Imagine applying for a job as a backend engineer and not knowing, based on the job posting/qualifications needed that they were a Windows shop.
Or just imagine generating this fake Gmail in Gemini or ChatGPT and posting it to farm the rage.
I applied to a (among other techs) nodejs position for a finance company. I asked 5 times in all interviews if it’s ok to run linux, just to make sure.
they said yes, and after signing the contract, I was send the instructions via email and company laptop was shipping. In the instructions, I was supposed to work through some remote desktop on a windows machine. fuck me
I instantly resigned, one day before starting.I refused the parcel so it went back to the mothership without me even touching the box
Sounds like he figured he would see last able to work with another os in his own environment.
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.
EDIT: I am absolutely flabbergasted at how many people don’t know their rights.
In the US this is covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is extremely simple when defining what is considered on-the-job work. If it is mandatory, work-related, and for the benefit of the company, then it is on-the-job work and you should be paid for the time.
Stop perpetuating wage theft, people. It’s the #1 form of theft in the US by a wide margin. Learn your rights and demand pay for your work.
They would quit working at the old company before they start work at the new one. usually there wouldn’t be overlap.
If you begin the onboarding process as a senior backend engineer without inquiring as to what your working environment will be, then you’re just incompetent.
Is this some usa user who haven’t heard about other countries? (and I doubt it’s even true in the usa).
Not only is this definitely true in the US but I know it’s true in other countries like the UK and Japan as well.
Dawg put down the crack pipe you’re the only one who is asserting this.
Definitely NOT true in US, or UK. Didn’t work IT when I was in Japan so can’t say for that one, but likely not true there either.
EDIT: In the US this is covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is extremely simple when defining what is considered on-the-job work. If it is mandatory, work-related, and for the benefit of the company, then it is on-the-job work and you should be paid for the time. So congratulations; you’ve likely participated in wage theft by onboarding people who aren’t being paid for their time. Obviously it wasn’t knowingly or with intent, but that doesn’t change the fact that, based on your response, your employers have had you or your coworkers participate in failing to pay people what they are owed.
Except for the other reply that starts “you are right. you cannot onboard a new job before you leave your old one”??? They may go on to say that accepting an offer isn’t onboarding but since I never tried to argue that it was, that’s kind of irrelevant.
Lots of people don’t know their rights or their obligations. Wage theft is the #1 from of theft in the US by a lot. Coordinating with an IT department for onboarding without getting paid for it is straight up wage theft and being taken advantage of. Doing so while still employed by another company is moonlighting under most contracts.
People do shit like that all the time. Doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make it safe.
You are right. You cannot onboard a new job before you leave your old one. Accepting an offer is not part of the onboarding process though. It happens before.
After an interview process the company makes an offer. The candidate can then accept or reject it. But that is really all informal. You can then negotiate with them for an official start date and contract. You just need to ensure you can hand in your notice and work the rest of your notice period before the start date of your new contract.
I don’t know anyone that would hand in their notice before accepting the initial offer of a company. At least here in the UK.
Communicating with IT is absolutely part of the onboarding process. And the phrasing of the email clearly states they are rescinding an offer acceptance, as in they had already accepted and begun onboarding.
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.
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
How are they going to use a personal device when corporate policy locks that down?
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.
Never, ever, EVER use your personal equipment for work.
There are a ton of legal reasons for that, not just around who owns the Copyright of work done on that machine as well as licensing of the software running in it (most commercial software has different licensing conditions for personal and commercial use) but also because if there’s some kind of legal case against that company your equipment might very well be confiscated as part of an investigation.
Also, more in general, if you have personal practices which are legally dubious or often frowned upon (piracy, porn) you don’t do it in the same machine where you’re doing your professional work, definitelly not on a work machine but even in your own machine it’s risky (see the point above about how your machine might end up confiscated and examined by the authorities if the company is investigated). The principle of “you don’t shit were you eat” applies here.
Even for your own company, it’s best to have the company stuff separate from personal stuff.
Beyond that, it’s also a very good idea in terms of having a good work-life balance to separate the personal from the professional: ideally you keep a very strong separation between work and not-work, at all levels, from work time and outside-work time to work/personal machine and work/personal phone - it helps make clear both for yourself and, even more importantly, others, that there is no work outside work, which reduces the chances of management doing things like call you on weekends or evenings with questions and makes it easier for them to accept when they try it and you say “I’m not at work now, so I’ll pick this up first thing when I’m back at work” - the cleaner and harder the split the less room there is for the “barely in control, almost 100% reactive” kind of manager to sneak work stuff into your personal-time.
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.
I will just throw a fit and they will have to do what I want.
Nah, dogg, nah.
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.
Google products are acceptible though? 🤨
That’s the recipient using gmail, I think. It shows the inbox tag.
Does anyone actually believe this post??? Because it reads like upvote farming.
Its posted in a humor sub soooo no
Not IT, but my dad said they lost a chemical engineering hire over this once, like 25 years ago.
The employer? Albert Einstein.
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.
We had a new joiner quit on his first day because of this. Didn’t even get to eat the burrito he ordered :( So it definitely happens.
Wait a minute, you’re telling me a post on programming_humor might be a meme?!?!?!?
Memes are fine.
But this is straight up propaganda trying to disguise itself as a joke.
If I’d even encounter a dev like the one from the post. I’d laugh in his face and wish him good luck on finding a job that caters to their niche needs.
Im pretty sure the entire joke is he’s an obnoxious Linux user who will never get a real job and knows absolutely nothing about actual development work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_in_autistic_people
Different people are different. For example, maybe ironically, your response also feels like it could be upvote farming to me. Also, the increased sense of justice thing is a thing.
In a Gmail client 🤮
Still the easiest way to get a throwaway email that isn’t banned everywhere. I wouldn’t want to use my real mail job searching.
They say while using gmail.
Gmail is functional at what it sets out to do, which is send and receive email.
The sender is not expressing privacy concerns, they’re expressing functionality / utility concerns.
Fair enough, still seems silly as hell to me. Windows is perfectly functional for corporate, and even software development use as long as the team managing the image and standard settings at your workplace is competent.
Yeah, being able to customize everything to meet your preferred workflow etc with Linux is preferable.
It is more than functional for corporate, seeing how the majority of companies run entirely on it.
Gmail is functional at what it sets out to do
it is not. it can’t even do such simple thing as sorting the inbox by the sender’s name. it may seem functional to people who never used real mail client and were brainwashed into accepting this as the only available ui, but it is really not.
And preferring yet another proprietary OS.
Guy just sounds entitled and precious they wouldn’t stump for a Macbook.
Workers should be entitled, and demand better conditions when we have the leverage
While I agree with the sentiment…there are workers who are fighting for things like safe working conditions, access to clean water, above poverty wages, etc. …and then there’s Billy Bob here drafting (and subsequently screenshotting and posting for all to see) a temper tantrum because his potential employer uses an operating system he doesn’t like. They’re welcome to turn down an offer for whatever reason (assuming this is even real in the first place), but I’m sorry, this is entitled as fuck.
Why not turn down an offer because a company is supporting the military industrial complex? Or has ties with black market business? Where are those screenshots? Those would be much more apt reasons for turning down an offer, rather than this shit 😂.
I mean do that too. Honestly tech unions are needed more there. I’ve turned down jobs for the same reason. I’ve had contractors and artists turn down projects I’ve asked about too. Shrug at a certain point you earn some preferences on what work and how you do it beyond what is basic workers rights
So he’s not allowed to craft his own morals? Maybe he would turn them down if they supported a corrupt military complex. Your argument sounds like it has an agenda.
Demanding a Macbook when the place doesn’t use Macbooks is entitlement, not demanding better conditions.
He didn’t need the job, they needed him.
Well, we don’t really know how much they needed him. He may have been the best candidate, but the second best may very well be just as good, but might have a funny haircut or tattoos and the management doesn’t like that. They may very well look at an email like this and think “wow, good riddance”.
Employment is a negotiation, sounds like the employer lost out on a hire they wanted because of technical incompetence and will now have to resume a costly talent search that will cost much more than a MacBook.
God you must make a ton of money
Probably yeah. Ive done the same and said no to jobs where I couldnt use Linux. I didnt even want mac at that time, because 70% of the fun of the job was using Linux and native tools there.
Its not really strange. We are using our computers to do our job and we think its fun, so being forced to use a different platform ruins a lot of the fun.
I hate windows as much as the next lemmy user, but turning down a well paying job because I don’t want to use the OS 99+% of businesses use, means you must be at a level of stability I cannot even fathom.
And not you, but OP was kind of a dick calling IT lazy. As someone go works in IT myself, a lot of departments these days are woefully understaffed. We’re not going to support any extra software, causing us to work more overtime hours, because one douche is throwing a hissyfit
Yeah the agreement for me was always that i wont need any support from the company for my Linux, and I never did.
If you know Linux, it will just work. I had to use the web version of office and teams sometimes, but that worked ok during meetings.
I need to start applying to jobs while I’m still comfortable just for the thrill of turning them down.
Use your power for good 💪
I can’t imagine saying this to normies at my work. They’d look at me like I had 3 eyes.
Well to be fair, you might be the only one using your third eye.
PRYING OPEN MY THIRD EYE
Fucking based.
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.
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.
Whoops. I commented, decided to rephrase and edited. But it didn’t result in an edit and I didn’t notice as that’s when I went to bed.
It was just a light hearted dig, no need to explain yourself .
Meanwhile, the people at Red Hat are left asking, “are we a joke to you?”
Windows is shit for most things. Especially shit for development.
As someone who does cross-platform development: everything on Mac takes twice as long, and breaks with every OS update. And that’s without even the switch from PPC to Intel 32 bit to Intel 64 bit to ARM.
I’m exaggerating a bit, and I’m sure in many environments Mac is easy enough. But for us - there’s a reason we have more Mac developers than Windows and Linux combined, and it’s not because people want a Mac.
What makes it shit for development? I’ve been using windows as a developer for almost 10 years. I have switched to Linux at home, but I don’t develop on that PC. So I’d honestly like to hear whats so bad about it, and why is your preferred OS better?
over the past 10 years microslop has become increasingly hostile towards developers and encouraging vendor lock-in.
just over the last 5 years alone, microslop has stolen finite resources and refused to relinquish them under the guise of a better “user experience”. these resources are important to the stability and development of systems locally. unfortunately microslop’s solution is “use Azure remote services”.
everything microslop does is to drive users to their cloud services.
I’ll put it down to numbers for you if it’s not clear.
I can spend $1000 on a laptop, install Linux, and run 20± containers AND have a usable desktop environment for the next 10+ years.
or
I can spend $1500 on a laptop, install microslop and run 5+ containers AND have a slightly sluggish desktop environment for the next 6 months to a year, PLUS have my entire device bricked by an update or two within that time. microslop’s solution? “sync your files to onedrive”.
this is why windows sucks for developing unless you’re locked into microslop’s development programs.
if you’re doing c#, batch, .NET, or even Java, you’re probably fine using Windows. if you’re doing 80% of the rest of any development, you’re better off using Linux.
You could have had some great points, but the fact that you use “microslop” unironically shows how much of a bias you have. Meaning your points might as well not exist.
You sound like an anti-vaxxer blaming everything wrong with their life on big pharma.
you could have argued against my great points but instead you fixated on a singular word that rustled your jimmies. Meaning your opinions are invalid.
I couldn’t understand most of what you said because of that sloppy microcock in your mouth.
ill argue. the last 5 years has saw significant inprovment for developers.
the dev drive
sudo
ssh
a fantastic terminal
wtf is a dev drive?
wsl what?
you mean putty?
wsl what??
WSL is inherently flawed because it isn’t fully integrated with the kernel. WSL is literally an abstraction layer of linux that sits on top of the existing windows device. it’s no better than cygwin. microslop developed a way to run VMs and mount the whole c drive inside it, that’s WSL in a nutshell.
after doing some light research, it seems a dev drive is just a special file mount inside the linux abstraction layer.
all I can say…
this is entire statement is ridiculous. anyone who puts a completely closed system above anything isbretarded. and since you are retarded i have to explain that open system does not mean open source.
you probably thing development is made up of front end and back end like op. when in fact front and back tohlgther is web dev and web dev is a very small portion of development.
Bros out here fighting ghosts
This reads as not only privileged and out of touch, but you couldn’t tell from the job requirements and interviews that it was a Windows shop?
What makes you assume it’s a Windows shop?
The words and the particular order they’re in.
I really don’t see which part of “senior backend engineer” suggests a Windows shop to you. Devin is the internal IT support person of the company.
IT uses windows exclusively = it’s a Windows shop. “Senior backend engineer” tells us nothing, but the skills required to work for Devin in an exclusively windows environment would have been obvious.
“Senior backend engineer” tells us it’s likely backend software development, which is mostly platform agnostic. NodeJS, PHP, Python or whatever language you want to write your backend in can be developed on any OS. Even C#, unless you insist on specific versions.
The limitation to Windows as a developer OS was likely not communicated in the job advert or during the interview process and was only revealed when the developer machine was requested.
Going purely on phrasing, Devin seems to be head of IT. So this may be his call to make, but this will alienate some candidates, as we can see.
Software development on Windows is a uniquely frustrating experience. Nowadays it can mostly be sidestepped with WSL, but that still leaves you “using” an OS that you will have to fight frequently.Ah, okay. I wasn’t thinking of the job title in terms of software development, I was thinking in terms of backend infrastructure. That’s my own career bias showing. I still think the post comes off as privileged as IDEs a mostly OS agnostic. The biggest hurdle is the environment that’s being developed for, which I still maintain OP should have been able to sus out during the application and interview process.
Dude how many qualifications do you have that you can turn down a job offer in this economy over such a rather minor inconvenience?!
I find it crazy how many people here are making it sound like it’s torture to use Windows. I get that they prefer Linux, but for many it seems like it goes way beyond normal preference to something that’s a core part of their identiny.
“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.
Dude, that’s like hiring a truck driver and telling him his lorry will be pulled by 4 horses.
If they want to pay me to deliver stuff on a unicycle, I’ll be delivering stuff on a unicycle. Do I want to ride a unicycle? Depends on the pay.
As someone who rides a unicycle professionally: what type of unicycle? Is the company specifying a particular brand because I only ride Nimbus.
I’m afraid you’re overqualified. It’s an entry-level job.
Perhaps someone with higher standards like you would be a better fit for our penny-farthing department.
It is a mistake to see oneself as a mercenary in this way. We should all be the happier if objectionable jobs were harder to staff.
Sure, but it’s difficult to classify which jobs are objectionable and what the price should be for someone to do them anyway.
Your chariot awaits! It’s an actual chariot
Yet I work for a very successfully (we have too much work and don’t even advertise for it) small company and we all use windows computers as software engineers. We use C# .Net Entity Framework, SQL, GraphQL, React Typescript or WinForms.
We have some large clients that most people ok earth have heard of.
Nobody thinks you can’t do software engineering on windows. It’s just worse.
It really isn’t though. I’ve done in on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Mac and Linux are easier to install stuff but on the whole the experience has been almost identical.
You’ve used modern Linux and modern Windows and think the experience is almost identical? That’s an uncommon opinion.
Have you considered that you might have too much work simply because these tools are inefficient?
C# development is incredibly efficient to be fair.
Have you considered not asking questions based on conjecture? No it isn’t because we are inefficient. It’s a mix of staff come first and the work comes second and a lack of greed I’d say. Most of our work comes from word of mouth and we keep client for as long as they’ll stay with us.
If a client reads a spec and get the application described and decides it’s not right we will change it for them for free to build a relationship. Which is why we get more and more requests to work with us.
I also wouldn’t take a job that required using Windows. Yuck!
I think that’s a tad excessive. Sure, Windows sucks, but it’s not my machine so I don’t give a shit. Now, if they expected me to bring my own machine and also insist that it’s Windows, I’ll get pissed off and refuse the offer. Their machine though? They can demand whatever they want, so long as I can actually do my job.
9/10 times it’s not Windows I’m fighting against when I’m unable to do my job, it’s the IT department not giving me admin rights over the right folders so I can’t even install Docker without spending 3 days with them to get the right permissions.
Personally I also would not quit/back out just from that, but “it’s not my machine” misses the point, IMO. It’s a device I’m expected to use ~40 hours a week. Windows fucking sucks. Using that trash for half of my waking hours sucks. Been there, done that, I hope to hell I never have to again.
The fuck are you doing in it?
I’m a software engineer and we use windows. 90% of my day is spent in Visual Studio Professional. The rest is split between chrome, outlook, teams, postman, and SQL server management studio.
I literally never go to the start menu. I have shortcut icons on the bar for everything I need.
I’m was working on software that doesn’t exclusively target windows. Windows is only a decent dev environment if you’re targeting nothing but Windows. Any other kind of development is a worse, potentially way worse experience than it is on Linux. Using docker on Windows is painful. Using git is painful. Using bash is painful. The list goes on forever.
Most of our code lives on Linux servers. We target web browser most of the time. For those where it’s a windows application then sure it lives in windows environment.
In my experience with windows there’s just a slight lagginess everywhere. I’ve had full gaming PCs still feel laggy just in Vscode. It’s not bad but it’s a small pain point that I don’t want to experience for 40 hours a week.
