I saw this tweet from @unclebobmartin the other day.
Why do we feel like our company ought to buy our tools for us?
This is an interesting concept to me, because, as of late, I’ve been considering pimping my work area to be mine… just as any other craftsman might.
My dad is a skilled tradesman. He’s a Mould Maker in a glass shop. He’s been doing this for over 30 years… and he is what I’d call a master craftsman. I asked about the idea of owning your own tools last weekend. He nearly interrupted my question by saying:
Yeah, I’ve got about $6000 of my own tools.
I stood floored. I had no idea.
Previously, I considered the idea to include things like my IDE (Visual Studio, since it is somewhat expensive), ReSharper, Profilers, Editors, Static Analysis Tools, and more. I also feel like this applies to books (you do read [tech] books… right?). Someone asked me the other day:
so how do you get SEP to just buy all of your books?
… uhhh, I don’t. I use my own money.
I can only assume that all machinists have their own copy of the machinist handbook as well.
I actually do have my own copy of all the tools I [willingly] use every day.
Do you?
P.S. I’ll leave you with one more thought. I challenge you to add one more piece of equipment to your tool chest (or to at least think about it)…your dev machine. Should your company provide you with a dev machine? Why not? Why so? I had never considered this until I read this article talking about Hashrocket. They all use their own machines!
Update:
I think my lack of skill in writing prose has caused some confusion or misunderstanding [Thanks for the feedback! For Reals.] This was really meant to be more about responsibility and craftsmanship than about money (or anything else). The main thought I wanted to invoke was who’s responsibility is it to buy/make your tools?
I also did not try to infer that SEP doesn’t buy me all the things I need (I’m sure they would, in fact… I just wonder who’s responsibility it really is).
Sorry for any confusion.
I think it depends on whether it is a tool you would expect to take to your next job or one you would be leaving behind. Take a mechanic for example, a lot of them have full toolchests that they take with them from job to job, but certain tools are owned by the shop they work at and are used by any mechanic working there.
There’s nothing to say that the computer itself couldn’t be a tool that you take from job to job, but any code or proprietary documents would have to be purged from the machine, along with any other specialized tools that the company did buy for the project you were on (say if the company purchased a license for Matlab for a simulation project for a customer).
Any tool purchased for a specific project probably makes more sense for the company to buy since there’s a good chance that you’ll move off the project some day and someone else may move onto it (or the project may close down for a couple years and someone else will have to pick it up when it resurfaces). In such a case does it make sense for you to still have a tool you have no use for?
Another thing that makes the situation tricky is how you get fresh-outs to pay for tools. You could provide fresh-outs with a signing bonus that is specifically tagged for tools maybe? I’d be curious how mechanics start out
[...] Read more [...]