alt Hacker NewsI was surprised to read that Chromebook use at Google was common for engineers. Even if developing remotely I had assumed they'd opt for the most powerful machine possible.
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For most of my time here I used exclusively Chrome OS, and switched to it for personal use as well. My daily driver for years was a bright red Samsung Chromebook Galaxy (the first gen with the actual metal case). Literally none of my work is local, and it could run Secure Shell, Cider-V, and Docs as installed PWAs with their own taskbar items, etc. It was glorious.
When it finally failed in the most annoying way possible (the touch screen, which I do not use, started creating phantom clicks in the upper right corner of the display) I went looking for another Chromebook that was light, powerful, and well-built. Finding none, I now use MacBook Air and weep for the time I lose every time it needs an OS update.
How common? I'd wager most people still use a mac, followed second, but far by regular goobuntu laptops. Chromebooks goes 3rd because Windows is practically banned.
When I joined, I started with a MacBook and lost it within three months :(
Afterwards I was issued a 12" Pixelbook and it was surprisingly much more usable than I had expected! I could ssh into a Linux box for running builds and tests. Cider worked perfectly. It was snappy enough to serve as a thin client even on a 4K screen.
Since it's mostly browser tabs, as long as you have ample memory (eg 16gb) it's good enough.
I do most of my development on a MacBook air and a Chromebook. The ~only thing I do from my local machine is ssh into a beefy workstation and use chrome.
From what I'd heard contractors get issued as little as a Pixel tab and dock? Everything else is in the cloud (either gLinux desktops or cloud shells) AFAIK.
Very little development in Google3 happens locally. You aren't even allowed to keep the source code on your local disk, and this is true no matter what OS it runs. (Android and Chromium are different though.)
You have access to an extremely powerful remote workstation that from a UI perspective functions almost identically to a local workstation, via Chrome Remote Desktop. Plus, no one builds things locally, even on that machine. There is a huge, absolutely amazing distributed build system that everyone uses for everything. (Again, Android and Chromium are different.)
So you don't really need a powerful local machine. I held out for a long time--there were a lot of growing pains in the early days. But eventually it got really, really good.