alt Hacker NewsWhat I'm seeing here is that Binance has the IT culture of a SV start-up when it should have the IT culture of a bank. Sounds to me like a thug with a $10 wrench could've been just as effective.
> Lots of people have their work tools setup on their work computer, but not on their personal computer...you don't want your interview performance to suffer because you're using an unfamiliar tool or service...
I struggle to come up of even the most absurd interview scenario where the tool makes the difference especially in our field where if a FOSS tool is not standard, then there's a sufficiently powerful free tier (eg., Sublime, IntelliJ). Heck most remote interviews, they take you out of your tools completely and ask you to code on some shared browser-based editor.
> That's a very uncommon mindset and worldview.
I'm calling HN SV start-up bias. Outside of the startup software eng'g industry, a lot of people exercise very good separation between work tools and personal tools. I know a lawyer, _who's the head of his own law firm,_ bring his personal laptop to the office just so he could purchase tickets during office hours.
I think this is also down to a few factors:
- SWEs are typically issued high-end machines in contrast to other professions whose standard issue is still 4GB (or 8GB, if you're lucky) RAM. For those professions buying a better personal laptop is a low bar to clear.
- SWEs are more efficient when they have admin access to their own machines. Though it begs the question that maybe some inefficiency would've been an acceptable tradeoff to $6.3B.
- SWE is one of the professions on the poster for the "Get paid good while working from Bali" lifestyle, wherein BYOD is implied, especially if you are freelancing.
> I struggle to come up of even the most absurd interview scenario where the tool makes the difference
I had an interview recently where I'd initially planned to use my own machine, then gave up and just used my work computer.
I'm used to the whiteboarding/UML/flowchart software I use at work, so I either needed to pay for a personal subscription so I could use it in the interview or be forced to use some other software I'm not familiar with. I also didn't have a personal paid AI code tool, so again either pay for a personal one or just use the work Claude account. Also the webcam on my work laptop is substantially nicer than my personal laptop.
Also, critically, it doesn't matter. If IT or my manager had pinged me to ask "Did you do an interview at noon yesterday?" I would have said yes and then the only follow-up would have been them asking if it was a random thing or if I was actively looking.
I think IT (and I guess, lawyers) are probably the only people who care much about separating work and personal devices, just because they're prone to being aware of how much surveillance of the device can be happening. People in marketing/sales/whatever back office stuff will be logged into their personal Facebook, Netflix, iMessages, Email and bank and never consider that their keystrokes are being logged and screenshots are being taken.