undefined | Better HN

0 pointsblt6y ago0 comments

If I worked from home and my employer asked me to install a server in my home, I would tell them to go fuck themselves.

It's noisy, it takes up space, and presumably I'm on call to fix it if it breaks.

You should pay them an extra 24x(PSU wattage)x(peak $/Wh in area) per day for the electricity too.

I'm alarmed that someone in your company felt this idea was appropriate enough to propose.

0 comments

7 comments · 3 top-level

bob10296y ago· 4 in thread

We would certainly compensate employees. I didn't feel it appropriate to disclose every last detail regarding the arrangement in a thread which is only tangentially-related to the OP.

This was my idea. I am a developer in my company. We are a flat structure. We have a lot of respect for each other. I am on a standup with the CEO every day. We all believe in our product and would happily participate in whatever activity brings it to market more quickly. We do not hire or retain the kind of talent that would flatly refuse to participate in experimental projects like this. At least not without some sort of initial conversation about why it's not a good fit for a particular individual.

I certainly see how someone might share your perspective. I used to work for a souless megacorp and I could have easily found myself telling my former employer to "go fuck themselves" if a proposal similar to this was imposed upon me.

starfallg6y ago

Try the value data center providers like he.net.

A 42u rack and 1 Gbps connection is $400 per month.

Put cheap supermicro EPYC servers in rather than threadrippers (or build your own). High capacity RDIMMs are cheaper than UDIMMs.

This will give you a much more maintainable solution than workstations at employee's home via overlay VPN.

There is a maintenance cost for infrastructure that people tend to forget these days.

xemdetia6y ago

I think it was funny to presume that the employer wouldn't pay for it. At one of my old roles I had a second laptop I used solely for VMs just because I ran out of space on primary workstation. A simple fix orders of magnitude cheaper for a developer compared to more ESXi or cloud hardware.

Aeolun6y ago

I guess the ‘go fuck yourselves’ is heavily dependent on how able the company is to do this sort of stuff without involving you.

bltOP6y ago

Do you have an ownership stake in the company?

breischl6y ago

Tangentially, I once joined a startup where a week after I started the CEO demanded that I run their crawler software on my own personal hardware, on my personal internet connection, 24x7. I (politely) told him to go fuck himself.

I later learned that the CTO had to spend a couple hours talking him out of firing me. I probably should've just quit on the spot anyway.

jiofih6y ago

You can stop at “go f* themselves”, plenty of jobs to choose from.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse