tech-company, website, investmentI’ve been tasked with purchasing computer equipment for programmers in small startup. We are a team of 12 people. 3 node.js programmers, 3 front-end developers, 3 ios developers and 2 graphic designers.
We were thinking of buying an iMac 27” for everybody, but I’ve been talking to some people who manage their own companies and they said that a macbook and a 24” monitor would be a better solution. Right now I’m not sure what we should buy.
How can I determine what the best equipment to buy for my team is?
Ask your developers. Some folk prefer desktops. Some folk prefer laptops. Regardless of laptop or desktop a second monitor will probably be a good thing.
But ask the developers. They’re the ones who will be using the kit. Get stuff that they want, not what somebody else recommends.
First of all, money is cheap. Don’t skimp on hardware for the developers. Trying to save $200 by going with an i5 instead of an i7 will cost you a hundred times more in lost productivity per year. Not to mention the user satisfaction of your team.
Minimum I would consider are i7, 16GB RAM and SSD hard-drive. With the exception of the iOS app, everything can be developed on either Mac or PC. Almost all developer tooling is available for both, Microsoft has even announced Visual Studio for Mac this month. So OS really comes down to personal preference. If at all possible let each developer pick PC or Mac. You can standardize on tooling that can work on each equally well.
Desktop is a dieing form factor. There is literally nothing that you can do on a desktop that you can’t do on a laptop, whereas you can’t easily lug a desktop to the conference room. There are some absolutely insane laptops out there, more mobile workstation and less laptop.
I manage my own startup company and my developers have the following setup. They asked for the following kit and it really worked for them:
This way they will have 3 different screens. They can use the monitors in vertical mode, which is convenient for coding, or in the regular horizontal mode if they prefer.
If you are on a huge budget you can consider having better extension monitors, but definitely go for laptop instead of desktop! They can take it home, move to another room for discussion, go outside, etc.
The laptops have i7 processors, 16GB and SSD (and HDD in some cases).
They may want 2 monitors each, which I find makes development an awful lot easier…
Every work setup has different requirements.
While your GFX/Webdev guys maybe happy to get true color screens and a powerful machine to work smoothly with large graphics the programmers probably want multiple screens or vise versa.
You should talk to your staff and ask them. I would not be happy if i was settled to a IOS device if im used to linux.
To speak for myself as webdev, i would never go for a laptop on a working desk for multiple reasons, some might be:
I would look specifically at the differences these two styles can provide. An iMac (or any desktop computer) has the general advantage of being more powerful (or at least more upgradeable). A Macbook (or any laptop) has the general advantage of mobility.
Is it more beneficial to you that your programmers can bring their laptops over to the designers to discuss XYZ feature? Is it better that your graphic designers have a computer that can handle huge multi-layered PSDs?
The other part of this I would look at is specifically what the different employees like/use more often. Not speaking just about whether they use laptops over desktops more often but the platform itself. While it may not be applicable in your case, not all developers may want to use a Mac (or putting it differently, they may be more effective using their favourite *nix distro or perhaps they even prefer using Windows).
It is important to talk to your employees about things like this as it does directly affect them.
As others said, you should talk to your devs and see what each of them wants. I am pretty sure a two-monitor setup will be a must for a flawless activity.
Good luck :)
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