I came across an Engineering IT Supply Manifesto. It’s a long rant from a former engineering manager at facebook who makes the case that taking longer than a business day to supply IT equipment (laptops, monitors, keyboards, …) is stupid.
Amen to that.
When I worked at Joost the IT folks kept a stack of spare preconfigured macbooks and thinkpads in a cupboard (famously the macbook stack was higher than the thinkpad stack, because the macs broke more). The experience was pretty great for the developers (going from the downer of “crap my laptop broke I hope I committed recently” to the upper of “ooh shiny new laptop” so quickly), and also for the sysadmins (actually getting thanked for their hard work and careful planning), and I’m pretty sure it meant a net save of money.
As a contractor I’m used to keeping a spare laptop around. I don’t have one right now, but OTOH there’s an apple store 20 mins from work and 30 mins from home, so I know I can get away without that spare. I also tend to buy faster/better gear pretty frequently. At 2 years my current laptop really deserves replacing, just haven’t gotten around to it yet because I can’t decide what size to switch to.
Hmm. I suspect EU public sector organizations of a certain size have to do “big chunk” EU procurement for their IT…anyone know of public sector organizations that have drafted decent framework agreements compatible with this manifesto? 
