Ask HN: New employeer not providing equipment

Oof. That's a bright red flag: Regulated industry and own laptop? Please tell me at least if they asked you to install a new harddrive and company VPN. If not, the company is probably compliance theater and has no business being in the business. God have mercy on their customers.

How to handle it? If you can afford it, leave and don't come back. If not, bring it up first thing you see your manager, latest on your first 1-1. This can't go on. If he brushes off, check if he intends to work you hard like 996. That usually means they are looking to use your work and find a reason to fire you asap afterwards.

Just out of curiosity: Did you oversell yourself during the interviews?

Red flag. Never work on company stuff on personal machine. They need to get their act together and provide equipment. You show up; you get paid--even if they are still provisioning your equipment.

In the meantime, shadow folks, attend standups, get to know your colleagues, the products, etc.

Using your personal laptop for work is unheard of for anything other than a startup that is still a couple dudes in their basement. (Where you are one of the original dudes)

Run away.

I'm surprised at the immediate leaps to conclusions here...

Why not text him back and ask him why directly? This could all be clarified in a few messages.

Run Consider if you really want/need to join them. Working in a regulated space for a company that is asking this to a new hire seems dangerous

I think it just doesn’t occur to companies of a certain size. I was similarly flummoxed when my current job also assumed I was BYOPC, though they acquiesced to buy me a Mac when I asked. But, the rest of the team still uses their desktops and (!!) has trouble when traveling and being forced to use an alternate development environment.

Buy a $50 used chromebook and take it in.

No way they could ever pass an ITAR or SOC 2 audit with employees using their own machines. Data security is critical part of these governmental frameworks and having a set of controls in place that companies must comply with if they are to be certified. Keeping ITAR data on an employee's personal PC that is open to the internet is probably one of the biggest no-no's I can envision.

This happened to my wife at a small PR firm. She told them she doesn't have a laptop (she didn't really have a functional one) and they just bought her a personal one as a 'signing bonus' and they have her bring it in.

It's a bit unusual, it's a yellow flag for sure, but it depends on how desperate you are for a job. If that's the worst thing about the company, it's not so bad, I've definitely worked for worse.

I'd tell them "i don't have a laptop, just a desktop" and see what they say? If they seem like they're going to not hire you for that, I agree with what other folks said, buy a cheap chromebook.

As a counterpoint to all the negative comments here, it’s entirely possible the CTO knows it’s gonna take x time to get your company laptop, which precisely because it’s a regulated industry might mean days/weeks of you waiting around with nothing to do

In that situation it makes sense for you to bring a personal laptop which you can use to access non confidential stuff, you might not write any code in it and might just be given docs to read through

Buy a new laptop.

I didn’t get a work laptop when I was at a mega corp and the pay was absurdly good.

I ended up remote desktoping into a secured pc anyway.

Don’t put your personal stuff on the laptop for any reason. If money is a concern buy a laptop from Costco.

90 day return policy in case the first check bounces or something.

Well, you should send this ‘yeah, I can bring my personal laptop while my machine gets set up - when will my company issued device be available?’ Oh and yeah, bring a comically old laptop running an obscure Linux distro. DSL would be best.

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If your job requires an ITAR license then it will take a week or two from the first day until you get to access the codebase after clearing your license.

Happened to me before too, it happens, it’s not a redflag, it’s more of the company is small and they don’t have enough established policies regarding those stuff, to be fair, I like it that way, too much policies make feel like suffocating. For you, you can grab a good thinkpad for $200 and use it solely for work, it won’t break the bank.

It's not uncommon. You're probably not going to work on anything serious until they get you one, but until then it'll be much more useful than a phone, when it comes to looking things up or viewing pertinent web pages or videos. Avoid putting any sensitive data on your laptop, as it likely won't be as secure as the one they set up for you. Even if it's a small startup, in California there's a bunch of bureaucracy around onboarding new hires. I joke that there's a small-business-industrial-complex that makes its income bleeding small businesses dry offering compliance services.

Fun fact: When you're new employer makes you read a bunch policy, or watch videos about them, it's called indoctrination. It literally means learning, but outside of business context it has a much harsher connotation.

You might want to bring a 100 $ old Lenovo such as x200 (ideally with Libreboot, to justify youself)

Or you may go further and bring a 30 $ used/old laptop with 1G ram and a stipped-down Linux such as Alpine+fluxbox. Your employer should quickly understand that they need to give you a new machine for you to be productive :)

Or even further, you may also say that you only have a fixed desktop computer and no laptop.

I've renegotiated (and given up) start dates for less. I'd "forget" and offer my phone as a substitute... expecting they'd get too comfortable calling or asking for work-adjacent things before preparations.

What's the rush, why not enjoy another week in the garden? Surely the paperwork and meet/greets can wait. On their part I'm seeing a lack of preparedness, adaptability, or boundaries; unsure which. Maybe a combination. Are you ready for this to consistently happen? They certainly seem more eager than anything else.

If/when they do get around to providing, I suspect it won't be long until your personal laptop collection grows with the end of another startup.