We see the same thing when new laptops are announced and every employee all of a sudden needs to upgrade, despite the fact that 90% of people would be able to make do with a Macbook Neo.
> despite the fact that 90% of people would be able to make do with a Macbook Neo.
Myth. Total myth! I recently had to beg for more RAM after continually hitting swap space which causes tools like dictation to stop working, failure to load certain websites without rebooting, and so on. Devs do in fact need powerful machines and the ~$500-1000 an employer saves upfront in machine costs is dwarfed by productivity losses.
Giving your engineering employees new machines in a 2-year cycle that are between the middle and high end is one of the cheapest ROI decisions that a tech org can make.
Surely devs could just uninstall Slack, and get the same combined RAM & productivity boost?