This makes a lot of sense. A hacker's computer is a very personal item. Most hackers will be in a situation where there is little distinction between the tools they use at work and those they use at home. There's also likely to be many hours of customization spent on a machine in the form of shell startup scripts, defaults tweaks, browser extensions with userscripts, software licenses, text editor plugins, and a bunch of hand-compiled (or Homebrew) software.

I take my personal MacBook Pro to work and back every day, despite it being a pain in the ass to lug around, because I can't imagine doing all the same tweaks, installs and settings on two machines. And I wouldn't feel comfortable with having my personal stuff on a machine owned by my employer either. So this seems like a great solution.

And yeah, let's face it, we do like the shiny. You'd be none too pleased if you joined a new company and they gave you a scuffed old machine with the previous users sandwich still living under the keycaps, would you?

If only big corporations took the same line as you. I can't believe the last company I worked for (starts with A, one that Steve Jobs hated) re-appropriated my 3 year old scuffed, dented, damaged MBP to a new employee after I left.

I thought I could keep it as a write-off when I left the company cos I had warped the case in a bicycle accident and dropped a video camera on the keyboard so a few of the plastic keycaps had been smashed. It still worked fine and meant a lot to me but I wouldn't be too impressed if I had received that computer as an employee. It would show a basic lack of respect for the work I will be contributing.

twitter-version: Sumo Logic gives their new hires a MacBook Pro. It's a signing bonus.

They develop on laptops? Ouch.

Nope, most people have both a laptop and desktop. But they only get to keep the laptop :)