The Insidious Laptop Takeover

You think your employer gave you that laptop because you deserved it?

“Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E.”

Sometimes, you only notice things when you deliberately stand still, look around, and start focussing on what’s actually happening around you.

It’s a little like the classic Sherlock Holmes technique of purposefully focussing on events, rather than letting them drift idly by. For, only then, can you conspiratorially join the dots, open your eyes, and notice changes that would otherwise have gone by completely unnoticed.

This occurred to me a while back, pre-pandemic, when I was burning some of my own time and money commuting. Every single software engineer I saw on public transport, and they’re not hard to miss, was carrying a laptop.

Ok, so the younger progressives among you, the neophytes, and those just learning the intricacies of the Grand Game might think that a company awarding you some high powered laptop is some kind of badge of honour, symbol of faith and trust, or even a kind of recognition of how lucky you were to be employed at all.

Well, you’d be wrong.

You see, I remember a time when us progressive engineers used to turn up to work (yes, it was office based work in the old days), crank up the desktop machines (that were always on the floor, as it happened) and associated…