
Ask HN: How developers in enterprises and startups can spend money? - bestan
When developers need something (hardware, software, support from 3rd party etc.), who would be making a call and allocate a budget for it? Do developers and teams already have budgets that they can freely spend on whatever makes them productive?<p>I&#x27;m curious about the structures and procedures that different companies have.
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patio11
It depends on the company, the nature of the expense, and the amount of the
expense.

A fairly common arrangement at startups is a purchasing card, which is
typically held by a team lead (for larger startups) or the founders/finance
folks (for smaller ones). If you need anything, you put it on the p-card.
There is generally minimal oversight on "anything" and the limit for a single
expense is fairly low ($500 is common, with $1,000 and $250 being probably the
next most popular).

If it doesn't fit on a p-card, things get interesting and _quite_ varied per
company. For example, a company might have a rule "Devs get to buy their own
laptops" with the informal understanding that they're $3k or so, but at the
same time _not_ be willing to allow a dev to individually decide to buy e.g. a
$3k server. That might be budgeted separately and/or controlled by another
process within the company. A dev (or team lead) _might_ have authority to
sign off on a one-off $3k expense without elaborate justification required,
but it would have to go through purchasing to actually get paid (on a check).

There exist companies which allow employees reasonable discretion to purchase
work-related necessities on their personal credit cards and receive
reimbursement, typically on a backwards looking monthly basis, after running
receipts and/or CC statements past the company bookkeeper. This is very common
for sub-$50 purchases like "Bought a pizza for the team because they stayed
late" or "Took a prospective hire out to coffee" or "Needed some printing done
at Kinkos." Most companies would probably prefer that employees _not_ put SaaS
on their own credit cards.

Enterprises are another kettle of fish with regards to processes. In general,
lots and lots of scar tissue builds up around this question, and you can
pretty much tell who has abused them in the past by what questions they need
answered to approve a purchase.

John Sheehan sensibly remarked once that "I need a $25 a month SaaS to do my
job. Explain to me the process for getting it. Does that change if it is $250
a month?" is a great question for a candidate to ask when feeling out a
company for whether they're desirable to work for or not, since it predicts a
whole host of control/micromanagement issues.

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hanniabu
Well said. I agree with this.

