It’s a mistake if the company is healthy. But if individual workers are in a position to get a performance bonus or impress their boss, it may be worth it for them to spend some money to ensure that would happen. It would also be a bad work environment.

It won't impress anyone. All it will do is incentivize them to see what else they can get out of you for free. They won't respect you if you don't respect yourself.

And yet if you don't get the job done due to slow company approval process you get the blame for it, and possibly at the cost of your Job. It is rather unfortunate that this isn't a minority but many of today's company, from SME to Fortune 500 operate in a similar fashion.

If they make it such a hassle to spend $100, what do you think their bonus policy is like?

If $200 is the difference between being blamed for a late release, and being praised for doing a good job, I'll pay the $200.. and work to make that cash up in spades by negotiating it back from the company in the form of pay and position increases.

You're correct that the company should pay, but not everyone is willing to martyr their career over petty cash.

Choose your battles, as they say.

> I'll pay the $200.. and work to make that cash up in spades by negotiating it back from the company in the form of pay and position increases.

By paying the $200 you've already lost the negotiation. The work you should have done is to demand the resources to do the job the company claims it wants done.

We once built a CPU farm using own parts. It was stupid but you have to get the job done.

Unfortunately this meant that we later had to fight management really hard to pay for cloud services. We lost that battle.

> but you have to get the job done.

No, you don't. If the company won't fund the job then it doesn't get done.