When I was at Facebook, they had network to my desk, and it often worked; with 802.1x too (certs automanaged by the corporate spyware). You could get a usb nic out of a vending machine if you had a poorly specified machine that doesn't have an ethernet port. If the vending machine doesn't have a compatible nic, the helpdesk probably would (they did for me, my corporate issued macbook had usb-a and the vending machine only had usb-c nics; I had been using a personal 10/100 usb nic for some time, but needed 1G for something eventually).

Their wifi was pretty ok though. I went a month or so without noticing that my personal usb nic had stopped working after an macOS update (needless to say, I'm not a fan of macs after experience using one at that job).

That's not my experience.

Work is done at a desk with a large display (or two) and a network port. The laptops come out for meetings, not coding.

Some people prefer hiding with their laptop and coding, but I find the added latency of wifi when using remote desktops is painful. Code is _not_ allowed on the laptop's storage.

Some people who do use laptops as primary machines will have a dock to let them use the wired network and large displays.

I worked at Apple and had a 10GbE fiber optic hub underneath my desk where I was able to pull 6Gbps over the public internet.

It depends on your job function, for sure, but I had to download multiple large device images each day, and having a 10G link was pretty convenient for doing that.

I’ll let my employer know they’re not a serious business.

-written from my wifi connected laptop at Netflix

I think a lot of people don't consider FAANG serious business, profitable yes, but you aren't putting food on tables (other than the shareholders)

I don't know anyone that isn't taking Amazon or Apple seriously now. Lots of people don't take Meta or Alphabet seriously, but still buy or click online advertisements.

I'd say Amazon is the most "serious" of them, but only the import/export side of the business.

Apple basically just sells boutique whitegoods.

If any of these companies ceased to exist, it wouldn't inconvenience anyone other the shareholders.

Well, one could imagine some small inconvenience if Gmail disappeared...

Seems like your definition of "serious business" probably amounts to about 10% of the overall economy at this point? It doesn't seem very relevant or useful.

How does that reflect on the usefulness of the economy

> I think a lot of people don't consider FAANG serious business

true, hn'ers obviously excluded :)

> but you aren't putting food on tables

i tend to agree, but then again, most "value" is created by businesses that revolve around unnecessary things.

congrats on having the worst hn take of the year

Hard pill to swallow, I know

> you aren't putting food on tables (other than the shareholders)

And the employees.

I ssh into an insane desktop machine, which has a wired connection. Effectively, this is WiFi for the shell commands, and wired for the actual heavy lifting.

> but e.g. my MacBook doesn’t even have an Ethernet port

Staircase's ramp here at home is beautiful but the metallic balusters acts as a Faraday cage. Wife's MacBook M1 doesn't have an ethernet port either but she's using a little USB-C hub providing ethernet (and connection to a proper monitor): I think these adapters cost like $25 or something (my brother had one laying around and just gave it to me).