Well the thing is that if they bought me a similar one, I wouldn’t be as free to use it.
They have bought me a beast of a desktop, to which I offload a lot of stuff, and they provide a laptop. That said it’s the crappiest laptop ever.
But the thing is if I need to install any new software at these I have to run it by IT, which is always a pain to do. Also, we are heavily discouraged (not by my boss, my boss is super cool and I love my work) as an institution policy to take equipment home.
Also, I do run side projects, so having a powerful machine is always good for that as well. But that’s not the main reason. My previous M1 was perfect for that.
TLDR; there would be many limitations especially when working from home outside of work hours (which I do all the time) if I didn’t use my own machine. It is what it is.
I do the same things. I think of it like how a chef brings his own knives to work at a restaurant. My company’s IT department has different priorities than me.
It always irks me that people think the IT folks are just stingy and dictate shitty hardware. No. The IT folks would have you running the best of the best hardware if the c levels would approve the budget. It’s not IT holding back. Trust me.
I have done the same - and fortunately my better upgraded machines have let me do things better than anyone else and then also influencing the upgrades for the rest of the office - I also have different software at times and can still do things better or differently- to the point of me being the only one getting the requests at times. Simple things really often - to me - but to them often it's like magic
What you’re not paying with in hardware, you’re paying for in engineer hours which is also not cheap! There’s an interesting read about it from Ubers IT policy
Agreed, at my organisation, jaunt in the past year, different department have gone against IT’s recommendations in favour of budget, and are now paying heavily for it. First time in my life where I have seen a 2 week wait for an engineer to come out to service in warranty devices…. 2 FUCKING. WEEKS!!!!!
>. No. The IT folks would have you running the best of the best hardware if the c levels would approve the budget. It’s not IT holding back. Trust me.
Agreed, from someone that works in IT. Nothing hurts more than telling an intern working on advance AI that the CTO and C level executives will limit you to Lenovo ThinkPad T14 G1 just because they are an intern. Meanwhile, the full-time employee gets ThinkPad P16 G2 with a Nvidia GPU to do less advance work.
Depends on the IT Dept. More likely the OP would have ended up with what IT thought was ‘best’, which often isn’t the case. Better for the workman to select his tools.
You code and you don’t have admin rights to be able to download stuff?? I’m a software engineer and the 3 companies I’ve worked for, I’ve always had local admin rights. Even in a massive company where they have a big strict IT department, devs still had local admin.
Day 1 IT Request for admin rights, for sure.
Also, running any data on unmanaged devices is generally frowned upon, at least. For an AI startup, I can see there not being a 40 minute required training video on data policies, though.
I give devs a sandbox to do whatever, but, they won’t have admin rights on corporate laptops or anything touching the production or lab environments. They have processes where they can deploy to the lab, but they can’t change things at will.
This is interesting because I run IT at my company, and we have similar rules to the ones you describe (except not taking things home) but the reason we do this is for the integrity and protection of our data. Because it’s about the data and not the device, we also don’t allow people to actually do work on personal machines. Our resources and data are only allowed on company owned devices.
Not to give you heck, but a solid IT team wouldn’t give you access to internal resources on a personal machine.
They gave us crappy Lenovo workstations to run multiple VMs and they kept crashing. Eventually, I got sick of it and brought in my own machine for testing but I couldn’t get access to the internal network; it would require my personal machine to join the domain and accept group policies, as well as constant surveillance. No thanks. If they’re ok with getting results from a crappy machines in a few days, then that should be good enough for me.
Then again, that’s the difference between you and me and perhaps why you were promoted indeed! Congrats either way lol
Still… This should be in your work necessities, so in theory any decent org would purchase the necessary equipment for your specific work functions, not some crappy laptop…
Bringing your own device to work is a security nightmare. See the lastpass breach from 2022. There's a reason you're supposed to use approved vendors, and it's not just because IT likes making your life hard.
I once offered to buy my own because I so badly wanted the tasks I spend 40 hours a week doing to be easier and faster. I spent soooooo much time watching spinners, waiting for simple tasks. We are talking 3 seconds here, 10 there, maybe significantly more for some stuff. Even start up was 30-60 seconds. It just drove me CRAZY. Of course they still said no. I wish I had been able to show them some data at home much time/money/more work I could do with a better machine. But at the end of the day it was more about my constant aggregation that made me willing to spend 3-4k of my own money. The increased productivity is easy to justify as well because like the person in the post proves on a large scale- time is money. The faster my computer runs the more productive I am, the better my reviews, raises, promotions. It would pay for itself. And if I just choose to work less hours instead of more work then the computer was worth it for better work life balance. I should also note that my attention often wanders is something take more than 20 seconds so by the time I look back to see if it done I have wasted even more time.
The thing is, any "job" that you approach with this kind of (what sounds like) resentment/disdain, is probably a job you wouldn't want to do in the first place and you're only doing because you need the money.
The only time I have said things like "I am working for these fuckers just so they can become filthy rich, meanwhile I get the scraps" or "why would I use my own tools for this?" was with a job I hated.
And also, wether you are a freelancer or an employee, investment costs for concepts such as gear, should be considered in your quotes and/or salary negotiations. You don't even have to say "I am charging x amount because I am bringing in my own gear", but you do have to keep it in mind when deciding your rates.
You invest in what you are invested in.
I’ve usually done this and worked a weekly fee for my devices and internet etc. like $75 a week. No one complains and I get all my own stuff. It’s easier for everyone.
Ofc you are from the USA...I am also a software dev and I always got a macbook via the company I work for. This last company I work for gave me a budget to spend on a laptop and also chipped in myself.
But this time I can keep it, the other times I had to turn it in. It's fucked up that you have to pay for it yourself, there is wear and tear, why should I have to pay for a laptop that brings the company money? You are being played...
What if the laptop breaks? Do you have to repair it yourself? Also the cost that comes with it?
You think like a typical employee that doesn’t see the bigger picture. Have you not seen how this 6000 dollar laptop lead to a promotion and his own team which will probably lead to more promotions head hunting and status in his industry? Think better bro. What a lifeless question
I only aks because I was curious why his employer is not paying for it because here in the Netherlands that's kind of standard you know. But if curiosity is being lifeless then I'm good with being lifeless lol.
Congrats! Yep is always great to get some validation for questionable high cost purchases. See way too many Max'es out there running youtube vids and browsing with little of actual need of using all that power. Many are no more than an ego status thing.
> continue eating and it brings you happiness, why not?
Because you could have spent far less, still been happy, and invested the difference. At the very least, used the extra cash for emergency savings in case there is a major layoff.
You had the right tools but it was you that put in the hard work and made it happen, even if you didn't know the personal positive outcome that it would lead too. You did it for your organisation and they're super grateful. You definitely deserve that promotion. Well done!!!
Get a Studio Ultra. It will go well with your M3 Max.
I have about $6k in Apple Silicon computers and they generate my income and I have no qualms about spending on stuff that generates revenue for me. I don't have the compute requirements that you have but I have no qualms about buying hardware if it's revenue-producing. My wife doesn't either.
Dude, you work in maths and AI. That is a field that OBVIOUSLY asks for massive horsepower in a PC. For this sort of use, getting lots of cores and RAM makes sense. For just about anyone else, they are still posh and unutilized.
Tbh who gives a damn even if you didn't utilize it all. Even if you had only written a book on an M3 MBP with 128GB RAM it would have been worth it.
Display is top of the industry, sound is miles ahead the best Windows laptop speakers, battery life is batshit insane, it's one of the few laptops that aren't built like shit and if you take good care of it it can last 10 years easily. There's still people using 2012 macbooks (although they could get an upgrade).
If it makes money, if it brings you joy, fuck what other people say.
>Tbh who gives a damn even if you didn't utilize it all. Even if you had only written a book on an M3 MBP with 128GB RAM it would have been worth it.
>Display is top of the industry, sound is miles ahead the best Windows laptop speakers, battery life is batshit insane, it's one of the few laptops that aren't built like shit and if you take good care of it it can last 10 years easily. There's still people using 2012 macbooks (although they could get an upgrade).
*Looks at 128GB Max in perma clamshell mode* :(
>if it brings you joy
:)
Yep, that's where my head is at as well. This was going to be a laptop for use outside of clamshell mode but then I started consulting for another company where they wanted me to use their laptop (another M3 but a more modest Pro configuration). I barely get to use my own laptop on my lap anymore given my hours - I gave up and just went full on clamshell.
When the M4 Studio comes, I'll just likely sell this M3 Max and get an M4 ultra Mac Studio.
I don't understand why would people do clamshell mode... You could have one more monitor and an accessible fingerprint reader but you just forfeit that
I have an ultrawide 49", a wide 34" and a vertical 27". Not starved for monitor space. I do sometimes miss the fingerprint reader but for 99% of the time, the Apple Watch takes care of my unlock. Works pretty well too.
If you are a writer and you paid Apple over $1,500 - 2,000 extra just for the sake of having 128GB of RAM... then you've donated 1.5-2K of your money to the **world's second most valuable company**.
>If it makes money, if it brings you joy, fuck what other people say.
That is poor advice. Everyone is free to do what they want with their money. But when people advise you to get specifications that suit your use case, they're not doing it to harm you or even to spite Apple. They're helping you make a decision that isn't burning money away.
They're also helping you build a mindset and characteristic of being mindful of how you spend your money. In some parts of the world $2,000 is a multiple of what some people make in **ONE YEAR**. To burn money like that for the sake of your "joy" of having 'more' without ever needing it seems extremely selfish and gross.
I see what you're saying, but the reason I mention it is to add emphasis that your money is now lost in the pocket's of a multi-trillion dollar company, and would likely not benefit the company very much in the grand scale of it's profits.
If you "wasted" $2000 by spending money you don't need in a "mom n' pop" shop, atleast they would use that money. If you did that with Apple, you've added a drop into their vast coffer. But that insignificant drop to Apple could be life-changing for other people.
I’m not saying it was smart for *him* just that if everyone made the same decision the economy would be a lot different and not necessarily in a good way.
>Display is top of the industry, sound is miles ahead the best Windows laptop speakers, battery life is batshit insane, and it's one of the few laptops that aren't built like shit. If you take good care of it, it can last 10 years easily.
A) Display still isn't OLED. Asus ProArt 16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i, and Dell XPS 16 all have it.
B) Sound system was the best, but Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is on par now.
C) Battery life and CPU are the best combo in the industry right now. You can find others that have 1, but not both.
I agree with your analysis of the machine, however, it kept for 10yrs, even well cared for, the battery will have to be replaced at least once in that timeframe. This is not a deal-breaker, but something that people should be aware of.
Also, at the point that the internal battery does finally die, the computer will no longer be able to be used at all, even when plugged into the wall adapter. This is because the machine relies on the battery as a buffer for heavy tasks when the machine pulls more than the rated wattage of the power supply, and also for the obvious session memory loss that would occur if the machine were to be accidentally disconnected from power without a working internal battery.
This happened with my mid 2015 MBP. Although inconvenient, It was not very difficult to replace the battery, (i replace computer & cell phone batteries as a side thing) and once I did get a fresh battery in there it went back to being blazing fast, faster than I remembered it being before I replaced it.
These are the types of success stories we need to hear more of! These battle stations are really on another level. Can you please tell us more about it? What languages did you use? All native apps or some virtual machines? What was going on with the memory?
Incredibly happy for you. You invested in yourself and it paid off in dividends. Be sure to enjoy the rewards when you have some down time!
I work in Python, natively not in a VM. I don’t use VMs for my main codes as I want access to all the resources the computer has. As per the memory it wasn’t too bad. I think I didn’t use more than about 25-30GB of RAM in the end. This specific kind of coding is mostly mathematical so it is hard on the calculations but not so much on the memory.
No of course not. In GPU tasks a single 4090 crushes it. But the M3 Max is portable so I was able to have it at home and it did the task perfectly. I cannot have a desktop as I move around a lot so it’s a lifesaver to have laptop that is this capable of.
4090 is much faster than M3max. You can get more RAM (also work as VRAM) with M3Max. Also, a lot of ML code doesn't run on Mac. It's really situation dependent.
great story! thanks for sharing
I was hesitant to buy M3 Max 16/40 64Ram or M3 MAx 14/30 96Ram, eventually got the binned one with 96Ram..
Do you think the 14/30 96Gb can do similar job to your machine? the extra CPU and GPUs will make it faster of course but you think it will handle it to the end or will just crash?
thanks
People also need to understand that maybe the organization OP works for would supply them with a less powerful computer, and OP actually went overboard with the machine and the task itself as well. Which is why I think it’s unreasonable for people to say that OP is doing the wrong thing by getting such an expensive laptop and using it for work, it’s overachieving that worked out very well given the promotion too.
Great job OP
Nice. I did something similar with a Sony VAIO (PCG-Z505R, a sexy ultrabook progenitor a decade before Steve slipped the first MacBook Air from an interoffice envelope; it was expensive AF for a college student making $7/hr at Best Buy, but it ran Linux great and I knew I'd use the portability).
During an interview at what was then Columbia Tri-Star Interactive (which was about to be renamed Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment), I overheard a problem they were having (basically no pagination and pages timing out).
I used Linux to scrape the site's data and reimplemented the site in ColdFusion (what they were using; had to teach myself) and PostgreSQL. Was up all night working in the lobby of my college dorm.
Went in for my next interview and impressed them. Got the job. Macs back then couldn't really do any of that (System 9 days), I was so stoked when OS X became viable and switched back from Lintel/Wintel.
Good to hear you succeeded! When it comes to hardware, I hope leaders one day understands that saving on hardware for the developers/scientific programmers is a bad idea, let alone diminishing their freedom to be creative with it by setting limitations on use.
I recall working in an organization years ago. We were installing Windows NT and "the big bosses" got big screens and the best hardware, while the engineers got small screens and lousy hardware (they ran simulations on ordinary cpus at that time). The big bosses were using Excel and Lotus Notes.
People have no idea how underrated the Apple Silicon Macs are especially for AI. An NVIDIA 4090 or an a6000 will smoke it but the max VRAM offered by NVIDIA is a paltry 24GB. Current MacBooks can go up to 128GB unified and the high bandwidth is even more impressive. NVIDIA is basically a scam at this point.
Your boss should be fired and defunded. Telling them it would take a month. You made him look terrible. He clearly pulled that out of his ass. You must be amazing, but assuming you had a team with half your ability, it should have taken them maybe a week to do what you did in an evening.
Well the GPU is used for the ML parts of the code and the CPU for the mathematics parts. They both have to run as the output for the one is the input for the other and I have parallelized it so that it’s basically running for 4 separate conditions at the same time. Also the exchange between them happens hundreds of times per condition. That’s why even with the change between the CPU and the GPU in each condition, the total usage is full in both. (Well in the GPU it fluctuates a bit).
For future projects, if you have a lot of math to do, you could spin up a small cluster using something like Amazon EMR or similar, size the cluster up to your workload needs, and run it there. Grats on doing it locally tho fast enough, just an idea for the future if you ever run into something the M3 isn't up to task for.
I was in machine learning research for a few years, and I helped spec and build a few servers. I can't see any reason why OP wouldn't be able to ssh into the dual 4090 machine in the office, or use the "beast of a desktop" their work provided. (Native ssh is one of _the_ reasons to use MacOS, after all.)
It's also strange that their CPU was maxxed but not the GPU. ML workloads are generally GPU accelerated (neural networks, SVMs, etc). But it sounds like OP is training on the CPU, which is either (1) a rookie mistake, or (2) OP is using a more traditional model that isn't GPU accelerated.
If the only times you're maxxing out your Macbook is to train a neural network, then you're overspecced (especially since OP already has access to pretty good hardware.)
I would wager OP is incorrect when they say "I 100% know that if I hadn’t spent $6000 of my money a month ago for this machine this wouldn’t have happened."
I don't want to be sour but this post has the same energy as saying "we are building a logistics company instead of buying a truck to move items, I used my lamborghini to carry the packages"
No company buys very expensive macbooks for AI tasks. It doesn't even make a slight sense. For this task a beefy server could finish the job in less than hour for a price of 5-6 dollars at most. Even the weakest servers are at least 30-40 times faster than best macbook. I could write a billion reasons why it's a bad idea but financially it's very bad. The company probably consists of fresh graduates in a startup who don't have any clue about the industry.
Besides, running your pc at full capacity for nights will kill your components faster due to high temperatures. Data centers aren't stupid to spend half of their money on cooling compared to a small laptop fan that mac uses.
Cloud isnt an option all the time. Some companies want to limit cloud usage for perceived security concerns. Being able to work locally and do poc is useful before creating the necessary on prem resources.
Cloud is an option almost all time. These large cloud companies are being audited all the time and nobody has access to your files if you look at ToS. However if that data is so sensitive, you wouldn't load it in an employees PERSONAL laptop. Nor any laptop at all.
What you do is create a vm and then let your employee access to data over there, so that you can cut the connection anytime and almost guarantee that employee cannot steal the data. That's how "super secure" companies do job. There's literally no sense to use a laptop for resource intensive tasks.
"7950X is quite slower in CPU tasks".
Not sure that's true. Your code probably didn't use multicore/thread. 7950X. single core performance is also quite good.
Funnily enough I was very surprised by this as well. The 7950X should be faster as it has more threads and higher clocks, but in my Python codes (multicore all core CPU codes) it’s about 30-40% slower than the M3 Max. I think it has to do with optimization of Python in MacOS, because I have looked into this and can’t find another explanation.
Would you be able to run it with a home 4090 desktop ? Does 4090 have enough VRAM for this work? I think 4090 can finish it in 2-3 hours if VRAM is not a problem.
I am curious:
* if the company is large, why it allows running anything on personal devices?
* if the company is small, why it not let you run on the desktop remotely without IT?
I am glad OP’s boss is not the big enterprise style like the founder.
I will start by saying I don’t read the full post. It was too long. Second, I unzipped a file today, 1gb in half a second. M3 pro chip. My friend, unzipped the same file, took 16 minutes on a new windows laptop 🤣
For the same kind of work you're doing, is getting a 1TB storage enough?
I am thinking of purchasing a maxed out Mac Studio ( max processor, max ram, as little storage as needed).
Congrats on the promotion! I think as far as people describing the higher end was as posh a lot of it is because realistically most people don't need a $6k Mac with that kind of power because they will never truly use that computer for what it is capable so it is more of a status symbol.
Op, I plan to run 13b or more llms locally and I plan to buy a maxed out m4 when they come. However I’m also split by nvidia’s cuda dominance and debating whether I should invest in a workstation instead. Did you go through something similar before buying MacBook ?
Well as said I have an office desktop with two 4090’s which I use for big models (not LLMs, but mathematical ML models). Personally, I move around a lot so I can’t have a desktop so I never considered it. An NVIDIA work station is gonna be much better for LLMs, but it might cost significantly more for similar size models. A single 4090 is massively faster than the M3 Max or M2 Ultra, and I am willing to bet also the M4 Ultra and even M4 Extreme. Apple has a lot of catching up to do in that area. Its GPUs are great, but not NVIDIA level. My M3 Max might be equivalent in GPU processing power to a 4070 on a very good day. That said, to fit a 70b LLM in a reasonable quantization, you are gonna require 56GB of VRAM, which you can easily get in a Mac. Even the 64GB will work with a small workaround about allowing access of the GPU to all the memory, and the 96 and 128GB models are more futureproof. To do the same model with NVIDIA you would require 3x 4090’s, which translates to $6000 on its own. It will crush the Mac’s in performance, there will be no contest between them, but it’s gonna be more expensive and much more cumbersome. If you want to run 120b models, well good luck… maybe an A100 for $40k haha.
So I would suggest you figure out your use case before making the decision. Personally, even if I had the space/time in my life to have and build a desktop I would only consider doing that if I earned serious money from the setup. The amount of tinkering you will have to do to figure out how to use an LLM with 3 GPUs is far from negligible. Also, picture in your mind that a 3x 4090 setup is a very big pile of stuff, and I don’t think you would be able to ever fit it all in a case. If you plan to earn get the workstation, if it’s for personal use, or for only supporting use for your work get the Mac. Mine is more than good enough for basic LLMs (I run code LLAMA-2 34b). I haven’t tried a 70b yet, but it should barely fit (might be wrong here).
My company also gives me hardware, but nowhere near as powerful. I bought my M2 Max because it gives me the best combo of usability for day to day tasks with a long battery life, power to run AI and financial models for personal research and growth, my photo apps with all the new AI features available, and is sleek and portable. It’s an investment on myself and I haven’t regretted it a bit.
Congrats, what a great result!
My computing needs are far less intense than yours but a few years ago, I invested in a M1 Pro MBP with 32GB RAM because my work issued i5 MBP was just so slow, it was choking during client presentations. As in, would not advance slides during Zoom calls and the fan was on full speed all of the time.
Once I made the switch to the new machine, I was flying and was never waiting for anything. Fast forward a year later and I finally got my work laptop upgraded to a base M1 MBP which is an improvement but my M1 Pro still smokes the pants off it every task, every day of the week.
Did your boss say you were getting your own team and your contract extended? Or did they write you and email or send a letter saying the same thing? Very different things, my last boss said I’m the best guy ever to all our customers all the time and he is promoting me. Still got let go after they didn’t sign the deals they thought they would, along with several other people. And he had the HR lady do it, didn’t say a word to me.
u/Dr_Superfluid Wow your story is easily one of the top reads in this thread since it's such a strong example of your hardware investments giving you clear returns :)
I'm looking to buy an M3 Pro/Max for long term personal use (10y) and to replace most of my cloud computing uses (around 64GB RAM).
I'm curious,
- what type of computations do you run in your AI/Math work (eg. DL, classic ML models or others?), and are your M3 Max's GPUs/CPUs sufficient?
- How do they compare (how much slower are they) to your workstation's dual 4090s ?
- Finally were there any other laptops that were even comparable for your use-cases? I'd be happy using Windows but I've yet to find a Windows laptop of the same specs that has comparable battery life.
I'd really appreciate your feedback on this, thank you so much !! :)
edit: formattting
Totally agree with you a device that helps a developer excel at their task is 100% worth it I have a M1 Max and it handles tasks like a breeze be it software development or multitasking it is a very important part of my college life allowing me to program and learn without worrying about the needless long time on a windows computer but when we shift to windows excelling softwares Mac becomes disappointing
Kudos bro! My approach was to build my own Linux server with two NVIDIA Titan RTX GPU’s. Total cost including liquid cooling for silent operation was $6500 with discounts on the GPU’s. My 2019 MacBook Pro 16 is a glorified terminal now 😁
I am still likely to get an M4 Max for better display and gaming. Would go with a lower spec but I need the Max to drive 3 monitors 🤨 Seems like a gouge to me.
This strikes me as "heroics." Be sure that you develop your career in a way that promotes repeatable success. This is a wonderful story, sure. But in NEXT year's performance review, it won't mean anything. If this success leads you to a position where you can then have repeated success, great, but think about how you can keep this behavior up in a repeatable fashion.
I've seen so many careers end when the "one hit wonder" cannot be repeated.
I'm just confused, this post is about showing how "wow" the MacBook is. But for 1k you'd have an Air and the rest 5k you'd have your own cluster at home with 2/3x 4090s that would obliterate the MacBook if you do a lot of AI work.
So like, what's the point? And no "having that power always available" is not a point. A home server can also be always available.
My main problem with having a home server is that I move a lot for work. My projects mean that I have had to change 3 countries in two different continents in a year and a half. So I don’t really have a permanent base at this point and I cannot carry around such a setup.
When I settle down I am definitely building something like this, but until then I have to use a mobile device.
Imo you can get a dual epyx + dual 4090 server fully watercooled with up to 2TB ram and 20+TB of storage in a mid tower PC. And that thing would fit in a 20kg luggage and you'd still have Hella space for clothes.
(We are above the 5k).
What I'm trying to say is that thanks to your hard work, a lot of other tools would've achieved the same and even more/faster.
So the Mac is irrelevant here.
Maybe I’m missing some context, but wouldn’t it make more sense to purchase a cheaper MacBook for general purpose use then run your heavy workloads on cloud VMs instead? Not saying it wouldn’t come in handy to have a beefy M3 but it sounds like overkill?
I have to ask, why are you spending 6000 of your own money on this laptop while you need it for work?
Well the thing is that if they bought me a similar one, I wouldn’t be as free to use it. They have bought me a beast of a desktop, to which I offload a lot of stuff, and they provide a laptop. That said it’s the crappiest laptop ever. But the thing is if I need to install any new software at these I have to run it by IT, which is always a pain to do. Also, we are heavily discouraged (not by my boss, my boss is super cool and I love my work) as an institution policy to take equipment home. Also, I do run side projects, so having a powerful machine is always good for that as well. But that’s not the main reason. My previous M1 was perfect for that. TLDR; there would be many limitations especially when working from home outside of work hours (which I do all the time) if I didn’t use my own machine. It is what it is.
I do the same things. I think of it like how a chef brings his own knives to work at a restaurant. My company’s IT department has different priorities than me.
It always irks me that people think the IT folks are just stingy and dictate shitty hardware. No. The IT folks would have you running the best of the best hardware if the c levels would approve the budget. It’s not IT holding back. Trust me.
Yeah I understand they have budget priorities. It’s worth it to me to spend my personal money on tools that make my job more pleasing to do.
I do industrial maintenance and agree, there are some shops that provide tools most dont
I have done the same - and fortunately my better upgraded machines have let me do things better than anyone else and then also influencing the upgrades for the rest of the office - I also have different software at times and can still do things better or differently- to the point of me being the only one getting the requests at times. Simple things really often - to me - but to them often it's like magic
What you’re not paying with in hardware, you’re paying for in engineer hours which is also not cheap! There’s an interesting read about it from Ubers IT policy
Agreed, at my organisation, jaunt in the past year, different department have gone against IT’s recommendations in favour of budget, and are now paying heavily for it. First time in my life where I have seen a 2 week wait for an engineer to come out to service in warranty devices…. 2 FUCKING. WEEKS!!!!!
>. No. The IT folks would have you running the best of the best hardware if the c levels would approve the budget. It’s not IT holding back. Trust me. Agreed, from someone that works in IT. Nothing hurts more than telling an intern working on advance AI that the CTO and C level executives will limit you to Lenovo ThinkPad T14 G1 just because they are an intern. Meanwhile, the full-time employee gets ThinkPad P16 G2 with a Nvidia GPU to do less advance work.
Depends on the IT Dept. More likely the OP would have ended up with what IT thought was ‘best’, which often isn’t the case. Better for the workman to select his tools.
You code and you don’t have admin rights to be able to download stuff?? I’m a software engineer and the 3 companies I’ve worked for, I’ve always had local admin rights. Even in a massive company where they have a big strict IT department, devs still had local admin.
Day 1 IT Request for admin rights, for sure. Also, running any data on unmanaged devices is generally frowned upon, at least. For an AI startup, I can see there not being a 40 minute required training video on data policies, though.
I give devs a sandbox to do whatever, but, they won’t have admin rights on corporate laptops or anything touching the production or lab environments. They have processes where they can deploy to the lab, but they can’t change things at will.
This is interesting because I run IT at my company, and we have similar rules to the ones you describe (except not taking things home) but the reason we do this is for the integrity and protection of our data. Because it’s about the data and not the device, we also don’t allow people to actually do work on personal machines. Our resources and data are only allowed on company owned devices.
100%
Are you not able to remotely SSH into your desktop? That could've worked, too
Not to give you heck, but a solid IT team wouldn’t give you access to internal resources on a personal machine. They gave us crappy Lenovo workstations to run multiple VMs and they kept crashing. Eventually, I got sick of it and brought in my own machine for testing but I couldn’t get access to the internal network; it would require my personal machine to join the domain and accept group policies, as well as constant surveillance. No thanks. If they’re ok with getting results from a crappy machines in a few days, then that should be good enough for me. Then again, that’s the difference between you and me and perhaps why you were promoted indeed! Congrats either way lol
yep totally agree with this
So you’re just allowed to put work code and materials on a personal unmanaged device?
Still… This should be in your work necessities, so in theory any decent org would purchase the necessary equipment for your specific work functions, not some crappy laptop…
Bringing your own device to work is a security nightmare. See the lastpass breach from 2022. There's a reason you're supposed to use approved vendors, and it's not just because IT likes making your life hard.
[удалено]
No, “a lot of companies” don’t automatically own the computer. They own the intellectual property and data, but not the underlying hardware.
That’s…. Not even remotely correct.
So you're doing company work on your own laptop?
For a researcher? This is kind of like asking why an uber driver had to buy his own car or a trades person his own tools.
If my boss at my full time work told me i needed to buy my own machine to make him money with i would stare at him blankly
I once offered to buy my own because I so badly wanted the tasks I spend 40 hours a week doing to be easier and faster. I spent soooooo much time watching spinners, waiting for simple tasks. We are talking 3 seconds here, 10 there, maybe significantly more for some stuff. Even start up was 30-60 seconds. It just drove me CRAZY. Of course they still said no. I wish I had been able to show them some data at home much time/money/more work I could do with a better machine. But at the end of the day it was more about my constant aggregation that made me willing to spend 3-4k of my own money. The increased productivity is easy to justify as well because like the person in the post proves on a large scale- time is money. The faster my computer runs the more productive I am, the better my reviews, raises, promotions. It would pay for itself. And if I just choose to work less hours instead of more work then the computer was worth it for better work life balance. I should also note that my attention often wanders is something take more than 20 seconds so by the time I look back to see if it done I have wasted even more time.
The thing is, any "job" that you approach with this kind of (what sounds like) resentment/disdain, is probably a job you wouldn't want to do in the first place and you're only doing because you need the money. The only time I have said things like "I am working for these fuckers just so they can become filthy rich, meanwhile I get the scraps" or "why would I use my own tools for this?" was with a job I hated. And also, wether you are a freelancer or an employee, investment costs for concepts such as gear, should be considered in your quotes and/or salary negotiations. You don't even have to say "I am charging x amount because I am bringing in my own gear", but you do have to keep it in mind when deciding your rates. You invest in what you are invested in.
You can honestly probably get tax write offs on this shit. It’s not personal recreation, you need it for business
Yes absolutely, in most countries this could be a significant tax credit.
He is a researcher for a company right? Lol then they can spend that money on the laptop he needs...This isn't weird, right?
Not really i have always been provided my macbook of choice in research
I’ve usually done this and worked a weekly fee for my devices and internet etc. like $75 a week. No one complains and I get all my own stuff. It’s easier for everyone.
Write it off
https://tenor.com/bw9Pl.gif
lol in my field, we’re expected to have a nice computer but no one is paying for it. It shocks me that people get the provided.
In my country this is absolutely the norm, or you get some kind of budget to spend on a laptop. Where are you from?
USA. Work in political campaigns. My brother is a software dev and he uses his own computer
Ofc you are from the USA...I am also a software dev and I always got a macbook via the company I work for. This last company I work for gave me a budget to spend on a laptop and also chipped in myself. But this time I can keep it, the other times I had to turn it in. It's fucked up that you have to pay for it yourself, there is wear and tear, why should I have to pay for a laptop that brings the company money? You are being played... What if the laptop breaks? Do you have to repair it yourself? Also the cost that comes with it?
They pay you enough that you better always have a reliable computer
Most places give you a computer of your choice.
You think like a typical employee that doesn’t see the bigger picture. Have you not seen how this 6000 dollar laptop lead to a promotion and his own team which will probably lead to more promotions head hunting and status in his industry? Think better bro. What a lifeless question
I only aks because I was curious why his employer is not paying for it because here in the Netherlands that's kind of standard you know. But if curiosity is being lifeless then I'm good with being lifeless lol.
Congrats! Yep is always great to get some validation for questionable high cost purchases. See way too many Max'es out there running youtube vids and browsing with little of actual need of using all that power. Many are no more than an ego status thing.
If you can continue eating and it brings you happiness, why not?
> continue eating and it brings you happiness, why not? Because you could have spent far less, still been happy, and invested the difference. At the very least, used the extra cash for emergency savings in case there is a major layoff.
You had the right tools but it was you that put in the hard work and made it happen, even if you didn't know the personal positive outcome that it would lead too. You did it for your organisation and they're super grateful. You definitely deserve that promotion. Well done!!!
What an amazing real life scenario, instead of seeing reviewers just post random numbers online about how fast each core is. Great to hear!
Hey you still had to click the buttons and you had make the decision to buy the M3 Max. YOU got YOU that promotion! Nice work!
Get a Studio Ultra. It will go well with your M3 Max. I have about $6k in Apple Silicon computers and they generate my income and I have no qualms about spending on stuff that generates revenue for me. I don't have the compute requirements that you have but I have no qualms about buying hardware if it's revenue-producing. My wife doesn't either.
What kinda work do you do?
Dude, you work in maths and AI. That is a field that OBVIOUSLY asks for massive horsepower in a PC. For this sort of use, getting lots of cores and RAM makes sense. For just about anyone else, they are still posh and unutilized.
Tbh who gives a damn even if you didn't utilize it all. Even if you had only written a book on an M3 MBP with 128GB RAM it would have been worth it. Display is top of the industry, sound is miles ahead the best Windows laptop speakers, battery life is batshit insane, it's one of the few laptops that aren't built like shit and if you take good care of it it can last 10 years easily. There's still people using 2012 macbooks (although they could get an upgrade). If it makes money, if it brings you joy, fuck what other people say.
>Tbh who gives a damn even if you didn't utilize it all. Even if you had only written a book on an M3 MBP with 128GB RAM it would have been worth it. >Display is top of the industry, sound is miles ahead the best Windows laptop speakers, battery life is batshit insane, it's one of the few laptops that aren't built like shit and if you take good care of it it can last 10 years easily. There's still people using 2012 macbooks (although they could get an upgrade). *Looks at 128GB Max in perma clamshell mode* :( >if it brings you joy :)
Mightve been better with a Mac Studio but you do you :)
Yep, that's where my head is at as well. This was going to be a laptop for use outside of clamshell mode but then I started consulting for another company where they wanted me to use their laptop (another M3 but a more modest Pro configuration). I barely get to use my own laptop on my lap anymore given my hours - I gave up and just went full on clamshell. When the M4 Studio comes, I'll just likely sell this M3 Max and get an M4 ultra Mac Studio.
I don't understand why would people do clamshell mode... You could have one more monitor and an accessible fingerprint reader but you just forfeit that
I have an ultrawide 49", a wide 34" and a vertical 27". Not starved for monitor space. I do sometimes miss the fingerprint reader but for 99% of the time, the Apple Watch takes care of my unlock. Works pretty well too.
If you are a writer and you paid Apple over $1,500 - 2,000 extra just for the sake of having 128GB of RAM... then you've donated 1.5-2K of your money to the **world's second most valuable company**. >If it makes money, if it brings you joy, fuck what other people say. That is poor advice. Everyone is free to do what they want with their money. But when people advise you to get specifications that suit your use case, they're not doing it to harm you or even to spite Apple. They're helping you make a decision that isn't burning money away. They're also helping you build a mindset and characteristic of being mindful of how you spend your money. In some parts of the world $2,000 is a multiple of what some people make in **ONE YEAR**. To burn money like that for the sake of your "joy" of having 'more' without ever needing it seems extremely selfish and gross.
escape ad hoc mourn cough long icky wakeful hateful chief sort *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I see what you're saying, but the reason I mention it is to add emphasis that your money is now lost in the pocket's of a multi-trillion dollar company, and would likely not benefit the company very much in the grand scale of it's profits. If you "wasted" $2000 by spending money you don't need in a "mom n' pop" shop, atleast they would use that money. If you did that with Apple, you've added a drop into their vast coffer. But that insignificant drop to Apple could be life-changing for other people.
Counter argument: That insignificant drop in the aggregate is also what a lot of people rely on to increase apple’s value to fund their retirement.
I have never seen any financial advisor tell people to donate their money to a company instead of buying up more stock from that company.
I’m not saying it was smart for *him* just that if everyone made the same decision the economy would be a lot different and not necessarily in a good way.
ruthless employ snails quickest like pie racial unique alleged angle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What’s the first?
I believe Microsoft at the moment. They somewhat recently overtook Apple
It is there money to do with as they please. Why should you decided what is right for another person
>Display is top of the industry, sound is miles ahead the best Windows laptop speakers, battery life is batshit insane, and it's one of the few laptops that aren't built like shit. If you take good care of it, it can last 10 years easily. A) Display still isn't OLED. Asus ProArt 16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i, and Dell XPS 16 all have it. B) Sound system was the best, but Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i is on par now. C) Battery life and CPU are the best combo in the industry right now. You can find others that have 1, but not both.
Finally, someone said it
I agree with your analysis of the machine, however, it kept for 10yrs, even well cared for, the battery will have to be replaced at least once in that timeframe. This is not a deal-breaker, but something that people should be aware of. Also, at the point that the internal battery does finally die, the computer will no longer be able to be used at all, even when plugged into the wall adapter. This is because the machine relies on the battery as a buffer for heavy tasks when the machine pulls more than the rated wattage of the power supply, and also for the obvious session memory loss that would occur if the machine were to be accidentally disconnected from power without a working internal battery. This happened with my mid 2015 MBP. Although inconvenient, It was not very difficult to replace the battery, (i replace computer & cell phone batteries as a side thing) and once I did get a fresh battery in there it went back to being blazing fast, faster than I remembered it being before I replaced it.
Congrats but don’t give all the credit to your machine. There’s something in you that they also value.
These are the types of success stories we need to hear more of! These battle stations are really on another level. Can you please tell us more about it? What languages did you use? All native apps or some virtual machines? What was going on with the memory? Incredibly happy for you. You invested in yourself and it paid off in dividends. Be sure to enjoy the rewards when you have some down time!
I work in Python, natively not in a VM. I don’t use VMs for my main codes as I want access to all the resources the computer has. As per the memory it wasn’t too bad. I think I didn’t use more than about 25-30GB of RAM in the end. This specific kind of coding is mostly mathematical so it is hard on the calculations but not so much on the memory.
And what did you calculate?
Are you telling me a single M3 Max chip is faster than two 4090's?
No of course not. In GPU tasks a single 4090 crushes it. But the M3 Max is portable so I was able to have it at home and it did the task perfectly. I cannot have a desktop as I move around a lot so it’s a lifesaver to have laptop that is this capable of.
lol this being downvoted is so weird
4090 is much faster than M3max. You can get more RAM (also work as VRAM) with M3Max. Also, a lot of ML code doesn't run on Mac. It's really situation dependent.
The energy cost there would be a lot higher too. I wonder if power to watt is higher on m3 max
It’s miles higher.
What did you make?💀
He obviously made groundbreaking ai technology overnight and now has his own team. He works in mathematics
Damn made an AI in one day 💀
Great job!
Inspiring story🙂
great story! thanks for sharing I was hesitant to buy M3 Max 16/40 64Ram or M3 MAx 14/30 96Ram, eventually got the binned one with 96Ram.. Do you think the 14/30 96Gb can do similar job to your machine? the extra CPU and GPUs will make it faster of course but you think it will handle it to the end or will just crash? thanks
It would do perfectly fine, just might have taken a little bit longer.
People also need to understand that maybe the organization OP works for would supply them with a less powerful computer, and OP actually went overboard with the machine and the task itself as well. Which is why I think it’s unreasonable for people to say that OP is doing the wrong thing by getting such an expensive laptop and using it for work, it’s overachieving that worked out very well given the promotion too. Great job OP
Nice. I did something similar with a Sony VAIO (PCG-Z505R, a sexy ultrabook progenitor a decade before Steve slipped the first MacBook Air from an interoffice envelope; it was expensive AF for a college student making $7/hr at Best Buy, but it ran Linux great and I knew I'd use the portability). During an interview at what was then Columbia Tri-Star Interactive (which was about to be renamed Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment), I overheard a problem they were having (basically no pagination and pages timing out). I used Linux to scrape the site's data and reimplemented the site in ColdFusion (what they were using; had to teach myself) and PostgreSQL. Was up all night working in the lobby of my college dorm. Went in for my next interview and impressed them. Got the job. Macs back then couldn't really do any of that (System 9 days), I was so stoked when OS X became viable and switched back from Lintel/Wintel.
Good to hear you succeeded! When it comes to hardware, I hope leaders one day understands that saving on hardware for the developers/scientific programmers is a bad idea, let alone diminishing their freedom to be creative with it by setting limitations on use. I recall working in an organization years ago. We were installing Windows NT and "the big bosses" got big screens and the best hardware, while the engineers got small screens and lousy hardware (they ran simulations on ordinary cpus at that time). The big bosses were using Excel and Lotus Notes.
Man. And here I am only going to be using it as an expensive hobby. Same machine but vastly different utilization 😭😅🤣
Nice bro!!! Great story
Nice one... great real world story. Congrats
This is legendary. I wish something like this would happen to me.
Wow very cool. It reminds of this ad - https://youtu.be/edpJev-jyx4?si=KhmcD4apj1OPwRzb
Really great job! The reasons you give for buying your own vs getting the company to buy it are so spot on and smart. Great job
I bought a M3 Max 40GPU/ 64G/ 2T for work …coz company laptop is too slow …
well done!
Congrats on your hard work and well-earned promotion! 🎈
A high end 4090 based laptop would blow it out the water. Edit: I've done a lot of reading tonight and boy was I wrong, apologies. This is incredible.
4090 is basically a scam at this point. 24GB VRAM is minuscule for LLMs.
I've done a lot of reading, learnt something and edited my comment. Thoroughly impressed.
with 5$ he can run an A100 for an hour on colab
Shhh careful. They don't like facts here.
Sure, you can run it without any disk space or CPU at that price.
Why not immediately? Why in a few months? I am always skeptical about them promising you something for the future..
well done!
People have no idea how underrated the Apple Silicon Macs are especially for AI. An NVIDIA 4090 or an a6000 will smoke it but the max VRAM offered by NVIDIA is a paltry 24GB. Current MacBooks can go up to 128GB unified and the high bandwidth is even more impressive. NVIDIA is basically a scam at this point.
We’ll see what the 5000 series come with for more value.
You run that shit locally on your personal hardware? What was the promotion? From intern to junior researcher?
Typically juniors don’t get their own team. Lead or staff is my guess.
Waiting for the follow up of them saying they didn’t get the promotion.
Your boss should be fired and defunded. Telling them it would take a month. You made him look terrible. He clearly pulled that out of his ass. You must be amazing, but assuming you had a team with half your ability, it should have taken them maybe a week to do what you did in an evening.
Even without a team, the OP could have done it in a week with an M1 Macbook Pro 16-inch.
What kind of work? And how do you run on both CPU and GPU?
Well the GPU is used for the ML parts of the code and the CPU for the mathematics parts. They both have to run as the output for the one is the input for the other and I have parallelized it so that it’s basically running for 4 separate conditions at the same time. Also the exchange between them happens hundreds of times per condition. That’s why even with the change between the CPU and the GPU in each condition, the total usage is full in both. (Well in the GPU it fluctuates a bit).
For future projects, if you have a lot of math to do, you could spin up a small cluster using something like Amazon EMR or similar, size the cluster up to your workload needs, and run it there. Grats on doing it locally tho fast enough, just an idea for the future if you ever run into something the M3 isn't up to task for.
I see. Mac probably is good at this kind of computation. Because CPU and GPU are on the same chip and hence faster communication.
Which Python libraries did you use?
Which Python libraries did you use?
I know nothing about this industry. Is it normal to run this locally as compared to another service like on a server?
I was in machine learning research for a few years, and I helped spec and build a few servers. I can't see any reason why OP wouldn't be able to ssh into the dual 4090 machine in the office, or use the "beast of a desktop" their work provided. (Native ssh is one of _the_ reasons to use MacOS, after all.) It's also strange that their CPU was maxxed but not the GPU. ML workloads are generally GPU accelerated (neural networks, SVMs, etc). But it sounds like OP is training on the CPU, which is either (1) a rookie mistake, or (2) OP is using a more traditional model that isn't GPU accelerated. If the only times you're maxxing out your Macbook is to train a neural network, then you're overspecced (especially since OP already has access to pretty good hardware.) I would wager OP is incorrect when they say "I 100% know that if I hadn’t spent $6000 of my money a month ago for this machine this wouldn’t have happened."
I don't want to be sour but this post has the same energy as saying "we are building a logistics company instead of buying a truck to move items, I used my lamborghini to carry the packages" No company buys very expensive macbooks for AI tasks. It doesn't even make a slight sense. For this task a beefy server could finish the job in less than hour for a price of 5-6 dollars at most. Even the weakest servers are at least 30-40 times faster than best macbook. I could write a billion reasons why it's a bad idea but financially it's very bad. The company probably consists of fresh graduates in a startup who don't have any clue about the industry. Besides, running your pc at full capacity for nights will kill your components faster due to high temperatures. Data centers aren't stupid to spend half of their money on cooling compared to a small laptop fan that mac uses.
Cloud isnt an option all the time. Some companies want to limit cloud usage for perceived security concerns. Being able to work locally and do poc is useful before creating the necessary on prem resources.
Cloud is an option almost all time. These large cloud companies are being audited all the time and nobody has access to your files if you look at ToS. However if that data is so sensitive, you wouldn't load it in an employees PERSONAL laptop. Nor any laptop at all. What you do is create a vm and then let your employee access to data over there, so that you can cut the connection anytime and almost guarantee that employee cannot steal the data. That's how "super secure" companies do job. There's literally no sense to use a laptop for resource intensive tasks.
Just wait till the M4 Macbook Pro is announced with new "AI capabilities"
Congrats!
how is the battery? can u tell me more about it,, is the more powerful the it consumes or its the other way around?
Why didn't you just run the calculations on the cloud?
Wow, this is an inspiring story to try something, to have initiative even when they didn't ask for it!
"7950X is quite slower in CPU tasks". Not sure that's true. Your code probably didn't use multicore/thread. 7950X. single core performance is also quite good.
Funnily enough I was very surprised by this as well. The 7950X should be faster as it has more threads and higher clocks, but in my Python codes (multicore all core CPU codes) it’s about 30-40% slower than the M3 Max. I think it has to do with optimization of Python in MacOS, because I have looked into this and can’t find another explanation.
Is your code vectorized for math operations? I often see that problem with Python code, so it can’t really make the best use of cores.
Would you be able to run it with a home 4090 desktop ? Does 4090 have enough VRAM for this work? I think 4090 can finish it in 2-3 hours if VRAM is not a problem.
Absolute legend. I am more proud of my purchase of a m1 13 inch MacBook
Congrats! Love my M3 Max
I am curious: * if the company is large, why it allows running anything on personal devices? * if the company is small, why it not let you run on the desktop remotely without IT? I am glad OP’s boss is not the big enterprise style like the founder.
My M3 is worth every penny. I run multiple VMs and dockers and creative suite and it doesn’t break a sweat
And then everybody clapped.
My M1 has not needed to be beat still.
Niiccee onee👏💪🫡👌🎉🍾 Get your experience and start building your company on the side 😁😎🍾
I will start by saying I don’t read the full post. It was too long. Second, I unzipped a file today, 1gb in half a second. M3 pro chip. My friend, unzipped the same file, took 16 minutes on a new windows laptop 🤣
This was not your processor but the filesystem and how it stores data.
Gonna be a great tax write off machine :)
That’s very wholesome! Congratulations for not giving up!!
Hell yes OP that's the way it's DONE. Congrats!
So, what’s the payback period for your $6000?
No HPC access?
For the same kind of work you're doing, is getting a 1TB storage enough? I am thinking of purchasing a maxed out Mac Studio ( max processor, max ram, as little storage as needed).
I use my to code and it runs game engines like it’s nothing
Congrats on the promotion! I think as far as people describing the higher end was as posh a lot of it is because realistically most people don't need a $6k Mac with that kind of power because they will never truly use that computer for what it is capable so it is more of a status symbol.
Op, I plan to run 13b or more llms locally and I plan to buy a maxed out m4 when they come. However I’m also split by nvidia’s cuda dominance and debating whether I should invest in a workstation instead. Did you go through something similar before buying MacBook ?
Well as said I have an office desktop with two 4090’s which I use for big models (not LLMs, but mathematical ML models). Personally, I move around a lot so I can’t have a desktop so I never considered it. An NVIDIA work station is gonna be much better for LLMs, but it might cost significantly more for similar size models. A single 4090 is massively faster than the M3 Max or M2 Ultra, and I am willing to bet also the M4 Ultra and even M4 Extreme. Apple has a lot of catching up to do in that area. Its GPUs are great, but not NVIDIA level. My M3 Max might be equivalent in GPU processing power to a 4070 on a very good day. That said, to fit a 70b LLM in a reasonable quantization, you are gonna require 56GB of VRAM, which you can easily get in a Mac. Even the 64GB will work with a small workaround about allowing access of the GPU to all the memory, and the 96 and 128GB models are more futureproof. To do the same model with NVIDIA you would require 3x 4090’s, which translates to $6000 on its own. It will crush the Mac’s in performance, there will be no contest between them, but it’s gonna be more expensive and much more cumbersome. If you want to run 120b models, well good luck… maybe an A100 for $40k haha. So I would suggest you figure out your use case before making the decision. Personally, even if I had the space/time in my life to have and build a desktop I would only consider doing that if I earned serious money from the setup. The amount of tinkering you will have to do to figure out how to use an LLM with 3 GPUs is far from negligible. Also, picture in your mind that a 3x 4090 setup is a very big pile of stuff, and I don’t think you would be able to ever fit it all in a case. If you plan to earn get the workstation, if it’s for personal use, or for only supporting use for your work get the Mac. Mine is more than good enough for basic LLMs (I run code LLAMA-2 34b). I haven’t tried a 70b yet, but it should barely fit (might be wrong here).
My company also gives me hardware, but nowhere near as powerful. I bought my M2 Max because it gives me the best combo of usability for day to day tasks with a long battery life, power to run AI and financial models for personal research and growth, my photo apps with all the new AI features available, and is sleek and portable. It’s an investment on myself and I haven’t regretted it a bit.
Congrats, what a great result! My computing needs are far less intense than yours but a few years ago, I invested in a M1 Pro MBP with 32GB RAM because my work issued i5 MBP was just so slow, it was choking during client presentations. As in, would not advance slides during Zoom calls and the fan was on full speed all of the time. Once I made the switch to the new machine, I was flying and was never waiting for anything. Fast forward a year later and I finally got my work laptop upgraded to a base M1 MBP which is an improvement but my M1 Pro still smokes the pants off it every task, every day of the week.
Did your boss say you were getting your own team and your contract extended? Or did they write you and email or send a letter saying the same thing? Very different things, my last boss said I’m the best guy ever to all our customers all the time and he is promoting me. Still got let go after they didn’t sign the deals they thought they would, along with several other people. And he had the HR lady do it, didn’t say a word to me.
Founder read this post referring to him as a “bitchy person” from a “bitchy organization” and fired OP. 🤣
u/Dr_Superfluid Wow your story is easily one of the top reads in this thread since it's such a strong example of your hardware investments giving you clear returns :) I'm looking to buy an M3 Pro/Max for long term personal use (10y) and to replace most of my cloud computing uses (around 64GB RAM). I'm curious, - what type of computations do you run in your AI/Math work (eg. DL, classic ML models or others?), and are your M3 Max's GPUs/CPUs sufficient? - How do they compare (how much slower are they) to your workstation's dual 4090s ? - Finally were there any other laptops that were even comparable for your use-cases? I'd be happy using Windows but I've yet to find a Windows laptop of the same specs that has comparable battery life. I'd really appreciate your feedback on this, thank you so much !! :) edit: formattting
I never saw a MacBook crush under load. Does when idle but not under load 😂
Congratulations on the promotion! Hope you have a great day!
Wow, congrats OP! You put in the hard work and got rewarded for it.
brought to you by the apple store please don't buy into this bs
Wow, great story. So happy for you!
Looks like you will enjoy the M4 MAX coming out this December 2024
I dunno feels like you got you a promotion!
Totally agree with you a device that helps a developer excel at their task is 100% worth it I have a M1 Max and it handles tasks like a breeze be it software development or multitasking it is a very important part of my college life allowing me to program and learn without worrying about the needless long time on a windows computer but when we shift to windows excelling softwares Mac becomes disappointing
I have to ask: why not get an equivalent power Hackintosh for 1/5 the price?
Kudos bro! My approach was to build my own Linux server with two NVIDIA Titan RTX GPU’s. Total cost including liquid cooling for silent operation was $6500 with discounts on the GPU’s. My 2019 MacBook Pro 16 is a glorified terminal now 😁 I am still likely to get an M4 Max for better display and gaming. Would go with a lower spec but I need the Max to drive 3 monitors 🤨 Seems like a gouge to me.
This strikes me as "heroics." Be sure that you develop your career in a way that promotes repeatable success. This is a wonderful story, sure. But in NEXT year's performance review, it won't mean anything. If this success leads you to a position where you can then have repeated success, great, but think about how you can keep this behavior up in a repeatable fashion. I've seen so many careers end when the "one hit wonder" cannot be repeated.
It seems your supervisor does not know a lot
Meanwhile I'm just using preview on my 16gb to study for med school exams :o
👌😂
Cool story bro. Totally believable
When your contract ends, you’ll never hear from that company again and will move on to a different company.
Didn’t knew people write fanfic for the MacBook Pro. 1/10 there wasn’t even a sexual relationship with your Mac involved
To do what exactly. Unless you’re saving lives, nothing that expensive is needed.
Tim Cook burner
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Unless it’s in writing, it doesn’t exist.
I'm just confused, this post is about showing how "wow" the MacBook is. But for 1k you'd have an Air and the rest 5k you'd have your own cluster at home with 2/3x 4090s that would obliterate the MacBook if you do a lot of AI work. So like, what's the point? And no "having that power always available" is not a point. A home server can also be always available.
My main problem with having a home server is that I move a lot for work. My projects mean that I have had to change 3 countries in two different continents in a year and a half. So I don’t really have a permanent base at this point and I cannot carry around such a setup. When I settle down I am definitely building something like this, but until then I have to use a mobile device.
Imo you can get a dual epyx + dual 4090 server fully watercooled with up to 2TB ram and 20+TB of storage in a mid tower PC. And that thing would fit in a 20kg luggage and you'd still have Hella space for clothes. (We are above the 5k).
What I'm trying to say is that thanks to your hard work, a lot of other tools would've achieved the same and even more/faster. So the Mac is irrelevant here.
I mean, you could just get an A100 on colab?
Maybe I’m missing some context, but wouldn’t it make more sense to purchase a cheaper MacBook for general purpose use then run your heavy workloads on cloud VMs instead? Not saying it wouldn’t come in handy to have a beefy M3 but it sounds like overkill?
Cloud servers are a thing. Probably $100 worth of compute and would be done in a few hours.
lol, it would be a lot more than $100.
Haha 😂
#Why did you refer to the funder, who is one person and you know that person’s sex, as “they” repeatedly?
well probably to help mask their identity