In extreme cases we can work it out but you should have something that makes up for the extra annoyance compared to 99% of applicants.
Probably not common, but certainly plausible. Not everyone wants to bring work home or have hobbies that are the same as their work.
I kinda assumed that most developers took a similar approach to me. Laptop because portable when you need it, hooked to large screens, nice keyboard, nice mouse/whatever. I don't know what having a desktop would really buy me. I do 99% of my work with the laptop docked but that remaining 1% it sure is handy to grab it and go.
If you are just making web apps, it does not matter, but I do data processing where having the headroom can make a big difference.
Do you actually believe what you’re saying, or have you not thought it through?
stop advocating that we discriminate against them because you feel you need your hand held.
It wouldn’t stop them from being hired.
You’ve got 10,000 candidates applying. Seriously, what would make “doesn’t have a laptop” stand out to you positively? Why not just go with the 9800 applicants who do have one? Surely there’s no reason to think “broken laptop = good dev”. It’s so much easier to simply go with a candidate who has no problems. Beyond that, what’s the deal with making candidates do stuff on their own machines anyways? You don’t know what’s on there. You don’t even know if it’s stable enough for a test, and none of that has any bearing at all on their skill.
I’ve never worked in the Bay Area, but if this is common practice, I think I dodged a bullet.
Honestly I would see that as a huge red flag. In western countries a used laptop costs almost nothing.