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They paid for you at that rate with an M2, you said you would "definitely pay for a 30% improvement" - that suggests you would be done in less time and able to bill less money, and if you were on-site you couldn't even hide it from them and pocket the difference - so why would you? That's the bit which makes no sense.

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I said I would pay for a 30% improvement - meaning if it would have improved my productivity or even just be less irritating.

Most of my time is spent between the AWS console and VS Code writing Python and Node. A faster computer wouldn’t speed that up.

And I'm asking why you would, when that appears to lead to lower income in the situation you described. Will you explain?

If you are optimizing for making the current job take longer, then you should use a slower computer. However, if the reason people will pay you $150 per hour is because you are 10 times faster than the person who costs $50 per hour, you want to keep your speed as high as possible because that it what creates the long term demand for your services.

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