I work in a worlwide (german) industry / automotive company. The group leader can decide what Notebook, PC or Workstation his team gets. We can choose between a normal office HP Notebook/PC or a pretty good version of a HP Z-Book or a fast Workstation. Also I think most external tech guys who came to our company, they usually have real good hardware. At least in my company now, the managment has just normal office notebooks or convertibles.