At the company I just started working at, the computer has a company profile as well as Sophos antivirus, which, from what I can see, filters all traffic. However, I have another MacBook, and there are no requirements to use a VPN. We use GitHub, which means I can work on my personal MacBook.
In my contract, I’m not obligated to use the company laptop, and I believe these software tools are just to comply with some ISO standards.
From what I’ve noticed, the IT team monitors app usage, so I could leave the IDE open all the time.
So my question is: would it be wrong to use my personal computer for development?
There might not be a specific rule to point to yet, but you don’t want to be the reason they make that official rule.
I know at my company, if I were to put company details on my personal laptop I’d be walked right out the door. How many company secrets are in the code and when you leave the company they don’t want to take your word for it that you’re not keeping all of that and doing who knows what with it. It’s a huge liability on both sides.
If the company provided you hardware that is subpar, you shouldn’t spend your own money (wrt to owning/depreciating your own hardware) for the company’s benefit.
Does that slow you down? You have to ask IT every time you need elevated privileges? Well, it is the company’s policy, you shouldn’t rob them the opportunity to feel the consequences of their own decisions.
A decent manager would understand how those internal processes are slowing you down, and a bad manager, well, they’ll find other ways to screw you if that’s what they want.
You're putting a lot of faith in them having a decent manager.
Your next job is contingent on being able to deliver at your current job.
The reality is that you need to do what you need to do to get work done.
If you have a bad manager, using your own hardware to deliver things faster maybe will make them like you. If it doesn’t, then it wouldn’t matter in the first place if you used your own hardware or not. They’ll find a reason to sack you.
Remember that hardware is extremely cheap compared to western salaries, relatively speaking. A beefy machine costs 1-3 weeks of the employee’s salary, yet it holds current for 3-5 years, and even if you are rotating employees often, it’s perfectly fine to hand down used ones. It is mostly a choice.
> Your next job is contingent on being able to deliver at your current job
The sad reality is your next job is only dependent of being able to pass interview rounds, and increasingly less about your previous work.
Deleted Comment
Hard disagree. I've always supplemented or augmented my tools for work. I do this because my value for efficacy and comfort exceeds that of most of my collegues and employers. I went with SDDs, multiple large high qiality monitors, decent switches keyboards, 'gaming' mice, Safari subscription (back when books were still a thing) even better IDE's long before a lott of these became popular and prices commoditized.
If tools are holding you back, that might prompt you to look for a different employer, but why waste your own time just to 'retaliate' with holding back?
But you make a good point about that also hurting yourself. Sub-par tools hurt.
I'd agree with you to invest in tools you use to work, but not to give the return of investment to the company. Instead one should work fewer hours if those hours are more productive.
If you are investing in increasing your output, only do so if you are going to reap some benefits too.
The entire contents will be copied and everything will be reviewed by a human. By both the lawyers suing and your own company’s legal team.
In my ignorance of youth I used to use my company devices for personal use (within reason, nothing bad) but a long time ago I made a clean cut.
My work phone is boring as hell. Same with my laptop. Nothing but work related info.
I would definitely not give that up. If I did have to turn it in I'd wipe it first.
But I thought this couldn't happen because our phone apps are all cloud stored anyway so they can get to everything there. On my byod phone I'm not even able to download anything locally.
Ps: I'm not in the US but in Europe and we have pretty strong privacy protections so I couldn't imagine this would be a thing.
But even for legal holds in the US (which is incredibly much more litigious anyway) our company just freezes cloud assets afaik.
Can confirm this happens. And yeah, the "extra-curricular" images they find will make their rounds and everyone will know.
The laptop you use for work, whether it be personally supplied or supplied by the business, is subject to legal discovery and may be confiscated by law enforcement. Your company has no control over this. If you attempt to delete evidence from your personal laptop then you've committed a felony.
The only way I'd use a personal device for work is if I were using it to access a work-provided and maintained VDI.
If the company refused to tell you to unlock the laptop, they would be in trouble for refusing legal discovery, and if they were wanting to refuse legal discovery, they wouldn't have handed over the laptop in the first place.
If the company ordered you to unlock the laptop and you refused, you would be violating a lawful order of the court and would be held responsible.
That said, once again, I am not a lawyer, so I could be completely wrong
It’s also not in my contract, but in the IT policy I need to acknowledge once a year.
> I believe these software tools are just to comply with some ISO standards.
“Some ISO standards” may be cumbersome or even pointless — but they help your company sell their products. Ignoring them is not a good idea.
Besides: if you use your private laptop, it may be subject to a legal hold in case of a lawsuit, giving someone else access to it.
This is SOP for basically all enterprise IT. If I didn't follow it I'd get a rap on the knuckle at best, and maybe fired at worst. I bought a separate laptop for contract jobs simply to ensure it stayed separate from personal stuff.
Other thoughts:
malware risks -- often aggressive efforts targeted at organizations compared to individuals; way more likely they get hacked first, and then it spills over to you. or, now you risk bringing down the company cuz you lookin at Pronz and get hacked and that gets back to their Active Directory, etc.
legal risks -- what happens if something legal goes down and there are fights about IP and ownership. looks like your laptop is seized. in every job I've had, anything I developed in on or around company property was theirs, and this may run afoul of that.
what happens if something breaks? now you're on the hook to fix it, and it may impact your ability to work and get paid. meanwhile if your work laptop is fried you call IT and it's on them until you're back.
Another matter is software licensing. You mention the IDE. Is your IDE properly licensed for commercial use on your own laptop? If not, the company may need to throw out all that you do when they find out, or they risk losing all their commercial licenses.
If you really want to use your own hardware, I would seek a letter from HR/legal with a statement to the effect that the company allows it. But given that the company gives you a laptop with a software image, it's likely they have to for a real legal reason.
Or you could become a consultant/outsourced supplier where it will be expected, in most cases, that you will use your own hardware. Though not always.
If you don't properly handle this, the likeliest scenario is that you will be fired when they find out. If you are lucky, they won't tell this to your future employers when they ask for references. I think it's common to be lucky in that regard to be honest, but not everyone is. And if the org loses licenses or has to throw out a chunk of their codebase, you may find yourself in a lawsuit (possibly between a client/supplier of your employer and your employer). Of course, if it's a small start-up, personal consequences are less likely. But don't act this way towards a small company.