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throw0101atoday at 12:56 AM7 repliesview on HN

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them […]

At $WORK we have the option of getting a work smartphone or having the company pay for (at portion of) our monthly mobile bill.

I chose a work device because I do not want any cross-contamination. (Others chose payment because they did not want the 'hassle' of carrying a second device (and to save some cash).)


Replies

crossroadsguytoday at 3:20 AM

Yeah. I was encouraged to take the lump-sum money my company paid (like most happily did - not taxed; amount equalling latest base iPhone cost) and get MDM installed on the personal phone so that we could access email and everything on that. Laptop was company issued anyway. I, and very few, chose company phone and I got a new SIM just for the company and set it up (they had to pay the SIM bill as well).

A nice side effect of that was I could clearly control when the phone won't even be on me and I had set that expectation - like treks, or short personal vacations, sleeping hours (yes!). I had championed the "follow the sun" policy in my company when it came to on-call rotation, but somehow some of my fellow country men/women colleagues took pride in "being available". Anyway, their time, their choice.

Later some of my colleagues were surprised when they couldn't install certain apps, couldn't do certain things and often used to wonder "does the company take screenshots of my phone?" because the permission was present :D

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gorgoilertoday at 4:23 AM

Company IT policies really got it the wrong way around with “bring your own device”. My personal phone is the last device where I would want them to have a presence. Conversely, having them manage a laptop and workstation for me is never going to give me a device as nice as I’m used to at home.

It’s as if they had two choices:

“we’ll provide clothes but you can bring your own lunch!”; vs

“wear your own clothes and we’ll provide lunch!”

and they chose the weird one not the helpful one.

I am extremely picky about keyboards, screens, and OS configuration as a result of being partially deaf, having poor eyesight, and honestly being a bit of an old stick in the mud. It would be lovely to set aside some space on an old Thinkpad for work tasks. It would be comfortable and easy to isolate and be just like my personal machine.

Instead I get a choice between a MacBook with a fixed alternate key layout or a Windows machine with a locked down bright white wallpaper and a non admin account.

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socalgal2today at 7:21 AM

Like you I keep them separate. Not just my phone. I don't do anything personal on work devices (don't log into personal email or banks, etc...)

But, I believe I'm in the minority. Most of my fellow employees have added corp to their phone. I believe most do personal stuff on their work computer. I get it, it's inconvenient. I've gone to offsites and given don't have corp on my phone I have to pull out my corp laptop to contact people and/or lookup stuff that they wouldn't. It would also be much nicer to set personal appointments or deal with personal things I need to during business hours on a laptop than my phone. On rare occasions I bring my laptop to work if I know I'm going to need access to my stuff even though all of it is in the cloud so theoretically I could access it from a work laptop.

I was once at an SV party and several Apple employees (3 women, 5 gay men, 3 straight men) said they all used their work laptops to watch porn at home or traveling. I was pretty shocked. Not that they watched but that they used work laptops for it. They all thought it was fine. It came up because, for some reason I mentioned I always take 2 laptops on business trips, my personal one and my work one. They said they never do that, they just take their work one and do personal stuff. I asked, what about porn and they all said they watched on work laptops.

That was a very long way to say I think people like myself who separate the two are rare.

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andyjohnson0today at 11:12 AM

> I chose a work device because I do not want any cross-contamination.

This is a wise choice. For me, nothing personal goes onto my work phone or laptop. And nothing work-related goes onto personal devices. Life is just easier that way.

ChrisMarshallNYtoday at 1:36 AM

In my early career, I used my work computer (off hours) to do personal work. I never made any money, but it was still wrong.

At some point, I couldn’t live with myself, and purchased my own computer (better than what work gave me, anyway).

I never used my personal cell for work. The closest thing was coordinating meetups, when traveling.

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OtomotOtoday at 4:39 AM

Many years ago my mom chose to have the company pay for her private phone number.

When she stopped working for them, they informed her, that the number legally belonged to them.

It was not a problem for her, because she wanted to get rid of the number anyway, else too many old clients would call.

But it was an interesting situation nonetheless.

izacustoday at 11:04 AM

Doesn't your phone support creating an isolated profile which deliberately keeps data separate?