8 ms·

Should employees buy their own computer?

44 points by swombat 16y ago

nickolai 16y ago
First thought : if only the shop I work at did this .. I could use a linux laptop. I wonder if people get to chose their OS under this scheme?
- tomjen3 16y ago
  At least one of the places required you to use "standard" Mcfee. So properly not.
  - nickolai 16y ago
    Thought so. Double-checking still left me with some (tiny bit of) hope : http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virusscan-enterprise-for-linux.aspx http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virusscan-enterprise-for-l...
- ghaff 16y ago
  It really depends on the IT department and which applications you need to run. If everything you need to access is through a Web interface (perhaps over a VPN) then, policy permitting, there's no technical reason that you can't use pretty much any endpoint device you want that supports the necessary Web standards--and possibly VPN client. Generally speaking, formal BYOPC programs are more restrictive but in lots of high tech companies, people use a variety of their own gear.
- rmc 16y ago
  As far as I'm concerned that's a deal breaker. Dont tell me that I have to pay for my own laptop and then mandate what OS I run. You want to control what OS, you pay for it.
wccrawford 16y ago
So if I can't afford to buy my own high-end computer, I have to use one of the loaners from work. And those loaners won't be anywhere near as nice as the ones that people have bought. So now my job performance depends on how much money I'm willing to spend on products that are for the company's benefit. If I'm not willing to cough up enough dough, I won't get good reviews or raises. I might even be fired for under-performing! Yeah, this sounds like a great idea... If you want to invite lawsuits. Having said that, I bring my own mouse and keyboard to work. I didn't ask, I just did it. The comfort was worth more to me than it was to them, apparently.
- adestefan 16y ago
  Most tradesmen are required to provide their own tools. I can see the arguments about security holding this back, but it's not an unprecedented idea.
  - crander 16y ago
    Tools for developers and designers is a big point. Especially with new hires. Ten years ago joining a major corporation gave you access to resources you didn't have on your own. Exchange was better than Yahoo mail. The T20 cost so much almost no one would buy it for personal use. Today when student graduate they are often used to and already own Mac laptops or high-end PCs and are using Google services. They can lose productivity going from these (cloud) consumer to enterprise technology systems. I recommend the Gartner report "Gartner_Report_BYOC_checklist.pdf" on BYOC.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Indeed, and if your job actually requires a high-end computer you're probably getting paid well enough to afford one.
    - gaius 16y ago
      That's simply not true in graphic design, DTP, 3D modelling, etc.
    - joeguilmette 16y ago
      Or in any job where mobility is desirable. A good laptop is not cheap.
  - sudont 16y ago
    Most tradesmen have leeway in buying the tools that suit them best. This doesn't work in a corporation, as the amount of work IT would have to do to support every different computer that wanders in would be insane. Look at a college that has this laptop purchase program: students get a choice between Mac and a Dell laptop, and unless you're a fine-arts major you don't get the Mac option. More likely, employees would be forced to buy the one computer that IT specifies. And, knowing how much VB.NET code is running out there now, it'll end up being a top-of-the-line enterprise Dell laptop, crippled with XP and all of their network policies. Somebody who's forced to buy a laptop and then give all control away won't be a happy body.
beoba 16y ago
While we're at it, let's start storing customer data on these personal machines. What could possibly go wrong?
- ghaff 16y ago
  Hardly a unique problem to using personal devices. Also from the article: "The design that we implemented was that no data or access to the device was enabled locally, so you can plug in your USB but it would not be registered when you have a Citrix connection." To take another example of forcing security in a client device. I have push email from the office to my iPhone but it's implemented in such a way that forces using a passcode to access the iPhone.
timrobinson 16y ago
This isn't "bring your own computer", but "use your own computer to connect remotely and access the firm's computer". The data's still held inside the firm and the employee's PC isn't doing anything more than running a web browser. The first few paragraphs miss the point, though: they imply that this kind of remote access is quicker if you're using a brand new laptop than some old Windows XP PC.
- iwwr 16y ago
  If the firm is also running the VMs, it makes no sense to ask the employee to bring anything but K/V/M.
trotsky 16y ago
Seems to be an advertisement for Citrix VDI and not legitimate news.
jawee 16y ago
The caption on the image of the iPad is misleading. If I´m not mistaken, virtualisation is not permitted on iPads even if they were capable; the picture seems to be illustrating remote desktop.
- trotsky 16y ago
  That's the case for all examples here - they are virtualizing your "desktop" on a server and all you're doing is remoting in. AKA thin client aka what the industry has been trying to sell for 20 years. Pretty much the same as: http://www.vmware.com/products/view/ http://www.vmware.com/products/view/
mynegation 16y ago
One advantage of unified computer inventory is faster and cheaper service. Software installation tend to be much easier when hardware is unified as well. BYOC is a worst nightmare of system administrators and technicians.
- motters 16y ago
  I think the idea here is to get rid of in-house sysadmins as much as possible and rely upon an outsourced IT support contract. "Staff taking advantage of the scheme must buy a three-year service contract."
Splines 16y ago
As long as you don't do cancer research, you'll be fine.
motters 16y ago
I notice the gratuitous inclusion of a silly quote about tablets (BYOT). Using your own hardware is ok, provided that the company is prepared to accept any security issues which could arise from that.
iwwr 16y ago
"One of the prerequisites is to have a standard McAfee anti-virus installed on the device." Forgive me while I laugh at this. If an employee's computer is compromised, the company VMs running inside it are vulnerable. It makes no difference that the connection is secure if one endpoint is not. The safe way to do it is to hand the employee a locked down device strictly for work. An alternative, maybe, is to hand them a locked hypervisor which allows them to run personal, alongside work VMs (but not allow them to install anything at the same level as the hypervisor (no dual-booting)). Edit: Thinking about this, the company may issue USB secure tokens linked to a truecrypt drive. The employee would dual-boot either into the work environment (locked down) or a personal environment, with the warning that the token must never be connected in the personal environment.
- thorax 16y ago
  Not sure if you already knew about this and are just joking, but the locked hypervisor approach is actually one that Citrix (mentioned in the article) is touting.. their XenClient stuff does that.
stuaxo 16y ago
Hell no.
tedunangst 16y ago
Related issue: employees issued company laptops tend to drop them, forget them in starbucks, leave them in cabs, and generally lose them fairly frequently when the company replaces them. If the company only pays for a replacement every 18-24 months, the employees' memory suddenly and quite drastically improves. Almost like a shot of mega-ginkgo.
- jtbigwoo 16y ago
  For a while, I worked at a company that had a "lose your laptop and get fired" policy. They backed down after less than a year, but it definitely caused me to think twice about where I stored my laptop at home and on the road.
rmc 16y ago
I've working in small tech companies and have used my personal laptop as a work machine, so in theory I'm not opposed to it. But if you want to mandate it, I get to choose the OS and I get root.
slippytoad 16y ago
I've been using my own Mac at work for the last 4 years, at 3 different companies (granted, one of them was my own startup). The caveat is you have to support yourself, which is fine by me. I get to use the environment I'm most comfortable in and I don't have to deal with crappy Windows updates, virus or Outlook headaches.
- cypherdog 16y ago
  I'm nearly in the same boat. I've been at the same company for some time now and started bringing my personal macbook to work to code on. After awhile, I was so productive they bought me a one for work use. However in a 1000+ person company I'm the only one on a Mac, but I also have to do my own support.
barrkel 16y ago
I don't think employees should buy their own computer, but having the freedom to do so is liberating. However, I don't think it fits very well into an argument for remote desktop systems. That's more to do with the user being remote from work than having their own computer. I work remotely, from home, using my own hardware. That means I have administrative access, an SSD, 12GB of memory, overclocked i7 CPU, etc., which all adds up to a machine that can build our source tree faster than the build servers that are "optimized" for it by IT. When I visit base, co-workers are amazed at my build times; usually less than 50% of the time on their workstations. Most of these advantages would be negated by using a remote desktop / app solution, but then, the advantages may be largely specific to certain kinds of workloads.
iuguy 16y ago
For the scenario described this is a security nightmare. Instead of having to expend a lot of effort targeting your organisation, profiling your defences and attempting to bypass your security (doable but will require some effort in many cases) I now just have to attack your personal email, get you to click on a link to my attack, compromise your box, install a keylogger then route my terminal services/citrix ica connection through your desktop and logon with your credentials to get in. Nice try, Citrix PR Company.
- speleding 16y ago
  Any company of a reasonable size has lots of consultants walking around, all with their own laptop, and sensitive company information on them. Giving people their own laptop to manage is really not much different.
  - iuguy 16y ago
    I disagree with regards to how different it is. Those consultants are a relatively small proportion of the estate of such companies. Furthermore companies of sufficient size to have permanent levels of consultants connected to their internal networks and running their data have fairly nasty clauses mandating security requirements for said laptops to connect to their networks, with significant consequences for failure (both for the individual and supplier). The consultants walking around with their own laptops generally have internally mandated compliance requirements for things like encryption, host firewalls and antivirus.
speleding 16y ago
We've done something like this at my previous company. The lesson I learned was that it works really well for some staff but that it goes poorly for the non-technically inclined. We ended up having a scaled down IT services for the "poets" and the techies could use their own thing. That worked well and people were happy, although security was an ongoing debate since laptops get stolen a lot and people don't tend to put encryption on anything unless you force them to. We ended up doing "spot checks" on various occasions to check if backups/etc, were up to scratch. After I left new management was too worried about security and brought it back in house (although we'd never had serious incidents). The dissatisfaction that caused among employees was huge, it's really much harder to give up freedom than if you've never had it in the first place.
localhost3000 16y ago
I worked for a startup that made owning / bringing a laptop to the office a requirement of employment. We had one incredibly awkward incident in which we hired a kid without making this rule clear to him. He showed up for work on day one empty handed, was called into our founder's office, left ten minutes later and never came back. It was a bad idea with even worse implementation. Often times our founders wouldn't mention this requirement in the interview. "You got the jobs! Congrats! Oh, and by the way..." It was terrible and the company failed.
beamso 16y ago
While I don't believe that employees need to buy their own computer, I've not hesitated to buy a notebook and use it for work if I thought it necessary. When I started at my current workplace, I didn't realise that the employer provided PCs were XP machines and that developers didn't get admin access. After a few weeks it was too frustrating to not get a notebook and use it at work.
erik_landerholm 16y ago
If you work for a technology company and they make you use a 5 year old computer...time to go work somewhere else.
drallison 16y ago
An employee using their own computer presets all sorts of liabilities and risks both to the employee and the employer. The decision needs to be made in consultation with a qualified lawyer. It presents an intellectual property and security nightmare.

44 points by swombat 16y ago

First thought : if only the shop I work at did this .. I could use a linux laptop. I wonder if people get to chose their OS under this scheme?

tomjen3 16y ago
At least one of the places required you to use "standard" Mcfee. So properly not.
- nickolai 16y ago
  Thought so. Double-checking still left me with some (tiny bit of) hope : http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virusscan-enterprise-for-linux.aspx http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virusscan-enterprise-for-l...
ghaff 16y ago
It really depends on the IT department and which applications you need to run. If everything you need to access is through a Web interface (perhaps over a VPN) then, policy permitting, there's no technical reason that you can't use pretty much any endpoint device you want that supports the necessary Web standards--and possibly VPN client. Generally speaking, formal BYOPC programs are more restrictive but in lots of high tech companies, people use a variety of their own gear.
rmc 16y ago
As far as I'm concerned that's a deal breaker. Dont tell me that I have to pay for my own laptop and then mandate what OS I run. You want to control what OS, you pay for it.

wccrawford 16y ago

So if I can't afford to buy my own high-end computer, I have to use one of the loaners from work. And those loaners won't be anywhere near as nice as the ones that people have bought. So now my job performance depends on how much money I'm willing to spend on products that are for the company's benefit. If I'm not willing to cough up enough dough, I won't get good reviews or raises. I might even be fired for under-performing! Yeah, this sounds like a great idea... If you want to invite lawsuits. Having said that, I bring my own mouse and keyboard to work. I didn't ask, I just did it. The comfort was worth more to me than it was to them, apparently.

adestefan 16y ago
Most tradesmen are required to provide their own tools. I can see the arguments about security holding this back, but it's not an unprecedented idea.
- crander 16y ago
  Tools for developers and designers is a big point. Especially with new hires. Ten years ago joining a major corporation gave you access to resources you didn't have on your own. Exchange was better than Yahoo mail. The T20 cost so much almost no one would buy it for personal use. Today when student graduate they are often used to and already own Mac laptops or high-end PCs and are using Google services. They can lose productivity going from these (cloud) consumer to enterprise technology systems. I recommend the Gartner report "Gartner_Report_BYOC_checklist.pdf" on BYOC.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Indeed, and if your job actually requires a high-end computer you're probably getting paid well enough to afford one.
  - gaius 16y ago
    That's simply not true in graphic design, DTP, 3D modelling, etc.
  - joeguilmette 16y ago
    Or in any job where mobility is desirable. A good laptop is not cheap.
- sudont 16y ago
  Most tradesmen have leeway in buying the tools that suit them best. This doesn't work in a corporation, as the amount of work IT would have to do to support every different computer that wanders in would be insane. Look at a college that has this laptop purchase program: students get a choice between Mac and a Dell laptop, and unless you're a fine-arts major you don't get the Mac option. More likely, employees would be forced to buy the one computer that IT specifies. And, knowing how much VB.NET code is running out there now, it'll end up being a top-of-the-line enterprise Dell laptop, crippled with XP and all of their network policies. Somebody who's forced to buy a laptop and then give all control away won't be a happy body.

beoba 16y ago

While we're at it, let's start storing customer data on these personal machines. What could possibly go wrong?

ghaff 16y ago
Hardly a unique problem to using personal devices. Also from the article: "The design that we implemented was that no data or access to the device was enabled locally, so you can plug in your USB but it would not be registered when you have a Citrix connection." To take another example of forcing security in a client device. I have push email from the office to my iPhone but it's implemented in such a way that forces using a passcode to access the iPhone.

timrobinson 16y ago

This isn't "bring your own computer", but "use your own computer to connect remotely and access the firm's computer". The data's still held inside the firm and the employee's PC isn't doing anything more than running a web browser. The first few paragraphs miss the point, though: they imply that this kind of remote access is quicker if you're using a brand new laptop than some old Windows XP PC.

iwwr 16y ago
If the firm is also running the VMs, it makes no sense to ask the employee to bring anything but K/V/M.

trotsky 16y ago

Seems to be an advertisement for Citrix VDI and not legitimate news.

jawee 16y ago

The caption on the image of the iPad is misleading. If I´m not mistaken, virtualisation is not permitted on iPads even if they were capable; the picture seems to be illustrating remote desktop.

trotsky 16y ago
That's the case for all examples here - they are virtualizing your "desktop" on a server and all you're doing is remoting in. AKA thin client aka what the industry has been trying to sell for 20 years. Pretty much the same as: http://www.vmware.com/products/view/ http://www.vmware.com/products/view/

mynegation 16y ago

One advantage of unified computer inventory is faster and cheaper service. Software installation tend to be much easier when hardware is unified as well. BYOC is a worst nightmare of system administrators and technicians.

motters 16y ago
I think the idea here is to get rid of in-house sysadmins as much as possible and rely upon an outsourced IT support contract. "Staff taking advantage of the scheme must buy a three-year service contract."

Splines 16y ago

As long as you don't do cancer research, you'll be fine.

motters 16y ago

I notice the gratuitous inclusion of a silly quote about tablets (BYOT). Using your own hardware is ok, provided that the company is prepared to accept any security issues which could arise from that.

iwwr 16y ago

"One of the prerequisites is to have a standard McAfee anti-virus installed on the device." Forgive me while I laugh at this. If an employee's computer is compromised, the company VMs running inside it are vulnerable. It makes no difference that the connection is secure if one endpoint is not. The safe way to do it is to hand the employee a locked down device strictly for work. An alternative, maybe, is to hand them a locked hypervisor which allows them to run personal, alongside work VMs (but not allow them to install anything at the same level as the hypervisor (no dual-booting)). Edit: Thinking about this, the company may issue USB secure tokens linked to a truecrypt drive. The employee would dual-boot either into the work environment (locked down) or a personal environment, with the warning that the token must never be connected in the personal environment.

thorax 16y ago
Not sure if you already knew about this and are just joking, but the locked hypervisor approach is actually one that Citrix (mentioned in the article) is touting.. their XenClient stuff does that.

stuaxo 16y ago

Hell no.

tedunangst 16y ago

Related issue: employees issued company laptops tend to drop them, forget them in starbucks, leave them in cabs, and generally lose them fairly frequently when the company replaces them. If the company only pays for a replacement every 18-24 months, the employees' memory suddenly and quite drastically improves. Almost like a shot of mega-ginkgo.

jtbigwoo 16y ago
For a while, I worked at a company that had a "lose your laptop and get fired" policy. They backed down after less than a year, but it definitely caused me to think twice about where I stored my laptop at home and on the road.

rmc 16y ago

I've working in small tech companies and have used my personal laptop as a work machine, so in theory I'm not opposed to it. But if you want to mandate it, I get to choose the OS and I get root.

slippytoad 16y ago

I've been using my own Mac at work for the last 4 years, at 3 different companies (granted, one of them was my own startup). The caveat is you have to support yourself, which is fine by me. I get to use the environment I'm most comfortable in and I don't have to deal with crappy Windows updates, virus or Outlook headaches.

cypherdog 16y ago
I'm nearly in the same boat. I've been at the same company for some time now and started bringing my personal macbook to work to code on. After awhile, I was so productive they bought me a one for work use. However in a 1000+ person company I'm the only one on a Mac, but I also have to do my own support.

barrkel 16y ago

I don't think employees should buy their own computer, but having the freedom to do so is liberating. However, I don't think it fits very well into an argument for remote desktop systems. That's more to do with the user being remote from work than having their own computer. I work remotely, from home, using my own hardware. That means I have administrative access, an SSD, 12GB of memory, overclocked i7 CPU, etc., which all adds up to a machine that can build our source tree faster than the build servers that are "optimized" for it by IT. When I visit base, co-workers are amazed at my build times; usually less than 50% of the time on their workstations. Most of these advantages would be negated by using a remote desktop / app solution, but then, the advantages may be largely specific to certain kinds of workloads.

iuguy 16y ago

For the scenario described this is a security nightmare. Instead of having to expend a lot of effort targeting your organisation, profiling your defences and attempting to bypass your security (doable but will require some effort in many cases) I now just have to attack your personal email, get you to click on a link to my attack, compromise your box, install a keylogger then route my terminal services/citrix ica connection through your desktop and logon with your credentials to get in. Nice try, Citrix PR Company.

speleding 16y ago
Any company of a reasonable size has lots of consultants walking around, all with their own laptop, and sensitive company information on them. Giving people their own laptop to manage is really not much different.
- iuguy 16y ago
  I disagree with regards to how different it is. Those consultants are a relatively small proportion of the estate of such companies. Furthermore companies of sufficient size to have permanent levels of consultants connected to their internal networks and running their data have fairly nasty clauses mandating security requirements for said laptops to connect to their networks, with significant consequences for failure (both for the individual and supplier). The consultants walking around with their own laptops generally have internally mandated compliance requirements for things like encryption, host firewalls and antivirus.

speleding 16y ago

We've done something like this at my previous company. The lesson I learned was that it works really well for some staff but that it goes poorly for the non-technically inclined. We ended up having a scaled down IT services for the "poets" and the techies could use their own thing. That worked well and people were happy, although security was an ongoing debate since laptops get stolen a lot and people don't tend to put encryption on anything unless you force them to. We ended up doing "spot checks" on various occasions to check if backups/etc, were up to scratch. After I left new management was too worried about security and brought it back in house (although we'd never had serious incidents). The dissatisfaction that caused among employees was huge, it's really much harder to give up freedom than if you've never had it in the first place.

localhost3000 16y ago

I worked for a startup that made owning / bringing a laptop to the office a requirement of employment. We had one incredibly awkward incident in which we hired a kid without making this rule clear to him. He showed up for work on day one empty handed, was called into our founder's office, left ten minutes later and never came back. It was a bad idea with even worse implementation. Often times our founders wouldn't mention this requirement in the interview. "You got the jobs! Congrats! Oh, and by the way..." It was terrible and the company failed.

beamso 16y ago

While I don't believe that employees need to buy their own computer, I've not hesitated to buy a notebook and use it for work if I thought it necessary. When I started at my current workplace, I didn't realise that the employer provided PCs were XP machines and that developers didn't get admin access. After a few weeks it was too frustrating to not get a notebook and use it at work.

erik_landerholm 16y ago

If you work for a technology company and they make you use a 5 year old computer...time to go work somewhere else.

drallison 16y ago

An employee using their own computer presets all sorts of liabilities and risks both to the employee and the employer. The decision needs to be made in consultation with a qualified lawyer. It presents an intellectual property and security nightmare.