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This happens a lot because of logistics costs. Managing inventory means hiring people. The total cost of the laptops is probably less than salary + benefits for

• Proven 6y ago
  It doesn't matter, it's still nice of them. They could have ordered the laid off employees to destroy their laptops.
• sethhochberg 6y ago
  I used to run an all-remote engineering team and even though we had the right personnel in place, it still often ended up that for anything short of a new top-of-the-line device, it would be left with a departing employee as a gift because the cost of shipping and paying import duties to get it to the next most logical person in line to have possession of the device was often more than the value of the device itself. Even for high-value hardware that might have been financially worth reclaiming at the end of someone's employment, there was always a buyout clause in their hardware issuance agreement and we encouraged people to use it if they liked their laptop. We _really_ didn't want the gear back most of the time.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Last time I turned in a laptop (which was about 6 years old--wasn't my day-to-day system), I had to go through the whole routine of reformatting, cleaning stickers and the like off as well as I could, and shipping it to our IT department. I'm sure it was just recycled when it arrived.
• Shivetya 6y ago
  with leasing however it comes back into focus as an asset you have to recover. Many companies have turned to leasing programs where hardware is rolled over every three years.