5 ms·

How the smartest companies are letting employees use their personal gadgets.

17 points by ryutin 15y ago

chopsueyar 15y ago
Monolithic corporate communication app (email/doc viewer/calendar/etc) Virtualization - phone as thinclient Wipe everything when you leave/lose your phone/terminated (including personal stuff like photos/movies/contacts/appts)
joezydeco 15y ago
If someone is really stealing a phone for corporate espionage, couldn't they have most of the important emails located and forwarded off the phone within a few minutes? This idea of "self-destructing if it doesn't call home in a few days" seems pointless.
dkarl 15y ago
Why, why, why, why, why? Why would I give up partial control over my personal cell phone to corporate security? The remote wipe functionality is all downside, and it might come with remote monitoring as well. How would I know it didn't? How would I know if it got turned on? Corporations are unpredictable, amoral profit machines run by people who disengage their personal morality, gladly or reluctantly, when making decisions on behalf of their employer. (There are exceptions, but even exceptional folks such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin disappoint their fans sometimes.) I'm not a raving anti-corporate idealist. Computers are amoral machines, printing presses are amoral machines, power plants are amoral machines, and like those things corporations have a productive role in our economy. I just cannot comprehend why people don't sensibly isolate themselves from machines that have unpredictable and aggressive "failure modes" (rarely acknowledge as such) and which, if anthropomorphized, would be powerful, greedy, and occasionally very intelligent sociopaths. And the whole purpose of giving these machines access to a stream of data comprising your entire personal life is so you can get more work done for them. Again, why?
- dpritchett 15y ago
  I like a variation on this model where employees use whichever machines they want and you pay for them: Your guys want to use macs? Fine, we'll pay $1500 each for them and don't come crying to tech support when they stop working.

17 points by ryutin 15y ago

Monolithic corporate communication app (email/doc viewer/calendar/etc) Virtualization - phone as thinclient Wipe everything when you leave/lose your phone/terminated (including personal stuff like photos/movies/contacts/appts)

joezydeco 15y ago

If someone is really stealing a phone for corporate espionage, couldn't they have most of the important emails located and forwarded off the phone within a few minutes? This idea of "self-destructing if it doesn't call home in a few days" seems pointless.

dkarl 15y ago

Why, why, why, why, why? Why would I give up partial control over my personal cell phone to corporate security? The remote wipe functionality is all downside, and it might come with remote monitoring as well. How would I know it didn't? How would I know if it got turned on? Corporations are unpredictable, amoral profit machines run by people who disengage their personal morality, gladly or reluctantly, when making decisions on behalf of their employer. (There are exceptions, but even exceptional folks such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin disappoint their fans sometimes.) I'm not a raving anti-corporate idealist. Computers are amoral machines, printing presses are amoral machines, power plants are amoral machines, and like those things corporations have a productive role in our economy. I just cannot comprehend why people don't sensibly isolate themselves from machines that have unpredictable and aggressive "failure modes" (rarely acknowledge as such) and which, if anthropomorphized, would be powerful, greedy, and occasionally very intelligent sociopaths. And the whole purpose of giving these machines access to a stream of data comprising your entire personal life is so you can get more work done for them. Again, why?

dpritchett 15y ago
I like a variation on this model where employees use whichever machines they want and you pay for them: Your guys want to use macs? Fine, we'll pay $1500 each for them and don't come crying to tech support when they stop working.