4 ms·

At a previous employer we would only push changes to production when all regions were outside office hours, which ended up being around 3AM for us. Only a few p

At a previous employer we would only push changes to production when all regions were outside office hours, which ended up being around 3AM for us. Only a few people had access to push changes, which they did from home (run deploy script, go through a checklist of what should have changed, run revert script if there's a problem). They'd get paid for being on-call, and used an authentication app to access our systems. One day my boss asked if I would install this authentication app on my phone, so I would be able to push changes. I refused, stating that my phone is my private property. This resulted in quite a long conversation, with reassurances about security, etc. but I didn't budge. At one point they stated that my "argument wouldn't work" if it was on a company-provided phone. I completely agreed and said that would be fine, which seemed to surprise them. I don't think it had even occurred to them that I was being honest: I didn't want to install random things on my phone. I wasn't making up some excuse to avoid being on call in the early hours. (Of course, I also wasn't going to suggest a way to end up on call in the early hours!)

Forge36 6y ago
I'll install anything my employer wants on my phone provided they've provided me with the phone :) How did your situation work out?
- thomasahle 6y ago
  Anything? What about software that continuously records everything you say and sends it to your employer? If we're suddently ok with all kinds of intrusions, just because we got agree phone, that seems like a bad deal.
  - NathanielK 6y ago
    If it's not your personal phone, you can just turn the work phone off when you do not want to be spied on.
  - Forge36 6y ago
    As another response says: turn off phone is an option. Leave in another room. Note: I didn't say I'd carry this phone with me 100% of the time OR keep it turned on. These are good secondary rules to discuss. (Tangent: how do I know my work computer doesn't already do this?)
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  > How did your situation work out? I didn't hear anything else about it ;) I ended up leaving after a pretty gruelling death-march (full backend replacement, with a "big bang" switchover). That switched a lot of things to .Net, which is a path I didn't want to go down in any case.
  - Grimm665 6y ago
    > I ended up leaving after a pretty gruelling death-march (full backend replacement, with a "big bang" switchover). That switched a lot of things to .Net, which is a path I didn't want to go down in any case. God this made me nauseous just reading it.
johncessna 6y ago
Hear Hear. What's worse is that corp software generally comes with corp governance and the ever so fun 'we can wipe your phone remotely in case it gets lost' policy. No. Way.
ggregoire 6y ago
Surprisingly enough, I see a lot of people installing whatever tools their company uses on their personal phone/smartwatch _without anybody in the company asking them to do so_. It just seems like an "obvious" thing to do for people. I've never had to argue about it with anyone as you did, but if it happened I can already see the other person asking me, surprised, why I don't have Slack on my phone and how do I keep in touch with work outside of the office.
- CapmCrackaWaka 6y ago
  I personally installed several of these apps because it allows me to respond to emails and messages while I'm not home (running errands, doing chores, playing hookie, etc). This, in turn, gives me much more freedom while working from home. To me, this outweighed whatever privacy issues people can come up with. Funnily enough, this has probably had the opposite of the intended effect, which is to increase productivity.
  - ggregoire 6y ago
    I was not talking about privacy issues but that's actually a good reason too.
- codemac 6y ago
  Android work profiles make this so easy - it doesn't appear as easy on iOS, but I was never a big iOS user. I don't mind using resources on my personal device, I mind the access to my personal information. Carrying two phones vs. one for isolation make sense, but if the isolation can be done in hardware/software on the same device it's much easier for me.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    Work profiles are okay. They're a little buggy for my taste (e.g., I still have the wrong Play Store installed after removing my last work profile), and I think the remote IT department has a little too much control over the device (e.g., rather than being able to push an update immediately no matter how expensive the network I'm on might be -- I think it would be much more reasonable to just restrict work profile app access till after I've installed such an update at my leisure).
alkonaut 6y ago
If any of the "normal" apps (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator) had a monitoring backend that my employer could use, I'd be angry with Google/Microsoft for adding that functionality rather than upset that my employer made me install it. I don't want to carry around two devices so I'd much rather have company apps on my phone. Obviously, that is as long as the apps seem resonable, like a 2FA app. If I had to install "person location tracker by shadycorp" I'd just refuse even on a corporate phone. But 2FA app on my personal phone vs being required to carry 2 devices? I think the first is much more appealing.

Forge36 6y ago

I'll install anything my employer wants on my phone provided they've provided me with the phone :) How did your situation work out?

thomasahle 6y ago
Anything? What about software that continuously records everything you say and sends it to your employer? If we're suddently ok with all kinds of intrusions, just because we got agree phone, that seems like a bad deal.
- NathanielK 6y ago
  If it's not your personal phone, you can just turn the work phone off when you do not want to be spied on.
- Forge36 6y ago
  As another response says: turn off phone is an option. Leave in another room. Note: I didn't say I'd carry this phone with me 100% of the time OR keep it turned on. These are good secondary rules to discuss. (Tangent: how do I know my work computer doesn't already do this?)
chriswarbo 6y ago
> How did your situation work out? I didn't hear anything else about it ;) I ended up leaving after a pretty gruelling death-march (full backend replacement, with a "big bang" switchover). That switched a lot of things to .Net, which is a path I didn't want to go down in any case.
- Grimm665 6y ago
  > I ended up leaving after a pretty gruelling death-march (full backend replacement, with a "big bang" switchover). That switched a lot of things to .Net, which is a path I didn't want to go down in any case. God this made me nauseous just reading it.

johncessna 6y ago

Hear Hear. What's worse is that corp software generally comes with corp governance and the ever so fun 'we can wipe your phone remotely in case it gets lost' policy. No. Way.

ggregoire 6y ago

Surprisingly enough, I see a lot of people installing whatever tools their company uses on their personal phone/smartwatch _without anybody in the company asking them to do so_. It just seems like an "obvious" thing to do for people. I've never had to argue about it with anyone as you did, but if it happened I can already see the other person asking me, surprised, why I don't have Slack on my phone and how do I keep in touch with work outside of the office.

CapmCrackaWaka 6y ago
I personally installed several of these apps because it allows me to respond to emails and messages while I'm not home (running errands, doing chores, playing hookie, etc). This, in turn, gives me much more freedom while working from home. To me, this outweighed whatever privacy issues people can come up with. Funnily enough, this has probably had the opposite of the intended effect, which is to increase productivity.
- ggregoire 6y ago
  I was not talking about privacy issues but that's actually a good reason too.
codemac 6y ago
Android work profiles make this so easy - it doesn't appear as easy on iOS, but I was never a big iOS user. I don't mind using resources on my personal device, I mind the access to my personal information. Carrying two phones vs. one for isolation make sense, but if the isolation can be done in hardware/software on the same device it's much easier for me.
- hansvm 6y ago
  Work profiles are okay. They're a little buggy for my taste (e.g., I still have the wrong Play Store installed after removing my last work profile), and I think the remote IT department has a little too much control over the device (e.g., rather than being able to push an update immediately no matter how expensive the network I'm on might be -- I think it would be much more reasonable to just restrict work profile app access till after I've installed such an update at my leisure).

alkonaut 6y ago

If any of the "normal" apps (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator) had a monitoring backend that my employer could use, I'd be angry with Google/Microsoft for adding that functionality rather than upset that my employer made me install it. I don't want to carry around two devices so I'd much rather have company apps on my phone. Obviously, that is as long as the apps seem resonable, like a 2FA app. If I had to install "person location tracker by shadycorp" I'd just refuse even on a corporate phone. But 2FA app on my personal phone vs being required to carry 2 devices? I think the first is much more appealing.