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It's a widespread practice that companies provide laptops to contractors to compartmentalize the way they interact with the company's IT. But I'm really quite

It's a widespread practice that companies provide laptops to contractors to compartmentalize the way they interact with the company's IT. But I'm really quite opposed to it. At one point I had 3 sets of machines: Two different 14" laptops from two different clients and my own machines. At some point you simply run out of space on your desk and end up constantly either working on screens that are too small (14" really isn't enough to be productive), or plugging laptops in to and out of screens as you're context-switching. Carrying three laptops with you when you're travelling if you anticipate having to work for both clients during that timeframe is also not exactly my definition of great fun. And you end up duplicating a lot of effort around managing that IT, like tweaking settings the way you like them etc. The argument "we own this laptop, so we can do with it whatever we want, including spying on you" is just not valid. They're either doing things that I'm okay with, in which case I'm okay doing it on my own hardware. Or they're doing things I'm opposed to, in which case I'm opposed to it no matter who owns the hardware. Also: In many European countries, authorities are clamping down hard on practices whereby companies pass people off as contractors who really are employees. They usually work off of lists of criteria of what makes an employee, and if you fit too many of those criteria while, on paper, passing yourself off as a contractor, then you and your client can be in for a world of pain. One of the criteria that makes you look more like a contractor and less like an employee to the government is providing your own facilities like the computer you work with. And, last but not least, it's just not a good way of dealing with the planet's resources.

skjoldr 5y ago
If you can afford to spend a bit of money on the problem, it's possible to use something like PiKVM or KVM-over-IP to just leave a stack of client laptops or mini-PCs out of the way somewhere and connect to them remotely in a reliable way, so you can reset the machine if the remote desktop software fails.
andrewzah 5y ago
"either working on screens that are too small (14" really isn't enough to be productive)" I work primarily from a 13" xps. Given the high-res display + that I can switch desktops easily via i3, it's really a non issue for what I do. You can also use a dock. For my work laptop, I use the Caldigit TS3+ thunderbolt and it's great.
300bps 5y ago
I have a dedicated laptop for a client that is in a room of my basement. I remote into it from my personal machine whenever I do work for them. Works very well!
rjzzleep 5y ago
I still have two lying around. One of them was a 15” dell brick. I had informed the client that I will be disposing of them when I’m back if they don’t handle it and that any and all third party liability well fall on the direct supervisor if he can’t organize the transfer. Needlessly to say even me connecting them directly to the courier was not enough. My guess is that the OP depends on the money otherwise he wouldn’t be asking for help. So either but a cheap laptop and then control it with barrier[1] from your main driver and don’t ask(because whatever you ask they will probably say no). Or let them ship theirs to you, but I’m willing to bet that it be worse than whatever second machine you get. In the meantime I would suggest you look for a new client because judging from experience there is a lot more pain to come. I didn’t do it in time and ended up paying dearly for my lack of initiative on that front. [1] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
everforward 5y ago
I think there are absolutely a list of things that I don't want the company doing on my hardware, but I'm okay with on their hardware. Off the top of my head, remote wipes/resets make sense. Frankly, I prefer the company has that option, just in case I lose my work laptop. Encryption should cover it, but I'll take the backup. Compliance agents also have a legitimate reason to exist, but I don't want them on my personal PC. Some places maintain lists of allowed software (I think in part so they can track/inventory them for compliance stuff). I respect that they have the right to restrict what I install on my work laptop, but I reserve the right to install whatever I please on my own computer. It would also not be insane for a company to do automated backups of company laptops to company servers. You want a way for Joe in marketing to get his data back when his cat pees on his laptop. I do not want all my personal documents on company servers.
- ganoushoreilly 5y ago
  This is really the thing people miss. It's a company laptop first and foremost and the right to privacy goes away. The amount of compromising content we've seen and or found on investigations is mind blowing. No one needs that on a work computer. Keep your private life private from your employer.
  - byron4242 5y ago
    The OP was about a contractor though. The way I think about somebody who is truly a contractor is that they are their own IT department, and their capabilities in the IT space should be at least on par with whatever the client's IT department enforces for in-house employees. The above two comments however seem to be arguing from the viewpoint "this is just an individual person and any individual person surely needs babysitting by a big mighty corporate IT department because otherwise they can be expected to do stupid things like losing storage media with important data and not having backups, never doing updates, having their computers full of spyware, intermingling private stuff and work stuff from different clients in such a way that there's data leakage, etc. etc." If you want to truly treat a contractor as a contractor, you should think about it as your IT needing to interface with their IT in such a way that it makes sense for both parties. And "here, use this laptop" is just frequently a bad solution from the point of view of the contractor's IT. I also heavily object to the notion that any expectation of privacy goes away on a company laptop.
jameshart 5y ago
How comfortable would you be if you learned that your cloud provider allowed a contractor in a random overseas country to connect to your production servers from a laptop on which he also read his personal email? Would you like them to have some controls in place to prevent that? Would you like that to be enforced consistently and audited? Would you like them to provide you with a certification that their procedures to ensure that doesn’t happen meet some minimal standard? Congratulations, you have invented ‘demanding SOC2 compliance from vendors’. And the upshot of it is that some contractors have to put up with jumping through some hoops.

skjoldr 5y ago

If you can afford to spend a bit of money on the problem, it's possible to use something like PiKVM or KVM-over-IP to just leave a stack of client laptops or mini-PCs out of the way somewhere and connect to them remotely in a reliable way, so you can reset the machine if the remote desktop software fails.

andrewzah 5y ago

"either working on screens that are too small (14" really isn't enough to be productive)" I work primarily from a 13" xps. Given the high-res display + that I can switch desktops easily via i3, it's really a non issue for what I do. You can also use a dock. For my work laptop, I use the Caldigit TS3+ thunderbolt and it's great.

300bps 5y ago

I have a dedicated laptop for a client that is in a room of my basement. I remote into it from my personal machine whenever I do work for them. Works very well!

rjzzleep 5y ago

I still have two lying around. One of them was a 15” dell brick. I had informed the client that I will be disposing of them when I’m back if they don’t handle it and that any and all third party liability well fall on the direct supervisor if he can’t organize the transfer. Needlessly to say even me connecting them directly to the courier was not enough. My guess is that the OP depends on the money otherwise he wouldn’t be asking for help. So either but a cheap laptop and then control it with barrier[1] from your main driver and don’t ask(because whatever you ask they will probably say no). Or let them ship theirs to you, but I’m willing to bet that it be worse than whatever second machine you get. In the meantime I would suggest you look for a new client because judging from experience there is a lot more pain to come. I didn’t do it in time and ended up paying dearly for my lack of initiative on that front. [1] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

everforward 5y ago

I think there are absolutely a list of things that I don't want the company doing on my hardware, but I'm okay with on their hardware. Off the top of my head, remote wipes/resets make sense. Frankly, I prefer the company has that option, just in case I lose my work laptop. Encryption should cover it, but I'll take the backup. Compliance agents also have a legitimate reason to exist, but I don't want them on my personal PC. Some places maintain lists of allowed software (I think in part so they can track/inventory them for compliance stuff). I respect that they have the right to restrict what I install on my work laptop, but I reserve the right to install whatever I please on my own computer. It would also not be insane for a company to do automated backups of company laptops to company servers. You want a way for Joe in marketing to get his data back when his cat pees on his laptop. I do not want all my personal documents on company servers.

ganoushoreilly 5y ago
This is really the thing people miss. It's a company laptop first and foremost and the right to privacy goes away. The amount of compromising content we've seen and or found on investigations is mind blowing. No one needs that on a work computer. Keep your private life private from your employer.
- byron4242 5y ago
  The OP was about a contractor though. The way I think about somebody who is truly a contractor is that they are their own IT department, and their capabilities in the IT space should be at least on par with whatever the client's IT department enforces for in-house employees. The above two comments however seem to be arguing from the viewpoint "this is just an individual person and any individual person surely needs babysitting by a big mighty corporate IT department because otherwise they can be expected to do stupid things like losing storage media with important data and not having backups, never doing updates, having their computers full of spyware, intermingling private stuff and work stuff from different clients in such a way that there's data leakage, etc. etc." If you want to truly treat a contractor as a contractor, you should think about it as your IT needing to interface with their IT in such a way that it makes sense for both parties. And "here, use this laptop" is just frequently a bad solution from the point of view of the contractor's IT. I also heavily object to the notion that any expectation of privacy goes away on a company laptop.

jameshart 5y ago

How comfortable would you be if you learned that your cloud provider allowed a contractor in a random overseas country to connect to your production servers from a laptop on which he also read his personal email? Would you like them to have some controls in place to prevent that? Would you like that to be enforced consistently and audited? Would you like them to provide you with a certification that their procedures to ensure that doesn’t happen meet some minimal standard? Congratulations, you have invented ‘demanding SOC2 compliance from vendors’. And the upshot of it is that some contractors have to put up with jumping through some hoops.