3 ms·

I'm curious about this. What are the risks? I use my work device for everything. I can't afford to buy a laptop just for personal usage.

dijit 12y ago
they can fire you for misuse of company property. check your contract. Undoubtedly they have a clause stating you must use your work device for the companies interest only.
- sukilot 12y ago
  Mine explicitly does not. But I don't work on top-secret projects and I dont work for jerks.
  - mdekkers 12y ago
    A lot of companies, especially smaller ones (like mine) will have a clause like that not to be jerks, but to protect themselves. We have a clause like this in our contract. Do I care if our devs spend time on Facebook, or whatever? Not really - I am interested in their output and productivity, and however they are comfortable in producing their output is fine by me. I did have an administrative employee recently that spent all her time on Facebook, and didn't produce any useful output at all, and clearly had to be let go - we tried to work with her to improve, but she just didn't care. Under the employment laws of the country where we operate, it is very hard to fire somebody. Performance related dismissals take forever, and are very expensive in terms of administrative, legal and opportunity costs. Larger companies can probably afford that, but small companies like ours cannot. Our choices are simple: Either spend a lot of time, money and effort in trying to get the person fired on the basis of insufficient performance, where the outcome isn't certain, and where we likely have to end up paying a few more months salary even if we are successful, or pull her up for provably excessive use of company computers during work time for private purposes, and fire her on the spot. Does that make us jerks? I don't think so.
caseysoftware 12y ago
My comment above: It goes beyond personal use. Odds are you signed an agreement that says "Anything I do using company resources is owned by the company."* So you have to be careful for any open source work, startup ideas, etc that you may have. Don't do it at work or on your work machine (even at home). * If your agreement says "everything you do is ours," it's already too late for you. I never sign those contracts. Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9213831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9213831
walshemj 12y ago
Not even a second hand desktop for home use? I would expect almost all of NH new readers to have at least one or two systems at home just to play with. You could use a raspberry pi at home for example

dijit 12y ago

they can fire you for misuse of company property. check your contract. Undoubtedly they have a clause stating you must use your work device for the companies interest only.

sukilot 12y ago
Mine explicitly does not. But I don't work on top-secret projects and I dont work for jerks.
- mdekkers 12y ago
  A lot of companies, especially smaller ones (like mine) will have a clause like that not to be jerks, but to protect themselves. We have a clause like this in our contract. Do I care if our devs spend time on Facebook, or whatever? Not really - I am interested in their output and productivity, and however they are comfortable in producing their output is fine by me. I did have an administrative employee recently that spent all her time on Facebook, and didn't produce any useful output at all, and clearly had to be let go - we tried to work with her to improve, but she just didn't care. Under the employment laws of the country where we operate, it is very hard to fire somebody. Performance related dismissals take forever, and are very expensive in terms of administrative, legal and opportunity costs. Larger companies can probably afford that, but small companies like ours cannot. Our choices are simple: Either spend a lot of time, money and effort in trying to get the person fired on the basis of insufficient performance, where the outcome isn't certain, and where we likely have to end up paying a few more months salary even if we are successful, or pull her up for provably excessive use of company computers during work time for private purposes, and fire her on the spot. Does that make us jerks? I don't think so.

caseysoftware 12y ago

My comment above: It goes beyond personal use. Odds are you signed an agreement that says "Anything I do using company resources is owned by the company."* So you have to be careful for any open source work, startup ideas, etc that you may have. Don't do it at work or on your work machine (even at home). * If your agreement says "everything you do is ours," it's already too late for you. I never sign those contracts. Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9213831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9213831

walshemj 12y ago

Not even a second hand desktop for home use? I would expect almost all of NH new readers to have at least one or two systems at home just to play with. You could use a raspberry pi at home for example