
Ask HN: How are you separate your personal vs. work laptop? - somethingbroken
I know pretty well that my company laptop is capable of tracking almost everything I do. But still, I find it difficult to keep my digital life separate between personal vs. work. I often find myself doing mixed tasks, leaving my personal data and hobby works on the company&#x27;s laptop all the time.<p>It is definitely not good for my company and me in the long term. I could potentially expose too much of my personal data to my company, or worst, accidentally leaking the company&#x27;s data to my personal stuff.<p>Moving away from it is also challenging, for example, browser history, notes, messaging, emails, online activities...<p>How are you currently dealing with it? Or do you have this problem at all? I would love to learn. Thanks.
======
bradknowles
Two different physical machines.

The more locked down the work laptop is, the less likely you are to want to
use it for mixed purposes.

If the work laptop is running an OS that you hate, loathe, and despise, then
you are likewise much less likely to use it for personal things. But then
you’re also likely to be hating life, at least as it concerns work.

------
ltmi600
Don't do anything on your work computer that is not work related. I include
reading tech news and visiting Hacker News in the group of work-related tasks
because it is something that I can do and get away with at work. But I never
use my work laptop to do anything I would not do in the office in front of
other co-workers.

If you are working remotely you should bring your personal laptop with you or
at least an iPad so that you can browse the internet as you would do in the
privacy of your own home.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
This is true and works as good advice. Some years back I was having my
feedback call with HR person while I was being laid-off from the company, and
one of the things she told me was my time spend on social networks and "other"
websites not related to work (HN included). Reading between the lines here, IT
is monitoring traffic and reporting it to managers at all levels. I was caught
and, since then, I have never used my work device for anything but work.

------
codingdave
I work from home, and rarely take my laptop out to work in other locations, so
my setup is complex in terms of hardware, but simple in day-to-day working:

Two separate laptops. One 4k monitor. 1 keyboard/mouse/headset/ethernet. A KVM
switch with a USB hub to make it take just a button press to swap between the
two laptops while using the same peripherals.

I have Slack installed and signed in on both so I can remain available even if
I've switched over to the personal laptop. And both are also connected to
wifi, so my active laptop gets the gigabit ethernet, but the idle one still
has connectivity for any background processes that are running.

~~~
sethammons
I'm similar. I have the work laptop and my personal tower. My monitor has two
hdmi inputs. I have a usb switch that handles my peripherals. When I switch
over, I have to press the button on the usb switch and then change the monitor
input. A bit more work than a kvm switch. A friend of mine used to have a
pedal switch on the ground for his kvm, it was really nice.

------
mcv
I sometimes use my work laptop for personal browsing, but I don't download or
install personal hobby stuff on it. If I come across something I want to
download for myself, I mail it or a link to me private email.

------
facorreia
Easy. I keep my work laptop at work and my personal laptop at home.

~~~
el_dev_hell
As a remote worker I miss this so much. Having your work laptop available 24/7
makes it way too easy to sign on for a quick fix on a day off.

------
el_dev_hell
I'm 100% remote (so is the rest of our team).

The company doesn't pay for hardware devices at all (all staff are full-time).
When I started with the company a few years ago, I used my personal laptop
with a separate user account called "Work".

A colleague I used to work with did the same. They had a MBP and set up a
secondary user also called work. They had an "incident" on Slack involving a
crude photo and eventually quit due to embarrassment.

I sucked up the cost and bought a separate device out of pocket. My personal
laptop is 100% personal and my work laptop is 100% work (I refuse to even
access email from my personal laptop). I also have a work phone that's 100%
work.

Don't mix business and personal life unless you have literally no life outside
of work.

Unrelated: is it weird to buy your own work computer if you're remote? I don't
get any reimbursement from the company... I've always found this odd.

~~~
crustacean
Unless you were a contractor, your company should have bought you a computer,
full stop.

------
muzani
I bring two laptops. Mobile dev eats up all the CPU/RAM of a high end MacBook
Pro, so a secondary laptop helps in dealing with dead time compiling.

I can keep my personal notes, passwords, etc on my personal laptop, as well as
use it for referencing docs, etc.

Same goes for company phone. Don't put anything there that you wouldn't mind
leaving in the office unlocked.

------
wingerlang
At first I treated them as the same (startup didn’t provide a laptop anyway..)
and all was mixed.

When they provided one, I forced myself out of the convenience and set up two
accounts, one personal and one for work.

Now i have a personal laptop and a work laptop.

———

The only overlap is 1Password I think.

------
therufa
Just to mention: You have to deal with migration of stuff only once. I
personally have always used a separate device for work, and one for private
things. Except for one time, that's the reason behind why I do now :D (even
right now as a freelancer I have a laptop dedicated for work only, while right
next to it, there's the PC I use for private purposes) Whenever I have a
company laptop I try to have it as clean as it is of my personal stuff, so I
usually would use a tablet and/or my phone for private stuff as long as
there's not too much typing involved.

~~~
trungdq88
Just curious, how strictly do you keep your personal works away from the work
device? Is there a lot of inconveniences you faced doing this? For example, if
you need to book a flight quickly, do you have to wait until you get home?

------
CM30
Two machines. More accurately, I don't have a work laptop, so the computer I
do my work on while at the office and the one I use at home are by necessity
not the same device.

The software on each machine isn't connected account wise either, and anything
work related that needs to be accessed when working remotely is merely done
through a web browser anyway.

------
qwaxys
Work laptop came with an M.2 SSD and had a sata connector as well. Due to size
both wouldn't fit buy you can fix it using an mSata disk and an adapter.
[https://imgur.com/ax7epyg](https://imgur.com/ax7epyg)

It's easy now to keep work and private separate since I need to shutdown one
to boot in the other.

The disk in encrypted so my data is safe if they would ever take the laptop
back without asking. But pulling out a disk is going to be way faster then
copying or erasing.

------
shoo
Two different computers: the work computer stays in the office and very rarely
comes home; the home computer stays home. Work happens at work, work doesn't
happen at home.

I don't sign in to any work related comms (email, slack, etc) outside of work
hours so there's no need to have any work related stuff on my non work machine

------
pythonbase
I have separate machines for work and home. I also have separate Skype and
Gmail IDs for work. If I have to check SM while at work, I do that on my
phone.

------
cloudking
Don't do that, have your own personal computer and phone.

------
buboard
Use a completely separate data-directory for your browsers. For chrome ,
—user-data-dir c:/secret. For firefox —-profile c:/secret

------
slipwalker
browser history and bookmarks, are sync'ed over google accounts ( there's
nothing super private there i would mind Google to peek over ) also google
keep for quick notes and reminders. All the rest sits separated on the work
machine XOR personal machine.

------
p1esk
I have a desktop at work, and a personal laptop at home. When I work from home
I use Teamviewer.

------
imhoguy
VirtualBox, I keep work in separate VM.

------
BOOSTERHIDROGEN
I bring two laptop

