

Should employees buy their own computer? - swombat
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12181570

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wccrawford
So if I can't afford to buy my own high-end computer, I have to use one of the
loaners from work. And those loaners won't be anywhere near as nice as the
ones that people have bought.

So now my job performance depends on how much money I'm willing to spend on
products that are for the company's benefit. If I'm not willing to cough up
enough dough, I won't get good reviews or raises. I might even be fired for
under-performing!

Yeah, this sounds like a great idea... If you want to invite lawsuits.

Having said that, I bring my own mouse and keyboard to work. I didn't ask, I
just did it. The comfort was worth more to me than it was to them, apparently.

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adestefan
Most tradesmen are required to provide their own tools. I can see the
arguments about security holding this back, but it's not an unprecedented
idea.

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sliverstorm
Indeed, and if your job actually requires a high-end computer you're probably
getting paid well enough to afford one.

~~~
gaius
That's simply not true in graphic design, DTP, 3D modelling, etc.

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timrobinson
This isn't "bring your own computer", but "use your own computer to connect
remotely and access the firm's computer". The data's still held inside the
firm and the employee's PC isn't doing anything more than running a web
browser.

The first few paragraphs miss the point, though: they imply that this kind of
remote access is quicker if you're using a brand new laptop than some old
Windows XP PC.

~~~
iwwr
If the firm is also running the VMs, it makes no sense to ask the employee to
bring anything but K/V/M.

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trotsky
Seems to be an advertisement for Citrix VDI and not legitimate news.

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tedunangst
Related issue: employees issued company laptops tend to drop them, forget them
in starbucks, leave them in cabs, and generally lose them fairly frequently
when the company replaces them. If the company only pays for a replacement
every 18-24 months, the employees' memory suddenly and quite drastically
improves. Almost like a shot of mega-ginkgo.

~~~
jtbigwoo
For a while, I worked at a company that had a "lose your laptop and get fired"
policy. They backed down after less than a year, but it definitely caused me
to think twice about where I stored my laptop at home and on the road.

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beoba
While we're at it, let's start storing customer data on these personal
machines. What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
ghaff
Hardly a unique problem to using personal devices. Also from the article:

"The design that we implemented was that no data or access to the device was
enabled locally, so you can plug in your USB but it would not be registered
when you have a Citrix connection."

To take another example of forcing security in a client device. I have push
email from the office to my iPhone but it's implemented in such a way that
forces using a passcode to access the iPhone.

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iwwr
_"One of the prerequisites is to have a standard McAfee anti-virus installed
on the device."_

Forgive me while I laugh at this. If an employee's computer is compromised,
the company VMs running inside it are vulnerable. It makes no difference that
the connection is secure if one endpoint is not.

The safe way to do it is to hand the employee a locked down device strictly
for work.

An alternative, maybe, is to hand them a locked hypervisor which allows them
to run personal, alongside work VMs (but not allow them to install anything at
the same level as the hypervisor (no dual-booting)).

Edit: Thinking about this, the company may issue USB secure tokens linked to a
truecrypt drive. The employee would dual-boot either into the work environment
(locked down) or a personal environment, with the warning that the token must
never be connected in the personal environment.

~~~
thorax
Not sure if you already knew about this and are just joking, but the locked
hypervisor approach is actually one that Citrix (mentioned in the article) is
touting.. their XenClient stuff does that.

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Splines
As long as you don't do cancer research, you'll be fine.

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rmc
I've working in small tech companies and have used my personal laptop as a
work machine, so in theory I'm not opposed to it. But if you want to mandate
it, I get to choose the OS and I get root.

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barrkel
I don't think employees _should_ buy their own computer, but having the
freedom _to_ do so is liberating. However, I don't think it fits very well
into an argument for remote desktop systems. That's more to do with the user
being remote from work than having their own computer.

I work remotely, from home, using my own hardware. That means I have
administrative access, an SSD, 12GB of memory, overclocked i7 CPU, etc., which
all adds up to a machine that can build our source tree faster than the build
servers that are "optimized" for it by IT. When I visit base, co-workers are
amazed at my build times; usually less than 50% of the time on their
workstations.

Most of these advantages would be negated by using a remote desktop / app
solution, but then, the advantages may be largely specific to certain kinds of
workloads.

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erik_landerholm
If you work for a technology company and they make you use a 5 year old
computer...time to go work somewhere else.

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slippytoad
I've been using my own Mac at work for the last 4 years, at 3 different
companies (granted, one of them was my own startup). The caveat is you have to
support yourself, which is fine by me. I get to use the environment I'm most
comfortable in and I don't have to deal with crappy Windows updates, virus or
Outlook headaches.

~~~
cypherdog
I'm nearly in the same boat. I've been at the same company for some time now
and started bringing my personal macbook to work to code on. After awhile, I
was so productive they bought me a one for work use. However in a 1000+ person
company I'm the only one on a Mac, but I also have to do my own support.

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speleding
We've done something like this at my previous company. The lesson I learned
was that it works really well for some staff but that it goes poorly for the
non-technically inclined.

We ended up having a scaled down IT services for the "poets" and the techies
could use their own thing. That worked well and people were happy, although
security was an ongoing debate since laptops get stolen a lot and people don't
tend to put encryption on anything unless you force them to. We ended up doing
"spot checks" on various occasions to check if backups/etc, were up to
scratch.

After I left new management was too worried about security and brought it back
in house (although we'd never had serious incidents). The dissatisfaction that
caused among employees was huge, it's really much harder to give up freedom
than if you've never had it in the first place.

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mynegation
One advantage of unified computer inventory is faster and cheaper service.
Software installation tend to be much easier when hardware is unified as well.
BYOC is a worst nightmare of system administrators and technicians.

~~~
motters
I think the idea here is to get rid of in-house sysadmins as much as possible
and rely upon an outsourced IT support contract.

    
    
      "Staff taking advantage of the scheme must buy a three-year service contract."

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localhost3000
I worked for a startup that made owning / bringing a laptop to the office a
requirement of employment. We had one incredibly awkward incident in which we
hired a kid without making this rule clear to him. He showed up for work on
day one empty handed, was called into our founder's office, left ten minutes
later and never came back. It was a bad idea with even worse implementation.
Often times our founders wouldn't mention this requirement in the interview.
"You got the jobs! Congrats! Oh, and by the way..." It was terrible and the
company failed.

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jawee
The caption on the image of the iPad is misleading. If I´m not mistaken,
virtualisation is not permitted on iPads even if they were capable; the
picture seems to be illustrating remote desktop.

~~~
trotsky
That's the case for all examples here - they are virtualizing your "desktop"
on a server and all you're doing is remoting in. AKA thin client aka what the
industry has been trying to sell for 20 years. Pretty much the same as:
<http://www.vmware.com/products/view/>

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nickolai
First thought : if only the shop I work at did this .. I could use a linux
laptop.

I wonder if people get to chose their OS under this scheme?

~~~
tomjen3
At least one of the places required you to use "standard" Mcfee.

So properly not.

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nickolai
Thought so.

Double-checking still left me with some (tiny bit of) hope :
[http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virusscan-enterprise-
for-l...](http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/virusscan-enterprise-for-
linux.aspx)

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beamso
While I don't believe that employees need to buy their own computer, I've not
hesitated to buy a notebook and use it for work if I thought it necessary.
When I started at my current workplace, I didn't realise that the employer
provided PCs were XP machines and that developers didn't get admin access.
After a few weeks it was too frustrating to not get a notebook and use it at
work.

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drallison
An employee using their own computer presets all sorts of liabilities and
risks both to the employee and the employer. The decision needs to be made in
consultation with a qualified lawyer. It presents an intellectual property and
security nightmare.

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motters
I notice the gratuitous inclusion of a silly quote about tablets (BYOT). Using
your own hardware is ok, provided that the company is prepared to accept any
security issues which could arise from that.

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iuguy
For the scenario described this is a security nightmare. Instead of having to
expend a lot of effort targeting your organisation, profiling your defences
and attempting to bypass your security (doable but will require some effort in
many cases) I now just have to attack your personal email, get you to click on
a link to my attack, compromise your box, install a keylogger then route my
terminal services/citrix ica connection through your desktop and logon with
your credentials to get in.

Nice try, Citrix PR Company.

~~~
speleding
Any company of a reasonable size has lots of consultants walking around, all
with their own laptop, and sensitive company information on them. Giving
people their own laptop to manage is really not much different.

~~~
iuguy
I disagree with regards to how different it is. Those consultants are a
relatively small proportion of the estate of such companies. Furthermore
companies of sufficient size to have permanent levels of consultants connected
to their internal networks and running their data have fairly nasty clauses
mandating security requirements for said laptops to connect to their networks,
with significant consequences for failure (both for the individual and
supplier).

The consultants walking around with their own laptops generally have
internally mandated compliance requirements for things like encryption, host
firewalls and antivirus.

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stuaxo
Hell no.

