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Property Rights and the MSDN PDA Give-Away?
An anonymous reader asks: "MSDN subscribers recently qualified for a free Viewsonic V37 PDA (supposedly, around 25,000 units were given away). The software development group, at my company, just received our shipments; however, now there is contention between the developers and the company over who owns the PDAs.
The company I work for (a worldwide information technology and services company) contends that that they own the PDAs because they were obtained through a subscription purchased by the company and, therefore, the PDAs are company property (and so all company policies governing the use of their property applies). This upset quite a few developers in my group who were excited to have a new gadget to work/play with and now any tinkering must be approved by the company. So, who owns the PDAs -- the developers who found out about the promotion, filled out the forms, paid for the stamps, on their own initiative, etc. or the company who purchased the MSDN subscriptions to make the developers eligible for the 'free' promotion? Also, I am curious to find out if others are having similar debates at their respective companies. Details of the offer can be found here."
Here's a hypothetical situation for you: You buy a new digital camera, and are unaware that there is currently a $100 rebate available for that camera. If I fill out the rebate form, and mail it in at my own expense, would you say that that $100 is mine, or yours?
Nevermind the fact that you probably don't want to lose your job over a PDA.
Also seen companies that claim they own the frequent-flier miles that employees accumulate, since they paid for the tickets.
Seems like an unpleasant work environment. They'd probably do better to let the employees make use of things that don't cost the company extra. Certainly helps morale, which in turn helps productivity.
IANAL...
We are not a lawyer...
Slashdot is not a lawyer...
I doubt you'll get anything, since the company paid for the merchandise. If you get a "buy one, get one free" your neighbor who told you about the offer doesn't get your freebie. You could ask for the cost of the stamp, but that's about all you'll get. The best you can hope for is to ask for an exemption and to the usage policy and let you tinker with it.
This annoys me so much, I'm tempted to think the question is a troll. Does anyone really think that the PDA wouldn't belong to the company?
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
They didn't round up all the units and sell them on ebay. I can think of a couple of companies that would.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
from https://vstudio.joleschgroup.com/faq.aspx
Q. My company or organization has multiple licenses for an eligible product via an Open, Select or Enterprise Agreement. Can I (or someone else) enter multiple registrations to take advantage of this offer?
A. No, this offer is for individual end-users only. If your company or organization has multiple licenses for an eligible product, please ask your end-users to register their product individually through this site. You cannot register someone else on his or her behalf.
Ok, now that it has become a can of worms you pretty much have to submit to the will of the company. In all rights they bought the software licenses and the PDA is something that came free with purchase ... so in effect it is theirs.
: ... I don't even want to think about it.
... this is technically the same thing. In fact it should be reported as income to the IRS by the individual employees, but that isn't going to happen. If you could pick the most charismatic of your group and tactfully get the deciding manager to align these PDAs in his head to the same sort of business perk as SkyMiles, subtly suggesting that hey, we are all on the same team and yea, we acknowledge that we are in effect getting some free goodies as part of the business process, and actually SkyMiles could be used for business travel to save the company money whereas the PDAs could in no way save the company money by being micromanaged ... you might get away with taking them home to play with them as you wish as long as playing with them didn't negatively affect your work. If your company micromanages SkyMiles and doesn't let the flyers keep them for personal use, you are fuxored, hand over the toys.
Two thoughts
1. Who the fsck told anybody with any sort of authority about the PDAs? If I have to guess I would say that there are only half a dozen or less licenses at your company and thus only half a dozen (or less) PDAs - and probably no more PDAs than people in the IT department who would be getting them. The boxes come in, go directly to IT and you little weasles tear them open and start playing with your new toys - nobody else needs to know. Whoever leaked this to the managers needs to be blackballed, cause it cost you guys your toys (an important aspect of being IT.) Maybe it was the seventh guy on the totem pole, the guy that didn't get one and he was jealous, or maybe
2. SkyMiles. Whoever is making these decisions is a manager - and managers fly places. Now you are not in a position to be making demands, but if there is any leverage for discussion on the matter right now you need to turn it around into a language they understand : business perks. If your company lets the manager keep his SkyMiles when he flies for business, even though they are rightfully an extension to the ticket bought by the company, so he can later use the miles for personal travel or whatever
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Lets say there were six total PDAs in question, and six developers. Then lets pretend you are paying your developers $50,000 annually apiece. Finally lets pretend the PDA cost $250 apiece (the cost of a Dell Axim, plus or minus.)
Your employees carry a fully burdened cost (salary plus expenses like benefits, etc.) of $300 per day. These PDA are basically a windfall, one of your resourceful developers found out about the promotion and sent in the paperwork. Didn't cost the company anything extra because the time lost doing that was pretty much taken from his slashdot time, not productive time.
Is it really worth pissing off half a dozen developers over a toy with a street value of less than what you pay these guys in a single day. Trust me, they are going to hold a grudge. For a while. Maybe for a year. You could (in theory) lose 20% of the total efficiency of half a dozen developers (20% of pretty close to half a million dollars a year burn rate in fully burdened cost is roughly $100,000) in lost productivity because you have managed to cause a rift between you and them over $0 (actual cost to your company) in PDA toys.
Do a benefit / cost ratio comparing what you will get out of keeping the PDAs away from the guys that showed the initiative in obtaining them, to what you will get out of just giving them to them and being genuinely happy about letting them keep them.
Then vote again, we will give you a 'do over.'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee.
Reminds me of one company I worked for. A large hardware manufacturer donated a dozen or so PDAs to our development group. They weren't quite a perk per se; said hardware manufacturer was just getting into PDAs, and they gave us the hardware and associated SDKs for free, to see what we'd come up with by way of cool applications. Then, we'd go to market together. It was more like seeding developers than giving away freebies.
All those PDAs ended up in the attache cases of non-technical managers. No applications, cool or otherwise, for that platform were ever developed by the company. In fact, it doesn't produce much by way of anything anymore. Exactly the same thing happened when a handset manufacturer gave the developers their latest phones too.