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Company Laptop, My Data — Can They Co-exist?
An anonymous reader writes "I recently replaced my old laptop. The owner of my company heard about this and offered to reimburse me for it, since he knows I have and will continue to do company work on my own hardware. I'd like the extra $1,250, but I think if I accept his offer that legally he has the right to any data on it (personal emails, files, blog posts, etc.). Even if I decide to put my personal stuff on a second drive, I'm worried that using company property to save and write to separate storage still gives them the right to it. The apps (Office, etc.) are my own licenses. We do not have a policy that intellectual property developed using company assets belongs to the company. But, if I figured out the One Great Internet Business Idea or write the Great American Novel and used the company laptop to do it, it's an avenue they could use to claim they own it. Unlikely, but scary. How many Slashdotters have been in this situation, and what agreement did you and your management come up with?"
Use the laptop to remote in to your home computer and do your personal business on there.
If they just want to reward you for working on your own hardware, a bonus is the way to go.
Do you Gentoo!?
Use online web stuff.
Unlikely, but scary.
Your fears are not unfounded. As someone who has had "e-mail forensics" done on his company's MS Exchange during an investigation of a coworker, I can assure you that while it may not be something that you've done to trigger this it does happen. And nobody wants to be in a compromising position should their relationship with their employer goes bad.
So your solution is simple: send him an e-mail explaining that this new laptop is going to function as your main personal laptop with family photos and videos and whatnot. Tell him that you'd love to accept the $1,250 as an award or included with your next paycheck as special compensation but the laptop won't be inventoried or tagged by the company. Make it clear it's your property and not a company asset. Offer to bring in the invoice for him to look at if he's concerned you're buying a car with it instead and get it in writing. If you get the money awarded to you to do with as you see fit but you have an informal agreement that this will go toward your personal laptop, everything should be fine.
My work here is dung.
If there's doubt, then you cannot.
Tell them you'd like to take him up on his offer, it's very generous, but tell him how you fell about the situation and that you lay claim to all your data. If there's no IP agreement you had to sign before then they'd have no legal basic to lay claim to it. P.S. IANAL so I could be mistaken.
I'm like a superhero, but with no powers or motivation.
No.
Don't do it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Nice thing about the Berne Convention—Your work is born yours unless you've signed away your rights to it.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I wont even allow my company to reimburse me for flash drives for this reason. It's way better to be safe when it comes to your personal data.
My sausage tree didn't grow, does that make me a bad mommy?
And how would your company know you used the laptop do to X, Y, or Z? If its on your own time and if the laptop is devoid of big-brother-like apps, I fail to see how they could even begin to make a claim for it.
You need to ask a lawyer. His answer will depend, at least in part, on documents you have signed as part of your employment, and on state law.
Personally, I know my company is too confused to ever go after me, my data, and my ideas after I leave, so long as I don't compete directly with them. I don't worry about their supposed ownership of my every thought and dream, despite signing those rights over to them.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Sounds like a good argument for cloud computing. My gmail account stays off my company laptop except for the browser cache which can easily be cleared. I think they would have a hard time proving I crafted a genius email using the browser on their laptop.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
I was always warned about working on personal projects using work equipment. I was told that my company can claim the project as their own since I used their equipment to develop it, which sounds plausible. Where or not it's really true is another matter.
Or was it that I shouldn't be working on personal projects during work time?
Summation 2
- Obfuscate code, CYA
- Use remote administration software to work on a remote (home?) computer, and store documents there
- Alternatively, for web apps, remote into a server and do your work remotely.
- Use Google Docs to store your Office-y documents
In the age of teh internets, what's the problem?
the answer is NO!!!!!! just think about it for a bit. If you want your personal data to be inviolate then you need to segregate it from your work. any physical association no matter how tenuous compromises this segregation.
When you are 'done' with your job you can either delete the VM or move it to your personal computer.
Clean, easy.
He may just have access to it anyhow, in which case..take the money and run.
I had a company laptop I just put my own hard drive in it when I was using it at home or you could just boot from USB.
Do everything in your power to keep your data and theirs separate. In fact I'd even recommend you stop doing their work on your hardware.
If they want to provide you with a company machine then let them.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Seriously, things COULD turn nasty and then this goes to court. He is most likely trying to be nice, but if you are doing side work and want the right to keep that separate, then you should do so. I do recommend that you keep HIS work on a separate disk. He may also insist that you do work only under his licenses, etc (protect himself). If so, consider xen, or vmware and run a virtual system for HIS stuff.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Many companies give employees an allowance to cover the expense of using their own car for business. Tell your boss you want this done the same way.
At my previous company, we went the other direction...no personal equipment was allowed. If you needed a tool (e.g. a laptop), it was provided.
We didn't want the liability of damage or theft of someone's personal equipment. Further, we didn't want to deal with things like users bringing in tools that impact the network, we didn't want to have any issues with software licensing (who provides or you bring in non-licensed software), etc. We also had problems with people bringing in things like printers and then having the company pay for ink (that gets expensive) or wireless routers and creating new and unauthorized access points. Beyond even things like people wanting to bring in their own [monitor, video card, sound card, speakers, desktop, etc], we unfortunately faced the issue of dealing with these things (prior to the policy) when on rare occasions someone was fired and IT had to dismantle a PC, etc.
I guess I'm a fan of keeping work and personal apart.
Tell your boss how you feel and if he agrees with you maybe he will figure out some other way to reimburse you, like for example a nice little bonus.
It creates an expectation that you will provide your own tools in every circumstance, and you shouldn't be subsidizing your company in any case. Create a line between your personal and business life or you will find that your personal life will erode away. That isn't fair to you or those in your personal life. No matter how much you love your job, it's still just a job at the end of the day. Don't be a sucker.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Nothing to it.
Depending on the tax code where you live, something like this might be required anyway, as it'll be seen as either payment or benefits.
So - go all out. Either have him add the cost of your laptop to your pay check as a one time bonus (bring a copy of the receipt so they can see the price), or have them buy the laptop and give it to you as a gift along with papers showing that it is indeed your laptop and not the company's.
Personally I'd prefer the one time bonus. I'm buying the laptop anyway, I need it, and I'm effectively getting a company sponsored discount with none of the drawbacks.
Why not take the $1250, buy a second, identical laptop for personal use and set up an external drive that you could use to sync files between the two if necessary (or even a shared drive for professional purposes)?
If you go this route, make sure you never accidentally put personal stuff on the professional laptop.
Ask your employer to give it as a bonus. That way, you get your $1250 and he gets to pay for your laptop in a roundabout way. He won't be explicitly paying for the laptop, just giving you some extra cash which you "could" put towards the laptop. However, you might want to ask for a bit more as a bonus will be considered income and be taxable. If you want to keep the machine if/when you leave, getting reimbursed probably wouldn't work. If they pay for it, they'll probably want it back after you leave. Same thing with your data; if they own it, they have the right to snoop around and if you do any personal work on it, they can probably legally say they own at least part of it, if not all of it.
-SaNo
I wrote my laptop off as a non-reimbursed work expense. That does not mean my company or IRS now owns it. I still do. I have the receipt to prove it.
It's your laptop. You own it, whether the company reimburses you or not.
If they do want to own it, then they're not reimbursing you, they're buying your laptop.
I use Dropbox to sync my important files between my work laptop and my home desktop. For added security, I also keep my files encrypted, so that neither my employer nor the Dropbox folks will be able to get access if I ever have to give the laptop back. If you're using Ubuntu, I wrote up a howto blog post here.
Have them buy you a SECOND laptop. Keep your stuff and company stuff separate. You shouldn't be doing company work on your own laptop anyway as even THAT opens up questions of ownership/privacy.
Ask for the "reimbursement" to be made in the form of a bonus so it's clear who owns the laptop - what you do with your bonus is your business. Yes, you'll have to pay taxes on it (I assume your tax laws count a bonus as income) but that's cheaper than the full price of the laptop and now it's yours, without question.
So long as there's 1) no contract to spell things out clearly and 2) the computer is "theirs", there will always be the risk of someone claiming the data on it is owned by them, not you. You may have an amazing relationship with your current boss but that situation may change (new boss, turn-for-the-worse in your relationship, whatever). If there's a contract in place, fine, but I suspect you're hesitant to ask that a contract be drawn up for just this situation.
Thus, if the company is willing to fork over the money, have them fork it over in a way that does not link it to the computer.
Or, of course, pay for it yourself. You obviously thought it was worth it given that you already bought it. Yes, an extra grand in your pocket is nice but you already decided you were willing to part with the money so if ownership of the data is important then you're not really out anything - it was an expense you were willing to pay.
I have and will continue to do company work on my own hardware ...
There's your problem.
Tell your employer they can have it one of two ways: either (a) provide you enough hardware to do your job, or (b) the contents of your laptop of yours, not theirs. Any other approach leads to trouble with sorting out who has copyright on what that will cost them far more than $1250 in legal expenses.
I am officially gone from
Make a Truecrypt folder, ideally 4GBish so can be backed up onto a DVD.
Now setup your Thunderbird email profile on the Truecrypt folder ("Thunderbird -profilemanager" allows you setup a new TB profile), and ditto for Firefox profile. Note that Thunderbird and Firefox programs are still installed on machine per normal, it's just the profiles that a separate.
Now your private stuff is private...
Just because an employer "reimburses" you doesn't mean he takes title to the item. It might be better to call it compensation - he is paying you for the business use of your equipment. There are tax consequences, but it's better than nothing.
There might also be a parallel in the treatment of using a personally owned vehicle for business use - just because I get $.55/mile when traveling doesn't mean that my employer gets to riffle through my trunk.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I use TrueCrypt and create an encrypted volume that only I have the credentials for. They might be able to get on your machine and view files but if you never give them the password to the encrypted file then you are safe. I guess through subpoena or something like that they COULD, in theory, eventually gain access but that's a huge pain in the ass and you could very easily delete the file. It also makes for easy backup to disc or another machine, if needed.
This, of course, should be used in conjunction with what Eldavojohn said and get it in writing that the property is yours. That might not keep them from snooping, however and this solution would keep them from "stumbling" across something you may perfer to keep private.
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I think the real question is why you're asking Slashdot instead of sitting down with your boss and hashing these issues out directly.
in the past, and so far have been pretty lucky. What I wound up doing was encrypting a partition with TrueCrypt and keeping all my personal stuff on it... that way if I ever DID get burned there's not much the company could do in terms of using said data. I realize this isn't 100% fool proof, but I think it's prolly good enough.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
But, if I figured out the One Great Internet Business Idea or write the Great American Novel and used the company laptop to do it, it's an avenue they could use to claim they own it.
I don't know what Company you work for, but MOST companies force you to sign a contract at time of employment that basically claims that anything you create while you are employed by the company is legally theirs. Any code you write, any works you produce they could technically sue you for if you suddenly turned around and actually made a decent bit of money off of them. Yes, this includes things you write in the middle of the night on a weekend on your personal computer.
Does this mean they're going to try and claim your profits at the Church Arts and Crafts fair or try and claim they own the game you sell for $2 on your website? No. But they do this for several reasons. One is to protect their own asses... while you're busy coding at Adobe for their Great New Photoshop, you can't go home and use the ideas, even those YOU came up with at work, to create "Joe's Photomall" and suddenly turn around and start undercutting photoshop. Another reason is pure greed... if you suddenly have this great idea and write a 5kb Operating System that runs everything, it's THEIR great idea if you actually coded it while you were employed under them and _they_ get the rights to it, not you.
Yes, there have been cases where this has come up, and it is usually up to the (ex)employee to prove that they created the code or whatever either before or after they were under employment.
Just an FYI... I would check up on your contracts if you think this may be a problem.
Your company owner sounds like a good person, offering to reimburse your purchase. It sounds like he surprised you and now you're trying to decide whether you want to retain ownership of the laptop or sign it over to the company.
For the company owner, it would be a no brainer because he owns the company that would own the equipment. For you, there are more questions about relinquishing ownership.
1) Will you have to return the laptop if you leave the company?
2) Will the company's IT staff have to maintain the laptop?
3) How much personal usage will you get away with before you ruffle feathers?
4) Why would you provide your own copy of MS Office for a company machine?
Since the company owner made the offer to you personally, I think you could discuss this informally with him and emphasize that when you purchased the equipment you were expecting to use it primarily for personal business.
As to the issue of your personal work being claimed by the company, that's sort of a nightmare scenario that I can't imagine happening in the real world unless you work for total assholes. If you're truly worried about your company sending lawyers after you, you shouldn't even consider signing over your equipment to the company.
I'm in the same situation.
I'm using a Virtual Machine. The job stuff in a isolated guest, and my stuff in the host OS.
So, the IT guys can configure group policies, monitoring, copy anything... but don't touch my host.
I do not know what policy most company setup for situation such as these but with mine; when the company paid for your equipment it is company property irregardless if you take it home and keep it there.
the one reason my company did this was people were stealing, they purchase equipment then wrote it off say it was for work then quit.
Business and pleasure don't mix. Have your boss buy you a laptop which you only use for work-related purposes.
Why are you using your personal property to do work for your job in the first place? Your post sounds like you've worn out your own laptop working for your boss and now you have to replace it? Not smart. He should replace it, yes -- but then he should also provide another one, if necessary, for company business, and never the twain shall meet. Now go forth, and transgress no more, grasshopper!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Encrypt everything.
There should be clauses in your contract that handle intellectual property. If there's something like: "projects developed in a company setting are owned by the company" you should be careful because a judge might view using the company laptop as being in a company setting.
I'd say let them reimburse you for the laptop, then take the $1250 and grab another one (or a really nice netbook and pocket the change) for personal use. If you leave the company and they ask for the laptop, oh well. If they don't, you have an extra laptop. If you insist on having personal data on a machine used for work, then use truecrypt for your personal files.
A netbook wouldn't add much weight to your bag either.
That's my opinion. I'm stuck using my personal laptop as my employer won't cover one but they know damn well it's mine (along with any of my personal pet projects) and any attempt to steal my personal work through litigation may result in health complications.
Set it up as a loan from the company to purchase the laptop, payable over x months. If you leave before x months, you owe the remainder, if you stay the full x months, you don't have to repay it. That way the laptop is yours, not the companies.
Don't do it. Even if you make an arrangement with your company, put it in writing, etc, you have no way of knowing who might buy your company, what their policies might be and how aggressive they might be about cashing in on IP which they claim to own through lawyer-spending-power. I write - fiction not code - and I never, ever use company hardware or time to do it. It's just not worth it. I don't even write notes on company notepaper. It isn't just paranoia, its also fair play to separate the two. When I couldn't afford my own laptop, I bought an Axim and used that instead.
Why not take the money and use it to buy a new laptop exclusively for work? Is it critical to have a single laptop that you use for work and personal use?
If it's more convenient to use your work laptop for personal use, but only on occasion, you can always copy your files to your personal computer when you're able and then use a program like Eraser to clean up your work drive.
If you total or wear out your personal car because of your work, and your employer offers to pay for the replacement, he doesn't magically get title to it. He *replaced* YOUR hardware which wore out due to company use.
Same as if the company replaces a customer's cell phone that gets broken due to, for example, it getting run over by the company's delivery truck. They don't suddenly p0wn the customer's cell.
When they reimburse you for on-the-road meals, do they suddenly have a right, like Shylock in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", to claim their pound of flesh? Nope. When they pay for your new pants because you ruined your old ones on a service call, do they suddenly have the right to say "only wear them while you're on the job?" Didn't think so. When they give you gas and mileage money, do they get a lease-hold or any further rights to your car? Nah.
When the laptop gets stolen, whose insurance is going to cover it, or who is going to eat the loss? You. Take the money, and make it clear that the laptop is YOUR responsibility, and your liabity. Worse comes to worse, get it in writing, get it in writing, and get it in writing.
Your computer, your data. Their computer, their data.
At my last company I bought my own HD for the laptop mainly because the lead time for the laptop with a 7200RPM drive was too long. The laptop arrived about a week or two after I started, (I was in the IT/OPS dept btw). I took the laptop home and the first thing I did before even turning it on was to "dd" the old drive to the new drive. I put the old drive away in a safe place and used the new drive for my time there. When I left the company I just yanked my disk, and put the original back in and gave it back to them. Sure the licenses of software was theirs for the most part(it was dual boot XP and UBuntu) but I've never used(nor never intended) to use the commercial software, it's really only been a backup disk since. I put it in a USB enclosure and have used it on a few occasions to get data off of it.
Company before that I just copied all my data off before I left and left the system booted into a live linux distro writing /dev/urandom to the disk in a loop.
(posted as AC as I don't have a /. account and I post maybe once every two years)
Well shit, I'm never gonna leave my girlfriend in the company car again!
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think that your worries are largely unfounded. I think that your data and work belong to you by default, unless you have signed some paper that tells otherwise. The laptop is a tool, not an IP black hole.
Imagine other similar situtations:
In short, they are providing you with a tool. Unless otherwise signed, they are not entitled to what is produced with it or liable for its misuse. Even if you sign such a paper, I think that they will have a hard time to claim every data file on the laptop. This would give you grounds to counter-claim overtime wages for the time needed to produce the data ;-).
If in doubt, accept the offer and replace the hard disk of the laptop. When you leave the company, shall they ask you for the laptop back just give it back with its original (empty) hard disk. Any work files they want from you should be given to them seperately.
Take the money.
Buy a second laptop.
One for you, one for them, and if it all turns out well in the end, you get both (though they'll be old and shitty by then probably).
There may be a side route to this.
If the laptop is a business expense, you can deduct it from your taxes.
I THINK this means that you can take this as a deduction and get the FULL value back, either as a refund, or reduction in taxes owed.
Talk to you tax professional.
I work from home for a company that isn't in my state, but I also do independent work and have my own small company. I don't want a seperate machine for each place, so for my main employer, I have a monthly stipend added to my pay for the use of personal computers, printers, office supplies, etc. This way I still own the equipment, but I also get some money for it's wear and tear, etc. Of course this means I pay for repairs and supplies out of pocket when they are needed, but over time it evens out.
First off: if you're really concerned, and you do intend to do develop your own stuff, talk to a lawyer - laws vary significantly between jurisdictions. That said, I always do my own development work on my hardware using my software on my own time. I do not use company time, hardware, or software, for anything I consider to be "mine". I won't even talk to co-workers about it (even outside company time). I do all this to maintain a strict separation. If accepting the money means they own the laptop (even in part), don't take the money. Or buy a cheap computer to use for your own work. I'd recommend doing this even if a lawyer says you're okay. Laws change. You could move. Companies can use the threat of long, expensive lawsuits to intimidate. Leaving as few legal footholds for the enemy is a good idea.
linquendum tondere
It is that simple. Physical seperation is the way to go and since you were willing to buy a machine with your own money, you now get two machines for the price of one. No legal mess, no conversation required, this is the simplist solution.
a laywer will help him, but the problem will be to find somone with this profession.
I wouldn't do it. Do anything the boss is interested in (stealth startup perhaps?)... and they will try to claim rights on the data and make a huge mess. Boss suspicious your moonlighting, doing anything that violates company policy (selling trade secrets).... again will try to claim rights. Will end up in court in front of a judge who couldn't turn on a computer himself and it will be corporate lawyers vs. whatever you can afford. Not to mention if the company goes under... will creditors assessing what hardware assets the company has consider this hardware theirs or yours? Just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. At the very least there's a potential for legal bills. Totally not worth it.
No personal computers connecting to company network. Period.
What's mine is mine. What's theirs is theirs. Keep it separate.
Do -not- use personal equipment for company use.
Okay, I admit I do it. I have a $20 keyboard and $15 mouse that I brought in. But if something happened and I never saw them again, 'oh well'. They don't store any data, and they have no value other than their replacement value.
A laptop? Are you insane!?
Take the $1250, the company now owns the laptop. Do your personal stuff on a computer you actually own.
KEEP THEM SEPARATE.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Take the check for $1,250 and use it to buy a new laptop. You get a free laptop that you use for work-only, and keep the other one for personal stuff. I call that the best of both worlds.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
But it's primarily to keep IT away from my system. As a telecommuting developer, the last thing I want to deal with is the corporate flavor-of-the-month security/antivirus software either a.) hosing my system with incompatibilities or worse b.) actually missing a virus and having it ship with a product. I've seen both happen at various employers to others, and I've also been the only one on a network totally unaffected by a virus outbreak aside from a dialog saying "Hey, this email is infected. Sorry, you can't run the attachment".
It means I spend $1000+/year in hardware and software expenses (and yeah, my antivirus costs more than their antivirus), but I figure it is worth it.
I'd say if you can afford it, just keep the hardware and software your own. Then there's no questions on "ideas developed on corp hardware" and such for things you do on your own time unrelated to work using your own hardware and software.
See if you can swing the money into a gigantic monitor and docking station in your office. For $1200 you could probably toss in an Aeron or similar without blowing the budget.
Then use the money to buy yourself another laptop, so you can use it exclusively for personal stuff and the company-reimbursed one for work purposes.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
The data belongs to your company anyway. If ID'd in lawsuit or legal action, your personal property can be searched. If you want to use your machine for work and play, keep your personal data on a separate file system like an encrypted thumb drive or other removable media. Don't forget to take the money as income and pay taxes on it though.
Several points here... Clearly establish any conditions that go with accepting the cash. Are they buying any part of ownership, or are they just providing a bonus or reward to help you along? Is there any expectation that your new computer will have 100% up-time, or have a stated life in years? The common sense approach would be to say that if you have been doing any personal stuff on a company computer, and it has been in your own time, without affecting your work time or your work, then it's OK, and they can only object if what you're doing reduces the life of the computer. Given that it's a 'personal' computer, not a company computer, then wear and tear would be OK, and we eliminate that objection. They can only object if your personal activities are affecting your work productivity. Remember, there has to be a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing for them to capture the computer or data on it. Keep your nose clean, and all should be well. Best of all, in case your computer needs to be inspected for maintenance (probably only applicable to company assets), or put on a company network, keep any personal stuff separable, in known folders, backed up regularly, and if shared then only securely shared(!).
If he gives you money to buy the PC, who does it belong to? If it is yours, then they have no say on it. If it is theirs, then they might have a say in it.
Ask HIM what the situation is by email. That way you have a trace if anything goes sour in two years or so. The worst that can happen is that he decides that it is THEIR machine. At least then you know what the situation is.
I would think that if they are willing to give you that amount of money, they will also be willing to answer any questions you have about it.
A solution depends also on what rights you have on that PC. If you have admin rights, you could use encryption. As it is a Portable, you could use encryption anyway. That way when you loose the machine or it is stolen, the company data is secure as well.
Make either a separate encrypted partition for yourself or use the hidden part of Truecrypt for your own files. That way you can even give the sysadmin of the company the login, in case you are hit by a bus.
That way your data is secure and private, while the companies is secure as well.
If you do not have the admin rights (and don't want to hack them) then an external drive and/or USB stick can be the answer. e.g. at home an external drive for everything and a USB stick for on the road.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Thank the boss for the offer, but make it clear that you don't want to blur the lines of ownership regarding your laptop and the associated software licenses. Suggest that, if he still wants to compensate you for all you do using your personal equipment on your own time, if he would consider making the payment a one-time cash bonus. That way, the payment is associated with wages and cannot be construed as being an employer reimbursement for business equipment to be used at home.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
There goes your $1250.
If the laptop is to be owned by the company, get something in writing or at least a verbal contract. If your boss is good enough to offer you hardware for your dedicated service, he doesn't sound like the kind of guy to stab you in the back with it.
A better idea would be a direct payment or at least a voucher towards a personally-owned but for work purposes laptop. ("Here's $1000. Spend as much as you want over that amount towards the system you'd like best.")
Maybe the OP is working as a Contractor. My most recent contract stated that I was to provide all hardware and software, because the end client does/will not provide any tools.
If you are a contractor, the work you do, as well as how you do it may be dictated by the employment laws of your state.
1: Read your employment agreement.
2: Ask yourself if any outside dealings are worthwhile.
3: Consult with a law professional who specializes in employment law.
I was going to buy a cell phone, from a carrier that had better coverage in the areas I frequented than the cell phones provided by the company. As they were getting ready to get another cell phone anyway, I asked that the one assigned to me be reassigned, and that if I used my new personal phone for business they pay for those minutes or give me a stipend for phone use. Instead, they bought me a phone of the type and carrier I wanted, and said they would rather pay for personal calls than to hassle with the paperwork the stipend or reimbursement of the calls. It worked fine for years, then one day they called me in and said pack up and get out, hand over the keys and your phone. There was no time to pull off my phone list, or delete any text messages. I had some of the numbers in other places, but not all of them. And, I had to quickly go out and get a new phone and update everyone with the new number. Now, I carry two phones, one is mine,. one is theirs, and business and personal never combine. I would do the same with the laptop. But, I would make them buy the laptop, not take the money and buy one with it. That way there is no doubt which machine is theirs.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
If you mix work and personal data regardless of the machine, and some "disagreement" occurs, you can bet you will not have any right to refuse to supply any and all data from a mixed system. If someone just decides to "get even" after you leave (particularly if you are now at a competitor or set up a business in the same field), they can say you left with proprietary company data and sue for its return. You may think a Mac Book Pro is expensive, but you have never seen what an experienced law firm's retainer fee is until it hits with a thud.
#4, Why not use a USB stick as a complete Ubuntu workstation? Here are instructions to make a stick that will either run in a QEMU window on a host Windows OS, _or_ you can simply boot-up directly into Ubuntu?
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/all-in-one-pendrivelinux-2008/
So you can have your cake and eat it too. During work hours, just insert your USB stick when you need access to your own PC.
Most employers assert ownership of their employees. Mind, body, and soul, you are bought and paid for. Especially if you are someone who works in something creative (like development). The modern attitude is that all works, copyrightable or not, produced by employees are the exclusive property of the employer regardless of when and under what circumstances the work was created.
I have seen someone have software they have written taken from them by their companies. The software was produced by them in their spare time, mostly on weekends. Not only did he lose all rights to the software, the company managed to sue him for legal expenses and also won a 1 year injunction preventing him from writing similar software for 2 years. The person I am referring to was a shipping clerk at the time, but the company had a sweeping and universal employee invention agreement, which the "great" state of Tennessee was all too ready to enforce.
So you may want to look at your employment contract because this may be a moot point. You probably don't own your vacation photos in the first place!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
I have a personal MacBook Pro purchased with my own funds. I hate having to carry my personal laptop and my work laptop around so I use Parallels on my Mac and I have a Windows XP image that I use for work. I keep an encrypted copy of this image on an offline storage system at home. If I go on extended vacation or there is any concern that my laptop might be more likely to be stolen, I just delete the image from my laptop and then copy it back over when I return home. Since I am using gigabit ethernet of the laptop and the storage it hardly takes more than 10-15 min to copy over. Plus the other beauty of this setup is I run the Parallels image on a separate spaces window. This gives me two distinct desktops that I can switch to instantly. I can surf personal stuff (like Slashdot) on the OS X side and keep the business stuff on the XP image.
I am about to get a laptop on the job to replace my previous desktop. I am considering to create a second partion on it that is completely separte from work partition. So i can get a clean work pc, and an overloaded home partiontion with games on it that do not affect the work software ever!
As it happens Trecrypt has an option to create a separte pationtion that hides the first partition. having truecrypt also automatically creates full disk encryption: if i ever get the laptop stolen i only have to give a statement about the hardware, not about the data of clients that might be on it.
Leave groggy questions about laptops behind in cubicle-land and become a rugged mountain man, plying the wilderness trails with a sure step, and the unmistakable sparkle and glow of Life in your flinty eyes and ruddy cheeks.
Oscar-Wilde, your faithful mountain lion companion, will leap at your side as you pull hapless vacationers from the icy clutches of the river during spring thaw. Why, you'll have adventures, foil villains and bed glorious Russian heiresses!
Screw the laptop.
-FL
First you need to prove it is yours (onus on you, at the spur of that moment - so tape the receipt to the drive) - to the person walking you out, with you while you grab your personal stuff. Secondly, they will want to remove any company from the drive, and won't take your word for it that there ain't none. So the now pissed off IT slave will scrape through your personal stuff anyway...
Many companies sort out what's yours and theirs after walking you out, so you're short on luck in that scenario.
Even if I decide to put my personal stuff on a second drive, I'm worried that using company property to save and write to separate storage still gives them the right to it.
Not if you clarify that the money is a bonus and does not constitute transfer of ownership of the property. And there's no shame wanting to be clear on the conditions.
At the office it's still murky. If you're using company bandwidth, they can monitor that.
There's very little incentive to get caught using company bandwidth to go to blocked locations when netbooks with wireless service are so affordable. I know some military installations are trying to regulate personal wireless devices and in some areas they can. But outside secure areas even those rules aren't entirely clear or consistent.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I've had it work both ways:
- Where I work now, I bought a $40 "Access 2003 VBA" book to do my job. My boss told me to fill out an expense report for it to get reimbursed, but if I did, the book would become company property and would stay if I left. I went ahead and filled out the expense report.
- Back in the days of numeric beepers, I had two jobs with on-call responsibilities. In both cases, I used my personal beeper for work, since I didn't want to carry around two beepers--and my boss had no problem letting me use it. One job gave me a steady supply of free AAA batteries. The other job paid me $5/mo [over half cost of the beeper service] as reimbursement.
Does your employer have written policies that govern acceptable use, data security, etc?
If not, now is a good time. You are going to use some form of full disk encryption, aren't you? Or would you rather give away all your and his data if^H^Hwhen your laptop is stolen?
Such policies make it much clearer. At least you will know the score, and he really should have such a policy. I suspect there is already.
I work with a very different organization, so they not only warn me any data is theirs, but our group policies also limit the type of media I can actually use - USB sticks generally work, but my 8G stick with the microSD reader won't let me mount a microSD card. My music player will mount, but won't let me copy .MP3, .OGG, and .MWA files. And my security agent reports on all that. I have to go back and request removable device support when it expires so I can back up data to the DVD drive etc as required by our disaster recovery policy - my access is limited and expires regularly, requiring me to jump through flaming hoops of fire (Kleenex on a coathanger, but they think it's fun) to justify to one group what I am mandated to do by another.
If you get a chance to work for a Furtune 100 company, do. Network management there is more fun than a rubber crutch, and will remind you that your former squabbles over screensavers and PST files are small potatoes in the grand scheme of life.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Tell them to give you a performance bonus, then use the money to buy the laptop. Not that hard.
You bought the laptop, you hold the recipt. You registered the SN with the warranty.
If he reimburses you for your personal expense it is STILL your laptop. They did not buy it for you therefore it's your property.
If he said," let me reimburse you for that purchase" and asks for a receipt for the laptop, they are buying it for you. Then it's THEIR laptop.
The sticker is the receipt.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And when you return it, give it to him in the condition he bought it for you: wiped clean.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You bought the laptop. It is yours. If your boss decides, "Hey, I'm gonna give you money for that laptop," your company is now out $1250 and you just got a free laptop.
That gives you a lot of practical control over what happens.
Unless you work for especially sly conspirators, its nice of them to offer to pay for the laptop, and doesn't seem like a problem.
I recently had a similar situation with a company laptop. They sold it to me for a token amount when I left the company, and I kept all my personal data.
Simple Solution. TrueCrypt. Creates an encrypted partition that exists as a giant file on the laptop hard drive. You can install apps to it or put data. Either way, no one can extract without your code.
It isn't the hardware, it's the data. The company could sue for access to your wife's computer if they thought you
might have their data on it. They may or may not be granted access by a judge, and it may make it a little easier if they claim the hardware is theirs. If you think there's reasonable suspicion your employer may want to look at your computer for their data, have them buy you one outright because then there's no trust, it's just business.
One of our right-wingnut friends shows his true colours...?
I keep company information on my personal laptop. It's in a TrueCrypt partition.
That keeps company information:
(1) Segregated from everything else
(2) Secured, as it's in an encrypted partition
I do the same with some of my own personal information. Makes things easy to manage.
I wouldn't work for a company that I was so suspicious of.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Get real. No one has needed to upgrade their hardware OR software for, oh, 5 years. The slowest part of the computer by far is the keyboard interface. You really think you need 4 gigs of ram and a hyperthreaded CPU to write emails or crate some useless bullet-ridden powerpoint?
Keep the old laptop. Use painters tape on the keys / screen / ports, give the sucker a shot of glossy black trem-clad, slap in the latest Ubuntu or flavor of choice, and keep the money.
$1,250 will get you a lot of lapdances and jello shots.
Use it for both and fully encrypt your hdd
Don't play games with your life or your stuff.
Use a separate PC for work, and another for home. You WON'T have a chance to make backups if you're fired. If you connect your personal PC to the work network EVER (even once), then your personal PC can be taken from you by just about anybody (Police, FBI, etc).
The same goes for your cell phone/pager/palm/pda/etc.
Why do people CONTINUE to post legal questions here? The way 99% of people here think things SHOULD work isn't how it actually DOES work. The way all of us geeks/nerds/whatever would like the world to work is from the perspective of how our perfect little world should be and usually doesn't have much in the way of how it actually is. If you have a legal question, as a damn lawyer, not /. users - most of the time you'll get rhetoric and nonsense...
There's really two items here: You versus your current employer, and you plus your current employer versus some third party
who sues you both.
Yes, I'm there right now - not a lawyer, but I've been doing the "doing employer work on my own hardware" for nearly 20 years now
and have "levelled up" a couple of times on the reality of the situation.
Case zero: nothing bad happens at all. Been there, and it's the most common case. But it's not the only case.
Case one: (you vs. employer) you can perhaps cope with it by getting (in writing) a supplement to your current employment
agreement to clarify ownership of the laptop, and of the data thereon, AND explicit listing of what _you_ are doing on
your own time and equipment. Be really, really explicit, and don't do anything _even after that_
that you expect to have in and of itself significant monetary value, because contracts can be abrogated (or it may come down
to "sign this reassignment or you're fired". Yes, I've seen that too- the guy in question walked and now works for Google,
but hey, not everybody can do that on a moment's notice.
As a subset of Case One that might not apply to you: case law on consultants and contractors may specify some
particulars about ownership of data versus hardware that might be of use to you, if you happen to be a consultant
or a contractor.
Case Two: (you plus your employer versus a third party), nothing you can do (including not using your laptop for work
at all) can 100% keep it out of a third party subpeona, as the third party only need show that there's a reasonable liklihood that
the you _did_ use the laptop for work, whether or not you really did so. Making sure that your personal equipment does NOT
have the VPN software or VPN dongle or VPN access helps your case, but you still might lose the laptop to a subpeona to
surrender it for forensics. I've never seen it happen, but I'm sure it has.
And then you'll know if your boss reads Slashdot.
I worked with a guy at a particular defense contractor who, while on company time and on company assets, wrote a decent short story. I was published and her got some cash out of it. His bosses caught wind and trying to "claim" the work as the companies since it was on company time and conpany assets. Apparently (IANAL) though there is this thing called RELEVANCY that factors into this. Since his employers had nothing to do with literary endevors they didn't have a claim to the work, it was irrelivant to his job. For instance jotting down a new formula for a soda on a company provided post-it note while at work doesn't give your employer ownership of that unless they somehow deal in ... well... soda.
You are not a slave and your employer doesn't own you, nor do they own your imagination. As long as what you do personally doesn't involve your work there is a resonable barrier between the two. I haven't heard of someone coming up with a great recipe for BBQ while working at a Ford plant and having Ford try and claim ownership. I think the judge would throw them out on their ear.
However I fear that we might end up slaves all too quickly if we don't raise hell on issues like this. It's already getting so far that former employers can sue you if you go work for a competitor without a non-compete agreement.
Slavery comes in many forms besides whips and chains...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Just encrypt the entire drive or where your documents are stored. It's trivial to encrypt your home folder in Ubuntu...for Windows, take a look here.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
If your employer reimburses you for safety glasses or steel toed shoes, they don't get access to everything you do while wearing them, do they ? Of course not.
Take it as a reimbursement, and do NOT let them even THINK that they 'own' the hardware. Note that they will need to include the $$ as part of your compensation (and you're probably gonna pay tax on it).
As far as the intellectual property issue if you 'invent something' while using the equipment, it's always a hard job proving that in a court of law. Even people who sign those 'all your brain are belong to us' agreements (sign or yer fired !) get out of them all the time. They keys usually are that the wonderful concept you developed has nothing to do with the core business of your employer.
I'd feel safe doing it this way. BUT! I'm neither a lawyer nor a tax consultant, nor do I play either role on TV. So YMMV.
If you're really doing something of value on your own, be very serious about keeping your own work and your employer's work separate. When I did this, the work I was doing at home was on a different kind of computer than I used at work, in a different subject area. I even used a different color of scratch pad for my own work (yellow for the employer, green for my own work). For the employer's work, I used blue pens; for my own work, black pens of a different brand. No paper or media associated with my own work ever entered the employer's premises.
This is a hassle. It is far less hassle than the litigation required to untangle things if you succeed at what you're doing.
It worked out very well for me, and I was able to retire before I was 40.
I am with everyone else. Take the money, encrypt your private files... on an external drive if you are not comfortable with them being on "their" drive. Back up your encrypted data at home weekly.
If the company turns on you and takes your computer without letting you remove files from it, they can have the encrypted volume on your laptop but not the password.
Personally, I would encrypt all of your data... personal and company. In addition to being more secure, this gives you leverage in the future.
The chances are that you wont come up with the One Great Internet Business Idea - or write the great American novel. Cos I doubt the people that do those things spend much time reading comments on Slashdot, or asking Slashdot for it's opinion.
most employee agreements state that the company will own your idea if it is related to their business regardless whether you use your laptop or the companies
keep business and personal separate... always.
My story is different, but some issues in it may be of interest.
There was a clasue in my employment contract stating that anyting I did of a copyrightable nature while employed belonged to the company, even if I did it outside of office hours on my own computer. The verbal assurance of the manager who hired me (he was one of the company's founders and my PhD thesis supervisor) was that they would not enforce the copyright ownership if whatever I did was irrelevant to the company's business, but he said it would be polite for me to ask for transfer of copyright ownership if I was to do something for myself.
Several years later, the manager who hired me had moved to a different part of the company. I did start to write stuff for myself. I did ask my (new) manager for a transfer of copyright ownership. In principle, he was happy to do this, but he had to run it past the legal department and get the CTO to proofread the draft of my book to ensure it didn't say anything embarrassing to the company. Of course, looking after the core business of the company and meeting quarterly revenue targets took a higher priority than dealing with my request, so the transfer of copyright ownership took 6 months. That was for the first book I wrote. It took 8 months for the second book. The point I am making is that if your employment contract states you own the copyright of non-work-related stuff that you write on your own time then that will save you from dealing with frustratingly slow bureaucracy.
I work in the consultancy and training department of the company, so I travel a lot. For this I need a laptop. It would have been impractical to carry 2 laptops with me: a company one and a personal one. So when I was working out details of the transfer of copyright ownership, I requested that I be able to keep my own stuff on the company laptop. Both my boss and the legal department were concerned with the possibility of "my stuff" and "company stuff" getting inter-mingeled on the same disk drive. We solved this concern by me buying a compact flash card and a compact-flash-to-PCMCIA-card adapter. I put these into the PCMCIA card slot on my laptop and used it as a separate drive for "my stuff". (By the way, I discovered that Windows has dreadfully slow drivers for accessing flash-based devices, but Linux has very fast drivers.) I got a written letter stating that I owned a "project" that was on the PCMCIA-card drive if my employer pre-approved the "project". The need to get pre-approval for projects was irritating-but-tolerable for a few years. Eventually, I paid off my mortgage and my wife's university fees. At that point, I realised that I could afford to live on far less money, so I negotiated to switch from being a full-time employee to being a part-time one. Suddenly the issue of copyright ownership became a non-issue because under UK law the company can demand copyright ownership only for what I do during the part-time work hours; what I develop under the rest of my time is automatically mine. I have been blissfully happy ever since.
One last point. About a year ago I bought a netbook. It's powerful enough for the needs of my projects--running PowerPoint, LaTeX and developing small C++/Java programs with "vi" and "make" or "ant"--your mileage may vary. I plug the netbook into an external monitor and keyboard when working in my home office. When I travel on company business, the netbook is small enough for me to carry it and the company laptop. So now I have a more complete physical separation between "company stuff" and "my stuff" and I don't have to endure Windows' slow drivers for flash-based disks.
Here's what you do:
1. Company buys the laptop.
2. You buy a hard disk.
3. You install your hard disk in the laptop.
4. Company wants the laptop back? No problem. Remove your hard disk and reinstall theirs.
if I figured out the One Great Internet Business Idea or write the Great American Novel and used the company laptop to do it, it's an avenue they could use to claim they own it.
They can claim anything they want regardless. Making the claim stick is another matter.
Unless your company has tasked you with identifying the next great business idea or writing a novel for them you're pretty safe regardless of what they care to claim. Copyrights on work done as a W2 employee within the scope of your job vest in the company. With a few very narrow exceptions every other copyright on work you create vests in you personally. Even if you signed a contract which claims otherwise. And "whose equipment was used in the production" is NOT one of the exceptions.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I have done the USB thing many times, and from my experience, the best way is to install Ubuntu like you normally would, only select the USB drive instead of your hard drive, and use ReiserFS or ext4 since they seem to run faster on USB drives than other file systems. The other method installs it like a live CD with persistent data storage, which was originally for installing Ubuntu onto netbooks.
"...anything you create while you are employed by the company is legally theirs."
Amend this to "anything you do while on company time at work or anything you do using company resources" and then you'd be correct.
"...if you suddenly have this great idea and write a 5kb Operating System that runs everything, it's THEIR great idea if you actually coded it while you were employed under them and _they_ get the rights to it, not you."
No. What you do on your own time and with your own resources is yours. If Operating Systems are not their business, they legally have NO claim to what you do.
The only good solution is to have your employer buy you a new laptop and keep it separate from your personal stuff.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
If he is offering to REIMBURSE you for your purchase then it is not company property. It is your property and you can do anything you want with it including throwing it in the trash. Your company is reimbursing you for expenses related to your job. (I have been working in IT for over 25 years and have had this issue come up at least a dozen times) For it to be company property the company must purchase it and then give it to you. Think of it like this does a company own your car when they reimburse you for the mileage you have traveled on company business? Obviously not. So it is your laptop even if you take the money. Just be sure that the company IT guy does install anything on your laptop.
As a consultant I've been exposed to many different corporate computer systems and often use their equipment.
The policy usually is that one is not permitted to mix personal data on any company equipment and that includes laptop computers. The policy is often stated on the login panel or with the background image or screen saver image as well.
Some companies allow personal browsing during breaks while others strictly forbid that. Some even don't allow personal equipment in company buildings.
Even with the restrictions there are some exceptions. A personal data stick might be permitted to allow for personal data to be accessed while at work. Usually this is for consultants to complete time sheets and other reporting functions.
It's best to keep your personal data on your own equipment. However, I'm always concerned that while at some client site they might confiscate my personal electronic gear for examination at anytime. So it's best to limit person information at work. This is especially true the tighter the security policy is. Even your phone might not be safe from data dumping by company security personnel.
That said, at most companies reason will likely prevail however be prepared for it not prevailing. A portable hard drive that you can detach in seconds might be best. Never leave it in the desk but always carry it with you in your pocket or you risk losing it.
As a consultant often new equipment is needed for the job when I work off site, for example a new spiffy computer, so I arrange for it to be part of the payment for work. This way I can use the equipment as I wish and these complications disappear for the most part. However, in some cases especially when work of high value is being done it's best to not do anything with the equipment that is personal or that leaves any personal data on the computer in case there are any troubles.
The best thing is to find out your company's policies and if needed get permission in writing from management who have the authority beforehand.
So tread with care and make use of removable data sticks or drives. These can also be helpful to have your own OS installed on a laptop. The best is likely to just travel with your own equipment to work making sure it's well marked and well secured against theft by other employees or company management!
I think that you basically have two choices:
Whatever you do, I'd advise you to keep your own and work data on separate partitions and encrypt both with different keys. Provide your employer only the key to unlock the partition with your work data. If you are running Linux, OS X or MS Windows you can use truecrypt.
If you are running Linux or *BSD and if you are feeling nasty, you can use one of the encryption schemes native to those systems. The chance that a typical windows-only IT department will ever figure out how to decrypt that are small IMHO, even with a key.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ask the company to designate the money as a gift, with the *unwritten* understanding you'll pay for your laptop with the gift.
Use the laptop for both company and personal means.
When push comes to shove it's your laptop. Company benefits because you do computing for them here or there.
does the company have a policy regarding its data and network be accessed from personal devices?
When it comes to privacy - USA is something else. Rest of the world - people would not think twice. They would take the laptop and use it for their private stuff.
Chances that you would ever actually have to show up in court on this topic are tiny. In USA - this tiny chance is a big deal. In rest of world - no one cares.
...not in our company :) All USB boot options are firmware disabled, as well as booting from any CDs. If the default specified HDD doesn't boot, someone from support with a BIOS password has to get in and reset the machine to enable this, and the BIOS settings are editable by a software app from within windows to re-disable this feature once an image is installed.
on many systems across the company, the USB ports are disabled entirely. generally, only execs and select machines in the suppoort areas have USB enabled. Nothing has an optical writer. SD and other memory card readers on laptops are disabled, and all HDDs are either BIOS locked, or encrpyted to both prevent them from being stolen, and to prevent other HDDs from being booted internally.
It's a bit extreme, but we have more than 15,000 employees with access to PCs, and sensitive data on millions of americans... We have to take precautions.
We also have no wifi at all, NAC devices scanning all ports, and MAC address tracking of all assets.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Not to troll but someone has to tell this AC the truth. You aren't going to come up with "One Great Internet Business Idea or write the Great American Novel" Sorry to tell you. I know your parents told you to never let anyone tell you can't do something, but they said that because it's what parents say to their kids. So you can stop worrying about these what ifs, cause the possibility of that actually happening is closer to zero every minute you spend on /. reading for advise.
Take the money and buy yourself an airplane ticket to a nice destination. You won't regret it.
You paid 1250 for that laptop ... and you are still on slashdot ? .. I thought slashdot is for nerds ... only 2-3 thousand laptop owners should be allowed here ...
I'm the IT Director of a 250 employee company that has 15 offices in the United States. I would first off like to mention that there is nothing that I hate more at my job, than a user who wants to use his own computer for work purposes. Not only does this threaten our infrastructure from a security standpoint, but it's also a troubleshooting nightmare if the user has no computer experience.
Case and point: User has his personal laptop at work. User complains about a certain application not working properly (it works fine on every other work PC and notebooks we have). Eventually we come to the conclusion that it must be that user's personal anti-virus solution and that he should disable it and then try it. User refuses to disable it and calls the developers of the app that's having the problem. They tell the user to disable the anti-virus software... viola... the app magically works.
Any personal system user cannot be restricted what they can and cannot put on their computers, as they have personal computers and the company doesn't have a right to tell them what not to put on their personal system. Furthermore, if upper management doesn't understand the implications of a personal systems on company infrastructure, and they say that it's fine for users to do that... then I.T. is stuck and the network will always be at risk.
Another case and point: User brings his personal Mac to work on a PC based network. I.T. upgrades the server from Server 2000 to Server 2003. All of the sudden the Mac user can't access network resources. Again... time and effort have to be devoted to troubleshooting the issue, which ultimately results in reducing the security of that local file server's authentication method so that ONE user can use a Mac.
To put it bluntly... People who use their own systems at work are a pain in IT's rear. Not being mindful of the logistical and hierarchical nightmares this causes is pure selfishness on the user's part.
If we're talking about a smaller network, such as a Small Office/Home Office network, 5 - 10 systems on a workgroup infrastructure, it probably isn't that big of a deal. But, if this is for a company that has an IT department, I'd think twice about bringing my own computer to work.
Someone mentioned about swapping internal hard drives and being able to do it in 47 seconds. That's against most corporate policies and can end up getting you fired. There should be NO PERSONAL INFORMATION on a company system whatsoever. Anything personal that you do, that's on a company computer, is subject to being wiped out and not being given to you if you get laid off/fired. At state departments in the US, when employees are terminated, they have their account disabled as they are in their supervisors office getting terminated. Then they may get to clear their desk (unless their personal belongings haven't already been boxed up by a co-worker) and are then asked to leave.
People do NOT understand the implications of doing personal things with corporate property and when the time comes for a subpoena or a termination, they throw their hands up in the air wondering why. It's not that hard. Do not do personal things on company equipment.
is also company property
If they'll agree to it, charge them $1250 for the past use of your old laptop. If they won't go for that, ask for them to provide a company laptop instead so you can really keep your personal and company use separate.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
they car is a tool, it isn't used to create anything. best advice is keep personal shit personal and vice a versa.
If you are already having concerns about your employers possibly making such claims, then I suggest you listen to those intuitive, "gut-feeling" concerns.
Such intuition is there for a reason. "Why do I fell like there is a leopard hiding behind that bush?" is a product of past experience and occurs to you for a reason. It may keep you alive, or in this case, out of a courtroom.
Stick with your own machine for such uses as you describe and it will never be an issue. Besides, you will be kicking yourself in the ass when you DO end up in court. Hindsight is 20/20, but it still sucks sometimes.
Where the OS is loaded from or where data gets saved is irrelevant. If the company's position is that it owns the laptop, and an employee uses it to create something, the company can reasonably argue in court that it owns the created work.
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> But, if I figured out the One Great Internet Business Idea or write the Great American Novel and used the company laptop to do it, it's an avenue they could use to claim they own it.
No you won't. If you haven't done it yet, it won't happen. There's almost no big idea after 30 years old.
Yes, having your work vm only on a personal machine is much better than having your personal vm on a work machine. That way, you can at least argue that there is a dedicated system for your work, and only that should be open to scrutiny. The other way, they look at your laptop and everything on it, including the VM image. Which, even if erased as a virtual image, would still be present in physical data on your physical drive.
Bung Truecrypt on and encrypt your personal data, using the plausible deniability option.
Do daily backups when you get home.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Just seeing that phrase makes me depressed at the stupidity of humanity. Why do so many people think that having the idea is all that's needed to make a business work? Everything I've seen indicates that it's got nothing to do with ideas and all to do with enormous amounts of hard work and lots of luck.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is what counts. Always. Even with Great American Novels, it's not the basic idea that the critics will like and the punters buy, but what you do with it. It's not even true with programming, for goodness' sake!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I used a company laptop and had a lot of personal stuff on it. On my last day I had only a few hours to get my stuff off of the laptop before they wiped it. Also, if you work for the government or a government contractor, once you access a classified network or have classified stuff on your laptop, that laptop belongs to the government.
I recently retired from a company after doing industrial programming on their machinery for almost 30 years. The company had a laptop for the department I was in, to use out on the production floor, for programming and trouble shooting. I could not take that laptop home because the other work shifts might need it for troubleshooting. So, I bought my own a few years ago, and used it at work. Just prior to my retirement, they called me into the office, and ask if I would be a consultant to them. It would save them from having to hire a replacement. I told them yes, but I would not have the software needed to do the programming as it was licensed to them. They in turn bought me the programming suite needed, and licensed it to me. In return, I am their "off site" storage of the programs that run their machinery, and I make good money when they call me in to help.
Have you actually tried doing any work on a USB OS? It's slow as hell...
1) Tell him you want to use the computer for personal business. If he doesn't care, take the money.
2) Don't say anything take the money. In all likely hood he wont even think about after a week.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since it is understood to be your personal laptop and the offer is in the form of a gift/bonus, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Be sure to add the amount to your income at tax time to firmly establish that this was GIVEN to you as a bonus for your personal use and not ISSUED to you.
It's also worth considering that declining could easily be seen as mistrustful and ungrateful.
Nobody gives away $1200 bucks for the fun of it; they expect SOMETHING in return. You need to know what they expect from you before you take the money.
In my experience, it was absolutely no problem. YMMV
The company I work for is basically run by one guy who treats us all with respect and dignity.
At one time, I purchased my own laptop because the one the company supplied wasn't powerful enough for my tastes; they paid me what they would have paid me for the standard laptop.
I would have bought the whole thing myself, because it made my work easier to have a decent hunk of hardware, but they chose to pay for some of it.
For the money that the company paid, they get my good faith and goodwill, and they get to go to bed knowing they treated me the way they think people should be treated.
Money absolutely CAN buy loyalty.
My boss says "Don't say it with flowers; say it with dollars.". He's right. If the company you work for values and respects you, in addition to treating you with human dignity, they will compensate your efforts with things that have real value. Like money.
To my knowledge, my employer has NEVER snooped my company-issued laptop. They trust me and I trust them.
Anything I really don't want other people to see is encrypted, no matter where it's stored.
I still work for the same folks, and plan to until the company no longer exists, or I retire or they ask me to leave. That's what they get in return for treating us like that.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Separate out your personal work on an encrypted VM and let them pay for the machine. Be sure there is no fine print and you don't have to turn it in, or repay any of the funds if you leave employment.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just ask him -- what terms? Is it yours?
It could be considered a "pay bonus"...
I suppose a stickler accountant might ask if it was going to be added to your 1040 (US pay summary for tax purposes)
at the end of the year..
If not, then your boss could later claim it was company property if you ran into difficulties.
All depends on your working relationship w/your boss. If he's new, might want to keep things official, if you don't mind the possibility of him rescinding the offer...
Not a bade idea at all. Depending on the laptop the hard drives sometimes come out pretty easily too.
As an aside, if you use your laptop on work premises, no matter who ends up paying for it, consider also how it's insured and who is liable if something happens. Get the answer in writing (I can't stress this strongly enough). I had a situation where I used my own laptop and my own desktop at work, to avoid using the company's 10 year old relics. However, an office fire destroyed a lot of my equipment and despite being assured that it was definitely covered because I was using it for work purposes that turned out not to be the case for the hardware or any of the software / data on it. My (costly) mistake for not checking this carefully. So the advantage of you using company equipment is that they're liable for it. Whether that's worth the restrictions and conditions, if any, they place upon you using it is up to you to decide if it's an option.
anyway to make that pendrive OS route all of its traffic through a SSH tunnel?
Or for that matter, any way to route a VM's network traffic through a SSH tunnel?
I used to do this. I had a nice company laptop, but also wanted to use it for occasional gaming. I installed Windows XP on a (fast!) 8GB USB Stick, which I used for all my private stuff. Worked really nicely (after finding out how to actually install XP on USB, which wasn't that easy at the time).
The laptop is the company's. If they want to give it to a different co-worker, fine. If they want to check that I just used it for work, fine. Separation of work and personal stuff is your friend. Don't mix it.
Additional advantage: when the harddrive packs in (like it did for me during a project in the middle of the Amazon jungle), you still have a bootable system on the USB stick.
Why not try this: Take your boss' offer of the laptop and install both Truecrypt and VMWare / Virtual PC etc... Make a truecypt container that is as large as your own personal windows installation needs to be, mount the container as a second drive; then make a VMWare / Virtual PC machine and save it to that drive. Therefore you can keep the laptop clean, and still have your own environment to work in. There is a time issue here... i;e; it takes longer to mount and load up the VirtualPC image than it would a normal windows installation... but it gives you good privacy. OR Take the offer of the laptop, remove the hard disk... replace it with your own fully system encrypted disk, then when your boss yells "Timkins! Get in here! I WANT THAT LAPTOP BACK!" You simply swap the original disk back in, and there is no problems. Your boss can't claim any ownership of the hard disk YOU bought can he?!
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
My company doesn't allow me to use personal laptops, so I havent bought one yet. They insist that I use the company issued laptop at home and they have a right to demand it back any time (they havent done so in years, but still they have the right). I do have my personal data/photos/articles on this laptop but I trust my company to give me at least 1 day notice so that I can backup my stuff before returning the laptop.
it is non-issue if you do your work on your own laptop, on home desktop, company laptop or any other computer. You are worker of that particular company and they could put their hands on ALL your work because they pay you for working and they have right to claim products of your work. It is very hard to distinguish something done "for work" and "for yourself". If it is very valuable to the company they will find a way to steal your rights from you, it you are employed. That is why Richard Stallman quit its job before begining of GNU project. Because he realized that by staying employed and payed company he would work for could put their hand to its work! If you want to make sure that only YOUR stuff is on Your laptop and your work is your work only, then quit the job! You might redefine your contract with that company to per-project basis or request special clause in contract do deny the company any rights to your work you do, except specific required tasks, that need to be documented by signed e-mail, requests for do a particular tasks, etc.
Assuming the work was done in the employee's own time, it sounds like a wholly unreasonable argument to me, but IANAL.
Never. Ever.
And my data has never graced my employers' computers.
Never. Ever.
The principle is simple really. All those suggestions above about "encrypt this or virtual machine that or bonus I don't know what else" are unadulterated bullshit.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It sounds from what you say that your boss is making this suggestion in a spirit of fairness and helpfulness, and hence you have a good relationship. Normally the best advice over something like this is "consult a lawyer", except that a lawyer is probably going to cost more than the advice is actually worth. There is another issue you don't mention: if you use a company laptop for your own purposes, or take it away with you when you leave the job, then the taxman may view it as a "benefit in kind" and want his percentage. Thats the real reason why most company AUPs forbid personal use of company resources. I suggest drafting a memo saying that the computer will be used 20% for private purposes, and 80% for company purposes (or whatever the right proportion will be) and then claim the company percentage of the price as a business expense. You and the company will jointly own the laptop; you own your data and the company owns theirs. You might even set up separate accounts on it for company use and personal use, just to keep an effective wall between the two. The value of the company share will be depreciated in line with normal company IT equipment (probably linear over a year or two), and if you leave for any reason before that expires you can take the laptop by paying the remaining value of the company share in it. Then you and the boss sign two copies and keep one each. If you do this then the taxman will be happy, your boss will be happy, nobody is paying for anything they don't get, and the position is clear.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I do not do company work on a personal computer. Thank your boss for offering to pay for the laptop but tell him if he wishes for you to continue working at home either let you remote in to your work PC or use that 1200 to buy you a work laptop, that way if you do happen to do something great its on your laptop not theirs and they will have no claim. Many of my employers have forbidden employees to do company work on personal computers, for just this reason. Regards, KJB
I was just recently let go from my IT job and I had a personal 1TB portable USB hard drive I had at work. I had my personal music on it as well as pretty much every personal file I own. Well, after I was escorted off property by security a few Fridays ago, I left all my personal stuff there because I was just being investigated and not actually fired yet. They fired me a week later and when I went to get all my stuff from my office, my workstation had already been taken to another building for a new employee. The hard drive was sitting on top of this computer. The employee who moved the computer told me that he set the hard drive on top of the desk, but it obviously wasn't there now. They COO conducted an investigation and all he could say is that 'its just missing and no one knows what happened to it". They're going to pay me the $100 it cost me but that's all Im getting out of it. I believe that they took it and still have it probably afraid that I may have work files on it that belong to the company. The drive is encrypted so they cannot see the contents no matter how hard they tried. I guess its easier for them to say it was stolen, pay me 100 for it rather than worry about what company data may be on it. Of course, maybe it was just stolen but I find this to be highly unlikely.
The purpose for bringing the drive in in the first place was so I could listen to my music collection that I had on it. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do because to get my severance pay, I have to sign a document saying that I cannot sue them for any reason, or talk bad about them, or anything like that. I basically give up all my rights to do anything to them. Of course, I haven't signed that yet (will be tomorrow) but even if I didn't, I doubt I would have any kind of a case against them since I cannot prove what kind of data was on it and because of that, cannot prove the value of such data, say, if I had code on there that I had been writing for a year to sell to a specific type of business for profit. I actually did have that kind of code on there but how could I ever prove it? I'm screwed I think. All I can do is sign the waiver, get my severance pay, my 100 for the missing drive, and move on.
I wrote the great american novel, using a pen I borrowed from work. It's now a bestseller and I don't see one single cent of the profit since the company owned the writing instrument.... ...lessons learned
Use Ubuntu or Mint USB OS with all company Documents saved with in the USB Key (say 32 GB) in company home file. Charge USB key to company expenses.
Have Laptop as Bonus payment.
On departure give company the USB key , their property with FOSS software - no licences) and their documents.
This is how I use a laptop with 3 companies I work for as contractor the USB key is theirs nothing else!
Of course they can - as long as they're on separate machines. I mean, which part of "company" in "company laptop" is spelt the same as the "personal" in "personal data"?
Nothing.
That's why they can co-exist on separate machines.
It's not very difficult.
You take your laptop with you when you travel for work, in the same way that you take your own personal sex aids and toothbrush. Work's laptop gets couriered to your destination, or travels with you in a separate bag and gets put on expenses as excess baggage as and when necessary.
Oh, you're talking about the boss buying a laptop to your specification? And that make it not a company laptop ... just how?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
you never heard about lying dont you ?
Interesting Point, but how about deniability. PROVE that the creation was created using the laptop and not a VM on any other machine.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
You run a certain risk with personal data on company hardware. At the very least if you get fired or laid off you'll lose that data if it's not backed up. At the worst end of the spectrum, you'll lose that data and it'll be owned by someone else. You have only two options:
1) Don't take the money. Politely refuse it, and thank your employer for the kind gesture.
2) Take the money and then buy yourself a second notebook. This way you have one you own and one that's the company's.
http://www.truecrypt.org/ Encrypt the entire hard drive. Now not only can your company not access the data, but neither can a thief if the laptop were to be robbed.
Our computer usage policy forbids this. As a user of a work owned laptop I understand that they purchased it for me to do work on, which I do 99% of the time. During lunch I'll do other things but nothing that is income generating. I also understand that the company's network resources are for company related documents only and shouldn't be used for personal items. I keep a "personal" folder on my laptop that has some pictures, my resume and a few other files in it, nothing more and that is encrypted and backed up to an online storage service. As the IT guy I know that a few people have signed the usage policy and have decided to ignore it. I routinely scan the network for pictures, music and video. Music was an issue for a while, I had a user who thought it was ok to backup her itunes folder there. Same one also backed up her 2.8gb of wedding pictures and a video of her wedding. Others use their work based email for the same thing. It's well known - and documented - that if I have to restore a PC or do a data recovery anything that isn't work related will be skipped. This happened once and it seemed to drive the point home. I also don't do any work on my home PC that is work related.