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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?"
If they just want to reward you for working on your own hardware, a bonus is the way to go.
Do you Gentoo!?
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.
I confuse the issue even further. I have a company issued laptop, from which I removed the company issued hard drive and then I installed my own Hard drive (80GB -> 300GB). They can have their laptop back at any time. I only need 47 seconds notice (I timed it).
There is well established precedence that fired employees must be given time to remove personal items from the office, company car, company apartment etc... This may have been derived from the rules governing eviction of a tenant.
Nobody (as far as I know) has sought to apply the same rule, either to data on a company drive or a personal drive in a company computer.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
#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.
>>>There is well established precedence that fired employees must be given time to remove personal items from the office, company car, company apartment etc.
>>>
Is there? When my contract expired a year ago, General Dynamics didn't even let me inside the building. Instead they carried everything out to me, and as it turned-out some items were missing, like the award I got from my previous employer Lockheed. They even went so far as to keep my music CDs and MAIL them back to me "after they were scanned" one week later. I threatened to call the local police, but it had no effect to change their minds.
Perhaps you better rethink your plan, because you might NOT get a chance to reclaim your personal hard drive from your desk (or wherever you store it).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
You've made it easier to separate, but you still haven't proven it doesn't belong to the company.
Makezine: "If you can't open it, you don't own it."