Slashdot Mirror
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.
If there's doubt, then you cannot.
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.
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
Aren't they cute when they are young and so naïve?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
Right! Don't give your data to your company, give it to google! :-)
Right! But keep the cache around for your company!
Sorry, our network policy forbid this, and our firewall blocks most outgoing ports besides the basics.
Sure, I could tunnel it through port 80, but at that point, I literally provide my employer with a reason to fire me if I do anything to piss them off.
No Thanks.
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 ?
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!
#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.
My company IS Google, you inconsiderate clod!
Reading Slashdot is, uh.. my 20% time.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
>>>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
Good advice. Most places don't let you access the outside world except via the HTML browser.
I would take the ~$1300 if my boss wants to reimburse me for my laptop. I never turn-down money, and realistically I'm just an average schlub like everyone else. I'm NOT going to write the next great american novel. I'd just make sure that if I have any personal data, like pics of my kids, to offload it onto my home PC or a separate USB drive.
And of course keep silent. The boss doesn't need to know everything I type into his laptop. If I create a PS3 emulator, he doesn't need to know about it. Just offload it to my home PC and he'll never know it existed.
"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.
Hmm when our coworkers leave we usually get together after work for pizza and beer to see them off. I guess some work environments are less friendly than others.
I threatened to call the local police, but it had no effect to change their minds.
And you didn't WHY? Throwing empty threats around like that does nothing but make it harder for those of us who really WILL call the cops to get any justice.
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.
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."