BYOC: Should employees buy their own computers?

[alexfish]

You are at work. Your computer is five years old, runs Windows XP. Your company phone has a tiny screen and doesn't know what the internet is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12181570

just noticed another thread same title

will request removal

title check show no duplicate

[ki4jgt]

My aunt has had to do this with all her laptops. She works for fruit of the loom. Of course, they ordered them for her as a company and got her discounts from the manufacturer, but she did have to order them herself.

[eriktheblu]

Can't where I work for several reasons.

1. We deal with sensitive personal information
2. Our employees would likely try to use computers of insufficient specs.
3. Any equipment not provided, must be paid for. We could theoretically establish a computer allowance (we have similar allowances already) but to do so would literally take an act of congress.
4. Users do not have adequate computing skills. Their personal machines probably have plenty of performance reducing and security compromising malware. As disappointing as find the precautionary measures that we provide on our machines, it at least provides some degree of protection.

[MisterGaribaldi]

In general, this would likely contravene many labor policies and practices.

The companies I've worked for supply all equipment and software to be used. That's actually how it should be.

The problem with buying your own equipment is the same as secretly not following company procedure to get your work done. You're supplying your organization with a crutch which does nothing more than support the existing bad (or suboptimal) behavior on their part. This is simply the wrong thing to do.

When new equipment or procedures are required -- or whatever else -- obviously an employee should attempt to be proactive and be a part of the positive process of change. However, where this simply falls on deaf ears, the employee's next best strategy is to allow things to remain suboptimal such that the company or organization they work for has no choice but to recognize the truth and then actually take care of the problem.

Ultimately, worst case scenario (and I've been in a few of these over the years) it is your obligation to find a better situation and walk away from this one. In most cases, "Well, I can't because..." is little more than an excuse based upon a fear of change or a fear of doing the courageous thing.

Be brave, my fellow UbuntuForums peeps!

[MisterGaribaldi]

This post and the triplicate below are duplicates of the one above this one and were the result of a 502 error.

Something must be up with the UF forums or database or something somewhere. Yikes!

[MisterGaribaldi]

Whoops... Duplicate post due to some kind of 502 error.

[Kalimol]

To be fair, though, it depends entirely on the business in question. Freelancers buy their own hardware by definition and might be working on multiple projects. A graphic designer might have a drawing tablet PC and work from home, then bring the same box into the office. I'm an adjunct instructor, and I have access to a variety of shared machines wherever I'm teaching (on that particular day of the week,) but anything of any consequence, I'm going to do on my netbook.

And I do understand that that's all outside the scope of the BBC story, which is a very specific subset of office jobs. I can't imagine semi-owning a machine that's built to company specs. = P

[themarker0]

I know of a place that does this to some extent, but not so much. There is a giant office all that is goverment funded people, but are very loosely related, and have to be honest maybe 30 departments in it. To hire a team of IT techs at the time would've been beyond the budget to the gov't made a "computer budget" for each. So bring your own IT when you need it. Some people had issues at first, needing it weekly, but i remember my dads clients before last month hadn't seen him in three years.