SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@flaxking said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@flaxking if you watch the video, you'll notice that the primary point isn't that you shouldn't provide equipment for people, but should only do so when it makes sense. BUT that your candidates should have the resources to do IT at home, regardless of it you expect them to use them or not.
At NTG, we do provide people's work environments most of the time (unless they don't want to use our stuff.) We provide the router/firewall, desktop, phone, etc. But we only do so to people who already have that stuff, too. We just provide better, or more appropriately designed and managed, work hardware.
We look for that passion. I absolutely am not going to pay to provide work equipment to someone that doesn't want to do this kind of work. That guarantees I'll have to motivate solely with money and will never get the kind of growth and long term healthy future that we look for.
Of course, we are also a "hire for life" employer, not a "hire for a task and see if we need you after that task is done" employer. We don't hire people for a role, we hire people who are passionate and that's about
So the thing is, for 95% of the companies I would apply for, it would make sense that they supplied the computer. Most likely for security requirements. Kind of like how for most people you interview, it would make sense that they own a computer. I wouldn't rule out the 5% because they might have a good reason they don't, but
I'm not a big believer in the security argument. Especially not in IT. I understand the premise, if you control the equipment tightly, you can lock it down. But we're IT, we HAVE to trust our staff already and we don't put any data on their machines (assigned... whether their machines or our machines, on endpoints that they use) anyway, so the entire point is locking down a browser or terminal. If they are going to hack that, they will do so regardless. Since we hire professionals we trust that they are securing things a bit as well. The exposure risk is very minimal as there are so many steps between them and data and always "closed glass."
And the situation where no data is getting onto the system is what would be a rate situation in the tech companies I would potentially work for. It's often still a situation where the decentralized work stations providing compute is still cheaper than centralizing it. The workstation isn't a perk, the alternative of centralized compute is more expensive. That might be changing with stuff like dev containers getting traction, but regulations are also slow to change.
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@flaxking said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@flaxking said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Using my own personal laptop for work if a good way to ensure that I don't do my own tech stuff when I'm not working. I dual booted so that my work OS was completely separate, but I still didn't want to touch that thing after work.
You only do IT at work and never because you find it fun or interesting or want to grow outside of job promotions?
I can't imagine wanting to work in IT at all, with all the drama, stress, hard work.. if I didn't love IT itself. There are so many better fields that are less demanding if it is only a job and not a career that you want to do regardless of the job.
It's about the association. If I do something on the side, it can be a fun project for me, but I don't want my purely fun projects mingling with my work. Though, having a family now and always being on the edge of everything falling into chaos, a lot of my fun learning does happen at work, but I am being paid for it. We have bookclub (and often the reading for it) during work hours. I can take whole days for person all development or just arrange certain mornings for it.
This touches on a completely (or almost) difference subject. The concept of on/off work/personal time and mingled time. For many of us, fun and work have to mingle whether it's because of scheduling, or because the things we like to do and work are essentially the same thing. Like write now, I'm not at work but writing about work stuff.
For us, and this is different by organization and jurisdiction, we operate in an environment where we are free legally to do anything to the benefit of the employees. There aren't any strong employer organizations manipulating the government into making sneaking anti-labor laws under the guise of protecting employees (e.g. New York's unpaid lunch laws for blue collar workers that are used to guarantee longer working days at lower cost for factories - the employers benefit, the employees suffer, but they claim it's employee protection to indemnify the employers who pushed for it.) So we are able to make healthy mingled environments where employees can effortlessly mix work and personal life.
At a bad company (or in a bad country) that might sound like trying to make people work all of the time. But at a good company, in a good jurisdiction, it's making people never have to shut off their personal lives.
For us, the lengths that we go to to ensure our teams are passionate, also allows us to go to great lengths to protect their personal lives and time and space. Unlimited vacation time transparently turns into nine month maternity leaves, zero locational requirement means "full time travel options". Bring your own devices means creating your own workspaces that are best for you. People work when it makes sense, and stop when it doesn't.
It may be separate from the point you were originally trying to make, but if you're looking at the whole picture trying to figure out where people make the demarcation, it's definitely part of the conversation.
Things like computers and phones and be really personal devices, stuff like your internet connection, less so.
Even when a company have unlimited vacation and actually mean it, they need to create a culture that gets people to actually use it. Super passionate people are less likely to take advantage of it, even when it would benefit them personally.
A company that provides a workstation can help create a culture where people can turn work off and on at their own time. For me, if I'm on my work computer not doing real work, seeing a notification pop up can be really distracting and consume my thoughts, even if there was no expectation for me to be working. Not that I can't think about work while I'm not at work, but some separation is definitely beneficial.
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As with many other folk, I also disagree. Work from the office, office machine. Work from home, home machine. Laptop or desktop, I don't care - but if its for work, its must be procured by work.
An example, asking an IT person what setup they have at home is perfectly fine. Seeing what they run and why. What network and switch they use. The firewall and lab. What Internet connection they have. All fine.
Getting that person to use their own machine for work, absolutely not.
Lets say I am passionate about my car and have spent a lot of cash on something fancy. No way am I putting mileage on it for work. Buy me a company car. My own car = my use. You want me to get from customer A to customer B for projects, get me a fooking Uber, or flight, or expense me a rental. No way am I putting hundreds of miles on the car I am passionate about for the business use.
Likewise, I spend thousands on a beast of a machine for my personal use. No way am I putting wear and tear on that for business reasons. It is my device. Go pound sand, get a device for me to use to get company work done, or go find a chump who will use their own like a damn fool. Of course I can afford top end and buy a really high spec machine, but thats for my use.
Edit: my neice needs a laptop and I decide to give her my personal one to use as I want to upgrade. Great, she has my device. My top of the range laptop is on order and is going to take a week from factory. Well, sucks to be the business, its my device and I no longer have it, so cant get work done! Should have supplied me with a work machine then - I can do what I damn well want to with my own machine and im not going to go and spend my own money on something cheap already at a store because my personal machine is no longer with me. Pfft.
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
THe use of computers makes all of them more efficient, and lowers the cost of the technology. I've never met someone who could forego having a computer at home and remain able to easily stay in contact in a modern, efficient way; could consume and fact check news and events, could remain educated and feel functional like modern people. When I encounter people who don't have computers at home, it's always noticeable. REALLY noticeable. They tend to get their world view from TikTok, be widely out of touch with reality, be easily manipulated and emotionally driven, have little human interaction, fail to grow personally and professionally.
It's amazing that civilisation survived before the age of the internet, huh? How weren't people just walking around in a complete haze not knowing what was going on?
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
If you feel that using your own computer would make you hate your career,
Say what? How do you get to that conclusion?
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Phone. If you don't want a computer, what about a smart phone. Do you skip that too? If not, what makes the phone acceptable but not a computer with a keyboard? Why one and not the other? Especially as phones typically cost a lot more and are dramatically more intrusive in our lives.
My phone cost $200, my work laptop $1500. But they're completely different devices, although pretty much everything you can do on a PC you can do on a phone or tablet, as millions of people around the world without a PC will testify.
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
College education. Or any education. How did you get into the field in the first place? You must have at some point had a different opinion to have learned enough skills to get into the job. What made you want to learn without a job at one point, but no longer?
Well I studied Economics. We had this thing called books, by people like Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes. But again, you seem to be under the impression that it is impossible to learn at work. I don't understand why you would think that. I am learning constantly, and taking exams and getting certs, it never ends in IT.
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What I'm wondering is, are your employees not allowed to learn at work? Is all their learning expected to be done in their own time, at their own expense, on their own computers? Because that's a very different culture to European companies, where learning and self-improvement is an integral part of the job.
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@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Basically where do you draw the line?
I don't see why anyone of us (if we are employers) need to "draw a line" about personal/work equipment.
For example, I usually ask employee, does she/he preffers to use personal mobile phone or a separate work device. Same for a car, or phone numbers - if the job does not require to use specific one.
I do not care if I am going to pay for a company phone/car/number... or if I am going to inlcude the cost of it in paycheck.
I prefer to have one laptop, one phone, on phone number, one car (and one motorcycle too
)- I do not care if it is personal or from work. But some others prefer to separate the two.I do not see that anyone needs to make "general rule" and select people based on what they prefer to use.
Edit: I prefer work equipment over personal because of tax reasons in my country. But it is not point here.
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@Mario-Jakovina said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
I do not see that anyone needs to make "general rule" and select people based on what they prefer to use.
So you agree with my points. My point was people should HAVE it, not hiring based on which they preferred.
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@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
What I'm wondering is, are your employees not allowed to learn at work? Is all their learning expected to be done in their own time, at their own expense, on their own computers? Because that's a very different culture to European companies, where learning and self-improvement is an integral part of the job.
That's not an implied take away from any of that. But what you learn at work is normally about work or has some relationship or has limits.
If I was to take your approach.... are you saying that in Europe no one knows anything that they don't learn at work? They get jobs knowing nothing and have no personal growth? The job has to provide everything for them and controls their lives leaving them no freedom of social mobility because they are conditioned to depend on their jobs to spoon feed them everything?
Of course that's not true, neither is the other. But GOOD employees want to learn for learning sake - not necessarily about things you'd do for work. And the difference in mind set between those who have broad learning capabilities, those who desire to always grow and those that limit growth, knowledge and education to what is given at work alone (e.g. easily manipulated by employers) stands out immediately in their ability to discuss, think outside of the box, be flexible, etc.
If I wanted to totally control and manipulate my employees and keep them from growing or advancing outside of exactly what my business can suck out of them, I could take a "only at work" approach, but we aren't like that. We want them to grow both for themselves as well as for the business. We recognize that business owners don't know everything and instead of being a controlling force over employees, they are simply providing a framework for growth and self improvement to what is hopefully a better end for everyone.
Does Europe not have universities? Or do you only send people who already have jobs to universities? If you do have universities, that doesn't match up with your feelings of what is implied by expecting to have people able to learn on their own and enjoy education for its own sake.
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@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
THe use of computers makes all of them more efficient, and lowers the cost of the technology. I've never met someone who could forego having a computer at home and remain able to easily stay in contact in a modern, efficient way; could consume and fact check news and events, could remain educated and feel functional like modern people. When I encounter people who don't have computers at home, it's always noticeable. REALLY noticeable. They tend to get their world view from TikTok, be widely out of touch with reality, be easily manipulated and emotionally driven, have little human interaction, fail to grow personally and professionally.
It's amazing that civilisation survived before the age of the internet, huh? How weren't people just walking around in a complete haze not knowing what was going on?
Actually, yes. But they are still doing that now.
Would you say the same thing about books if we expected people to be able to read outside of work? The Internet is part of modern education and just like books, yes, it is technology. But it's the fabric of society today.
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@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Well I studied Economics. We had this thing called books, by people like Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes. But again, you seem to be under the impression that it is impossible to learn at work. I don't understand why you would think that. I am learning constantly, and taking exams and getting certs, it never ends in IT.
I think this is showing the limitations of your university background - if I am to extrapolate in the same manner that you are. This is what we fear from university educated candidates... they tend to think that "learning" requires someone to spoon feed them and to determine what they should think rather than doing so of their own volition. This is the mindset of the industrial revolution... the job is king and you learn what they tell you and think what they tell you and follow their rules. You don't bring anything to do the table and your value is your butt in the seat.
Because I expect people to enjoy learning and want to grow, you then extrapolate the wholly illogical belief that if you learn somewhere else, that you can't also learn at work. Is that the kind of logic that university feeds? Of course we know it is, the idea of university depends on tricking the populace into believing that without designated professors students cannot have their own thoughts or that what they learn isn't valuable.
But that is exactly the opposite of how IT works. This is how you get IT departments that are manipulated by vendors and can't see how the market works or how they are being sold a bill of goods without value.
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@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
My phone cost $200, my work laptop $1500. But they're completely different devices, although pretty much everything you can do on a PC you can do on a phone or tablet, as millions of people around the world without a PC will testify.
$1500 for an IT worker laptop? That seems excessive. Unless you are doing non-IT stuff. I'm finally moving to something like that, but it's 100% for video editing, none of my IT work.
What value does that have over a $350 laptop in an IT setting?
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@Jimmy9008 said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
but if its for work, its must be procured by work.
Just to earn less money? What's your goal in that statement? Why lower your value only for the sake of doing so?
Are their cases where it makes sense, sure. But are there cases where it makes little sense? Yes, many.
And I ask again... if you feel that way about computers, why not Internet access, power, or even the house you are in? Where do you draw the line and why?
It feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It feels like you see your employer as the enemy and you want to hurt them. While that might be the case, instead of taking an antagonistic approach, look for an employer you like and who likes you. Your employment should be a positive thing for both parties, both working together, not against each other.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Lets say I am passionate about my car and have spent a lot of cash on something fancy. No way am I putting mileage on it for work. Buy me a company car. My own car = my use. You want me to get from customer A to customer B for projects, get me a fooking Uber, or flight, or expense me a rental. No way am I putting hundreds of miles on the car I am passionate about for the business use.
But luckily, computers don't wear out in that way. So not a good example. Computers wear out from time, not from use. So it's actually the polar opposite. You put all that money into having the device you like, yet you want to avoid using it even though it wouldn't wear it out at all. How does that logic hold up?
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@Jimmy9008 said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Likewise, I spend thousands on a beast of a machine for my personal use. No way am I putting wear and tear on that for business reasons. It is my device. Go pound sand, get a device for me to use to get company work done, or go find a chump who will use their own like a damn fool. Of course I can afford top end and buy a really high spec machine, but thats for my use.
Wear and tear? What? What wear and tear are you thinking of? That's not how computers work.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Edit: my neice needs a laptop and I decide to give her my personal one to use as I want to upgrade. Great, she has my device. My top of the range laptop is on order and is going to take a week from factory. Well, sucks to be the business, its my device and I no longer have it, so cant get work done! Should have supplied me with a work machine then - I can do what I damn well want to with my own machine and im not going to go and spend my own money on something cheap already at a store because my personal machine is no longer with me. Pfft.
You seem really emotionally tied to the idea that businesses could allow you to choose. I'm confused about this reaction.
Or are you reacting to something other than the video? Because this doesn't feel like something I've said that you are responding to.
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@Carnival-Boy said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
You seem to think that if you don’t own your own computer you can’t learn, or develop, or write, or research, or be passionate? I do all of these things on my work laptop.
You have a work laptop even when you don't have a job? Your learning, development, writing, research, etc. is all.... only when employed and tied to your job?
This brings up an interesting point. People have been stating how much they have to draw a line and won't ever allow anything work related on their personal equipment.
But now, and I realize this is different people making unrelated and crazy points, but you are using the opposite logic... that people don't need to own things because they have jobs that provide them and ANYTHING that they might want to do for their personal lives they can use the work computer for.
Maybe you can find an amazing employer that allows that (we do) but most, when forced to provide dedicated work machines often for security purposes, don't appreciate those devices then being used as personal devices when a personal device is refused to be used as a work one. It seems like the argument to defend the practice flips around wildly to try to make points.
There's so many problems with this approach. First, when we are talking about hiring someone they don't have a job to get a computer from. Where does that growth and development happen then? How does someone efficiently research, test, write, grow if they don't have a job? It's chicken and egg.
And for people who don't have personal devices but manage to get work devices to use personally instead... do you feel no lock in to your job, no lack of mobility in that all of your potential personal growth, continuity of data, access to tools, ability to submit CVs must be done through something you don't own and that could go away at any moment?
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@flaxking said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@flaxking said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@scottalanmiller said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
@flaxking if you watch the video, you'll notice that the primary point isn't that you shouldn't provide equipment for people, but should only do so when it makes sense. BUT that your candidates should have the resources to do IT at home, regardless of it you expect them to use them or not.
At NTG, we do provide people's work environments most of the time (unless they don't want to use our stuff.) We provide the router/firewall, desktop, phone, etc. But we only do so to people who already have that stuff, too. We just provide better, or more appropriately designed and managed, work hardware.
We look for that passion. I absolutely am not going to pay to provide work equipment to someone that doesn't want to do this kind of work. That guarantees I'll have to motivate solely with money and will never get the kind of growth and long term healthy future that we look for.
Of course, we are also a "hire for life" employer, not a "hire for a task and see if we need you after that task is done" employer. We don't hire people for a role, we hire people who are passionate and that's about
So the thing is, for 95% of the companies I would apply for, it would make sense that they supplied the computer. Most likely for security requirements. Kind of like how for most people you interview, it would make sense that they own a computer. I wouldn't rule out the 5% because they might have a good reason they don't, but
I'm not a big believer in the security argument. Especially not in IT. I understand the premise, if you control the equipment tightly, you can lock it down. But we're IT, we HAVE to trust our staff already and we don't put any data on their machines (assigned... whether their machines or our machines, on endpoints that they use) anyway, so the entire point is locking down a browser or terminal. If they are going to hack that, they will do so regardless. Since we hire professionals we trust that they are securing things a bit as well. The exposure risk is very minimal as there are so many steps between them and data and always "closed glass."
And the situation where no data is getting onto the system is what would be a rate situation in the tech companies I would potentially work for. It's often still a situation where the decentralized work stations providing compute is still cheaper than centralizing it. The workstation isn't a perk, the alternative of centralized compute is more expensive. That might be changing with stuff like dev containers getting traction, but regulations are also slow to change.
Well this is talking about IT and development staff mostly where that's completely the case. You'd have to have a pretty weird IT department where you need anything that they do to be a fat client. That era is long over. I'm not sure what kind of companies you are looking at, but IT and development do not require client side compute of any magnitude in anything but the most insanely rare circumstances. Sure, video game development is a common case, but outside of hefty graphics stuff, it's super rare. You don't need containers or any of that. Centralized compute for our industry is so cheap, so insanely cheap, I can't even picture what you are thinking of that would have any value at all putting on workstations.
Other careers, sure, it's on there, but rare. But in IT, seems like a stretch.
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@flaxking said in SAMIT: Should You Provide Equipment for Work from Home Staff?:
Things like computers and phones and be really personal devices, stuff like your internet connection, less so.
But is that true? Given that we work in IT, there's really no need for there to be anything of "work" on our computers. I would argue that the two are quite literally the same as far as need to be personal.
In both cases it's just a generic tool we use to access resources remotely. If it isn't, time to upgrade your IT processes
Whether you use a web browser, RDP, or SSH to access IT resources, nothing needs to be added, removed, changed on your Internet, router or computer. All generic protocols and you should be fine with Chromebook, Mac, Windows, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi.
Are there exceptions? Sure. But they should be very limited. Very few technical careers... doctor, lawyer, veterinarian, accountant, writer, IT, developer, etc. would need local tools of any sort. Rarely would you even want any, work machine or personal.
