Using a Personal Laptop at Work?

I think asking Is It Wrong to Use My Personal Laptop for Work? is the Hacker News equivalent of how is babby formed? how girl got pragnant?. Either that, or it's the sequel to a light novel franchise called Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?. Take your pick.

My opinion, stated above, is that it isn't wrong. It's just a bad fucking idea, like having "12345" as your PIN or password, or being a womanworking-class American who votes Republican.

There's a general and reciprocal principle involved: don't party on your work laptop, and don't work on your party laptop. It's a good way to avoid flashing your coworkers during the morning standup on Zoom. (No, I've never done this, but people have ended up in the news and on FARK for doing so.)

One of the reasons I wouldn't accept a company phone as a replacement for my personal phone is that I don't want my employer's IT department knowing that I read Wobbly propaganda after hours. They certainly don't need to know what kind of porn my wife and I like. It's none of their business. I don't have Teams, Outlook, or most other workplace apps on my personal phone, either, because my phone is mine; I don't keep a smartphone for my employer's convenience, or indeed for anybody's convenience but my own. The exception is multiparty authentication apps like Microsoft Authenticator, and only with great reluctance (and lingering resentment) on my part.

Likewise, laptops. I don't work on my website or write fiction on a company-issued laptop for the same reason. If I don't want my personal life on computers I use at work, then I certainly wouldn't want work-related stuff on computers I use outside of work. Work belongs at work; compartmentalization is a tool of resistance against totalitarian capitalism and the encroachment of work into one's personal life. There should be the same sort of firewall between work and the rest of one's life that Thomas Jefferson wanted to place between church and state.

Nor does it matter that my personal gear might be superior to company-issue gear. If the company-issue gear isn't fit for purpose, take it up with your IT department. Even if there weren't any liability or security issues involved, why in Satan's holy name should you feel obliged to buy your own gear for work? You don't get paid enough for that shit. You shouldn't even be commuting to a job you can do from home over a VPN unless you get paid extra for time in transit, mileage, and risk to life and limb. Hell, since your commute is in addition to an eight-hour day, that should be considered overtime and paid time and a fucking half.

Now, if I don't put personal shit on my work laptop, you can bet your immortal fucking soul that I don't want work-related shit on my personal laptop. If the company gets sued or faces criminal prosecution (which it probably should for wage theft), I don't want my personal gear getting seized as evidence. Nor do I need the headaches or liability that would ensue if I lost a personal laptop with work shit on it or had it stolen.

Frankly, it's a damn good thing that VPNs are a thing. Otherwise, I'd still be working in an office just to keep company-issued tech off of my personal network. I know that sounds extreme, and a bit paranoid. Call it an occupational hazard, but the only work-related shit I want on my personal computers are my W2s and pay stubs, because I kinda need those since even in 2024 I must still mansplain my annual earnings to the fucking IRS.

I'm not the only person who thinks so, either, if Bill Detweiler's ZDnet article Stop using your work laptop or phone for personal stuff, because I know you are is any indication. He wrote that shit in 2021, but I knew this in 2001. It's just one reason why I had GNU/Linux on my home computer instead of Windows.

This ain't no shit: back around 2001, my boss asked me to consider taking a copy of the code I was working on home so I could work on it over the weekend. She didn't care that I wasn't getting paid for weekend work. She didn't care that I didn't have the appropriate tools on my home PC, or that installing them wasn't feasible since I wasn't running Windows at home. So, I said, let's see what your boss thinks of this idea.

He thought it wasn't merely stupid, but absofuckinlutely retarded. Those were his words, not mine, and the only reason he could get away with talking like that in 2001 was that he owned the company. If he's still alive and running his business today, and talked like that, I think he'd have a wildcat strike on his hands.

He also said a lot of shit about keeping proprietary information secure, legal liability, and lots of other good reasons to not do work on your personal computer. But because my boss at the time had shit for brains, she asked, Why can't he use pcAnywhere from home?

At that point I jumped in and said, First off, I can still use that software to steal code and data from the company if I was that kind of guy, which I'm not. Second, I have a dialup connection at home. I might as well just come to the office and work on the weekend if the situation is that desperate, which it isn't except in your imagination, because I already have a fix implemented and I was in the middle of testing it when you interrupted me for this.

I didn't even have a company laptop in 2001, let alone a personal laptop, but I still understood the general principle. Don't mix work and play. If you can't play Doom on the company LAN, why are you using a personal machine for work?

Again, it isn't wrong to use personal gear at work. Nevertheless, don't fucking do it. It will not work in your favor; in the long run you'll end up getting screwed by security and liability headaches. If you want to get fucked in the ass that badly, try a gay bar. Or ask your girlfriend or wife if she's got a strap-on. You might at least get an orgasm out of it that way (and so might your partner).

PS: the only acceptable mixing of work and personal life is using the toilet during work hours. Like the rhyme goes: Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime; that's why I poop on company time. You don't get paid enough to "hold it", and if your bosses expect you to do so they are fucking inhumane.

Likewise doing household chores as a break away from your desk while your subconscious works on a hard problem as a daemon process. Even if I'm in the kitchen washing dishes, I'm still thinking about work. My ass might not be in the chair, but my head is still on the job; it's no different from me going to the break room for a coffee or stepping outside for a cigarette. Being able to get up and move around helps me maintain my health. Being able to do little household chores as a break helps me maintain my marriage. Doing both redounds to the company's benefit; it won't get much work out of me if I'm in divorce court, let alone from my fucking grave.