A Dumb Idea
Since this is being linked to approvingly from two of my favorite non-political blogs, let me just say this whole “bring your own laptop to work” idea is stupid :
Meme floating around the IT-analyst-o-sphere: “bring your own laptop.” Basically treat the employee’s laptop as you would treat the employees’s pants: require it, pay the employee enough to buy it, and provide the infrastructure that works with it, but that’s all. Give the employee the price of one laptop per two years, plus, say, the price of one major troubleshooting session per six months.
First of all, a big, smart company can get 3-4 years out of a laptop by recycling the hardware down the techie chain from the engineers (who need top of the line stuff) down to the administrative staff (who probably only need MS Office), but I’m sure the 2-year figure is pulled out of thin air, so I’m not gonna dwell on it.
The real reason shifting the laptop burden from employer to employee is such a bad idea is that it cedes a level of control that the company probably needs more than it realizes. There’s a lot of dumb shit people feel free to do on “their” computers that they wouldn’t on a work computer. Everything from surfing shady warez websites to installing spyware and virus laden games could have an adverse affect on the employee’s ability to perform their job. And if you think controlling virus outbreaks is hard for businesses now, just wait and see what happens when they start encouraging their employees to plug their computer from home into the network. It’s a virus-writers dream to infect some noob’s computer at home and have the same machine plugged into a large, physically-secure network.
The idea that providing a few bucks for support will actually offset the problems that would occur with the implied shrinking of a company’s IT staff is laughable. If an employee’s productivity goes down because their computer is mysteriously “slow”, the employers will have much less leverage to compel the employee to have a computer that they don’t own serviced. Even if you gave a stipend to the employee for hardware support, that money would go into their bank accounts first, meaning they would still be a lot less likely to pay somebody to look at the computer than they would now (when support means a quick call to the company’s IT guy). Do you think a random guy from GeekSquad would have the slightest idea what the employee would need to be doing with their machine? IT departments don’t just support hardware and operating systems, but the company’s suite of tools as well. This knowledge goes beyond just being able to install the required software, but knowing how to address problems such as “Why can’t I submit bugs?” or “My calendar is showing old stuff.” Getting a third-party company to deal with these issues is hard enough, but if you throw obscure or proprietary software into the mix, then you’re completely screwed).
Additionally, when the employer stops being the consumer in terms of laptop buying, there are additional worries. For one, it’s unrealistic to expect every employee to make an informed decision about what kind of hardware they’ll need to buy. Knowing the amount of RAM and diskspace, speed of the CPU, and power of the graphics card necessary for each job is a skill that in the long run saves the employer a lot of money. Granted, there are ways to work around a problem like that, but putting the individual employees in charge of buying their laptops has one more substantial downside.
An employee buying one laptop will never get the sorts of savings that a large company will get when buying their computers in bulk. Sure, Dell.com looks like they have pretty good deals, but when you’re a business buying hundreds of laptops at a time, you get much better deals that the general public doesn’t know about. If the employers think they’ll save money by shrinking their IT departments and reimbursing their employees for the prices of their laptops, they’re going to get hit with sticker-shock once they crunch a few numbers.
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Of course you’re right about all of this, and I’m sure whatever company you work for employs only the finest, best-trained, most conscientious and people-friendly IT staff, who diagnose problems promptly, cheerfully and in person whenever possible, then fix them and get the user back on the road to big-time productivity. But the company I work for has somehow got the idea that they can manage 40,000 PC’s from one office that is on the opposite coast from me, staffed by (what seems like) three surly 20-somethings whose training consists of a list of eight common problems (“Is the printer plugged in?”), followed by the ritual opening of a “ticket,” which is code for “You will have time to panhandle enough money for a new computer before you see a technician at your office.” This used to bother me until I realized that I’m only working about half as much since this system went into effect, due to the fact that the equipment is always broken.
I think they’re hoping that we’ll all buy our own laptops without any stipend from The Company.
Comment by Larry Jones — April 24, 2006 @ 7:54 pm
Most everything I’ve read on this topic is from the IT or business perspective.
It is still a truly hideous idea from the employee perspective. First of all, if I receive a stipend or my pay is adjusted for purchasing a laptop, do I have to reimburse the company if I quit before a certain time period has elapsed? After I leave, is the laptop going to be acceptable at the new company, or will I have to buy one there too? If the answer is yes to both, then I am now stuck with a laptop I didn’t want in the first place that is specialized for a company I didn’t like working for, and is now useless for future work.
What happens if I am layed off? Is the computer suddenly not mine because I haven’t been with the company long enough to pay for the laptop? I thought it was mine – what happens to all my personal files? My paper that is due next week is in second draft on that machine, because it was my understanding that it was MINE. All of my sex discrimination records are also on what I thought was my computer, which is (I suspect) why I was laid off.
Would a lack of investment in hardware for employees make them even more “plug and play?” It sounds like a job, and interviews like a job, but it is really just a short-term contract and it is costing the company very little to bring you on because you are supplying everything but the cubicle.
The next natural step in this line of thinking is that the company will not supply a phone. You will be required to have a cell phone (reimbursed based on the company guidelines) and that personal number will be used for the company’s purposes. No thank you. If I wanted to be in independent contractor I wouldn’t have applied for the job.
Comment by Barb — April 25, 2006 @ 7:17 am
Points well taken, but the post does not answer its own fundamental question.
When do I get my company-issued pants?
Comment by Cakesniffer — April 25, 2006 @ 11:17 am
Security would be a nightmare if employees were connecting their own equipment to the company network. It gives me goosebumps and dry-mouth thinking about it.
If companies took the time to truly understand what it is they need from an IT department — and then spend the money to build it properly, you wouldn’t run into 20-something twerps trying to support corporate networks over the phone.
Most companies don’t even know where to place an IT department… it usually ends up being an off-shoot of Finance, answering to the Financial Director, who wouldn’t know a ram disk from a router. That’s changing, but ever so slowly.
Comment by CLD — April 25, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
But I think that personal computers (today “laptops”, tomorrow Dick Tracy wrist computers or Star Trek lapel badges) are in the same situation that phones were a few decades ago.
In 1960, employees used hardwired phones provided by their employers. Then, one day in the 1980s, the water-cooler buzz was, “Hey, did you see what JR has? One of those new cell-u-lar-phone things.” And ten years later, everyone and their teenage kid had one.
Similarly, while today it’s controversial to ask all employees to bring their own computer to work, in ten or fifteen years you wouldn’t dream of trying to prevent it.
Cf Moore’s Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore‘s_law
The IT folks are just going to have to get on the ball and figure out how to cope with this, because it’s coming.
Comment by anon — April 25, 2006 @ 2:01 pm