[throwaway0220]

(Disclaimer: Googler here)

+1. Google gives you a corp phone and computer (even multiple ones, if needed); why the heck you'd want to use your personal devices? Plus using a personal device is strongly discouraged.

Also, all the companies I've worked before had similar clauses, and would always push iOS or Android certificates into your phone, so they can remote wipe the device when you leave company.

Seems fairly standard thing to me: no company would want their confidential information lying around in a bunch of personal devices. Calling it "Personal surveillance" seems ridiculous.

[cmrdporcupine]

We are not supplied with a corp phone, they're only for people with a 'business need.' Been @ Google 7 years and never had one given to me other than holiday gift phones.

Now, some of the nooglers sitting near me seem to think they're entitled to one, so maybe the messaging has changed. but I just looked it up and the language is: "Full-time Googlers with a business need are eligible for one Google-paid mobile phone and SIM"

Many Googlers I know have Corp set up on their personal phone.

[morgante]

If you're using your personal phone to check work email, that strongly implies a business need. Basically all my coworkers have corp phones.

[oh_sigh]

No one is going to give you anything. Have you ever asked your manager?

If you ever have had an on-call shift, or had to log in remotely to perform some work function? If so, then you qualify. You probably also qualify for them to pay for your home internet.

> Many Googlers I know have Corp set up on their personal phone.

That's stupid. Seems like a good way to get all of your data wiped off of your personal phone.

What is the company cost of the average engineer at google? It must be like...at least $300k or $400k/yr. They will pay another $600/yr for a phone and service for you if they think it will improve your productivity.

[aiiane]

You have to ask for it, it won't just be given to you, but I think you're making assumptions about the answer if you asked for it.

[woolvalley]

Tell your manager you wont check any work stuff on your personal devices anymore, because your worried about security, etc. The problem will either be resolved fairly quickly, or you will have better work life balance.

[kevingadd]

I never had a corp phone at Google and was never offered one. As far as I know they weren't available to me. It wasn't usually a problem but there were definitely cases where if I had a corp phone it would've made things easier - not like I was going to sync my personal phone up to corp and get it remote wiped.

They do hand out corp laptops like candy, which is great, but if you need to test software you're developing on a specific configuration, you basically have no choice but to use personal hardware. So let's say you're developing graphics code for Chrome, and there's a bug that only reproduces on a specific GPU - and you've got one at home. By doing that on your home PC have you now technically tainted it as a work machine even if you never checked out corp code onto it?

I guess alternately you just get your boss to expense a GPU and a PC and get all that set up and you can actually repro the bug like 4 weeks later once the purchases go through. Maybe corp purchasing is faster now than it used to be.

[oh_sigh]

Couldn't you just buy the card yourself on amazon or whatever and expense it?

If you brought your own GPU in to do debugging for work, and you end up frying it(lets say from the bug), would you expect google to reimburse you for it?

With any company that I've experienced, there is pretty much never a need to use personal stuff for work reasons.

[aiiane]

If corp purchasing is interfering with your ability to do your work, that's the corp's problem, not yours. If you choose to make it your problem and choose to solve that problem by using your own hardware, well, you made that choice.