[oblio]

A large bunch of big companies, including some of the biggest on the planet don't even sell past-end-of-life laptops to their current employees.

Let that sink in. They're not even willing to <<sell>> old laptops, they would rather scrap them and contribute to pollution and overall waste.

[preinheimer]

If you scrap a laptop you get a nice, auditable, chain of custody from the end user to the company that will certify it's been destroyed. If you sell someone their old laptop you need to ensure that it's actually been wiped, not just "I copied my files over and started using the new one". I've seen a few IT departments be not great at "Sam got their new laptop two weeks ago, someone should follow up now to see if the wipe on the old one happened".

One choice won't get you fired, the other might save you a bit of cash.

[oblio]

I'm talking about some companies that should have the best IT departments on the planet.

[dylan604]

Writing off equipment through depreciation is a time honored thing for corps. If they sell them, they are no longer a write off. That's now more work for the bean counters.

[oblio]

Then donate them.

[dylan604]

Isn't that essentially what they are doing when the let the employees keep them?

[oblio]

My original comment in the thread:

> A large bunch of big companies, including some of the biggest on the planet don't even sell past-end-of-life laptops to their current employees.

It's good that Automattic is doing it, I was wishing it was an industry standard procedure, for all past-end-of-life hardware, not just layoffs and not just laptops.

Right now FAANG, for example, which you'd expect to have the very best of everything, as far as I know don't give old laptops (and other old hardware) to employees, they don't even sell them. They send them to be recycled or whatever, but the best action is to reduce and reuse, recycle should be the last option.

Plus an employee is likely to be willing to accept their old device since they know it's performance and general behavior.

[johannes1234321]

If they sell to (ex-)employees they sell to consumers. This then includes consumer warranties etc.

However what large companies do is to get an agreement with a refurbishing company, which will collect and refurbish them and and pay the corporation some share.

This works in some mix calculation - the well treated machines can be sold well, some machines can be used to reuse some parts and some machines are nothing but cost for disposal.