Comments on: Bring your own… computer to work !

By: Register a domain

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By: Commercial playgroundequipment

Commercial playgroundequipment — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:16:00 +0000

Actually, speaking about the development sandbox and VirtualBox /
VMWare, that is exactly what we’re doing here at atHome Group in
Luxembourg. If you’d like to share some experience, feel free to get in
touch with StephanKasdorfreagroupcom He’s the man handling this
stuff over here and has done a great job so far.

By: Jacken Steve

Jacken Steve — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:30:00 +0000

It is common that my developers do some plan accompanying being at home, in the black or during the week-end, and it is aswell a actuality that humans use MSN, Skype, FaceBook etc. at plan for non-work accompanying activities. PC Recycling

By: Marge

Marge — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 07:35:32 +0000

I am a computer programmer and most all facets of my life are conducted via computer\intrant. Rather than impose on my company network for my personal banking, reading at lunch, emails, I bring my own laptop with its own data connect into work. People do experience a double-take when they see it… but after thinking about it, how is different than bring a cell phone to work? Also, most of my valuable code and tools are on it already. I think this is the wave of the future and the stuffed shirts need to realize it. SOon all personal business will be conducted over the internet.

By: Stephan Kasdorf

Stephan Kasdorf — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:39:07 +0000

Hi, me again, i really like the idea Andrew had, it is a win-win-situation and on the comment from Matt to Scott I would like to say: “Yes, it is correct there is allways someone who, let’s say plays around but even with a global policy you will not get rid of such people, so why punish everyone?” but i don’t have a solution to that either. It is more like the people here in Germany paying tax and the social system and some other people just take it and laugh about it but they are not worth thinking about in my opinion. So why not handle it the same way?

But for Scott’s first point. People bringing there own hardware to work is not about the brand I think, it is rather like driving a low budget Opel then a Porsche. (-:

By: Alain Fontaine

Alain Fontaine — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:01:47 +0000

Cheers Matt,

Actually, speaking about the development sandbox and VirtualBox / VMWare, that is exactly what we’re doing here at atHome Group in Luxembourg. If you’d like to share some experience, feel free to get in touch with StephanKasdorfreagroupcom He’s the man handling this stuff over here and has done a great job so far.

By: Matt Gay

Matt Gay — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:56:10 +0000

Although it doesn’t seem like much, the little inches of freedom, like this, which can be offered to the tech-savy and creative team members can often be the difference between an “employee” and a passionate, enthusiastic resource. Creative people can be difficult resources to keep happy and sometimes little concessions like a BYOC policy can benefit morale and engagement. We geeks like our geeky toys, we like our technical freedom and we like to feel privileged

On the other hand, Scott Stacey makes a very valid point above about administering incidents of BYOC-ers breaking an appropriate use policy. For all the trust that you may have in a team, there’ll always been one member that breaks the rules. I’d be interested to hear how other implementors of a BYOC policy handle such situations; a formal warning, just as if the transgression occurred on company equipment, or a zero tolerance policy of removing an employee’s BYOC privilege on the first incident?

Technical tangent: virtual machine images are not only good for standardising and deploying workstations, but can be excellent solutions for managing/deploying sandbox environments and (most importantly) for providing a comprehensive cross-platform testing setup without requiring many separate physical machines (e.g. the free VirtualPC images for testing IE6/7/8). Bundling an effective VM workstation & dev sandbox, a virtualised test setup and a BYOC policy could make for a nifty development ecosystem.

By: Andrew Sims

Andrew Sims — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:38:05 +0000

You could potentially work this in with a lease plan so the employee pays the unit off over a period of time and when the lease period is up, there is a choice of upgrading or purchasing outright (this might also get around the issue of system upgrades before the end of life for the equipment is up). Some sort of deal with salary sacrifice could also be possible (Not sure on the finance implications with that one).

Its benefits like these that make employees far stickier to their organization. Throw in the support aspect and you’ve got a real winner (while potentially bridging the gap between IT and the business).

By: Alain Fontaine

Alain Fontaine — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:39:41 +0000

Hi Craig, and thanks for the comment. I agree that good tools is something employees must have, regardless of the business they work in. Especially in technology companies which have a certain culture towards hi-tech stuff, this applies fully. You’re also right that it might be seen as a symptom, but not necessarily. Most of my people have top notch computers and still bring their hardware to work.

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:36:42 +0000

People bringing their own computers to work is normally a symptom. If you are giving your developers who are on $80k+ a year a computer that is 4 years old and broken enough that you literally couldn’t give it away to charity, then you will start to find them bringing their own PC. Investing $1-2k per year on hardware is not much for the increased productivity you will gain.