True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…
Was this supposed to be on a work phone or a personal phone? If a personal phone, was it a requirement to use it for work purposes?
Most times, I believe a change to the employment agreement made by the employee would result in the employer not going forward with the hire, unless it was agreed upon in the negotiation phase. So unfortunately I am not surprised at the outcome.
It is super convenient to have work stuff with you all the time. So you can step out and be available.
Google work profiles solve this for me. I deal with sensitive information anyway. So it is separated so much that it is hard to even share links with colleagues but once you switch to work profile on Android phone (OnePlus FTW!) it works well. I am surprised this is issue in Google.
True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…
I'm not. Legal doesn't want to deal with everyone having a different employment contract. Google has always leaned towards being ok with a ton of false negatives to avoid false positives. They'd rather give up 10 good hires than make one bad one. This is just an extension of that. They don't want any exceptions and they aren't willing to make any.
Isn't it great when even something as huge and life-changing as a job is subject to a contract of adhesion with no negotiation allowed? I'm sure glad to live in such a free country with great worker rights. (Sarcasm intended.)
Ah, so this was before they amended the rule allowing communication to be restricted. I wonder what the restrictions were before. It specifically says emails were allowed. But I wonder if a person maintaining an intranet site could post a banner on it with the same message. I'm guessing not since it isn't designed for that type of communication. I'm not sure where the plugin would fall. Seems like the message didn't…
Yeah, hard to say, one could certainly make an argument that it did fall under that though. It would need to be decided in court.
How could that message, on that site, fall into the scope of the plugin? I could maybe see if it was a site that employees were actually using it to perform concerted activities. If the firm was hired by the company, then they can't also represent the workers. Thus, what could employees do on that site for concerted activities?
I would also guess the plugin only covers prohibited use and does not cover allowed uses (ie does the plugin say you have 1st ammendment rights when visiting Facebook?). I doubt the documentation states that the plugin shall provide users with their rights. It probably says something like the purpose is to provide users with policy or law information related to the site they are visiting so they don't break the law/policy.
One thing that happens in SV is: * Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone" * Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone. If you install corp on your phone, Google vie…
100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. If my employer needs me to have a mobile phone they are paying for separate device and plan. It’s a little silly I need to carry 2 phones around but it makes my life so much more convenient. Unknown call on my work phone guess I’ll answer. If it’s on my personal then it’s spam. Leave company, no need to update or port my number. Want t…
This. And not just two phones but two laptops as well, unless the employer forbids bringing a personal one at work (which would be a reason to dump them in my case).
Leave work stuff to work hardware and never ever use company assets for anything personal.
A friend of mine who works for a big multinational telco (unrelated to Google) installed an open source tool on his company laptop; when he connected back on the corporate network, that tool got automatically deleted in a matter of minutes because it wasn't allowed for some reason and he got a notice about it. I can't recall the software used to keep control of corporate laptops, but according to what I heard from him it's widely used around and it catches everything: sites visited, software installs and runs, time spent working, screenshots, etc.
With android work profiles I don't think it's that big a deal. It's isolated from my phone, my employer can't see anything outside the profile and I just disable it on weekends/vacations.
> With android work profiles I don't think it's that big a deal. It's not a big deal... until it is. Like when your boss/coworker gets involved in a work dispute and you get dragged into a deposition.
It is utterly insane to me how confused people are in the rest of this thread. There are people getting paid like $200,000 a year, and they can't be bothered to pay a lawyer $3,000 to read their employment contract once and explain any of this to them?
> the work profile is supposed to solve that problem: you only add your corp account and install corp apps in work profile Wait until your personal phone, with its work profile, comes into scope of a work-related deposition. You'll find just how paper thin that argument is.
Why would my personal phone come under a work-related deposition? Work emails written on my phone might be, but those are accessible without physically taking my phone.
Because some lawyer convinced a judge that there may be pertinent information on it. If there's any suspicion that you may have used your personal device to communicate with co-workers, then they'll want to see it. You can't prove you didn't without turning it over. If they find you didn't use it, then thanks. If they find you did, game over. That's the point of the discovery process. They don't know what information is out there, so they're going to get as much of it as they can and sort it out later.
One thing that happens in SV is: * Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone" * Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone. If you install corp on your phone, Google vie…
I never install anything work related on my phone. Company has to provide a phone that can be looked at with backdoors rootkits etc. Articles like this just confirms that this is the right course of action.