Restructuring Announcement

a lot of companies ask for equipment to be returned due to security concerns, or just on principle

klarna allowed us to buy our work phone and macbook paying only the tax value. We had to give them the devices so they would be wiped out by a third party, then they mailed them to my home.

This is a G move, without a doubt the best way I've heard of this being done.

When I left microsoft, I kept everything EXCEPT data bearing devices. I got the sense they REALLY didn't want to have to collect the laptops either, but the VPs were forced to by compliance.

A company which is even moderately "OK" at IT will already have the means to instantly lock and securely wipe devices of any employee at a moments notice. Doing this during a RIF is a hell of a lot better than making the mail room deal with a bunch of filthy laptops.

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.

One former employer had this policy, and also refused to provide a way to ship said equipment back. No one was happy with my alternative solution: leaving it at the police station instead.

MacBooks and iPhones are amongst the easiest to wipe remotely.

You can wipe them fully (which would be the recommendation for MacBooks) and remove just work-installed apps on an iPhone.

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.

Absolutely. I was in charge of that at a previous job, and telling Jamf to nuke the device did the job the next time it was turned on.

Is that what you proposed or what you actually did? I want a story!

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.

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

I actually did it. This was back in the times when you could get a job the next day, and my new employer didn't want me keeping anything from the old employer by the time I started. Old employer was dragging their feet on the shipping label and made it clear that failure to return the equipment would be considered theft. I gave them a week of daily reminder emails with an approaching deadline (no response), then handed it to the cops as abandoned property. Got a few HR calls immediately afterwards asking how to pick it up, and an annoyed police call asking me not to do it again.

I love this. Bravo.

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.

> made it clear that failure to return the equipment would be considered theft

Is "please arrange for a courier to retrieve it" not the end of your obligations?

Then donate them.

In a situation where everyone (including me) was acting reasonably, sure. But I was slightly gruntled from being pushed out for filing a safety report, and keeping it in my possession would have technically violated my new contract. Giving it to the police was clearly not stealing it and didn't require going out of my way to help them solve a problem of their own creation.

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

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.

On the other side of this, I doubt the police would have done anything if they reported it stolen.

There are questions online about "what if a former employee doesn't return their laptop." They almost always end with "send a threatening letter in legalese." They stop after that because the the next step is get a $300 per hour lawyer involved for a $600 laptop.

A former employer said that FedEx shipping info would be attached to my separation email. It was not. I emailed the two people at HR who had been involved in my separation. Three times each. No replies.

I still have the laptop. And a hard copy of the emails.

Also, as an aside, it is ABSURDLY easy to bypass MDM and DEP on a Macbook Pro, even a later M series laptop. Absurdly so (anyone here could do it in about a minute or less, and have a de-MDMed, fully updatable, no weirdness laptop. Theoretically).