True, but if your manager is taking screenshots of your screen as you work, then they are micromanaging you. They don't trust you. If my manager doesn't trust me, then I'm not feeling too good about my job.

"Hey I see you're on Stack Overflow a lot, are you having trouble with the work we've given you?"

Why do we think that nontechnical managers would be good judges of what productive behavior looks like? Everyone has their own style.

I know people who refused to accept otherwise decent job offers just because a company had that policy in the workplace.

For software developers, designers and many other creative workers, work and life are intertwined. They can't, and often don't want to separate one from the other.

People often might fix urgent problems at night, or work extra hours on a weekend from home. But in exchange people want to be able to use company computer to check personal email, read the news, etc, and they don't want that email be available to their boss. That's a creative professional bargain. If employer doesn't accept later he won't get the former. And the value of the former is much higher than the later.

Yes, there're people who slack off, and they should be disciplined and fired if it doesn't help. But, if only people who you can hire are such slackers, may be there's something wrong with your hiring.

"Your personal device is your personal space" should be your personal policy, regardless of employer policy. Even if you have complete control over your employer-provided device, you have to assume the network is hostile -- if they aren't tracking everything you communicate over the network today, how would you even know if they started tomorrow?

Any business worth anything has data to protect and insider threats are what frighten them the most.

Use your own device. On the Guest / untrusted network. With a VPN. Should you find yourself somewhere that doesn't let you do those things, and it's not a job involving a security clearance... then it's definitely time to shop for a new gig.

Why can't you just have a laptop next to your work computer to do personal stuff? For many companies, allowing access to personal email via work network is an absolute no-go as it massively increases the risk of data theft. I've worked at several financial companies in my life and they always blocked any kind of page that is designed to store files. Otherwise you get employees that upload sensitive data to some online storage because it's the "simplest" way to continue working from home.

That doesn't mean those companies don't allow personal use but it has to be from devices on another network. Nowadays with most communication happening on mobile devices that's not much of an issue.

Yes, such companies are completely different from what I thought of. I think, allowing personal devices on premises wouldn't be a good idea for them due to security requirements.

I though about staffing agencies creating digital sweatshops without any business justification for it.