This is coming from a firefox-using privacy paranoid Googler.

I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

It just blows me away how lazy or thoughtless most people are. It’s the company’s network or machine or both. The business done on there should be for work for them and nothing more. You breach ethical lines when you start doing personal stuff unless stated otherwise in your contract/agreement with them.

If I gave you my laptop to borrow for a day, you bet I’ll be making sure you didn’t do something funky to it. I’ll also be making sure you didn’t do something to get me on a government watch list. If there’s a reason to try to get statistical data from your usage, I might check that out too.

To me, it’s common sense, it’s not yours so respect it for the reason it was given to you to use. Period.

For your personal stuff: don’t trust it on their network or with their software. You exist to make them money regardless of whether you get paid directly for it. Assume 0 privacy on the clock and that your device might be compromised if used on their network, so just don’t do it.

I agree it's shady, but I suspect it's there so that they don't have to specifically negotiate to add it when a special-case deal is agreed to. (They may say they don't negotiate, but there are exceptions at any company.)

They can't seriously expect their standard form agreement to stay NDA-confidential when they've had 6 to 8 figures of people sign versions of it, regardless of what the agreement requires. If there has ever been litigation over Google's legalese - even a dispute over whether forced arbitration applies - the copy in the court record is probably either public or unsealable upon request to the court.

(I'm a former Google employee, didn't have any role related to employee contract language, not a lawyer, certainly not speaking for them.)

Yep. Basically the same logic as companies with competitive salaries trying to keep wage info quiet, even in the age of Glassdoor. It's not that there's something to hide about the standard version, and it's not that the terms or even text will stay private. But it adds a hurdle to people comparing notes on exactly what they signed, and when somebody does get a special exemption, it stops them putting up a point-by-point guide for everyone else.

> They may say they don't negotiate, but there are exceptions at any company.

Presumably Google is big enough to have standards and make case-by-case decisions, but it's sort of horrifying how many smaller companies approach contracts as an exercise in seeing what they can get away with. Employment-prohibiting noncompetes and personal-time invention assignment clauses get casually tossed in, then pulled back out after no greater negotiation than bothering to ask.

It's not hard to see why contracts are under NDA when so many companies pretend their ridiculous terms are a standard form that everyone else signed.

So to make it harder for labor to organize, basically.

It's not as directly defensive as salary hiding, which can obviously help conceal everything from wage collusion to Ledbetter v. Goodyear style inequities. But it still stops labor from sharing information and helping to share in concessions.

I didn't include it above, but a related part is that layering on NDAs makes it harder for non-employees to get involved. If you post your whole contract online, a random employment lawyer might happen by and go "hey, you're getting screwed, 3.A.ii is non-standard and probably illegal". But if you restrict it to employee viewing and low-specificity discussions, you're less likely to have lawyers or activists get involved unprompted.

Even more worrisome.

There where agreements about what sort of offence justified monitoring at work it had to be a serious offence for example.

I don't think I've ever logged in to my Corp account from any non Corp device other than my phone, which uses a work profile for exactly that reason.

+1. Google gives you a corp phone and computer (even multiple ones, if needed); why the heck you'd want to use your personal devices? Plus using a personal device is strongly discouraged.

Also, all the companies I've worked before had similar clauses, and would always push iOS or Android certificates into your phone, so they can remote wipe the device when you leave company.

Seems fairly standard thing to me: no company would want their confidential information lying around in a bunch of personal devices. Calling it "Personal surveillance" seems ridiculous.

Now, some of the nooglers sitting near me seem to think they're entitled to one, so maybe the messaging has changed. but I just looked it up and the language is: "Full-time Googlers with a business need are eligible for one Google-paid mobile phone and SIM"

Many Googlers I know have Corp set up on their personal phone.

If you ever have had an on-call shift, or had to log in remotely to perform some work function? If so, then you qualify. You probably also qualify for them to pay for your home internet.

> Many Googlers I know have Corp set up on their personal phone.

That's stupid. Seems like a good way to get all of your data wiped off of your personal phone.

What is the company cost of the average engineer at google? It must be like...at least $300k or $400k/yr. They will pay another $600/yr for a phone and service for you if they think it will improve your productivity.

They do hand out corp laptops like candy, which is great, but if you need to test software you're developing on a specific configuration, you basically have no choice but to use personal hardware. So let's say you're developing graphics code for Chrome, and there's a bug that only reproduces on a specific GPU - and you've got one at home. By doing that on your home PC have you now technically tainted it as a work machine even if you never checked out corp code onto it?

I guess alternately you just get your boss to expense a GPU and a PC and get all that set up and you can actually repro the bug like 4 weeks later once the purchases go through. Maybe corp purchasing is faster now than it used to be.

If you brought your own GPU in to do debugging for work, and you end up frying it(lets say from the bug), would you expect google to reimburse you for it?

With any company that I've experienced, there is pretty much never a need to use personal stuff for work reasons.

On a throwaway for obvious reasons, but this is from an employment contract I've seen in the past:

"I acknowledge that I have no reasonable expectation of privacy in any computer, technology system, email, handheld device, telephone, or documents that are used to conduct the business of the Company. As such, the Company has the right to audit and search all such items and systems, without further notice to me, to ensure that the Company is licensed to use the software on the Company’s devices in compliance with the Company’s software licensing policies, to ensure compliance with the Company’s policies, and for any other business-related purposes in the Company’s sole discretion. I understand that I am not permitted to add any unlicensed, unauthorized, or non-compliant applications to the Company’s technology systems and that I shall refrain from copying unlicensed software onto the Company’s technology systems or using non-licensed software or web sites. I understand that it is my responsibility to comply with the Company’s policies governing use of the Company’s documents and the internet, email, telephone, and technology systems to which I will have access in connection with my employment."

tl;dr: Any device you so much as check your work email on (which taints it as a device "used to conduct the business of the Company"), is subject to search by the Company "for any ... business-related purposes in the Company’s sole discretion" (meaning the stuff about software licensing is superfluous). So ultimately the employee has, as stated, "no reasonable expectation of privacy".

This is a case of reach-as-far-as-you-can lawyer'ing in a setting where there's likely to be little push-back from most job candidates. Takeaway: Go over this stuff with a fine-tooth comb and threaten to turn down offers from companies who try to pull this. Then if you _have_ to take the job, keep a hard boundary between your work and personal systems.

"Keep a hard boundary between your work and personal systems" has always been the right answer. I am surprised that this does not seem obvious to everyone.

I'm sure the standard usage is only about job-related hardware and accounts, but if my employer's product was my source for personal driving directions, email, and web searches, I'd want a contract that didn't transform those into employment-related activities.

Not only it protects them, it enforces the work/personal hardware separation for me, which is good. My work hardware (which is pretty much a laptop and a phone) has no traces of my personal stuff and my personal has no traces of my work stuff and can't even it I wanted it to.

I genuinely don't understand the mixing of personal and work environments. Why would anyone possibly be interested in carrying their work phones with them after their done with work?

Convenience. I access my work calendar from my personal phone so I can check my calendar first thing in the morning. And avoid carrying/caring for a company-issued phone.

Meeting with Indian teams are rare, but when they happen, I have to be at the office an hour or two before normal. I'm always awake in time to get in, but generally have a relaxed morning - long dog walk, cooked breakfast, walk to work. If I have a 7am meeting, I have to grab a muffin and drive to work.

My best guess is that it has something to do with the permissions you give Google if you add a work profile/account to your phone. But that isn't required.