It's more like trying to haggle over the price of some bananas at Safeway.

maybe if bananas cost six figures people would negotiate over them.

I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Internal developers, internal security ops, legal, and C-suite coordinating these departments.

Also Google is very special in that their employees are extremely sophisticated and curious, so they need ~complete~ control of any electronics that access their networks.

So if your first paragraph is correct, what are we to make of the HR person saying "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data."? Were they lying? Or was there a real internal rule about "never" accessing personal data? A rule that was in disagreement with the $x million worth of coordinations of legal documentation?

And if your second paragraph is correct, then "Google HR lies to you on your first day as policy - if you ask certain questions" seems to be the only logical conclusion.

Perfectly determining company data from personal data on a personal device is impossible. "We would never access your personal data" means "we would never access your personal data deliberately, only accidentally in the course of an investigation of your work-related activities". Obviously no company is ever going to sign an agreement promising to do something impossible like perfectly avoid inspecting any personal data during a device audit. The person from the story might as well have been asking for the moon.

If they make verbal assurances that they'll do nothing bad, perhaps they'd be willing to write them down on the contract.

The upstream comment says that not only did they refuse to back up their verbal assurance that "they'll do nothing bad" with anything in writing, they withdrew the job offer over it.

It's been some time since "Do no evil" meant anything there...

> I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million.

Straw man. If a small change like this costs a company any more than a thousand bucks, they are Doing it Wrong.

You might argue that $1k is also a lot to expect, but consider that the company has likely already spent north of $25k (and sometimes a lot more than that) on the recruiting process that brought them this new employee. If they're going to throw that away to avoid an internal approval process that costs another thousand, that sounds like a bad financial decision to me.

Just fill your personal device with dick pics.

They'll stop looking pretty quick.

Only partially joking.

It's the equivalent of haggling of the flea market, and being told to give back the goods you are holding because there is no agreement on the price.

Alternative analogy. The haggling at the flea market already occurred (compensation negotiation), and the price was agreed upon. As you are picking up the goods, the seller shouts at you that he also gets to rifle through your phone, no take-backs, and you definitely agreed to it because you're picking up the goods.

One party here is altering the verbal agreement, and expecting the other party to accept without additional negotiation.