> High rates of "lost" equipment returns led to us ransomwaring the things to hold their unsynced personal data hostage until they return the equipment.

Is that really worth it to get back what I would assume is on average a 3 year old laptop? Do you then re-issue this old, used gear to your new hires?

That aside, using your work equipment for personal stuff (or vice-versa) is just a really dumb idea.

> That aside, using your work equipment for personal stuff (or vice-versa) is just a really dumb idea.

I see people say this all the time, but so far I have never seen any convincing arguments for why I should stop using my work laptop for personal use hah.

If you work for a company that has any kind of audits or certifications or regulation compliance or such (so, basically any company other than a recent tiny startup), your company computer is riddled with spyware that tracks every site you visit, all data in your files and buffers, may have keystroke recording, remote screenshots, and on an on.

Even companies that don't necessarily want this stuff will have it forced on them by this or that auditor soon enough.

And that's just the privacy angle.

If you were to work on any personal projects on that company laptop now you have an intellectual property mess on your hands.

Yeah, even if it's not official policy, we just basically write-off all laptops given to staff and then give them if there's a layoff.

In the rare case there's still a depreciable value on the books there is an additional severance payment equivalent to the final "value".

> Is that really worth it to get back what I would assume is on average a 3 year old laptop? Do you then re-issue this old, used gear to your new hires?

It depends on the device. A 3 year old M1 MBP is virtually identical to an almost brand new M2 MBP. There's no need to chuck an M1 MBP in the trash (metaphorically and literally) just because it's "3 years old".

Now if it's a 3 year old low end Intel machine then I'd be more than happy if it went away.

It's less about the hardware itself and more about recovering/accounting for the data on it.

If we can attest that no IP left with them and the device is out of its service life, sometimes we'll let them keep it out of pity. Ironically the most frequent justification is recognizance that they don't own a computer and can't easily look for another job.

> High rates of "lost" equipment returns led to us ransomwaring the things to hold their unsynced personal data hostage until they return the equipment.

Sorry, but that's a pretty dick thing to do to someone who just got laid off, especially considering it could otherwise be a write-off.

I actually agree with you, and I feel terrible about it in every case (it sucks being forced to treat aggrieved colleagues as adversaries), but we've gotten shit from clients over the poor data stewardship on this issue. It's not just the employee's vacation photos and recipes on the device.

There are other factors too-- one new challenge terminations in a WFH world present is that after HR notifies them, the employee can simply not log out and still have access to the local filesystem...and external media. Or if they slammed the lid shut in anger, they'd later log back in to Windows using cached credentials in Airplane Mode.

So employees were regaining access and exfiltrating data indiscriminately. It's been much less of a clusterfuck if we just reset the FDE key once HR is done with them, then negotiate return of specific files they identify. (Sometimes we do let them keep the laptop too, after recovering their stuff and wiping the rest.)