> accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired

Probably why none of the internal people cared either. They didn't want to be the person on the line in case it was determined that the usage wasn't valid.

I'm curious how you bricked it beyond repair though. Most devices have a way to enter a recovery/flash mode where you can upload your own firmware from the bootloader. And if you haven't unlocked the bootloader then I don't get how you could have bricked it unless there's an Android bug... which would have probably triggered a more serious look.

Most likely, the tool to upload the firmware from the bootloader required some sort of hardware signing key, which was present within the tool that he wasn’t supposed to use without permission.

A company the size of Google will for sure have it enrolled in MDM that prevents that.

It used to be, if you left a provider without paying for the device on time, they would remote-brick it, which would burn a fuse so it wouldn’t work anymore. I used this to get out of paying for the device once (Verizon), since I couldn’t use it anymore, why would I pay for it?

> There's a tool I could have used to fix it, but it's accompanied by a message saying that if you use it without permission you'll be fired.

Sometimes I name certain APIs/function names/whatever with a "do_not_use_or_you_will_be_fired" suffix. Generally for hacks I don't want people to copy-pasta. I can't actually fire anyone, but it gets peoples attention (especially more junior folks).

React has a bunch of those: https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/ddf8bc3fbac7aefbf557e...

Of course, it doesn't stop people from asking if they can use it: https://github.com/reactjs/react.dev/issues/3896

FRP? Plenty of ways to bypass that, even without any official tools.