Do people working in offices have IT staff come by to update their laptops? Would people in an office not open this email if they’d do so at home?
When I worked in an office nobody touched my laptop but me.
Also, please remember, it's not your laptop, it's company's laptop, merely given to you to do your work on it. Anybody within the company with correct credential would have the right to touch that laptop.
Not all companies do it this way. Many use a clear network and make services encrypted.
> Also, please remember, it's not your laptop
It is if you work for a bring-your-own-device company.
citation needed
> FAANG companies never did this
Actually it's allowed in 3 FAANGs that I know of.
I very often work on my side projects and it is quite an annoyance having to move around with 2 laptops or paranoidly erasing my personal work from company computer.
Also from my experience working at a fang like company they definitely don't seem to lick every penny. We have company laptops because of security reasons, but phones are bring your own which they pay for. Also they pay for WFH office equipment as long as you can reason it makes you more productive or is good for your health. Basically anything that makes you more productive or sustainable they will pay for.
Correct.
> Anybody within the company with correct credential would have the right to touch that laptop.
That is only partially correct. In many European countries people enjoy quite some protection also in work life. So in order not to do anything illegal the employer has to carefully control access rights to your PC. And the ones who have access rights cannot do whatever. Reading emails is typically illegal, yes emails on the work account! (Just to mention the legal concepts; of course in today's architecture emails are rarely stored on your PC)
I understand in the US employees enjoy little protection while at work. I could guess video surveillance in the toilets could still be unacceptable. Just to make the point, even if the location, paper and water is paid by the employer and more importantly the time is paid, it shouldn't be like that that the employer controls everything. (Although there have been reports that Amazon warehouse workers in the UK use bottles for their needs, because the employer does not provide for more human arrangements in practice. Some employers are always worse than others and that's why I have stopped ordering from that company.)