Comment by manifoldgeo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by manifoldgeo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I applied to two different Canonical jobs, and the process was so off-putting I dropped out of both at different stages.

One position required me to take a psychoanalytical test where they judge your personality traits to A.) make sure you have the desired personality traits for the role and B.) that you're smart enough for the role. I looked at the terms of service for the company they outsourced this test to, and it seemed like a data breach waiting to happen. I expressed my concern to the HR team in charge of hiring, and said I wouldn't feel comfortable having that kind of deeply personal info shared. I further expressed surprise that an open-source software company was using this test at all, given the usual penchant for data privacy in the FLOSS community. They (cordially) said I could either take the test or drop out-- I chose the latter.

For the other role, the interview process was going well, and I made it to final round. But, I ran when I saw their tech stack and tech debt. Lots of Jenkins and heavy reliance on Launchpad for almost everything. Launchpad might not technically be proprietary since it's GNU-licensed, but it's as good as proprietary if Canonical is one of the few companies using it commercially. And Jenkins is just Java / Groovy garbage all the way down.

It also struck me as a red flag that Canonical is 100% BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and they do not provide a work computer. You can apply for a _loan_ to buy a computer for work, but they will not pay for one. If a company is too cheap to provide a computer at a job where you work remotely and exclusively on a computer, I don't want to be a part of that company.

Lastly, I read a lot of negative press about Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth while researching the company. In general, Canonical seems like a sketchy place to work.

> It also struck me as a red flag that Canonical is 100% BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and they do not provide a work computer. You can apply for a _loan_ to buy a computer for work, but they will not pay for one. If a company is too cheap to provide a computer at a job where you work remotely and exclusively on a computer, I don't want to be a part of that company.

That doesn't seem so bad to me. I have always preferred personal device whenever possible. Why not cut out the ewaste?

I work in Contracting, so YMMV.

For me, I have a separate laptop for every contract I work on, sometimes more than one for a given contract (for complicated compliance reasons). The reason for this is to a) prevent cross-contamination between projects, and b) because the laptops could get caught up in legal shenanigans. If one contract ends up in dispute, the laptop could end up getting subpoenaed, and if it was my only laptop I would be SOL. Or god forbid, code from two projects gets mixed by accident, and now I'm in violations of multiple NDAs. In one case, the customer paid for my hardware during development, and when we were done they took ownership of the laptops along with the code.

Your work computer is just like your work code: At the end of the day it's not really yours, don't get attached.

Have you thought about having one machine plus a hot spare, and swapping out hard drives? If it gets subpoenaed for job X, put the job X drive in and give it to the lawyers, then put the drive for the current job in the spare, order a new spare, and carry on.

Of course, if you can bill the machines through to the clients, why bother!

swapping out hard drives in modern laptops sounds like an easier time for you? even w nvme sticks im gunna go with "no way"

You don't even have to open up the laptop anymore with pcie pass through on thunderbolt/usb4, you can attach NVMe physically externally without the typical USB IO hit. That gets into a discussion of enough ports and docks and what not but it is possible and in many cases pretty easy. Of course, that tends to cost extra as that tech isn't ubiquitous yet, but it's cheaper than a separate laptop.

Now, if you're doing this for concerns regarding discovery, I'd just use separate devices, as my confidence is low the court wouldn't just require the entire host(s) involved anyway.

This is personally why my environment is not tied to a specific host. Should any given device(s) get caught up in discovery I can still build/recover a full fresh environment on a new device relatively unimpeded - and do so regularly to ensure it's not just a theoretical. It can be a hassle, but at least I'm not trying to juggle devices in that way and have flexibility to either BYOB or work with client supplied kit and still bring my env and tools with me.

with linux? i swap hard drives all the time

With whatever OS you like.

Good luck switching hard drives on locked down customer provided laptops, or from the own IT on the consulting firm for that matter.

no, not whatever OS you like. Windows installations are coded against doing this. You can copy your Windows partition to a new disk and insert that, carefully, but you can't plug it into a different motherboard.

but you can with Linux.

I've never tried it with MacOS but the days of swapping Apple harddrives are in the past anyway.

The biggest reason I separate work and personal devices is that I do not want my personal devices subject to discovery if my employer is involved in a lawsuit. I can't stress this enough- if my employer is sued, I don't want the opposing law firm to get copies of my data.

The second reason is that I don't want my personal devices subject to security monitoring, and most companies that at least pretend to care about security require some level of endpoint monitoring.

> do not want my personal devices subject to discovery if my employer is involved in a lawsuit.

Why won't your personal devices be subject to discovery anyways?

What industry is this?

I don't know where tedivm works, but their concerns are reasonable for almost any industry.

Small companies usually can't be bothered worrying about those risks (and small companies aren't typically worth suing anyway). But a company of any appreciable size needs to worry about the kinds of things mentioned in the comment.

It doesn't matter. A subpoena is a subpoena and could happen at any job.

Usually any consulting industry where everything done during the project is owned by the customer.

I don't know many other jobs that work this way. Imagine getting a construction job and having to supply your own jackhammer or take out a temporary loan to buy one. Doesn't the company have some they should supply you with? Gig-economy jobs work this way, e.g. Uber and Lyft, but those are problematic for the same reason (and a lot more reasons imho).

As another commenter said, you're adding wear and tear to your own device. Sure, I have my own computers, but they're all spoken for, hosting VMs and containers or acting as my lab. Why should I subsidize the profits of a multi-million-dollar, for-profit company by letting them use my computer at no extra cost?

Your e-waste point is a good one, but I don't think Canonical's managers were looking out for mother nature when they made that choice.

Chefs bring their own knives. Many skilled laborers in construction bring their own hand tools, especially at the high end (cabinetmakers, finish plasterers, etc). In many industries workers must pay for their uniforms and safety equipment (the uniform part seems particularly egregious to me -- it is company specific yet you have to pay for it and look after it). Lawyers and salespeople have to pay for their fancy suits.

automechanics own their own tools, easily $10,000 or double or more worth.

Comparing to other industries is unlikely to be useful, because many craftspeople do own their tools and bring them job to job. Who owns the tools will depend on the specific tools and needs of a job.

Indeed, your hammer isn't going to be taken from you if the building firm does something bad to another company, and besides your hammer doesn't potentially have your bank/email/etc details on it.

Construction workers (and mechanics and most other jobs where you're using standard tools) do require you to provide your own tools, that's why you'll often see Snap-On trucks touring around garages. Obviously for bigger, specialized equipment like a jackhammer or an excavator, they provide them, but I think a laptop is much closer to a set of tools in this analogy.

That's a good point, a computer is probably more screwdriver and less jackhammer. I still dislike companies that externalize their costs to their employees, but I do agree my analogy was slightly off.

Funny, I actually mentioned Snap-On by name in one of my other replies, probably around the same time you were commenting. They've got good brand recognition, apparently!

> I still dislike companies that externalize their costs to their employees

I actually agree, I would personally not work somewhere that made me bring my own laptop, I prefer having a solid divide between work and home. But on that note, I also don't like having a work laptop, I prefer to have a desktop, that way I know I'm never taking work home lol

Mechanics tend to bring their own tools.

That's true. And for new mechanics that don't have their own tools yet, there are vendors like Snap-On that drive tool trucks to different garages will sell them tools on a payment plan. This creates a situation where a person in a new job starts out in the red, being indebted from the start simply because they need new tools.

At least it's not as bad as the gilded age where workers got paid in company-store scrip and lived in company housing in a company-run town. Still, I think it's a step in the wrong direction.

I'm not trying to be dramatic or imply that Canonical's device policy is some act of pure evil, but it was a contributing factor to my decision not to move forward. I have a computer that would serve the purpose just fine. It's more about principles. By itself, that policy wouldn't have been so bad, but combined with other red flags it was enough for me to stay away.

Snap-On tools are great. They also cost an arm and a leg. Yet if you put a 3' pipe on your 1/2" ratchet and break the ratchet, the tool guy will fix it or replace it on his next visit.

As a house painter I brought my own boots, cap, and whites, my own paint brushes and rollers (and poles) my own 5-in-1, and my own caulking gun. Spray rigs and and other power tools as well as ladders and scaffolding were provided by the boss.

At least in the UK, some of these are a tax deduction.

Most knowledge workers cannot deduct their laptop.

This might be OKish as long as Canonical doesn't insist on installing any management software or centrally-managed malware mitigation. You're still incurring wear and tear on your own hardware due to work activities though.

> That doesn't seem so bad to me. I have always preferred personal device whenever possible. Why not cut out the ewaste?

Because it externalizes their costs to employees and creates a bidirectional privacy nightmare (company data is exposed to programs running on a personal machine, and personal data is exposed to company programs - worse if they have any sort of management software but iffy even if not).

> That doesn't seem so bad to me. I have always preferred personal device whenever possible. Why not cut out the ewaste?

Sounds horrible to me. Work and personal are always completely separate.

Only if the employment agreement upholds your privacy if you use your own device. I've seen employment agreements that claim the right to access your personal device at any time if you use it for work.

Eh, because it sounds like the violation of labor laws in many places.

My company gives me a stipend for use of my own phone every month.

I enjoy closing the lid at the end of the day and leaving work behind. Separate user accounts doesn’t cut it. With WFH it’s tempting enough to spend too much time “at work”.

Specifically for Canonical, BYOD seems like a great way to dogfood running Ubuntu on all kinds of machines, rather than everyone having the same model of Dell workstation and a separate testing lab being the only place they encounter diverse hardware.

Not saying this is their reasoning - and if they're not too cheap, it would surely be better for tax purposes to buy your employees computers than pay them the equivalent in cash - but it's a reason at least.

This was one of the reasons. Also, how does a small company provide a laptop to remote workers across the globe in just about every locale and tax jurisdiction, many with specific job requirements and most with Strong Opinions?

There are many reasons not to work for Canonical, but the opportunity to pick and choose your own hardware rather than suffer what someone else thought your would need seems an odd choice.

Cause anything developed on your private device becomes company IPiif touched?

Never access your personal accounts on a work device.

Thats just asking for trouble.

My daughter once took a job at a place that did personality/compatability tests before hiring. As it turns out, it wasn't to help them avoid hiring crazy people. It's because they were the crazy people, and needed to find folks who are compatable with that ;)

> It also struck me as a red flag that Canonical is 100% BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and they do not provide a work computer. You can apply for a _loan_ to buy a computer for work, but they will not pay for one. If a company is too cheap to provide a computer at a job where you work remotely and exclusively on a computer, I don't want to be a part of that company.

So just add the cost of acquiring employer-specific hardware to the compensation package during salary negotiations, is it really a big deal? Don't you generally have your own hardware preferences anyways?

The problem would be if they insist on what software you run on that machine and if they put crap like spyware/backdoors on your device.

If it's just a "we don't care what you run, just be productive and do good work" kind of attitude, BYOD could totally be ideal.

Nothing is more annoying than having an employer shove something like an imac down your throat with a "use this backdoored garbage or quit" mentality.

Having said all that though, their interview process sounds more like a hazing ritual designed to filter out people who won't tolerate abuse. It's deterred me from ever pursuing a role there, despite probably being a decent fit for the work.

> So just add the cost of acquiring employer-specific hardware to the compensation package during salary negotiations, is it really a big deal?

It is a sign the company will resist spending modest amounts to improve efficiency and morale. Including pay increases likely.

You should offer to take a Voight-Kampff test instead. Much more reliable at detecting replicants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com