Lost my job because I refused to use Windows, who is at fault? | Hacker News Reader

Lost my job because I refused to use Windows, who is at fault?

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> A software they use for time tracking didn't support screenshots on Wayland and[...]

This is much more of a red flag than forcing someone to use Windows. A time tracking that takes screenshots? Who needs this kind of micro-surveillance?

I agree, this should not be normalized at any cost otherwise we'll delve into some dystopian scenario fast

For a lot of low cost, low powered workers, this is the misery they already live with. Screenshots, camera surveillance at random intervals to make sure they are sitting there typing away.

Yes. It’s unfortunately already standard. Years ago I thought I might do the elancing thing. I created a login with one website and then encountered a previously unmentioned “next steps: install this tracking spyware.” Absolutely not. But I think other people might not have a choice financially.

I can imagine that low payment doesnt really inspire one to work hard…

I also think this may be illegal in many places in the US.

I can't think of a situation where this wouldn't be illegal.

Unless it's some appliance-type 100% employer controlled device like a point of sales terminal or some control computer in a factory

This was also a personal device, not one provided by the company. Either the company should have provided a device, or the employee should _not_ be using a personal device.

An employer not providing a work machine is the first red flag.

The only time I ever provided my own machine was for a very scrappy "startup" where I was the first dev. Even then, it turned out the company was destined for failure.

100%

I once worked for a very small agency that "preferred" that I use my own machine. Then my PO would get upset that I didn't put documentation into a Word doc (was on Linux, and this was in the days where OO did not have great .doc compatibility so her styles that she insisted on using would be mangled badly) and go complain to the COO. He'd then ask if I could install Windows and my response was always that if he provided the machine I'd run whatever he needed. Which meant that's 2-3 golf outings he couldn't go on with clients and he was not about to sacrifice that. So he'd roll his eyes and leave me alone for a couple of months.

That company, too, ended in failure (luckily after I left).

Undoubtedly. The Venn diagram of businesses that require this much surveillance and won’t provide hardware is probably almost a circle.

This. My employer needs to supply every piece of equipment that I need to do my job. I am not here to subsidize my employer's business expenses.

As a matter of policy, I never use my personal machines/devices for work. This policy protects both myself and my employer.

I find it interesting that the expectation is the opposite in some fields. For example, every auto mechanic I know supplies their own tools except for a few specialized tools the shop owns.

I imagine different fields have different needs and constraints. A big difference I can see between the tools a mechanic needs and the tools a dev needs is that there are rather large security and privacy risks with computers that don't exist with things like wrenches.

I believe this may have to do with how many mechanics are paid as independent contractors

Agreed. Employers should provide, manage, and support work machines. I would never install employer-required spyware on my personal machine. Similarly, the only time I used my own laptop was for a scrappy startup where I was the first engineer.

Your employer is at fault.

Refusing to install software you don't want on a personal machine is entirely reasonable, particularly when you offered to provide them with multiple alternatives on how they could still track your progress without doing that.

If this is a job, as opposed to some kind of consulting, then your employer should provide you with the equipment needed to fulfill the role's requirements.

In some cases even when consulting/freelancing the employer will provide the machine so that they can lock it down securely. Statnett in Norway provided me with a Lenovo X1 Carbon when I did a gig for them. I could use my own machine (HP Omen 17" running Linux Mint) but only as a Citrix client. And of course there was no time recording software involved, I'm not sure that would be legal here.

Even then, if the employer has some technical requirements it's on them to supply what is required for the job.

It's not up to him to build a VM, it's up to them to supply one if that is a satisfactory middle ground for the employee.

Because this is the persons own device, it's the employer who failed to provide software that works properly with those devices.

To be fair, the firing offense technically isn't refusing to use Windows, but failure to do time tracking I suspect. Not really sure what the screenshot feature is suppose to do though.

It really depends on why this person isn't using company issued hardware. I've used my own laptop on jobs before, but that was to prove that Windows was slowing us down, once that was established my boss just bought macs.

There's also the option that the company could issue cheap laptops for the stuff that require Windows or other specific software and just let people use their own hardware for everything else.

"Not really sure what the screenshot feature is suppose to do though."

It's surveillance.

In an ideal world, your job performance would be measured by some combination of the amount of stories completed, balanced with the difficulty of the stories and the quality of the code delivered too. Not only would you avoid having to look over your employees' screens, you wouldn't even need to track time at all.

In the real world, these decisions are made by "managers" who think that things like hours, lines of code, surveillance, and using "approved software" are all good ways to measure the quality of the resulting product. They're the same ones pushing for return-to-office culture. They'll reward a dev who introduces bugs and then "burns the midnight oil" staying late to fix it, over the dev who writes clean code that doesn't crash in the first place.

Yes, the only proper way of determining if someone is producing as expected is to look at what they're producing.

It's how I've always run my businesses, and it has never steered me wrong.

I'll be the pedant that tries to split hairs:

Did you agree to a BYOD policy that specifies you must provide a device that runs required corporate software? If so: your fault, you need to provide that device regardless of your moral aversion to Windows.

Did you agree to a BYOD policy, but the policy didn't account for required software? If so: their fault, they need to update their policy so that people actually bring the appropriate devices.

Do they not have any BYOD policy? If so: their fault, they should probably be providing a device because they didn't specify any requirement at all.

Did I miss any scenarios? Ultimately my response is that this person needs to go back to their employee handbook or onboarding documentation and see what was required of them.

Employee handbooks / onboarding documentation beyond an offer letter don’t always exist.

That would seem really weird to me in a BYOD situation. When you comingle business and personal devices, both parties can open themselves up to liability unless they set expectations in advance. Heck, in California BYOD may require you reimburse your employees for the use of their devices, depending on what your expectations are and how you word it, so a well-written policy is basically essential.

I don't necessarily disagree with you that the documentation might not exist, but to me that would indicate that the people running the business don't really know what they're doing. Does it make a difference, legally? I'm not sure! I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say.

You don’t deserve the downvotes and I will upvote you. Setting aside childish “but it’s not fair!” arguments this inevitably attracts - is the poster asking for us to assign “fault” based on a legal definition or some ill-defined moral code one?

Employment contract will define the former.

Outside the legal fault my interpretation of facts is - they don’t want to employ you anymore because they don’t feel like dealing with your crap and you are not valuable enough where they would rather go through the inconvenience of finding your replacement rather than tolerate the hassle off putting up with you.

Personally as an employee - I wouldn’t like it either and would probably find another job.

As an employer - I would also get rid of an employee if their contribution does not outweigh the costs of keeping them, both tangible and intangible.

I didn't realize I had downvotes; thanks, though.

I think that there is a disconnect here, and agree that the answer is likely different if you approach from a legal or moral framework. From a moral standpoint, no, I don't think it's unreasonable to tell your employer to pound sand when they ask you to install spyware on your personal machine. But that might get you fired, and whether or not they were allowed to do so is a legal question, not a moral one.

"Employment contracts" are a rarity in the United States (except in the case of contract work), but yeah, I'd expect a business to have some expectations and requirements set in advance, especially if they're expecting employees to BYOD. If they don't, then that might be a red flag that the business doesn't know how to run a business.

Is this person a contractor?

Otherwise this has nothing to do with Windows and is entirely about the employer not providing equipment.

What if they provided a machine, and the person would still refuse to use windows? This story reads more like the company wants to have a secure screenshot-trail of their workers' activity, and the writer just doesn't want to use the required environment. Classical conflict of interest.

Though, still a shitty employer if this is true. Check the results, not the process.

A company can provide you a computer with software on it. If you refuse to use it according to their policies I don’t think you would have much recourse.

Asking users to install spyware on their personal devices is a bit different. In most of the US they could probably still fire you it just seems like a bad way to run a business.

There's two different things going on.

One a regular employee shouldn't have to bring their own equipment. If they're a regular employee being told to use their own equipment for work, then the employer is being an ass.

The other is that the employer wants to spy on its employees. That's gross.

Windows has nothing to do with either.

But an employee who refuses to use Windows in a Windows only shop (or whatever software) should've figured those details out beforehand to not waste everyone's time. Neither side is wrong for wanting to do things in a specific way.

I've turned down a couple jobs because they would have required me to use Windows.

I don't hate Windows, I just like working in my little unix-like Mac world. Of course I can do the whole "Run a mini Linux inside Windows so you can actually code", but I just don't want to.

For some types of dev it's essential, like if I were building stuff in Visual Studio. But I'm doing web dev. Typescript, React, serverless. There's no reason I can't use a Mac for that other than the company being lazy and not wanting to support them for whatever baseless reasons.

Macs are pricier than Windows PCs. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a company to give you a cheaper device that's also 100% capable of performing well for a web development job. TypeScript and React work perfectly fine in Windows even without WSL - manually install nvm and Git, then use npm like you would on any other machine. (Ideally using Git Bash.)

Personally, I use a mix of Mac (job) and Linux (personal) - haven't touched Windows in over a year. But if someone pays me to do web dev and happens to give me a Windows machine, that's fine too.

This is a brown M&M type thing for me nowadays. If I can't use MacOS, I don't trust the company's finances or IT.

A in the 2000's I used to do the same thing by asking for two displays. If they said no that was pretty much it. Arguments ranged from "we want everyone to use the same setup" to "too expensive".

My pay every month would've been multiple times the price of a monitor and at least 2-3 times the price of a MacBook nowadays. If your budget can't handle that, it's a huge red flag for me.

And there's always the time when I, a decently expensive external contractor, had to use some bargain-bin laptop with 2GB of memory. And I had to run at least two instances of NetBeans, a local Oracle installation and Adobe Flex at the same time. I lost so much time just waiting for that thing to work it cost them more than a proper computer would've =)

While it's good to know you don't need WSL to work on what I work on, I still don't think that's a good argument for why I would _need_ to use Windows at work.

For this type of work, just let your workers use whatever machine they want. If the employer can't afford the difference between a Macbook Pro and a comparable PC, that's a huge red flag for the employer for many reasons.

I am missing something, is the person suppose to create screen prints or stream their activity while working ? Anyway ignoring that question ---

>I refused to switch to Windows (xorg is just no for me) to support them

So, this tells me the person could have used xorg instead of Wayland to work, still staying with their preferred OS. Well, to me, it then the persons fault.

They had a option of Windows, Linux w/Xorg and probably a MAC. Software support for Wayland still far from 100% and if the Software is not available, then the employee needs to adjust.

They were using their personal device. The company did not provide a device to them.

Sounds like employee monitoring software that logs screenshots every X minutes while clocked in.

I would hate that on a work device, let alone a personal device they want me to use for free.

> Who is at fault?

Nobody? What does "fault" mean here? Are we going to court?

The employer and employee both had strict but mutually exclusive requirements. I empathize with the employee, but this still feels like at-will employment operating as intended.

I interpreted "who is at fault" in terms of "who is in the wrong", not in terms of legality.

> Funny thing is they said my activity level was too high (90%+) so my system was buggy. I said no its because I use key bindings and my input ratio is greater than their average worker.

This is even funnier, this guy knows how to work efficiently, get the job done faster and with less errors. And they fire him because they do not understand that such a person exists. They cannot wrap their head around it...

I've read elsewhere, and I'm agreeing more and more: MS windows is keeping it's users INTENTIONALLY stupid. That is, error's are strange and with weird numbers, checkmarks are unknown what they do. Troubleshooting windows is a nightmare all in an effort to make you go "IT is hard, let's leave it up to Microsoft, let's just rent it all from the cloud"

The more and longer I use Linux, the more I understand it and the landscape around it. Logs are much more "sane". Also: how to do correct troubleshooting steps. (Instead of the "shooting in the dark" type of troubleshooting that people with Windows tend to do.)

I'm at the point of blaming most bad practices in IT departments on the people just being accustom to bad Windows practices and working around them, and seeing that as "the normal". Even though it's actually insane for the amount of time wasted.

But I might me completely wrong. This is just my experience so far.

Sounds like this guy dodged a huge bullet.

> This is a personal device and they haven't provided one themselves.

BYOB is a good signal that who you're working for is either a zero stage startup, an oddball Linux shop, or a bunch of cheap asses. The farthest I'm willing to do is installing Slack and Outlook on my phone- I already have personal Slack channels and Outlook is an email client (they don't require any MDM).

If you need slack on your phone, your company should be providing you a work phone too. This is standard procedure in some industries, like Finance. You should never be using your personal phone for business communications.

This is standard for finance just because SEC requires it.

> The farthest I'm willing to do is installing Slack and Outlook on my phone

Oh god no. Why would I want work emails on my phone? I don't even have my private email on my phone.

I'd say because I have a lot more agency and less emails than with a job prior where I definitely didn't want to get work email on my phone.

> The farthest I'm willing to do is installing Slack and Outlook on my phone

You're willing to go much further than me! If I need a phone for my job, my employer needs to supply the phone to me. I'm not using my phone for work, let alone installing any software for work purposes on it.

Never BYOD. Doing business work on a personal machine is a liability both for the employee and for the employer.

In general, if an employer provides a machine (or multiple machines), I'm happy to run Windows if it were absolutely required because being a religious zealot about it would signal immaturity, unprofessionalism, and possibly unmanageability as employee. As an example, a previous employer issued me 3 devices for testing: MBP m1 Pro, Thinkpad X1 Carbon for Linux, and Thinkpad P51s for Windows.

I think balking in this instance is appropriate and they ought to find another job where the business understands the fundamentals of intellectual property.

> Never BYOD. Doing business work on a personal machine is a liability both for the employee and for the employer.

Why?

Downloaded files will be on your local drive, and also business emails if you use a mail client like Outlook to access business email. I heard of cases where lawsuit discovery requests needed legal to sweep employee laptops to respond.

It's a liability for the company because they cannot ensure basic security is in place, like the OS is being updated or a competent antivirus is running. Or Bitlocker enabled on all drives. It'd put business data at risk and open up liability. Some companies may turn around and sue the employees claiming they didn't follow basic security practices. Not to mention cases in the past like personal phones being wiped by MDM from ActiveSync when the employee leaves or is fired.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90440073/if-you-use-your-persona...

Oracle lets employees use their own laptops for business purposes if they administer it themselves. So clearly there are no legal issues to it.

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/85929-coca-cola-su...

The notorious Oracle lawyers must've put a bunch of legalese in the employment agreement that any failures to secure the laptop can result in liability to Oracle.

You'd think but you'd be wrong. Oracle isn't nearly as oppressive as people on the outside are desperate to believe.

Yeah no, they contacted us for an audit because a few people had the previously free and confusingly licensed JVM installed, and wanted us to pay for licenses for all thousands of employees. Just dealing with them cost us significant resources. The reputation is well deserved, I will never touch an Oracle product and will try to stay away from Java as well.

Don't believe me? Here's another example https://old.reddit.com//r/sysadmin/comments/165kzxg/oracleja...

> Oracle isn't nearly as oppressive as people on the outside are desperate to believe.

Why are you so desperate to believe this is normal? I dealt with dozens of software vendors and even Microsoft was nowhere near as bad even when they found actual widespread piracy of their products in an overseas sister company that we don't control. They made sure the used products got paid for and went away.

Hang on. You're the one who said "notorious Oracle lawyers" when I told you Oracle employees can use their own laptops for business use. Now I'm "desperate"? I think you're confused.

Not surprised Oracle is trying to save a buck on laptops and exposing both the company and employees to potential liability and not following basic security practices.

Your mind is already made up so this is a waste of time.

Apparently in some trades it's common for employees to provide their own tools. It's usually more basic stuff like hammers and screwdrivers. A mechanic is not going to provide their own tire balancing machine.

For example, here's a tool list from an electrical workers' union: https://ibew234.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Tool_List_fro...

There are labor laws related to this. According to one lawyer's site[1], in California employers can require employees to provide their own tools if they pay them double the minimum wage. Otherwise the employer has to provide everything.

You could debate whether this is the best system, but the point is it's customary.

A computer is a tool, but is it comparable to the kind of tool employees are expected to provide in other industries? I think it's borderline. A computer costs more than a hammer or a screwdrivers. However, a computer could easily be the only tool you need, so arguably the comparison could be to a worker's entire set of tools. The cost of a low-end computer might be in the same ballpark as that[2].

So I don't think you can conclude that it's definitely the employer's fault on the basis that they can't require you to provide a computer, because although it's borderline, maybe they can.

Having said that, the practical solution might be to just decide whether the job is worth it to you, and if this job is your best overall option, buy a second computer. You can get a brand new Windows laptop for $300. It sucks, but letting them screw up your computer and losing the job might not be the only two options.

---

[1] https://pridelegal.com/tools-on-the-job-in-california-who-pr...

[2] As a reference point, the electrical worker document says an employer must reimburse up to $890 if an employee's tools are lost.

I noticed nobody here is asking whether the OP is an employee or contractor, that is a very important distinction. (And OP has enough ambiguity and contradiction in their comments that I'm doubting the veracity of their story but I digress...)

An employer is required to provide the tools that an employee needs to do their job. With a contractor, it depends on the situation but the default is that they are required to have their own tools. Although the contractee or agency may have their own requirements, such as screenshot surveillance.

Disturbing how few remarks here and on Reddit there are about the corporate surveillance driving the author’s problem. Really depressing to see it normalized.

This kind of screenshot/recording software always made me curious what the security practices are around the recorded data. If you are doing any sort of DevOps, chances are you will, at some point, have a secret key visible on the screen. Giving non-security minded people access to this recorded data just feels like a data leak waiting to happen.

The title is misleading. It should be "I lost my job because the employer refused to provide me a device to work on and insisted I modify my private one instead."

> I think what I'll end up doing is running some picture viewer in full screen on a VM that pulls a capture from my main machine.

Yeah, did they get fired or not? Something smells.

I think they meant if they run into this in the future

Seems to me that the guy didn't have a "job" in the first place. Sounds more like applying to a new one and getting rejected for some whatever reason.

Come back when you already have a year into the job and then say "lost my job". Now it's just "didn't get a job", an entirely different and very unremarkable thing.

Use a VM?

Hah, and use some scripting magic (for example AutoHotkey) inside the VM to bring up an appropriate window before the screenshot is taken. E.g. if working on task PHB-5461 (which is a task involving webapp StupidApp with code in repository git:dumbcompany/stupidapp.git), then randomly show the browser with the webapp, or open the IDE with a random file out the repository, and let the tracking app take the screenshot.

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