Today, I just got news that our company is mandating that everyone installs spy software on their computers. As I am not going to install such software on my computer, it has been said to me that if we don’t find some solution, I will get fired.
To be honest, I was thinking about changing jobs anyway, so I don’t mind that much, but I am not sure what to do now.
I work in IT, so I have quite a lot of job opportunities, but most of them are something that is mostly harmful to society.
So I am considering two options: Try to find some meaningful job in IT (which is likely to be very hard).
Find some nice good paying job where I can work, ideally part-time, and focus on working on open source software in my free time.
Not really sure what to do, does anyone have any experience with similar situation?
To me, company requiring I install their monitoring software on my personal PC is a massive red flag. Even if they didn’t threaten to fire you, I would start looking for new work immediately. Honestly, my company expecting staff to use personal equipment for work would be a red flag to me even if they didn’t require monitoring software. From a security perspective alone, I wouldn’t want people using their personal devices on the office network. I don’t allow anything except domain-joined PCs using our specific image on the network.
Depending where you live, that could also run into legal areas because it is often illegal to monitor employees outside work hours. If you somehow caught them tracking your PC usage when you were off the clock, you’d probably have grounds for a lawsuit. I think even the US, with their shitty employee protection, doesn’t allow monitoring off the clock.
However, I know in the US it is staggering how little expectation of privacy you are allowed as an employee outside of that. I believe it is actually legal for companies to require you to install spy software on personal PCs if they are used for work purposes. Thankfully where I live it’s a little bit better, one of the requirements is that companies must disclose that the employees are being monitored as well as who is doing the monitoring. As the sole IT for the company I am the one that would be in charge of any tracking (I enforce none in our company. Short of staff doing anything illegal from a company PC, I honestly do not care. It’s their manager’s fault if they are slacking).
Could you just tell them “oops, sorry, all my personal machines just broke. Golly gee, guess you gotta pony up for one so I can do my work”. If you need a PC to do your work, it’s up to them to provide one.
I chose to work on my personal machine, I am much more comfortable and productive on it. Our company does issue work laptops, but they are basically unusable. Overall I get the point of not trusting outside machines, but I would not want to work on anything other than my system, which to be honest is much more secure than other computers at our company.
Not really sure what the laws are to be honest, but technically I am not currently their employee, so they probably wouldn’t apply anyway. I have been thinking about quitting for some time anyway, and this really pushed me to do it, so I don’t really mind that much. Also, if they fire me I know they will lose a lot of money, which is a nice benefit.