[c0achmcguirk]

This person chose to have their free phone from the company as their personal phone too. This is completely optional at Google, a really nice perk, and it's made very clear that anything under your work profile will be wiped if you leave.

They will not wipe your personal phone or your personal profile on your phone. This is completely avoidable and shouldn't come as a surprise.

[missosoup]

It's not a perk, it's a liability. This was an option at pretty much every company I worked at and I never understood what moron would choose to put their personal data/life on a corporate device (or connect their personal device to the corporate network and its management policy) with typical policies dictating that not only can the device be remotely wiped, it can also be remotely snooped.

The only brief moment of this being acceptable was Samsung phones being able to have completely split personal/corporate profiles across 2 sims in a single phone and have 2 copies of each app, but that seems to have died.

If your employer is managing the device you're choosing to also use for personal data, it's 100% your fault and 0% surprise when it backfires on you.

If you work in tech and don't have a separate work phone+laptop and personal phone+laptop, you're either a founder or an idiot.

[endtime]

Moron here. I work for Google and use my work phone as my personal phone, via Android work profile, so the work stuff is siloed. This means I have less than full access to company resources, but I don't really want to read code or respond to bugs on my phone anyway.

My understanding is that Google can't see the personal stuff. But it doesn't matter that much to me, personally, if they can (I'm not doing any exciting corporate activism, anything illegal, etc.). At least, it doesn't matter more than a couple grand a year plus the inconvenience of two phones. I'm not saying everyone should feel this way, and obviously some people value privacy more than I do, but that's the trade-off that makes sense for this idiot.

[0xEFF]

Over half of Google's workforce are contractors. Google does not provide a mobile device to contractors. The options for TVC's are to let Google control a personal device or take a significant productivity hit and opt-out of mobile email, chat, and docs.

[threatofrain]

It is a net perk because phone calling or mobile messaging is inevitably part of work and you don't want to buy your own separate phone. It's only awkward for anyone who isn't used to having two phones.

[tyingq]

Android does support a work profile and "two copies of each app", with some limitations. https://developer.android.com/work/managed-profiles

[mcguire]

"...or connect their personal device to the corporate network and its management policy..."

I've done this.

You are absolutely right.

[sumeno]

It reads to me like she was using her personal phone to access corp, not a corp phone to access personal stuff. They absolutely will wipe your personal phone in that scenario

[shadowgovt]

If the user had the phone configured as a corp phone and was taking photos and did not have Cloud backup enabled to automatically shunt those photos to their personal account, then when the phone is forcefully de-corped, it will try to purge local photo cache (because there's no way to know if photos in local cache were corp-sensitive or not, so the conservative solution is "Burn it all down").

Of course, if the user does have their Cloud backup enabled to automatically shunt photos, they're at risk of using the phone in a work environment and accidentally storing proprietary info in their personal account.

The fact the camera UI doesn't really allow you to choose what account you're snapping photos under makes the whole arrangement lose-lose, and this is a really easy failure mode for a user to find themselves in if they don't see it coming.

[dawnerd]

This happened to me before too, but the phone was wiped by accident by IT. Never again will I trust any corp junk on a personal device.

[avocado4]

The device policy is simple. If you add a Corp account to any phone it's subject to device policy, including wipeout after you get fired. It's very obvious when you enroll.

[papito]

A girl I used to date had a company phone. She was getting these racy random messages that, what appeared to be, were lewd conversations between two other employees, or two random someones, presumably on the same system. I found that hilarious.

[michaelt]

So if you take a photo with the default camera app, is that put into the area that gets wiped, or the area that doesn't?

If photos would be put in the area that doesn't get wiped, any idea what the quote is about?

[lnanek2]

She likely wasn't using separate work and personal profiles. That's a fairly new innovation. I've been using Android since the first public device was sold and only started doing it with the Samsung S10 5G. Most people just accept company MDM on their personal profiles and install everything in the same place.

[gregd]

This isn't that hard to understand. In order to access corporate email systems, you have two choices generally. Either you use a Corporate Owned device or you use a Personal Device but allow Corporate to do what they want to it.

In either situation, the corp has the ability to remotely wipe the device and enforce other policies on said device.

This should be abundantly clear to anyone who works in Tech.

[saiya-jin]

Then I wouldn't call it personal phone, strange description from OP/quote. That term indicates to me a phone I own completely, hardware, software and all data like photos.

Same with laptops - if one decides to use work laptop for personal use its their choice at their own risk, but it doesn't become their personal laptop in any meaningful way. Even if hardware would stay after employment ends, every reasonable company would wipe it clean with some deep format & clean image of OS.

[stronglikedan]

Your weirdly aggressive tone aside, I'll just say that I don't work with the smartest of people, but even still, almost everyone here with a company phone does choose to keep a separate private phone, namely due to perfectly valid policies like the one being discussed. She chose not to, and while she is a victim, it's only by her own choosing, so she is definitely solely to blame.

[el_s3v3n]

Yes, they did choose. It's a very voluntary and conscious decision to say "I am going to use my corporate device for personal needs, too."

Google provides a number of things. Food, showers, vehicles, lockers. You may CHOOSE to use these things or you may CHOOSE not to.

If you CHOOSE to store all your personal docs on your work laptop, and the laptop goes up in flames, who do you blame then?

Victim shaming is one thing, but being a naive child is another. A wise, rational, level-headed adult understands that company-owned assets are not suitable for personal use. Period.

[scarface74]

Who doesn’t know that using a company device for personal use is a bad idea? We aren’t talking about a Luddite here.

[notyourwork]

It’s made very clear when you enroll in MDM what the implications are. If we can’t trust tech people to own decisions like this than how do we expect tech illiterate to understand. These are software engineers at Google, not someone’s grandma who did what the cell phone guy at the mall said to do. Come on.