[sjfidsfkds]

If your employer wants you to have Slack on a phone, they should buy you a phone. That’s been my situation across multiple employers for 5+ years.

I plug the same monitor and mouse into a work computer and a personal computer. This isn’t hard - you can use a single dongle with all of your inputs so you only need to swap one plug. Or you could use some kind of KVM switch.

I understand that startups may not want the expense of buying hardware for their employees, and you might not want to buy your own laptop, but if you end up building something valuable in your personal time, it’s in your interest to keep these things separate. For example, you might work on a side-project which is somehow related to your employer’s business, and eventually decide to quit and start your own company. You’ll be in a more secure legal position if you used your own device for that. You might judge that you aren’t likely do do that, but you should think through the trade-off.

The GitHub agreement sounds like an improvement, but most companies don’t use it. I’m not sure how well it protects your interests. If you’re working at odd hours because you’re receiving notifications on a personal device, while you’re also working on your side-project on a work device, would lawyers agree on what is personal and what is work?

[stock_toaster]

> If your employer wants you to have Slack on a phone, they should buy you a phone. That’s been my situation across multiple employers for 5+ years.

I wholeheartedly agree with computers/systems, and keeping things separate there.. but two phones? Who wants to carry around two phones just for staying on top of slack during _off hours_?

If the company isn't ok with me using slack on my personal phone, then I'll only use slack on the supplied computer during business hours (eg. they get no mobile slack out of me at all). Either that or I find a different job. Life is too short to deal with so many devices and the hassle of it all.

[wikibob]

A better question is why do you feel the need to “stay on top of slack” during your non work hours?

Having entirely separate devices is BY FAR the best thing I have done for my mental health and productivity. Same as other posters here.

[tut-urut-utut]

> I wholeheartedly agree with computers/systems, and keeping things separate there.. but two phones? Who wants to carry around two phones just for staying on top of slack during _off hours_?

I have no issues carrying the work phone with me during the _working hours_. But off hours I just leave it next to the car keys, so I don't forget to take it with me the next morning. Just because I have a work phone that I didn't ask for doesn't mean I have to carry it with myself or even check off hours. It is useful only to have a toy to play with during the boring face-to-face meetings.

I

[XorNot]

There's a virtualized Android concepts out there, but I really want it to go further. I already have dual sim in my phone, but Android has essentially no support for multiple independent copies of individual apps.

Of course, workplaces tend to insist on remote data wipe functionality and that's a big nope from the get go.

The sad thing is, Google could fix this and use their authoritative position to declare it safe: support multiple encryption keys in the secure enclave on a device, encrypt apps associated with different profiles with different keys, and allow registering "work" keys as remote wipeable. Throw in some sort of copy+paste restriction option to satisfy the pedant IT managers who think cameras aren't cheap and common.

[toastal]

If carrying two phones is not feasible, why would carrying two laptops be? I've done work and person projects traveling through different countries at hotels and coffee shops pre-pandemic, and there is no way I would carry two phones OR two laptops.

[soperj]

why the hell would you want to stay on top of work during off hours?

[rodgerd]

> Who wants to carry around two phones just for staying on top of slack during _off hours_?

Why would I be doing that?

[slipframe]

What's the point of having phones thinner than razor blades, if not to facilitate carrying two of them? I think I could stack 5 or more phones and they'd still easily fit in my pocket.

[mike_d]

> If your employer wants you to have Slack on a phone, they should buy you a phone

...and if you want to have personal stuff on a laptop you should buy your own.

[alkonaut]

I think most of us are in the situation that our employers don’t explicitly want us to have Slack/Teams on our phones. They want us to be available.

Slack/Teams on my (personal) phone means I can run an errand in the middle of the day and still be available. I’m happy to use my personal device for it. The alternative is having much less flexibility.

If my employer expected me to be available outside office hours or when not at my computer it would be a completely different story. Like if I was on call. Then I’d demand they pay for my smartphone too.

[ghaff]

As someone who worked before there were smartphones--indeed, before there were mainstream cellphones and laptops--I'm acutely aware of just how "chained to your desk" you used to be in that, if you weren't there, you couldn't be reached. Of course, you were sometimes in meetings. But, for the most part, you really needed to be sitting at your desk most of the day if only because someone might call you with a question. (Yes, a sales rep calling me on the phone as a product manager was the norm.)

[rtpg]

OK so they buy you the phone.

Shouldn't the thing _actually be_ "if they want you to have Slack on your phone, they should pay you for availability during off hours"? The phone buying is a basically one-time cost from their perspective.

[sharken]

Very much agree, a phone should either be for personal use or work.

With 2FA being more common in the workplace it just makes sense to have that on the work phone.

[u801e]

I actually have a RSA token key fob which I keep on the same keyring as my home keys.

[grillvogel]

ive got a wireless mouse and keyboard that support multiple devices, so i dont even need to swap the plug. to use my personal computer i just switch the monitor input and the mode on the mouse/keyboard.