Comment by zem
2 days ago
on the positive side, it's a small thing monetarily, but retention of company laptops is a nice goodwill gesture
2 days ago
on the positive side, it's a small thing monetarily, but retention of company laptops is a nice goodwill gesture
Many of them are fully depreciated and worth nothing, or nearly so, on paper anyway. Any new employees won't want an old laptop. And it will cost time and money to deal with shipping, storage, cleaning, re-imaging, etc. On average, the bean counters must figure it's cheaper to let people keep them.
Worth maybe $1000, not even half a month's rent in almost any major US city
They’re mostly high specced, newer M model MacBook pros
I suggest that you look up the price of second hand M2 Macbook Pros.
They do say they have employees in 90 countries…
Eh, from the company's perspective this is logistically easiest--the laptop's value is hardly worth the effort.
a lot of companies ask for equipment to be returned due to security concerns, or just on principle
A company which is even moderately "OK" at IT will already have the means to instantly lock and securely wipe devices of any employee at a moments notice. Doing this during a RIF is a hell of a lot better than making the mail room deal with a bunch of filthy laptops.
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klarna allowed us to buy our work phone and macbook paying only the tax value. We had to give them the devices so they would be wiped out by a third party, then they mailed them to my home.
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One former employer had this policy, and also refused to provide a way to ship said equipment back. No one was happy with my alternative solution: leaving it at the police station instead.
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When I left microsoft, I kept everything EXCEPT data bearing devices. I got the sense they REALLY didn't want to have to collect the laptops either, but the VPs were forced to by compliance.
We always let our ex-employees keep their laptops because a. why not? and b. I don't need laptops for positions that no longer exist.
I was at a company that let people keep laptops (after they were wiped) largely because the severance was so meager it seemed they expected people to sell the laptops for some extra cash. :p
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“Welcome to your new job at HighSpeed TopFlight. Here’s an old, used laptop.”
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And yet only one company I've ever worked for went this way.
I wish more did; it really is such a small goodwill gesture to departing employees.
companies that collect their laptops from laid off => where do these laptops go? how they recycle them?
It's a huge "depends". Different areas have different recycling opportunities. Some hardware providers have their own buyback/replacement programs. Also some companies may want to reimage and reuse the returned hardware. Finally you want some stock of temporary laptops available for people who are waiting for repairs so some functioning used ones are great for that.
Yeah at the BigCorps I was at, old laptops (as long as they weren’t more than 3-4 years old) were usually reimaged and kept on hand as spares or for interns, etc. But I imagine after a large layoff they ended up with way more than they’d ever actually need.
Redistributing them to new employees/interns is very common, especially if the laptop is only 1-2 years old.