Missing the point

Missing the point

Another day, another misguided article claiming that “bad attitudes to BYOD put off prospective employes”. At least this time they missed out the hitherto obligatory reference to “millennials”, whatever more-than-usually-misleading category they might be.

Look, the issue is rarely with BYOD as such. If you’re as entitled a know-it-all as to make your employment choices based on whether your prospective employer will let you spend your own money on work technology, there is no help for you. Plenty of companies, my own sainted employer included, offer company-issued Macs and iPhones as optional alternatives to Dells and Blackberries. Wouldn’t that be a better trait to look out for?

The problem people have with anti-BYOD policies is that they’re generally the tip of an iceberg of bad policy and straightjacketed thinking. Companies that ban BYOD are not far from whitelisting approved executables, restricting admin privileges to users with a “valid and documented reason” for having that access, configuring ridiculously restrictive content firewalls, and so on and so forth.

Others have already explained in depth why BYOD is a symptom of unhealthy IT practices. In fact, the BYODers are arguably doing the company a favour by identifying problem areas. As I had occasion to say on Twitter, users interpret bad IT policies as damage and route around them.

BYOD just happens to be the latest buzzword which people can hang their Dilbertian complaints onto, but reversing that one clause would not fix the problem. In fact, a greater worry is a future in which everyone is required to purchase and maintain IT equipment for work use at their own expense. I might be able to do this now, and in fact I did Spend My Own Money and bought myself an 18 month reprieve from lugging the monster Dull around, but I certainly couldn’t have afforded to do that when I started out in my career - at least, not without cutting into other areas of my budget, like food.

Stick to the important concerns. BYOD will fix itself, if all the other pieces are in place.