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Handhelds Linux Business Hardware

Property Rights and the MSDN PDA Give-Away? 95

Posted by Cliff from the possession-being-9/10ths-of-the-law dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "MSDN subscribers recently qualified for a free Viewsonic V37 PDA (supposedly, around 25,000 units were given away). The software development group, at my company, just received our shipments; however, now there is contention between the developers and the company over who owns the PDAs. The company I work for (a worldwide information technology and services company) contends that that they own the PDAs because they were obtained through a subscription purchased by the company and, therefore, the PDAs are company property (and so all company policies governing the use of their property applies). This upset quite a few developers in my group who were excited to have a new gadget to work/play with and now any tinkering must be approved by the company. So, who owns the PDAs -- the developers who found out about the promotion, filled out the forms, paid for the stamps, on their own initiative, etc. or the company who purchased the MSDN subscriptions to make the developers eligible for the 'free' promotion? Also, I am curious to find out if others are having similar debates at their respective companies. Details of the offer can be found here."
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Property Rights and the MSDN PDA Give-Away? More

Property Rights and the MSDN PDA Give-Away?

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  • now any tinkering must be approved by the company

    Any company that doesn't let you tinker with your company owned hardware sounds like a pretty shitty place to work.

    The fact that they are making such a big deal about this just reinforces that.
    • Quit your job good thinking. Ok everyone we don't need to comment on the article anymore, this guy has it figured out. I have to go and quit my job now because we ran out of staples.

    • My company let us keep 'em (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I work for a large company at which us MSDN-having developers applied for the giveaway. I hear that management had some discussion about taking them away, but decided to let us keep them. I think my company was irritated that MS didn't instead offer them a cash credit.

      I don't think they (the PHB's) understood that Microsoft is not simply giving away PDA's to make people happy that they are MS developers. Instead, I think MS is giving them away as yet another way to 0wn a market. .Net Compact Frameworks

  • Consider the reverse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drfrank ( 16371 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:07PM (#6584222)
    Here's a hypothetical situation for you: You buy a new digital camera, and are unaware that there is currently a $100 rebate available for that camera. If I fill out the rebate form, and mail it in at my own expense, would you say that that $100 is mine, or yours?

    Nevermind the fact that you probably don't want to lose your job over a PDA.
    • It wouldn't be mine, but it wouldn't be yours either. Why? I have the camera and the packaging that it came in, and in order to get the rebate, you would need:

      1. The UPC code (clipped off the box)
      2. The serial number of the camera
      3. A copy of the receipt
      4. Super secret hidden rebate code printed somewhere inside the box

      And about 100 other things before you could even think about sending in the rebate. Even then you're most likely not going to get a check from the rebate company.
      • When is the last time you've had to gather 104 pieces of information to request a rebate? The only thing I have ever needed was receipt and UPC, and possibly the serial number, which is sometimes printed on the UPC/proof of purchase area anyway. And I've never heard of not getting a $100 rebate, as they are usually coming from large companies like digital camera, PC, or PDA manufacturers. Of course, anything is possible.

    • OP: Who leaked the word (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @10:06AM (#6587609) Journal
      Ok, now that it has become a can of worms you pretty much have to submit to the will of the company. In all rights they bought the software licenses and the PDA is something that came free with purchase ... so in effect it is theirs.

      Two thoughts :
      1. Who the fsck told anybody with any sort of authority about the PDAs? If I have to guess I would say that there are only half a dozen or less licenses at your company and thus only half a dozen (or less) PDAs - and probably no more PDAs than people in the IT department who would be getting them. The boxes come in, go directly to IT and you little weasles tear them open and start playing with your new toys - nobody else needs to know. Whoever leaked this to the managers needs to be blackballed, cause it cost you guys your toys (an important aspect of being IT.) Maybe it was the seventh guy on the totem pole, the guy that didn't get one and he was jealous, or maybe ... I don't even want to think about it.

      2. SkyMiles. Whoever is making these decisions is a manager - and managers fly places. Now you are not in a position to be making demands, but if there is any leverage for discussion on the matter right now you need to turn it around into a language they understand : business perks. If your company lets the manager keep his SkyMiles when he flies for business, even though they are rightfully an extension to the ticket bought by the company, so he can later use the miles for personal travel or whatever ... this is technically the same thing. In fact it should be reported as income to the IRS by the individual employees, but that isn't going to happen. If you could pick the most charismatic of your group and tactfully get the deciding manager to align these PDAs in his head to the same sort of business perk as SkyMiles, subtly suggesting that hey, we are all on the same team and yea, we acknowledge that we are in effect getting some free goodies as part of the business process, and actually SkyMiles could be used for business travel to save the company money whereas the PDAs could in no way save the company money by being micromanaged ... you might get away with taking them home to play with them as you wish as long as playing with them didn't negatively affect your work. If your company micromanages SkyMiles and doesn't let the flyers keep them for personal use, you are fuxored, hand over the toys.
    • "You buy a new digital camera, and are unaware that there is currently a $100 rebate available for that camera...."

      Yes, this reminds me of similar situations here. If someone buys, say, a printer or computer for the company through Dell, and Dell offers a monetary rebate (say, $100) for filling out a simple form, no way in hell is that rebate property of the person who sent it in. That's essentially stealing from the company.

    • It seems pretty obvious that "to the finder goes the spoils." If you bought the camera and are too stupid to use the rebate, that's your own problem.

  • Company policies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by menscher ( 597856 ) <menscher+slashdot@u i u c . e du> on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:08PM (#6584227) Homepage Journal
    I've seen companies that don't let employees use their work email address (which the company pays for) for personal email.

    Also seen companies that claim they own the frequent-flier miles that employees accumulate, since they paid for the tickets.

    Seems like an unpleasant work environment. They'd probably do better to let the employees make use of things that don't cost the company extra. Certainly helps morale, which in turn helps productivity.

    • Also seen companies that claim they own the frequent-flier miles that employees accumulate, since they paid for the tickets.

      The Federal Government is a small, little, company with this policy.
      • That policy has been changed as of the end of 2001.

        See here. [gsa.gov]
      • Government is always an odd-duck in these sorts. If you are a federal or state employee, you are almost always not even allowed to accept a free lunch from a vendor, whether you have influence over purchasing decisions or not.

        A coworker was given a portfolio with our SAN vendor's name on the cover and he just gave it to me and said "keep it away from work." Had the wrong person seen it, he could have easily been fired over that. Unpleasant? Yes. Essential from a civil service/financially accountable point

    • I think these are both fine policies. I've seen far too many abuses of corporate travel policies so that managers can accumulate miles, and I know too many people that have left a company in disgrace because the IT staff were snooping on their emails to their goat lovers.

      Back in the day, there was no such thing as personal email addresses, but times have changed. Keep your personal stuff off the company's computers, you'll be better off for it in the long run.

  • All together now..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:09PM (#6584233) Homepage Journal
    IANAL...
    We are not a lawyer...
    Slashdot is not a lawyer...

    I doubt you'll get anything, since the company paid for the merchandise. If you get a "buy one, get one free" your neighbor who told you about the offer doesn't get your freebie. You could ask for the cost of the stamp, but that's about all you'll get. The best you can hope for is to ask for an exemption and to the usage policy and let you tinker with it.

    This annoys me so much, I'm tempted to think the question is a troll. Does anyone really think that the PDA wouldn't belong to the company?

    • This annoys me so much, I'm tempted to think the question is a troll. Does anyone really think that the PDA wouldn't belong to the company?

      I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee. Your company pays for you to go to a trade show and you drop your card in someone's fishbowl, winning a DVD player/PDA/Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend/whatever. I've never known a company that tried to take that aw

      • But "winning a DVD player/PDA/Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend/whatever" isn't part of the contract for the trade show entry.

        And "Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend"? **Insert BSOD joke here.**

      • If this was 1999, I'd agree with ya, but in this crappy job market/economy, the employers have all the cards and if you don't like it, you can go look for an IT job with the 1000's of others.
      • If a company wants to piss off employees, they could probably do something like that. Most don't do it over a $0.10 pen or a $0.50 ball that lights up. If they were complaining about a giveaway, then that would be another story.

        A drawing at a trade show is usually won by the person, not by the company. The key is the "No puchase necessary" line. If you dropped in your friend's business card who happened to be at home, your friend would probably still get the drawing's prize. If the prize was based on
      • I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee. Your company pays for you to go to a trade show and you drop your card in someone's fishbowl, winning a DVD player/PDA/Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend/whatever. I've never known a company that tried to take that away from the employee. Ditto for this sort of thing. The company doesn't need the PDA, else they would have gone out and bought it (unless they hav

      • Re:All together now..... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) * on Saturday August 02, 2003 @07:49AM (#6594965)
        I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee.

        Reminds me of one company I worked for. A large hardware manufacturer donated a dozen or so PDAs to our development group. They weren't quite a perk per se; said hardware manufacturer was just getting into PDAs, and they gave us the hardware and associated SDKs for free, to see what we'd come up with by way of cool applications. Then, we'd go to market together. It was more like seeding developers than giving away freebies.

        All those PDAs ended up in the attache cases of non-technical managers. No applications, cool or otherwise, for that platform were ever developed by the company. In fact, it doesn't produce much by way of anything anymore. Exactly the same thing happened when a handset manufacturer gave the developers their latest phones too.
    • Does anyone actually think this company isn't a POS? The developers did the work give them the damn PDA's. They were free and it will go a long way to fostering good will.
      • I never said they were smart, just that they can do it. Right != intelligent.

        I know first hand how much a blow this can be. I go to a trade show, was given a free software title, only to have it taken by the company since that paid for my ticket. I've since left and have been nothing but glad that I did.
      • If I had to guess, I would say that somebody up the food chain is just salivating over the thought of getting his hands on one of the PDAs and is invoking 'business policy' to take them away from the developers. Petty, particularlly over a $300 toy, but that's where I would place my bets.

        Two weeks after he gets it, the manager is going to lose interest and put it in a drawer where it will stay until all usefulness from the PDA has long been depreciated (ie, like a 486 computer would be considered now) and
    • I doubt you'll get anything

      ...other than a pink slip. Complain loudly enough, and they just might give you the boot. This doesn't sound like the kind of environment where you complain about this and get what you want.

  • Answered your own question (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    [...] or the company who purchased the MSDN subscriptions

    Ding. Congratulations. Thank you for playing.

    You have learned "The Golden Rule". He who has the gold, makes the rules.

    Don't like it? Pay for your own subscriptions then get your own free stuff.

  • Ummmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Breakerofthings ( 321914 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:16PM (#6584273)
    So, what if you paid for the subscription, and your manager pointed out the deal ... who do you think that it should belong to, then?

    Personally, were it my decision to make at your company, I would let you have them; it is a windfall, and would make for a good faith gesture on the company's part.
    But, if the company paid for the subscription, and this is a realized, tangible benefit of that subscription, then it is the company's property.
    Look at it like this; the toy is not Truly Free, or I (not having an MSDN subscription) would have been eligible ... eligibility for the offer was "bought", fair and square ...

    Besides, if you paid nothing, either for the subscription, or for the toy itself, where do you get your sense of entitlement?

    Of course, for what it is worth, if the company wants to own the toys, they owe you some stamps ...

    Of course, since it came from Micro$oft, you could make a valid argument that you bartered your soul for it ... :)
    • OK, well riddle me this.

      Suppose a company provides their workers with free soft drinks, and an employee happens to win a large sweepsstakes from some sort of under-the-cap game.

      Who gets the money?
      • They are giving the soft drinks to the employees. This is implicit since obviously they don't expect to see the soft drinks again.

        In this case, I don't think the company has given the MSDN subscribtions to the employees. They could be transfered to someone else if an employee leaves the company.
        • I don't think the company has given the MSDN subscribtions to the employees. They could be transfered to someone else if an employee leaves the company.

          Actualy I have MSDN it is licenced to me. And me only. If I leave then technicaly the company is out of luck. Think it is not possable? Go read the EULA again.
      • If the company provides free soft drinks for consumption on the premesis, during work hours ...
        I think that the prize technically belongs to the company, just as it would if you used the company's internet connection, or email, or whatever to participate in a drawing, or whatever. Just as it would if you participated in a contest on company time.

        But I think that it would, in general, be in the company's best interests to let the employee keep the winnings; just because you have a right, does not mean

  • Be happy.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:20PM (#6584286)
    They didn't round up all the units and sell them on ebay. I can think of a couple of companies that would.
  • If the company hadn't paid the subscription, would the devs have been eligable to get the PDA's? If you buy a PS2 and I send in for the $20 rebate because you didn't realise you could, who gets the rebate?

    Quite simply, the PDAs are the property of the company simply because it was their subscription that paid for them. Therefore they have the say over what does and does not happen with them. Just because you and your buddies saw the offer doesn't give you ownership. Thats like me claiming your rebate on a
    • Wake up and smell reality. Stop trying to be a troll. If you're that unhappy about the situation, take your toys and go home. I'm sure Cartman would be proud.

      Just be sure that when you do, you only take the toys that belong to you, and not your company. :P
  • If I buy something on the company credit card and send in the rebate with proof of purchase myself who gets to keep the money.

    Who owns the frequent flyer miles? The company who paid for the tickets or the traveler who risked deep vein thrombosis?

    I think the answers to these questions are the same answer you seek.

    • This is the whole point of frequent flier miles, major-hassle mail-in rebates, etc. They are intended primarily as thinly disguised bribes or kickbacks for employees who spend company money. Every so often some government agency or megacorp tries to horn in on mileage or some similar premium. But the airlines won't go for it, they are quite adamant in insisting that the mileage belongs to the person who flew the metal, as they say on FlyerTalk [flyertalk.com].
    • If I buy something on the company credit card and send in the rebate with proof of purchase myself who gets to keep the money.

      I'm still confused on this. My boss does this stuff all the time. Just yesterday, she gave me 2 spindles of CD's to use. One was some no-name, one was TDK. The no-name was still shrink wrapped, the TDK's were missing the shrink wrap and UPC. Hmm. I remember seeing TDK's on rebate sale somewhere this week...

      She's always slow to buy stuff we need, except when there is a rebat
  • seriously, ask microsoft.. they are usually pretty clear on what they think the rules governing their give-aways are... although what MS wants to think and what the law is isn't always the same thing. when they came to my school and gave away a bunch of copies of windows xp and visual studio, they sent everyone an email saying it was wrong for us to ebay them.. didn't stop me from making a quick $100 though.. but their word might convince your boss.

    • Re:ask microsoft.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 )
      although what MS wants to think and what the law is isn't always the same thing.

      It probably is in this case. It previously belonged to Microsoft. Microsoft was entitled to give it away to whoever they wanted. Essentially, it belongs to whoever MS thinks they gave them to.
  • from https://vstudio.joleschgroup.com/faq.aspx

    Q. My company or organization has multiple licenses for an eligible product via an Open, Select or Enterprise Agreement. Can I (or someone else) enter multiple registrations to take advantage of this offer?

    A. No, this offer is for individual end-users only. If your company or organization has multiple licenses for an eligible product, please ask your end-users to register their product individually through this site. You cannot register someone else on his or her behalf.

  • I vote company (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @09:16PM (#6584547) Homepage Journal
    If the company paid for the subscription, then the employees were doing company work when they filled out the coupons (or whatever) and therefore the company owns the devices. Were I in charge of company resources I would then lend the devices to the people who showed the initiative to fill out whatever needed filling out, with specific instructions that they could do whatever constructive thing they wanted to do with the device, but they couldn't take it with them if they left.
    • If the company paid for the subscription, then the employees were doing company work when they filled out the coupons (or whatever) and therefore the company owns the devices.

      If I buy a lottery ticket on company time and win the first prize, is the company is entitled to take the money? I think not! If a co-worker gives me a bar of chocolate, if is my boss entitled to grap it out of my hands and scoff it? I think not!

      It has been reported that Microsoft say that the offer is open to individual end-u

      • If you buy "Take 5" or any given compo magazine and subsequently work on the entries during company time, then you're wasting company time but the company probably doesn't own any prizes you win. If you rip a coupon out of the newspaper that the company purchases then arguably any prizes you win belong to the company.

        Do you think that you'd be entitled to the mail-in rebate for a product purchased by the company just because you filled in the coupon?

    • Re:I vote company (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @10:31AM (#6587838) Journal
      Lets say there were six total PDAs in question, and six developers. Then lets pretend you are paying your developers $50,000 annually apiece. Finally lets pretend the PDA cost $250 apiece (the cost of a Dell Axim, plus or minus.)

      Your employees carry a fully burdened cost (salary plus expenses like benefits, etc.) of $300 per day. These PDA are basically a windfall, one of your resourceful developers found out about the promotion and sent in the paperwork. Didn't cost the company anything extra because the time lost doing that was pretty much taken from his slashdot time, not productive time.

      Is it really worth pissing off half a dozen developers over a toy with a street value of less than what you pay these guys in a single day. Trust me, they are going to hold a grudge. For a while. Maybe for a year. You could (in theory) lose 20% of the total efficiency of half a dozen developers (20% of pretty close to half a million dollars a year burn rate in fully burdened cost is roughly $100,000) in lost productivity because you have managed to cause a rift between you and them over $0 (actual cost to your company) in PDA toys.

      Do a benefit / cost ratio comparing what you will get out of keeping the PDAs away from the guys that showed the initiative in obtaining them, to what you will get out of just giving them to them and being genuinely happy about letting them keep them.

      Then vote again, we will give you a 'do over.'

  • Geez, haven't figured out the answer yet? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just make it fair to everybody. Split each PDA in half and the company
    will get half of each PDA and the person who won it gets
    the other half of the PDA.

    Geez, like that was tough to figure out.
  • I went to a "PIC microcontroller seminar" on my own dime - about $200 (but I got the programmer hardware as well). The only thing my employer gave me was the day off.

    When there, they announced they were going to be giving away an HP LogicDart - a $800 logic analyzer.

    While we were all eating lunch (provided as part of the seminar) I commented that I hoped that I would win the Dart, as unlike the bulk of the people attending I would have clear ownership.

    Guess what - I did indeed win it!

    Funny thing though
  • A guy a know is a salesperson for a photography equipment store. He won a three week long, all-expense-paid european cruise from Kodak for selling more kodak thermal printers than anyone in the country. His boss took it.

    A few years ago he won the same contest, and his boss took a brand new BMW.

    Why he doesn't quit, I don't know.

    • He won a three week long, all-expense-paid european cruise from Kodak for selling more kodak thermal printers than anyone in the country. His boss took it.

      Why he doesn't quit, I don't know

      He gets a three week long vacation from his boss! If my boss was that much of a jerk I'd take every opprotunity to send him away for 3 weeks!
    • Geez, with a boss like that, I'm amazed one of those "thermal" printers didn't suddenly burst into flame, amazingly at the same time as the spontaneous combustion of said BMW...
    • This is clearcut case of the boss abusing his position and company policy.

      Most of the time prizes and gifts are appropriated by the company in accordance with company policy, but in most cases the prizes are raffled off among employees. This is fair when someone is given a prize that was based off of a group effort. Every employee / team member contributed, so everyone has a fair shot at reaping the prize reward.

      When the boss enacts company policy, confiscates a prize, and then reallocates the prize to
    • Quit? I'd hire a hitman. That's disgusting.
  • I bought MSDN myself and registered for the giveaway and it was supposed to ship earlier this month but I didn't get it. So I called the 800 number and they said I had to wait another 8-12 weeks. So what gives?
  • Long before I arrived (1999), our Telecoms Ops manager was at a Nortel or Alcatel junket up in Boston. He won a nice Nikkon digital camera (at the time) as a door prize which the company appropriated for itself when he arrived back home. The moral of the story, don't travel with the VP in charge of your dept.
  • Just how valuable are these PDAs anyway? It seems awfully petty to be arguing over the ownership of something that was given away for free in the first place, and would probably only have cost a couple of hundred dollars if it hadn't.

    Frankly, I can't see the point in making a fuss over it.
    • Less than $300 street, I would guess. Odds are some manager wants them (never read the commandment that says 'Thou shalt not covet thy developers toys' or whatever) and is invoking executive privlidge to take it by force. That or the manager is just on a power trip and wants to micromanage the developers. Neither of which is going to be healthy for the company in the long term.

  • Sounds like COI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jolshefsky ( 560014 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @06:53AM (#6586556) Homepage
    Most companies have a conflict of interest statement somewhere that prevents people from receiving "gifts" from companines. A friend of mine once signed up for a contest at a company he worked with, and when he won, he checked around and found he couldn't accept the gift because it was akin to a bribe.

    In my opinion, though, I think the company is foolish for trying to claim the PDA's. Most places can't budget an occasional $20 for pizza for their employees, so being able to give people a cool gift for $0 out of their pocket seems like a pretty good deal.

  • Your employer owns it! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RedWolves2 ( 84305 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @09:21AM (#6587207) Homepage Journal
    You would not have these devices without Visual Studio.NET 2003 and so if you didn't purchase VS.NET 2003 or MSDN then you have no rights to the V37.

    When I filled out my forms and sent in my reciept I knew full well that my company owned the device. Luckily my company didn't care about them and let us developers keep them.
    • In case you hadn't noticed, MSDN is licensed to a particular end-user, not the company.
      • yeah and I am an ewmployee of said company under a contract of which my employer paid for said subscription. Therefore even though my name is listed as the end-user my company holds all the rights to me and my subscription. Therefore the V37 is property of the employer and not of the end-user.

        Now if I were to purchase the MSDN subscription out of my own pocket then it would be mine. But since I am using a tools that my company paid for and I recieve a free device because of the tools my company pays for
    • You would not have these devices without Visual Studio.NET 2003
      Not necessarily. I suspect Microsoft merely used the list of MSDN subscribers to get to developers. Microsoft wants to make developers happy and to think of Microsoft when they are speccing out new software. I don't think Microsoft was really intending to award people just for buying the MSDN subscription.
      • Dude you needed to buy Visual Studio .NET 2003 or have a subscription of MSDN in which you recieved Visual Studio .NET 2003 within your subscription time frame. The requirements for recieving the V37 included the serial number from the about Visual Studio .NET 2003 help menu. The whole purpose of getting the V37 was because it came already loaded with the .NET Compact Framework of which you can only develop against with the lastest version of Visual Studio .NET which was 2003. It had nothing to do with m

  • No purchase necessary? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Friday August 01, 2003 @11:07AM (#6588192)
    Aren't these kind of things supposed to come with a disclaimer of "no purchase necessary"?

    If it did, then it should make it obvious that the MSDN subscription only facilitated the entry into the contest, but was not required, and therefore the spoils should go to the individuals.

  • In the same boat... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work for a major company (no names) but the policy is standard. Any time an employee "wins" something at a tradeshow, or gets something like this PDA as part of a "deal" that technically the company owns the employee MUST turn the object over to the company.

    AFTER THAT, though, said toy is then given away to one of that employee's group as kind of a (free) raffle. (ie. If a developer won the prize, any and all developers are eligible, but NOT say Upper Management or the nice cleaning lady.)

    The logic is t
  • I don't know your companites policy on gifts, but it may dictate they have to be thrown out altogether. Many companies don't allow business related gifts, hook-ups, or kick-downs of any kind since it creates potential (no matter how abstract) conflict-of-interest.

    Depending on the standing policy they may be able to force you to throw them in the trash, destroy them, or return them. Maybe they could fire you on the spot for actively seeking and accepting the gift! I vote that you can keep your job and
  • You should have clarified this with your line manager or the company before you went ahead with submitting the claim for the goods. This would have saved your heartache.

    I think - unfortunately for you - the company owns the property. In general, the company can be said to own gifts and other items that are related to your activities in the course of business, but most of the time you're allowed to keep them for yourself (I'm thinking of christmas gifts, etc) in so far as it doesn't look like it's cause com
  • My company has established guidelines about accepting promotional items from people we do business with. Small items of insignificant value are acceptable. This would include branded little foam trinkets, t-shirts, mini-calculators, etc. If the object is of a significant value, say a PDA, printer, computer, etc, it's the property of the company, but it probably wound't be accepted anyways as it could be an influence in a future decision.

    I'd say the PDAs in your case would belong to the company, but thos
  • At the company I work for a bunch of us have MSDN subscriptions. One of the guys found out about the free promotion (many of us were unaware). He emailed the guy who manages our subscriptions for the company. This guy, in turn, emailed everyone who had a subscription so they could get their free PDA. None of this "hey, it's ours, we bought the subscriptions for you." Now, it could be that they simply saw it as a way to bleed Microsoft a little bit, but I doubt it. A good* company wants their devs to h

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