1d ago

Microsoft Bans Employees From Using DeepSeek App

www.sunrisegeek.com

26 comments

Correct me if I'm wrong here but a company can't dictate what you do on your own time on your own hardware, so I assume this simply affects work computers. Assuming thats the case I don't really see a problem here. I've never been able to download any applications at all on any work computer I've ever used short of apps the company itself uses.
Seems completely understandable to me to bar employees from using a competing service especially if there are genuine security concerns.
- Ever heard about software devs not being able to work on personal projects because all the code they produce, even off the clock is owned by their employer?
  
  No, what a ultracapitalist dystopian scenario.
  
  Sadly, it’s not uncommon from what I understand.
  
  Canadian software developer here,
  It's really not. Contracts like that in Canada and US haven't been used widely in a long time.
  
  Salaried american software developer here. While some large companies have moonlighting carve outs, by and large the rights to any of your work done outside working hours is at the employer's discretion.
  (I call out salaried because I think those clauses can vary depending on the structure of your employment)
  
  My understanding is clauses that own work made outside of work (hours, resources, nonncompeteing scope, ect...) is not enforceable.
  But if you do anything related to the company, then it's theirs.
  
  Ah, that sounds correct to me.
  My interpretation is probably distorted by having worked at big companies that have arms in basically every part of software development so there is no side project programming that is "out of scope" there.
  But working at a company with a narrower focus would let you moonlight more freely.
  
  Oh? That’s great to hear. That means I’m out of date on that. I have a friend who experienced this once.
  
  Hasn't been true for my past two jobs at least (US based), what I do outside of company premises / my own hardware and my own time is mine. They only own what was done on company's dime. Not saying it doesn't happen, but that's not my experience so far, and I'm not sure if would be legal.
- I mean if It’s only for business machines I get it. If you want a proper silo where your ip and isn’t going to be stolen by an LLM, any organization should run an in house self hosted model that is trained on their own data and doesn’t pass data back to the upstream. That just makes sense. Especially if it just passes your work to your competitors.
  I mean if we ever properly gleam information from LLMs, it’ll be the biggest source of leaks and whistleblowing ever created from video games to National security. Don’t use cloud hosted llms if you want privacy and security.
- Absolutely. Companies have every right to control what tools are authorized to use on their hardware, and what touches their data or users data. It could be as complex as security or as simple as don't use a competing service, but it all makes sense. Don't tell me how use my stuff and I won't tell you how to use yours.
  If it's BYOD then that's another multiple layers of cans of worms not worth getting into.

26 comments