| General > General Technical Chat |
| Does your corporation throw away useful stuff? How often and how much? |
| (1/10) > >> |
| Warhawk:
Guys, I simply can't get over it. My corporation (+30k employees) just threw away a whole bunch of test equipment. This includes 5GHz R&S spectrum analyzers, 1GHz Agilent oscilloscopes, Weller soldering stations that were "toxic" because somebody used a leaded solder, 6 GHz active probes, etc. etc. It goes to the same trash bin as three to four years old laptops etc. My colleagues and I tried to officially rescue some equipment but it was impossible. We practically hit the wall everywhere we asked. Arguments were silly. Something like "confidential data loss prevention prohibits us giving you the scope because it has a memory onboard". Other people claimed that the equipment has already zero value therefore it can't be sold. I mean just process things. Nothing that would even make sense. I do not necessarily need these things. My lab is complete but I would love to see local hackerspaces, universities, or fellow hobbyists using it. Nope. But next year our PR team will beg for money for the local orphanage to "build the brand of care". We will spam customers with useless newsletters and will give away useless flyers on the Electronika fair. And this happens every so often. $%^& you my corporation! How is it with you and your employer? Does the reduce/re-use/recycle work with your company or is it just a PR "statement of being environmental friendly" on LinkedIn? Am I wrong? What to I miss? |
| Tomorokoshi:
A = Does your boss have any technical hobbies? B = Does your bosses boss have any technical hobbies? If !(A OR B) then there is no hope. They simply won't have the imagination or inspiration to understand the intrinsic non-monetary value of equipment like that, along with the goodwill that would be generated by distributing it properly. I've seen it in both situations, where they are either passively supporting it or actively blocking it. It gets tricky when some in the organization understand it, and some don't. A very frustrating example is when an executive secretary threw out shelves of books without asking anyone in engineering if they wanted anything. I was able to get only few items that managed to wind up at the top of the bins. |
| SiliconWizard:
I've already run into similar situations. One thing to consider is that for a company, donating equipement to employees may have legal implications that most employers don't want to have to deal with (even for amortized gear). So yeah, this is crazy, but throwing it away is often much simpler. |
| daqq:
My current employer never did this, once a desirable device (computer, measurement tech, whatever) was intended to be thrown out, it was generally snatched within hours. There are also options to buy. The confidentiality issue was solved by removing the disk, or by scrubbing it hard. --- Quote --- Something like "confidential data loss prevention prohibits us giving you the scope because it has a memory onboard". --- End quote --- Well, if it goes to a professional recycler, the odds are good that it wont hit the market. If the recycler is less professional, you'll find it on ebay or something similar soon enough. Let's just say I know a guy. |
| m98:
What kinds of confidential Information could you possibly store on the internal memory of an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer? Software options? |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |