I work from home/remotely. For years I've followed a simple policy. I don't use work devices for personal use, and I don't connect my personal devices to any work accounts. I've never had an employer that's had a problem with this, and the most I've ever heard is comments about how I'm just inconveniencing myself because I carry two phones, two laptops. But the reality is, it's been extremely beneficial when I've had to work in compliance sensitive companies for exactly the reasons listed here and then some, and it's a minor inconvenience.
If you're a tech worker you can afford to buy your own personal equipment for personal use. If the company needs you to have equipment to do work, they can purchase it for you. Simple as that.
I love having a work laptop that only has work on it but I've never been able to have a personal laptop that doesn't eventually get all the work stuff onto it at some point.
What do you do if you're lying in bed watching a movie when you remember that you need to schedule a meeting with X for tomorrow at 11am? Do you get out of your warm bed and pull out your work laptop and add the calendar entry and then climb back into bed or do you just pause the movie, log in to your work calendar and make the entry real quick before resuming the movie?
The closest I've ever had to making this a reality was when my work computer was an iMac so I'd just leave it on 24/7 and RDP into it from home (I lived within WiFi distance of the office so all this was done via LAN). Even then, when the work stuff was going to take more than ~5 minutes, I'd still end up doing it natively from my home computer rather than deal with RDP lag.
edit: I also really struggle with what IM programs to keep on my work laptop these days. Medium of communication doesn't map cleanly onto work/personal contacts so I either deal with friends pinging me while at work or missing vital messages from people expecting a business response/having long professional conversations using a phone keyboard.
>What do you do if you're lying in bed watching a movie when you remember that you need to schedule a meeting with X for tomorrow at 11am?
I schedule it when I get in the office at 8 AM.
>I also really struggle with what IM programs to keep on my work laptop these days. Medium of communication doesn't map cleanly onto work/personal contacts so I either deal with friends pinging me while at work or missing vital messages from people expecting a business response/having long professional conversations using a phone keyboard.
My advice is to separate your work and friend accounts. You can have whatever messengers you need for work on your work laptop, but make sure that none of your accounts you share with friends are logged in on that machine. Same for your personal machines - only log in the accounts for friends. Then you don't have that problem.
In most cases, all you need is an email address to make a new account, and you can slowly move all of your friends over to this new account where friends and work do not overlap.
If you're a tech worker you can afford to buy your own personal equipment for personal use. If the company needs you to have equipment to do work, they can purchase it for you. Simple as that.