At least in Finland it's normal for some employers to offer to pay for your phone and plan and you can use the same phone all the time for both, personal stuff and work.
No to the custom ROM option. It's due to my employer's security policy. I would also never pay for a phone that I couldn't fully control and customise but... I didn't have to pay for this one. The main cost is losing sideloading.
I don't use my work laptop as my personal one, i have a personal gaming PC and tablet. If i didn't have my tablet i might temporarily use the work laptop for personal stuff when travelling, instead of buying a laptop just for that.
Reasons for using the work phone: i don't need to spend a lot of money duplicating the hardware i already have for free; i don't need to pay for a phone/data plan to service that second device; i don't need to carry two phones around (since i need to have the work one anyway).
Any particular reason you have in mind why one should not use their work phone? Or why is this surprising to you? Also not meant disrespectfully, only trying to understand where you are coming from.
Thanks for the response. Its weird to me because it's technically not yours and at any time the company could do a something that wipes it, asks for it back or does any number of things and you'd have to go through a lot to back up all your stuff. Or be out of luck if one day they decide to implement a policy that removes access to some app you like to use.
Not related to you in any way but I had this one lady who had a company phone and she went and got all these accessories and stuff and when we switched phones she was livid about all these things she bought. I felt bad for her but like...it's not your phone lol.
That's all true (unlikely it gets wiped, but definitely technically possible), but i accept it as part of the 'deal'. My personal data is automatically backed up, if the phone got remote wiped at any point it wouldn't matter. I know i will need to give it back eventually, but i will have skipped a generation of device (and data plan) in the meantime.
The story with the lady is funny, not sure how she thought it would work.