I have two MacBooks that I acquired through two different startups. Both companies no longer exist and I was basically given the laptops. (They have just been sitting in my closet for a few years collecting dust, and it seems like a waste.)
Unfortunately, now that I want to use the laptops as part of a local k8s cluster (or even dedicated music production hardware), I am locked out of wiping the things because they want to connect to MDM servers that no longer exist or have admin passwords that have long since been forgotten.
Since these laptops are essentially “bricked” I have no problems opening them up and attempting hardware hacks to get around this stuff.
Both laptops are in various states of reset or wipe due to previous attempts to reset. (Funny thing, actually. I was personally responsible for locking down one of these laptops at the time they were in corporate use…)
Trash or treasure? I dunno. I am apple-dumb.
If you have an invoice or some sort of ownership document from the original company (or if the MDM is actually no longer active), you can try calling Apple Support. They have the ability to unlock the Macs. But don’t get your hopes up if you don’t have solid proof that you are the rightful owner.