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Workplace Privacy - IBM Hot, Lilly Not
Brahmastra writes "Reuters has posted an article about the best and worst companies for workplace privacy, passing on information from the forthcoming issue of Wired Magazine, and IBM comes out on top. How does your workplace compare?" According to the summary, Eli Lilly was rated "the most notorious Big Brother boss", after "...its invasive background checks of workers after Sept. 11, 2001, some of which led to dismissals."
My employer is pretty good when it comes to workplace privacy and freedom. Afterall, they don't seem to mind me reading Slas
Maybe it's because everyone has their personal files they, um, look at at work under encrypted IBM security subsystems!
Just don't forget your password, or for the especially rich IBM employees, burn your fingerprints off.
Insert witty IBM/SCO comment here.
Still can't masturbate in the privacy of my cube without someone complaining to HR. The terrorists have already won...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
At least they're an equal opportunity privacy violator, as happy to spill the beans on their customers as their employees. People just have no respect for corporate consistency these days.
and IBM is Big Blue Brother :)
Troll alert. "genital testing" in the last line.
Wow! IBM seems to really be doing well in a geek's eyes right now. They don't spy on employees...they are helping the Linux battle against SCO, not to mention helping further open source by contributing to Linux, eclipse, and others.
Good job, IBM!
ikeya
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
Of course IBM comes out on top, as far as privacy goes. I've never worked there, but all the stories i hear about IBM gives me the impression that they are stuffy, overly structured, and overprofessional... Kinda like the IRS or the CIA.
Especially thier legal department. You just don't fuck with IBM....
do() || do_not();
Remember when IBM was The Man? Not as in "You The Man", but as in "You've sold out to The Man, man!" The Evil Empire? Big, corporate, bad guys? Now, they love Linux, they don't snoop on employees, they fight SCO-style crap, and so on? When did they get all nice-nice?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out then, trolli-boy.
Disclaimer: I no longer, but once did work for Big Blue
Of course they can't spy on you, you are't allowed to do anything. FACT: Leaving a single penny (or any change) in your desk at IBM is considered a security violation because someone seeing it may make them want to steal it, and they wish to keep an honest person honest.
while Ford and Sears were praised for voluntarily signing on with stringent data-protection laws in Europe and California.
How can you voluntarily sign on to a law? Does that imply I can opt out of the laws I don't like?
Oh come on, and crit of SD editorial policy, automatically a Troll? In SOVIET RUSSIA, Trolls Mod YOU down!
So let's see.. This is an article about an article about an article that hasn't been published yet? Awesome.. Let's create news articles by playing that old game of Telephone! Oh wait.. I think that's how the media works in the first place...
So.. This is a comment about a comment about an articl.. Oh forget it..
Geoffeg
Those Eli Lilly people sound like TERRORISTS!!!!! We should probably lock them up for a few months with no trial or phonecalls then threaten them with evil shit until they admit they are!
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I've been afraid of this. The proliferation of penis enlargement spam, and thus penis enlargement "natural herbal methods" has given companies an excuse not to pay up on health insurance claims. If you measure 3" longer than you should (to say nothing of breadth and vigor), you've obviously been popping the pills, and since the side effects are unknown, your claim is nullified. It's the new urine test, only you don't even need a glass of water.
Either that or the parent poster is less Informative than the moderators suspect.
Even the images on their homepage were snapped by CCTV...
The article has just 8 companies listed. That means anyone seeking further info has to buy the wired magazine. I'm already subscribing to Wired, so I don't mind, but what about people who don't.Well, maybe they will get it off Wired's website.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
In the work place, I expect to have all my correspondence, activity, anything that crosses their network to, at least, be open to scrutiny.
;)
Honestly, my time at work is for working. I know that's not a popular view with some, but it really comes down to asking yourself what you use your time for.
If you're comfortable with your boss knowing what sites you're looking at and he's comfortable with you looking at them, then there's no problem.
But to *expect* privacy I think is assuming you have a different relationship with your boss/company than you do: they're paying you to be there and do a job, and whatever means they take to ensure they're getting their money's worth is reasonable.
With all that said... I did post this from work.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Ironic that a medical company would be at the bottom in preserving its employee's privacy... considering that the medical industry has so many dramatic and rediculously strict laws devoted solely to preserving at all costs the CONSUMER'S privacy, or at least the privacy of their records..
While it's esay for us to sit here and complain on them for invasive background checks of workers after Sept. 11 its not that easy for them to avoid getting decent workers that don't disclose their research to terrorists. For example if Bin-Laden got hold of all the research of Elly he might avoid getting diseases like osteoporosis, cancer, depression, schizophrenia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. So actually its better that they check their future employees than Bin-Laden getting 120 yeras old.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
snoops peoples emails, record the websites they went to, monitor phone calls (incoming and outgoing) and watch how much time you spent in the bathroom and away from your desk. If she found out you were planning on quitting, she'd have tech image your drive so she could look for anything to sue you for.
And that was if you were on the boss's good side.
Glad to hear the bitch's company is on the verge of failing.
It's one of the few companies I know that has a yahoo group made of former employees where you can go to vent your spleen without worrying about getting sued by your former boss.
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
There's not much information provided by this link. It seems very lacking in detail. They take a couple of pot-shots at Eli Lilly and Wal-mart, but fail to provide any hard data to substantiate their claims of intrusive behavior. Not very fair, if you ask me. And not worth get worked up over. Anyway, employees are a major expense for most companies -- salaries, training, benefits, payroll taxes, etc. It seems to me that corporations have a right to know a great deal about their employees' private lives after investing all that money in them. I know I wouldn't want to invest in a company unless it disclosed information about its business and finances. I don't see why I shouldn't expect it to work the other way around -- companies need to know details about what sort of people they are employing in order to insure their money is being put to its best use.
I did a stint at a big Wall Street company that will remain nameless, but they were pretty free-form. They made me seem as if I were working for a small company, but thrumming underneath it all was this behomoth.
BUT -- despite the freedom in our dept, there were these poor slobs in the shirtsleeves who we knew could never ever tread off the path or righteousness, or the would be eternally damned.
Newsfollow.com
Much like a troll who once spammed threads IBM is making headway in getting it's karma back in line.
I applaud IBM these days for all it has done but don't forget what it was like back in the early days when IBM was that big evil co that invented the term FUD and tried to crush anything that even remotely threatened it.
Keep it up IBM and you'll get that Karma Bonus and realize that having positive karma is a good thing.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Then their business model fell apart. No more near monopoly on computers. They couldn't even control the "IBM-compatible" market. They were in deep trouble, and somebody realized that their arrogant corporate culture was a big part of the problem. So they hired a new boss from outside the industry, and retooled everything, from the way people worked together to their overreliance on proprietary technology. Worked out well. That which does not kill you, yada yada.
Companies are always searching for ways to squeeze more productivity out of their staff - I wonder if there's ever been any objective study to show that people *don't* work as effectively when they know they are amoebas under microscopic management.
Or do they work harder, and quit earlier? What's the cost of replacement?
It'd sure be nice if a well-funded and run study showed that being nice made people more productive... any studies at all?
Anybody remember the campus of a software company that had free medical (via on-site doctor) child care, membership in a health club, free food (all you can eat) soccer games, and the like?
I seem to remember seeing "60 Minutes" or something on this company - how they were able to improve productivity *and* morale by providing the extras on campus so that the people are just free to work...
Anybody have a link? Can this method be brought to everyday, or is/was this a fluke based on uncommonly good market conditions for said company?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
at least that's what a lot of former employers thought. I work for a pretty cool company these days. However, it was just acquired, so we'll see.
Seriously, if employers expect you to work 50-60 hours a week then they should also expect that there's a certain amount of personal business that is going to be transacted on company time.
If it's in your desk, your desk is locked (By corporate decree) and there is no way to be tempted.
Blar.
Old Ossama is so useful. Need to fire a troublesome employee? Worried about embaressing facts slipping out? Just cite the Terrorist Threat and you can do what you want! If Bin Laden didn't exist, somebody would have to invent him. In my foil hat moments, I tend to suspect that somebody did.
Reminds me of an old job, when one of the bosses tried to install a key-logger on my machine. It stored the key presses as a text file in C:\. Of course I noticed this (hard not to, it kept crashing) -- and being the evil person that I am, I replaced it with some imaginative ASCI art.
I don't work there anymore.
I would post a very angry reply, but I am posting this from work.
I work in the parmaceutical research industry (cancer biochemistry) and it doesn't surprise me that a pharmaceutical company brings up the rear w.r.t. privacy concerns (specifically background checks)
I'm in Canada and a friend got a job in the States for a big pharma a few years back. They did the whole background check and called up all his references etc... I assumed it was because he was Canadian trying to work in the US, but all this was before 9/11. I imagine it's gotten even more stringent since.
One reason for the security is that big pharma have HUGE animal facilities for thier pre-clinical experiments. Not trying to start a flame war here, but it's part of the process that you test potential drugs on animals before you submit an application for a new drug for human trials (IND) to the FDA.
It's quite normal to use thousands of rodents to develop a potential new drug. Not only efficacy, but parameters like maximum tolerated dosage, bioavailability of various formulations, biological half-life, clearance routes, metabolism, etc etc, all have to be characterized in animals before you even think about testing in humans. While appalling to some, it's part of the industry and just a small part of what it takes to get a drug onto the market.
For some companies, the animal facilities are housed in their own massive buildings and secured like a military installation. They probably use hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of animals per year and would make prime targets for animal activists. Probably not a very enticing a target for terrorists, but background checks in this industry are nothing new.
I work for a small company, and we dont do background checks, but during interviews we try and get a sense of a candidates interests and hobbies. Things like volunteering for PETA immediately raises serious red flags.
They kindly leave the firewall configured so I can SSH to my home machine and tunnel to my private proxy. Thanks boss!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
because all their employees work in Singapore, India, Russia, etc.
Pretty hard to walk buy and catch someone watchin porn when they're halfway around the world!
no comment
They can be real PITAs...before 9/11 as well as after. And forget doing contract work and thinking about wanting to work there. The contractors have to walk almost 1/2 mile to get to the building. That's real fun in the rain. It gives a whole new meaning to "software whore". If you're careful, however, you can try to "make a break" for the visitors' garage, although before you even get your car into Park, they'll be at your door. Then you just have to hope they'll believe you when you claim to be a visitor.
Walking around inside remindes me of when I did contract work for defense contracts - if you lose or cannot find your badge, stand in the middle of the hall and put your hands up in the air. Lilly's not quite that bad, but you get the impression that every time someone passes you, you're being scrutinized and everytime you're sitting at the keyboard, you almost get the feeling the keystroke manager "Lilly1984" is hard at work.
I used to work for a fortune 500 company that had a similar policy.
hardcorescooters.com
Love Life.
i guess they didnt include the monthly pyschoanyalysis all ibm employees are required to go to. and some call scientology bad.
Not to troll or anything, but after Bush Sr. left the CIA in '77, he became director of Eli Lilly.
How about the US government?
they certainly employ a large number of people.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Also, if they are looking at porn, their gods will punish them!
In the work place, I expect to have all my correspondence, activity, anything that crosses their network to, at least, be open to scrutiny.
... alas, that privacy has become a victim of 1980s anti-drug hysteria and the radical right agenda that has followed, one that now interprets a private communication as being 'property' of one's employer merely because it happened to be conducted using a piece of company equipment (the telephone) ... at one end.
... and your expectation shows that you have been unfortunate enought to swallow a particularly radical right-wing agenda hook, line, and sinker, to your own, and everyone elses, detriment.
Then you expect to work for felons. Opening a piece of US Mail not addressed to you is a felony, whether the envelope is sitting in your private home mailbox or on your bosses desk. Even the worst libertarian excesses of the 1980s War on Drugs, as presided over by Edwin Meese never changed that particular aspect of the law. These excesses, which encouraged such nonsensical interpretations of property rights to include invading the privacy of anyone who happens to be on said property (taken to its logical conclusion, your employer should have the right to strip search you on "his" property), are in fact in opposition to 200+ years of statutory and common law in the United States.
You have a reasonable expectation of privacy on your person (and, thankfully, our only somewhat brainwashed culture continues to agree...so your boss cannot order you strip searched on suspicion of hiding company documents...yet).
You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your snail mail correspondence, backed by federal law enforcing that privacy with downright draconian penalties should it be violated.
You have a reasonable expection of privacy when speaking on the phone
You should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in conducting correspondence via email, but again, the same flawed logic has been applied to extend property rights over the medium to include property rights over the content (your correspondence), merely because the medium is new (a computer network) and ignoring two centuries of precedent to the contrary in every other communications medium (including, until the 1980s, telephony).
It is unfortunate that you expect no privacy at work. You are certainly entitled to it
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There is a line somewhere between spending time working and spending time in jail.
Let's say I hypothetically work for some state goverment in horse country...err... in their IT dept.
I fully expect to have everything I do monitored and checked and this is fine and good. However there are those that tend to feel that such parental micromanagement is more a hindrance than a nessesity. How do you measure the LOSS of productivity? How many times does one NEED to go over an email to make sure that it isn't offensive to some obscure sect of midget neo-nazi lesbians that might accidentally get it?
It takes an awful lot of time to cross the building when you have to walk on egg shells to do it. I'm not trying to say that businesses should not monitor employees but I am trying to say that there is a loss of productivity in trying to make sure that you are walking a very tight, narrow line.
I know most monitoring is for porn, company secrets, company porn or whatever but the truth is that monitoring has gone into overdrive and we are losing our ability to communicate because everything has to be bleached of meaning to avoid offending even the most sensitive soul.
I'm not sure that we can have real communication when we are so worried about accidentally communicating something unpopular.
One thing about the Eli Lilly employees on the webpage: they're either bloody small, or they've got one huge photographer!
And I work for NASA! You know us "Anonymous Cowards"!
According to the summary, Eli Lilly was rated "the most notorious Big Brother boss", after "...its invasive background checks of workers after Sept. 11, 2001, some of which led to dismissals."
... doesn't it matter what those background checks uncovered (say, personally donating money to Hamas vs. simply having smoked a joint once in college)?
Umm
And what the hell does "invasive" entail?
Specifics, please!
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
How does your workplace compare?
M an ual Proxy configuration [localhost] [3128]
They're ignorant...
ssh home_squidhost -L 3128:127.0.0.1:3128
Mozilla->Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Proxies->
I call it my tunnel-O-porn, but seriously, I don't need them snarfing my slashcookie.
I've been missing out....
Blar.
What about a special user registration fee (think something really substantial)?
/.'s ROI (something that already started to happen, anyway).
Benefits would include an initial 3-point score prior to any moderation... considering the number of id^H^H trolls here, and the many high-level comments from registered users (like the parent above), this could be a major source of income to VA!
In time, ACs like me could be entirely dropped out of the equation to improve
As a manager/owner, I hire people for certain positions and I expect them to Do The Right Thing while they're working for me. In return, my employees want me to give them the tools to do their job and then (pretty much) get the hell out of the way, which I'm happy to do. None of us wants micromanagement.
I know that my employees use the company's resources for their own use on occassion. As long as it isn't abused or cause trouble, I'm fine with that. I certainly don't want to waste my time looking over everyone's shoulder. That's far more hassle than it's worth.
If the company and employees both play by those kinds of rules -- they act like adults, in other words -- then the surveillance can go away. But both sides have to abide by the rules and, unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
its 6:38. where is today's SCO update?
Where I work they don't even check up on how many hours you work.
Then again I'm working through the University, so they probably could get access to my school records, and I'm only making $9 an 'hour'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...he's probably glad he did.... great discounts for ex-employees. AND monitoring. Lilly cares.
Well Big Jim, it's just you, me, and the twins. SIGH
Right on.
...so once upon a time, IBM had a monopoly - meaning, market power. Of course they acted as any company would in those circumstances.
Now they don't, so they adapt to a changed business environment. IBM does not support Linux because it gives their top bosses a warm fuzzy feeling inside. They support Linux because they see big money in it, long-term.
Note: I'm a free-market economist, so I see this as a Good Thing.
paranoid rules!
"Still can't masturbate in the privacy of my cube without someone complaining to HR. The terrorists have already won..."
Well, if you'd stop crying everytime you do. We wouldn't be turning you in.
The Food and Drug Administration imposes this attitude on the companies it regulates.
When I worked for Abbott Labs in the 1970s, the employment application had a spot where you had to check and sign yes/no, "Have you ever used any illegal drug?" About a third of the applicants answered honestly (yes), and were immediately removed from consideration. And they keep those forms forever.
Stupid, yeah, but it is the law.
As someone who relies upon medicine from Eli Lilly to keep me alive from day to day, I think it's a very good thing that they have background checks in place.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Jeez, you guys bought it...
what the hell all the censorware.org blather is about? Who is insane and who isn't?
"Companies are always searching for ways to squeeze more productivity out of their staff - I wonder if there's ever been any objective study to show that people *don't* work as effectively when they know they are amoebas under microscopic management."
Hang around long enough, you'll start hearing about it. That's one of the reasons the US is so productive. Especially in this economy. Work long, and hard, with as few as possible. Then hang the threat of unemployment over their heads.
At Dell, they are always watching you. That is, they use SMS management installed on all Win9x (2K and XP as well) to take snapshot photos of all desktop PCs. In fact, I had at least 5 known shots taken of mine while working (you can tell when the screen refreshes). A co-worker I know says that they will once in awhile have one or two people in IT dedidicated to surveillance. If you get cought with questionable content displayed, your manager will be notified. Of course, the key word is "questionable" because browsing CNN.com is frowned apon as lost productivity.
Life is not for the lazy.
Some of this is a bit rusty, so bear with me...
Around the 50s and 60s, there were some questions asked as to what low cost steps could be taken to improve worker output in an office environment. They tried a lot of things, plants were added to one office, light music was played in another, windows were opened for fresh air all sorts of little things, and then some of the offices were controls in which nothing was changed. What they found was, everything, including the control group had a large jump in productivity, the reason they concluded after some additional research is that observation led to the workers working harder. This phenomenon came to be known as the Hawthorne effect
So the answer to your question is yes it does, sort of...
The thing is, that like any discovery in business, people and managers only really hear part of what you tell them, and then sort of add what they want to hear around it. The Hawthorne effect was seen as a justification of scrutiny, and given the political climate of today, it makes Rigorous scrutiny even more lucrative since it protects your business, and it increases efficiency as a bonus. The longer term effects of constant scrutiny have not been studied to the same extent since among other reasons, the level of observation that many employees are subjected to would be considered unethical by American Psychological Association guidelines. (unethical equals you can't do it, despite what the movies would have you beleive)
If I was to speculate as to the effect based on other similar studies I have read, I would guess that such constant monitoring would increase anxiety levels in most people, some more than others, and would indeed lead to higher attrition rates, greater than normal incidences of workplace violence harassment and overall a lessening of the office quality of life. Most companies trying to pursue the apparently evasive "bottom-line" would see a way to insure that workers do not reach an age where they qualify for pensions, and increased productivity with those workers that stay on.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
"And what the hell does "invasive" entail?
Specifics, please!"
Usually a box of rubber gloves, and lots of Vaseline.
...It still doesn't tell you what will happen with humans.
Not only that, but potentially useful drugs that don't work on animals won't make it to human trials. Penicillin is deadly to rats... fortunately it predates animal testing.
When you DO test on humans, you need to test on a lot of them. E.g., are you allergic to peanuts? I'm not, peanut butter must be 100% safe!
Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine:
Animal Experimentation
Anyway, it's still a lousy reason to snoop on your employees. If you want to free animals, it's trivial to find someone who will pass a background check, and of course anyone can sneak in after-hours to free the animals. They are NOT secured like a "military installation", that's a laugh.
Anyway, let me know when we can cure cancer in humans... we must've cured it in rats decades ago... Or AIDS. Or hepatitis. Herpes. The common cold...
One more thing: we ain't never going to see a cure if they DO find one. Just "treatments" that will have you shelling out for your prescription every week for the rest of your life. Think they care about YOU? These are people who torture fluffy bunny rabbits.
Now you know what PR people get paid for....
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
They had cameras in ever corner of the room. Then again the helpdesk I worked on was a showcase for clients. They would show the clients the helpdesk from remote locations through the cameras. The problem with this was that we were not allowed to have ANYTHING but the computer, phone, and a notebook on the desk. It sucked, but at least you could tell when the camera was on (it wasn't pointed at the wall behind it).
It's a good thing the world sucks or we'd all fall off.
Disclaimer: PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG!
Doesn't IBM require employees to waive rights to any technological creation they make, even if outside IBM and on their own time and equipment? OK, not really a privacy violation but a putdown nonetheless.
too soon I fear; IBM does this not out of kindness of its heart (does it have one?) but out of knee jerk reaction to avoid being sued by employees, by the governments, and so forth.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Lilly is based in Indianapolis. According to an Indianapolis Star article a few years ago, Lilly regularly recruits "drug trial participants" from the underground community of street people in downtown Indianapolis living in homeless shelters. We're talking about sad, sad people with no family contact, who are often anemic, and often alcoholic. .. but that's not the diabolic part ..
The report also provided a list regular donators to the homeless shelters in downtown Indianapolis. Guess who was #1? You guessed it.. Eli Lilly..
Wang Trading is one of the most intrusive employers.
It is an incredibly low class operation. The managing member, a paranoid little man of no integrity, will not offer anyone a job unless he relocates to Connecticut. He feels that he is entitled to every piece of information about your life. One cannot simply take a personal day or a vacation day; specific details are required.
To have the dubious privilege of working there, one must sign a serious of legal documents and provide complete access to one's brokerage account.
I also worked at a Bank before 9/11. There was massive surveillance of its employees. Ebay? You're fired. Talk about looking for another job? You're fired. Using Hotmail or Yahoo for personal email? You're fired. That bank lost a major lawsuit for videotaping the bathrooms in that West Palm Beach headquarters. They still videotape it: the "winners" of the lawsuit also got fired. They had a security department devoted to listening to phone calls, watching your email and snooping your web tracks. Being hired to develop software with Visual Studio, my first task was to hack the locked down NT boxes (wow, padlocks on the floppy drives! C2 is a joke) because Visual Studio was not on the approved software list. And of course, after a few months, the software audit showed unapproved software on the computer, so I was fired. LMAO.
Background checks for employees probably got a big boost after the tylenol tampering case. I am sure that some disgruntled employees have flicked boogers into the medicine before it gets bottled or tabletized. I am sure you have seen the "real tv" shows with the surveillance footage of some guy urinating into a coffee pot at the office. Could your company afford to make 100,000,000,000 pills with urine in them?
In this house, we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics!
Posted AC to avoid karma whore charges.
I'm a current IBM employee. And yes, the rules are pretty strict about leaving stuff out unattended. But you have to remember we have a zillion different customers from all over the world. Some of them, like major banks, governments, etc, tend to stipulate a certain level of general security "cleanliness" as part of their contract. When security is a habit, you don't make dumb mistakes. When you only do it when you remember you're on a sensitive projuect, you're more likely to slip.
It's a pain, but you adjust quickly. I have a locked drawer on my desk. End of the day, everything paper on my desk goes in my desk. The next day, stuff comes out as I need it. Every coupla months, the drawer gets full. And all that semi-sensitive stuff goes en-masse to the confidential recycling bin. Clean office, and no slip-up's from double stakcing papers, etc...
"IBM took top honors for its efforts to scrub Social Security numbers from health-care records"
BFD. A friend of mine who works at IBM claimed a coworker was fired because they found pr0n on his computer. They apparently watch what web sites he visited.
Does TI show up anywhere on this list? I'd be interested to find out.
I interviewed there once. I knew beforehand that they have random drug testing, and I'm pretty sure you have to pass a drug test prior to employment. Drug tests, in my mind, are a major invasion of employee privacy.
But the first thing I saw when I went into the building was the TI Ethics Office. Now, maybe I'm just being a bit overly paranoid, but you read the policies on that site. On the surface it looks good -- and probably, some of it is beneficial -- but it gives me the heebie jeebies with regards to employment.
because if you are.... it's not grandma's fault if you find her 30 pictures indescribably captivating... perhaps it's ADD, or you just don't like your work and are looking for something to distract you.
:)
Now, I can understand if you don't like working at a desk with a three month old sandwich with an ant line leading to and from it... but pictures? maybe you should work at an interior designer with such fine and conclusive taste?
or maybe it was just funny? I should laugh?
-pyrrho
I wouldn't expect anything good from lilly. Here in Brazil they have sold medicine that has absolutely no effect for 50 years. http://www.terra.com.br/dinheironaweb/191/negocios /191_sem_efeito_mercurio.htm
(in portuguese)
A couple of things we have pushed back on (projects that management thought were great ideas) include blocking specific senders of email (non-spam) from communicating with certain workers because it is 'causing a disruption', and another was to refuse to place mandatory filtering of content from the Internet on our networks. If we end up having to do it, it will be a warning/click-through solution, not a block.
my friend just graduated college from IU as an analytical chemist; he just got a job at Lilly and having been an Indiana native (it's based here; one of the states largest employers)everyone knows about lilly (hell i even own some stock)
they required a huge background check, a stringent drug test (no detox is gonna get you outta this one) and several interviews and when they found out he had been arrested for disorderly conduct (drunk at a party) they wanted to see a copy of the police report too... the fact is that prior to this i didn't and this story i didn't know anything about their practices; that in and of itself is suspect as people who enjoy working where they work talk as much as those who don't...
now that's just what little he's told me about it; we dont' talk that often i can only imagine the rest and what it must be like working there. and to be listed #1 on the big brother list it has to be something out of an Ashcroft wet dream.
I've got an acquaintance at Lily who's been partially sucked into their Collective. He's been told that the company expected their workers to report back any gossip -- particularly negative gossip -- about their products.
Now, wait a minute, you're thinking. It's not inconceivable that in doing so it could help to seal your next step up (hopefully) within the company, but it's been made pretty clear that (at least in his division) your life is the Company's, and vice-versa. A career, if you will.
It was just a little too scary to hear.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I work for a pretty big Biomedical company and we recently had some "Quality Training" with one of the corporate lawyers. To sum up the meeting. We(the company) are required to keep X number of years worth of emails. We don't read your emails unless they get subpoena'ed for a court case. As a large Biomedical company we get a few cases here and there. Lots of times the Plantiff's lawyer will request our emails and we are required to give them. If we don't come up with them the plantiff could argue that since we didn't keep accurate records and archives they could have possibly won they case with the evidence that was lost or destroyed.
To carry this a bit further your company esp. if it is a market leader(read: monopoly or close to it) anything you say about destroying the competition could be used in court. So even if they did read my work email(which they don't) I would understand. Thats why I have a computer at home.
It's all Politics
Only becuase we are not minors are we able to have any expectation to privacy. Very bizarre if you ask me.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I'm not necessarily sure an individual should have to go so far as buying their own personal laptop or using their cellphone (instead of the phone right on their desk), just to ensure a degree of privacy.
Granted, those are probably smart measures for one to take, if there's a concern about the employer not respecting his/her privacy.
Still, I think there's implicit trust between the employer and employee. (EG. By the mere fact that your workplace issues you a laptop to use, they're implicitly saying that they trust you enough to take care of this expensive item, and to use it primarily for the benefit of the business.) The same goes for the phone on your desk. (Many employees aren't given their own phone extension or voice mailbox, you know.)
Part of this implicit trust is the employer respecting the privacy of the employee. Just because something is "legal" to do doesn't mean it's good business sense to abuse that legal right. (If I go to my neighbor's house and borrow the phone, I would expect he/she wouldn't be listening in to my whole conversation on a phone extension. I suppose he/she could *legally* do so, since I don't own the phone or phone circuit in question - but it's just not considered the "right thing to do".)
There is no Constitutional right to privacy, in the definitive sense. It's simply a concept we choose to respect (and often hint at through legislating related activities) because it makes sense in a civilized society. I expect an employer to respect my privacy just as I'd expect anyone else to who I deal with on a regular basis. If they don't, they might not be breaking any laws - but I'd certainly consider working elsewhere (and warning others!).
When I first read this, I assumed that IBM was also killing its workers via radiation, and not simply hazardous chemicals.
There are a lot of managers out there. A relatively few number of them actually have any special training, most within IBM have special training. An MBA alone doesn't turn you in to a good manager or executive. IBM knows that and they have a process of creating good managers and execs, just like the military has a process of creating officers. People from the engineering career path decide to become managers, they go through training than then they are managers. At other companies it's an over night process, one day a guy is a senior software engineer and the next he's a manager. Subsequently, the MBAs I've had to deal with who weren't manager tended to be assholes who thought of themselves in a completely different light that the worker bees (just by virtue they should be paid more, drive a BMW and give orders, not all of them but an alarming number of them were that way) and those engineers come managers that I've worked with desparately wanted a number to quantify employee performance without actually knowing how the employees were doing. They either micro managed and their employees could only ever fail because they "could never do it as good as the boss" or they were left totally hands off and the boss had no idea who did what, when or why. At IBM my bosses trusted my judgement, they worked within that, they protected me, they asked my advice on technical matters, they dealt with politics, they were enablers and at the end of each year they had a pretty good idea why I worked for them, what I brought to the table, how i needed to improve and how I was of value; they knew the skill-set that I had and at times they moved me to better match that or to grow those skills in directions I desired. Also at IBM if you screw up, it goes to your manager, you surf porn and it's your manager that hears about it and sees the report, except for a few major offenses it's usually put in to your boss' hands when you do something wrong. Who better knows what the circumstances may be? Who better to judge your value to the company when you screw up?
I think the classic example was a coworker who got caught drinking in his car at lunch time. He was just sitting out there drinking from the bottle, it was a flat violation of policy (I think booze is semi okay at IBM now, they have beer at some functions) well as it turns out his wife had left him the night before. He could have been fired, HR at a midsized company may have just fired him. His manager had a talk with him, gave him a repremand, explained that it can't happen again and didn't fire him. Offered to get him enrolled in some alchohol classes or rehab and at that point this person essentially started to rebuild his life that had just been falling apart.
Now there are always problems, but IBM is a company that is built on trust and when the right people are in the right places and the trust is there they are a very very powerful company and a very difficult company to compete with. They've been around nearly 100 years and I expect them to be around another if they keep to these practices. They are a company to emulate in many ways and the ways they manage and trust their employees is one of them.
Didn't IBM provide systems to catalogue the Jews for the Nazis?
Memories are short.
that sounds reasonable... it does matter what you do for a living. As a software engineer... I'll continue to feel free putting up 5 yr old kid art, printouts, and various toys. Represent!!! :)
-pyrrho
I say we skip the animal testing and proceed to test on the mentally ill, retards, and people on death row. It's about time they paid off their debt to society.
I can't believe no one has asked, but:
Why would you invest in a company you don't believe in? I know the standard response is that it's just about money but really, is it?
And Windows and Linux are never offtopic in the Slashdot World. So I'm reading the article, and on the sidebar I see: Study: Windows Can Be Cheaper to Use Than Linux. And I'm thinking, how come the story on IBM and privacy made it to Slashdot but not this wonderful story on Microsoft and Linux so we can all have a grand fight and yelling match. I mean really, standards around here are slipping.
See subject.
let me amend this a bit, the findings were that each individual performed better when observed, good workers, bad workers, happy workers, angry workers, sad workers, all of them.
Yes happy people will output more, no arguments there, and i said right up front that these findings have been misrepresented as justification for tight supervision as a means to improve efficency. So we don't really disagree in that respect. The "true" spirit of the findings, are that the act of observation alone will affect the system being observed. Subjects will try and give their observers what they want. What was read out of it is "if everyone thinks/knows they are being observed they will work harder". I was more focused on the abuse of this research.
So saying that observation will only cause people who are not working to work is not the whole story; Hard workers will work even harder when observed. The Hawthorne effect will have an impact irregardless of individual worker attitude, some will be affected more than others, but in an overwhelming majority of the cases it will be a net gain.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
No
Last time I checked, the phrase "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." pretty much is what gives us the right to privacy.
'Course, that's a restriction on the government, not private business.
www.sas.com
And their software rocks. And the SAS community rocks (check out SAS-L)
I'm the only IT guy here....so i'm the one that gets called to monitor email, web traffic, voicemail...etc. I do it because it's my job. The day I get asked to perform a body cavity search, I quit.
To get this job I had to be fingerprinted, submit to a background check, take a piss test, and take countless immunizations and tests. Why? Because parents do not want child-molesting, drug-dealing, TB-infected people working around their children.
Makes sense to me.
-ted
This is how it is done on Slashdot.
Here.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
deployed local proxy servers to "block ads" and use custom rules tuned for their employees' focus. And the logs are mysteriously hard to come by. :-)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
The institution didn't monitor computer usage (as far as I know), but I always wondered what they would have found if they had. I knew several individuals who downloaded massive quantities of MP3s (just testing them out so they could, uh, later buy the album... yeah) or pirated software using the high speed connection. I'm sure the press would have had a heck of a good time had the institution been audited (supported by government grants and all).
I work for IBM which is why this will be anonymous. IBM may be fine as long as you only work at an IBM office but the majority of their workforce is in the field and IBM will bend over backwards for clients no matter how agregious their policies. For instance I work as a field tech and one of our clients for Point Of Sales equipment is GAP Inc. Well the Gap and their other retail stores has a policy of routinely searching the bags and persons of their employees as they leave the store. We field techs were told that we were to submit to these same procedures and that we should not raise any complaints about it! I told my boss and my dispatcher not to assign me to any of these calls because I would refuse to submit. I can't imagine being forced to submit to that every day. Hell I just walk past the idiot security guys at places like Best Buy. I will not allow them to assume I am a crook for shopping or working at their stores.
If you weren't so forgetful, you could have posted all at once and only had one set of moderated points spent rating you!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Had to fix the title - I just couldn't let that one slide. Definitely time for bed.
as a function of the development of databases.
As a former employeer there, one of the key reasons "gossip" needs to be checked on is due to the federal regulations. If someone from Lilly talks about drugs and that information is not okayed by the FDA, the company can be sued or fined. Do you want someone telling you that a drug can do something when it might hurt you? In addition, much of the drug development is a long process--on average 10 years and a $1 billion (before marketing!) That's a lot of people working with a lot of potential trade secrets.
Granted, it is a large company and experiences can differ greatly, but globally, there are totally anonymous procedures in place for reporting possible issues.
"In IBM Global Services we had tons of work and couldn't get enough people"
You guys are the worst.
No evil enough to be good at it, but in competent enough that it takes you 3 months to answer an RFP that should be done in 3 hours.
I remember when GS was started, the guys from IBM said "We sent all the losers to work over there". Seems like that's all they hire.
And you will never find a worse industry to work in than big Pharma. Eli Lilly might be the worst, but they are all bad. Firing people when finding something in background check is commonplace, even after years of employment, in fact some do it regularly. There is a manager at one who keeps very detailed records of female salespeople so SHE can fire them when they get pregnant. When big brother it watching your salespeoples every move via GPS enabled call recording devices, it is an easy matter to fire someone. Forget it just one day, and you can never catch up, it records time as well, so as far as the device is concerned that rep did not leave the house until he/she came back and got the device. Grounds for dismissal, and all auto-recorded into the database, neat, clean, easy.
I suppose I should feel bad for offering to my boss the ability to spy on anyone's desktop at random, then implementing it. But oh well. It hasn't been used for spying so much anyway, but rather it makes tech support easier (less running around) and my boss can now access the entire office from out of state. Combined with our cheap video conferencing they'll be able to practically retire wherever they wish without really abandoning their work.
A lot of this difference is due to the "time constants" of each business being different. In computer/electronics the life-span of products is on a few years at best. For Pharma/Biotech the lifespan is controlled by patents and FDA approval cycles which are 15-20 years. This automatically puts the kabash on innovation and creativity because they either can't afford it or would rather milk the profits (because they "can", never mind "should") than improve anything. In computer/electronic you don't have the time to worry (as much) about IP or squeezing a few more years out of some brain-damaged product - you are pretty much dead before you have the option.
Been there. Done that. Never again!
...one summer when I was in college. I have to say it was one of the best places I ever worked for. I can also understand why they might want to be over the top with security. The chemicals that go into producing some of their medications are really serious stuff, like the phosgene gas which goes into making Keflex. I don't know what things are like now, but at the time, we signed acknowledgements every time we made an addition of some serious agent into the process, acknowledging that we understood that the ingredient was a mutagen, carcinogen, toxic nerve agent, catalytic agent, etc. In one case we would add 10L of an agent while wearing air hoods and tyvek suits, then hose the room down, exit the room, bag and dispose of the suits, then go take showers. I don't think you want to have any doubts about the individuals handling such things. Even back then, you were made well aware that you were under video surveillance in certain parts of the plant and while entering and exiting it.
I like my office. I like my boss. I like our servers. I like my officemates. I love the girl working next room. In fact, I wish to live at work!
...about being self-employed must be that your boss will follow you around everywhere, and know even your innermost thoughts. No privacy whatsoever.
Why do I keep hearing of these things? Phone calls beining monitored, email being checked, privacy going straight out the window - and people claim that this is NORMAL?
At my company (been here three years now), our phone calls are not checked. Not even the numbers. The email is not checked. The surfing is not checked. We are not monitored in any way at all.
Clothing is very casual. People come and leave more or less when they please. When several of us sat in front of a computer, watching the 20min video of the new Half-Life 2 game, the boss showed up and watched it as well.
And the result? We're happy. We work hard. We leave late.
Never seen this before? Well, it *is* in Germany. Perhaps the US work place is going down the toilet as well, together with the citizens rights.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Is SOP nearly anywhere in the corporate world.
Sad but true.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I would hope that Lilly is extremely stringent about screening.
Genetic engineering (The first commercially successful genetically engineered organisms were insulin-producing bacteria), products that are INJECTED by their users...
A "bad apple" at Sears can't exactly do much damage terrorist-wise. A "bad apple" at Ford is no worse than their management. (Three words: fuel tank design) A "bad apple" at Lilly = thousands or even millions of people poisoned or made sick by tainted medicine.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Fine, how about the 1980s when IBM was still supplying machinery used to enforce South Africa's apartheid regime?
"We are not in business to conduct moral activity. We are not in business to conduct socially responsible action. We are in business to conduct business."
-John Akers, IBM Chairman
While I admit I didn't read the article yet, how is it legal for a company to go back AFTER you are hired, do a background check and dismiss you on that basis?
Hasn't their opportunity to invade your privacy expired after extending the offer?
Or was there some clause in their contract," we reserve the right to change our minds and change our requirements for employment here depending on our mood "
True, in the state Lilly is based, its a 'right to work' state, so its not hard to fire someone.. but to admit to this as the reason seems open for litigation by the ex-employee.
Besides, its NONE of their damned business what I do on my own time.. The only thing that should have any bearing on my employment is my performance AT the job.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=77699&cid= 6906066
If you're going to recycle comments as actual stories anyway, why not pick ones that are moderated as "Offtopic" instead of "Troll"?
Eli Lilly, just like any pharm company, makes or deals with a whole bunch of controlled substances (like narcotics or chemicals that can be used to produce them), not to mention the fact the research in antimicrobials requires access to various disease causing bacteria/vruses, so it would only make really good business sense for them to keep a close watch on their employees.
grisha.org
IBM may be a good company to work for, just don't ever stop working for them. After the bought and destroyed Sequent I stayed on for a while. Out of boredom I finally left. Here's part of how handled my departure.
http://michael.galassi.org/ibm.shtml
-michael
The "everybody was a man" thing has never been true.
IBM was training women as service engineers back in the 30s, and T.J. Watson set a policy of "equal pay for equal work" back then. IBM had its first female VP in 1943.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
When I first came on at IBM, I was thoroughly impressed by the manager that I was working for. Truly one of the finest folks I have ever worked with. Enter politics, favoritism, sexism, bureacracy. Guess what? They gave him a 30 day notice after 23 years of service. Replaced him with some gal with NO management experience, NO personality, and a sexist agenda. This company has not earned ANY respect from me. Ethics? Ha.
Anybody remember the campus of a software company that had free medical (via on-site doctor) child care, membership in a health club, free food (all you can eat) soccer games, and the like?
Google seems to have all this stuff.
Well, last time I checked, "religious tolerance" was an important part of the development of this country.
I don't think it's fair to jump all over a government appointee simply because he or she happens to publish religious papers, or publically announces a particular religious belief.
We do, after all, still print "In God We Trust" on every one of our coins. Senate meetings are opened with prayers (although we recently decided that was only ok for politicians, not for school students!?!). We even grant tax exempt status to clergy in organized religions.
I think the question is not whether Bush says he "feels he is doing God's work" in the middle east, or whether or not he happens to like reading the bible. The question is whether or not he's doing what the majority of U.S. citizens are asking for. Most of the polls I've seen show more folks in support of this war than not - so in that sense, he's doing his job.
(although we recently decided that was only ok for politicians, not for school students!?!)
Politicians are there because they have chosen to be. Students don't really have this choice, which is why the Supreme Court, etc. always strike prayer in school down. Since the government makes school mandatory, institutionalized prayer in that situation also makes it mandated by the state. And our government is at least supposed to try and avoid that kind of thing.
And Bush is always speaking of how his religion is what he uses to primarily make decisions, so the original point about that does stand. His favorite 'philosopher' is Jesus, for example. And the wonderful thing about our country is that the president (and our government) are not just supposed to do what the majority of the people want. Majority rule was not what the country was founded on - much of the Constitution is designed specifically to avoid that situation! Of course, we know how well Bush has shown he believes in our Constitution and its values...
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon