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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."
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
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
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.
Considering that some of their employees could have access to some real nasty shit (viruses and chemicals and whatnot), it makes sense they'd be more closely scrutinized than a guy in a cubicle at IBM, or a clerk at Sears.
You know who's really invasive in the background checks? The NSA.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So did a /lot/ of companies. It's been 58 years, and I doubt anybody who had anything to do with that decision is still working there.
Republican voter?
"Doesn't need to think, because a party line does the thinking for me"?
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.
Ever heard of a mailing list hosted @tired.com?
:)
All ex-Wired folks.
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.
Um, no. All a company has to worry about is whether or not the person can do the job in a manner that meets company standards, and whether they'll be able to continue doing it for the long-term. You see, I agree that a company has a certain stake in their employees being criminals, but only because that means the employee may not be around long. He might instead be in prison. Yeah, you want to hire honest people, not thieves, typically. But just because I've spent a ton of money on someone I just hired does not give me the right to pry/meddle into his life.
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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.
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
Hey, I bet the Nazi's were good customers and paid lots of money! Money is a good reason to sell anyone anything. Even WMDs. Never stopped ol' Uncle Sam.
Why is this "flawed logic"? In the specific case of computer networks, I can see a valid argument being made that your employer has the right to review your use of their resources. The situation is similar for phone service. This is not the same as saying you have no right to privacy at work.
Don't call me a dupe of some supposed "right-wing agenda", make a good arguement. That'll convince me a lot quicker than ranting against "libertarian excesses". Unfortunately, this is Slashdot, and most mods wouldn't know a good arguement if it gave them a lap-dance at a strip club.
I posted instead of modding. Does this make me a good person?
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Vpered na Mars!
Oh, and the penny thing must have been a local manager in overdrive. I know people with dollar bills, currency from other countries, etc on their desk. No big deal. They only care about high-value stuff. PDA's, laptops, etc.... because if it walks off, the workplace gets hostile and suspicious in a hurry...
Only becuase we are not minors are we able to have any expectation to privacy. Very bizarre if you ask me.
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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.
You might want to read some of the less press release like interviews with Bush, religious views are his primary guide, or in some cases like the war on (unprofitable) drugs, not backed with any reasoning more securely based than typical religious sentiment. If he looks scary, a lot of his appointees are far works...ugh.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
> Well, I would hardly call even President Bush "a member of the radical right wing". I think this term is usually reserved for the folks who let religious beliefs be their primary guide in their political views
Read up on some of his appointees. How about more lead for children and the healing power of Jesus to start you off? He's a self-proclaimed born-again, reads the bible every morning, thinks hes doing gods work in the middle east, etc.