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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."
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!
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?
As a newer employee of IBM, I can say... The "new" IBM and "old" IBM are very different. You'd be very surprised on how things are now. It is a very large company so the BS is there, but for the most part, it's not bad...
now, having said that, my company is very good about protecting my personal info. i'm not allowed in the united states (which means i get to miss all the inlaws' family reunions... thank you gw bush!) and would probably fail most security screenings - and yet, no one here really seems to care. well, aside from the gossip that is.
2 1337 4 u!
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..
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.
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
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.
what if they want to look into your wallet? is that ok?
look I work, my time at work is for work, but there should be a level of privacy, even at work.
I think it is reasonable for the work place to relize you have a life outside of work, and sometimes the to cross.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I used to work for a fortune 500 company that had a similar policy.
hardcorescooters.com
Love Life.
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.
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
No, it has to do with Lilly as a pain in the ass company. Read some of the other comments. They pay well but they're one of the worst places here in Indy to work for. If a headhunter calls to place me, I ask up front who it's for. If they stall, I state up front that I need to know. If it's Lilly, I thank them for their time, but let them know Lilly is on the block list. (the headhunters know me know this and are merely checking to see if I've changed my mind) I'm not the only one here in Indy with this attitude. And no, I'm not a 24-year-old script kiddie (I'm 41).
As a former IBM employee, this is true, to a certain extent.
They did expect all items to be locked in a drawer when you leave your desk (even for lunch), and there was a limit on personal photographs that could be placed on one's desk.
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.
I once had a coworker that acted like a hippy. The boss suspected her of being a stoner. So he'd surreptitiously search the girl's backpack when she was on her lunch break. Our boss definitely never told us he was going to search our personal belongings, although it never occured to us that we should ask.
While I'd certainly say that the boss could make such searches a requirement of employment (or drug tests, for that matter), doing so secretly and without warning is immoral. Dunno about the legality.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
But the levels of privacy made many things difficult and ultimately proved a factor in why I left. Information on salaries, expectations, and how you compared to others were confidential to the point where it was hard to tell where you were. The Personal Business Commitments (PBCs) program that would determine your variable pay (Read: bonus counted as your salary) was obfuscated and it was impossible to see the metrics behind the scores. Pay levels were discussed in closed rooms in whispered voices and it was verboten to speak of possible career advancing points. The thing that pushed me over the edge was learning that a college hire made more money than me even though my experienced dwarfed him (and I had graduated with a similar major).
Ultimately yes, privacy at IBM was a good thing, but brought with it just as many evils.
--Chag
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.
"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."
WHATEVER means? Even unreasonable ones?
Check this out. It should be obvious that you're getting work done WITHOUT resorting to snooping. Any job should be set up in such a way that it is easily apparent whether or not you are making progress.
CASE 1: You are getting your work done.
Then they have no reason to snoop!
CASE 2: You are not getting your work done.
Then they can fire you. Still no reason to snoop.
They pay me to do a job. They are not entitled to know if I call my wife to work out marital problems. As long as I am getting my work done, it shouldn't matter that I make goatse.cx flash animations part of the day for my own amusement. And if I'm not getting the job done, it doesn't matter that all the sites I look at are "kosher".
What you are proposing is that the boss should be able to monitor your life to determine if you are "distasteful".
From a strictly capitalist, bottom-line viewpoint, this is irrelevant! Firing a productive worker because you don't like homos is antithetical to the quest for the almighty buck. If your server room is a 24-7 gay pride parade but you have 10 nines of uptime, you wanna replace that with MSCEs in pinstripes?
Another ex-Big Blue employee. I started out in Lotus though and was then assimilated by the borg corporation.
In truth, they did not spy on us, but I had to open my laptop bag every day going in and out of the building so that security could check the serial number on it. And I had to secure my laptop on the table with a weird cable. And I couldn't/shouldn't work from home. And they wanted to take away my company car.
So, I left...
.sig
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.
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.
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?
Yikes, having a bad day? Take a break, go for a walk or something! :)
:P
1) Yes, the keylogger really was that bad. My machine running "ACertainOS 98SE(TM)" was rather stable (and fast) up until it was installed.
I agree, they are normally very simple programs. This one however was (is) quite bloated. It was trying to take snapshots of the desktop every few seconds and saving them as a JPEG (in C:\ also). It was called WinGuardian. Check it out sometime.
2) When I discovered what caused the crashing (googled for the file that crashed, 'sysctrl.exe', found out it was a keylogger), I went looking. Wasn't hard to find.
3) Oh c'mon, I'm allowed a few typos.
Now take a deep breath, drink a nice glass of warm milk and get some sleep mate!
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...
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.
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 left over many of the same things. When stock options began to be handed out, it was super-secret. (Even people's 1st- and 2nd-line managers would not know who had them.)
I recall they used to make a big deal that if you were a good performer at job level X, you might be making more than someone else in the next highest job level, because the salary ranges overlapped. In a moment of frankness, one manager admitted that the amount of overlap in those ranges was $10 (woo-hoo!).
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