Slashdot Mirror
Unlock Internet or Risk Losing Staff?
Dan Warne writes "People don't want to work for employers who heavily restrict internet access, a senior Microsoft executive said in a keynote speech at the opening of Tech.Ed 2006 Sydney today. From the article: 'These kids are saying: forget it! I don't want to work with you. I don't want to work at a place where I can't be freely online during the day," said Microsoft Senior Design Anthropologist Ann Kiera. She dubbed internet-wary employers "digital immigrants" and said the new wave of younger workers were "digital natives".'"
Nothing for you to see here move along...
Damn work filters.....I'm quiting
Aye, there's no way I'm working without my porn site access. Can't get a single thing done without it!
That and all the chat channels, the streaming music videos, and all those flash sites.
Now this statement isn't true at all. Anyone who has ever worked in network security realizes what a complete nightmare this is and that "technology" is having a hell of a tough time keeping up. This article is completely dismissing security as the reason for blocked websites. Leaky browsers and constantly exploited new technologies have made security a serious priority. (I'm not even gonna go into the irony that these comments were made by Microsoft execs...)
A company I had worked for recently had systematically blocked most popular online services over the past couple years. Myspace, hotmail, AIM, gmail... And I see the reason behind it considering we were in a sensative compartmented information facility that restricted external communication (not even allowed to have a cell phone). The company couldn't afford to have a large-scale information leak caused by viruses and/or non-secure communication.
However, there were always ways around. I could still check my old college email through their website, which was not on the restricted list. There were endless forums that were also left unrestricted (they left slashdot alone, thank god). And there was recently an incident within the company recently where someone was fired for pornography. So the general frustration stemmed from the fact that people could still spend all day on forums and looking up porn, but I wasn't even allowed to check my gmail, update my myspace, or send an IM. However, I'm sure the company would've like to block every forum, porn site, and web-based email site if they could. It's just not something that is in any way possible.
At any rate, I don't think most companies are blocking these sites because they are seen as unproductive, but rather for the risks that they pose.
--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He answers that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
Do they think they should be able to talk on the phone all day too? While they are "working". I'm a "digital native" and still think its up to the employers. If the employees don't want to work without internet then they should get the boot, screw letting them quit. Their job is to work, not surf.
2) WTF from TFA:
*shakes head* Child abuse?
3) It's Anne Kirah, not Ann Kiera. I know she works at MS and has a ridiculous job title, but at least try to spell one of her names right.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Go waste somebody else's money. I don't want a bunch of slackers "working" for me, taking my money, and doing other things when they should be productive. I don't ask my people to work overtime becuase we schedule so that things get done in the alloted schedule. If you are so addicted to the internet that you can't put in 4 hours before lunch and 4 hours after lunch without access to all of it, you're not going to do what I need you to do.
Oh, and you'd better not spend a bunch of time on your cell phone in my office either. Everybody has emergencies...nobody has them so often that I should know which ringtone your girlfriend is.
Oh, and get off my lawn you damned whippersnappers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The issue of internet access at work and its use is a curious one. We have been allowing people to use the telephone at work for years in a limited fashion. As long as it didn't invade the work day too much it was sort of accepted. It also generally wasn't recorded.
Internet is just telephone communications. No different. Treating it differently isn't wise. The employers are right though if the use gets out of hand.
There is of course the problem of not knowing what browsing is legitimate anyway. This isn't easy to determine either. Remember that clicking on a link might be accidentally the wrong one or you might be searching a topic and get one of those trick sites listed for the Porn types. It isn't really a matter of any or filters, it is a matter of content and time.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Why is this in YRO? You have no right to internet access of any kind while at work. Yes, it's common, and I believe any loss of time from a worker doing a little browsing or IMing (within limits) is more than made up for by the productivity gained from a happier worker, but it isn't a violation of your rights to not have access or to have limited access.
Amazing how you can pervert one science to make yourself sound smarter. Senior Design Anthropologist? What does she do? Dig through old Commodore PET and TRS-80 computers looking for clues to the outgrowth of the Internet?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
In the US, the labor market is a buyer's market - there are more people who need work than employers willing to hire them. Because of this employers are able to impose annoying rules on their employees because they know their employees don't have anywhere else to go, since the employee's only recourse is to quit. If people would start wielding this power to their advantage it would benefit everyone.
On the other hand, unfettered internet access is frequently not a good idea, especially for security reasons - people downloading malware, etc.
rooooar
First there was Chief Hacking Executive, now Senior Design Anthropologist? What next? Chief Chair-Throwing Gorilla? Oh wait...
Well isn't it the business's network? That means they should be able to do what they want with it. Whether completely open it up or block certain sites/ports. Like it or not, they have good reasons for it. Employees for one may be more likely to sit around browsing the web rather than doing the work they're assigned. Security threats from spyware/adware could increase. Yes, you can block those certain sites, but those sites tend to be less likely be accessible from a network with some kind of surf control. I work in a help desk and the spyware/adware problems went down tremendously once we implemented our surf control system. Yes there are some sites I wish I could go to, but its not that big of a deal to me...I can still get to slashdot. People have to grow up and realize that they're getting into the real world, and the real world does not revolve around any one person. I don't mean to offend anyone by saying that, but its how the world works fortunately or unfortunately. Besides, most companies will unblock a site if it's blocked but is needed for work.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
As a manager, I get peeved when deliverables are late but I see developers checking out some girl on Myspace. I have no problem with job-oriented surfing, but I want limits on what is accessed by my staff.
I want my teams focused on the job at hand during the day when the entire staff is around to help each other out. Having people working outside normal hours, while admirable (kind of), may be unnecessary if more work and less surfing is done during the day.
At my workplace we have a desktop for our own company usage/personal usage which is unrestricted, and them a tablet that is locked down for use on the clients network. Makes tech support fun again, and I'm actually really productive when I have work to do. About time companies start to notice this trend.
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
The quote was taken out of context. Here is the full exchange.
Employer: Of course we have Internet, but our firewall restricts access to "inappropriate" sites during working hours.
Kids:Forget it! I don't want to work with you. I don't want to work at a place where I can't be freely online during the day. I'll just move back in with my parents and use their DSL.
Parents: Sure, OK. What do you think would be a fair rent?
Kids: Rent? Where are we suposed get the money to pay rent?
[parents and employer exchange significant glances]
Parents: Umm, honey, I don't know if they explained this in school. "Work" is the eight hours out of the day when you do things you'd rather not be doing so you can pay for things like food and rent.
Employer [taken aback]: Eight hours?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I think is funny is that most people here are posting from work.
I have worked for two ends of the extreme, one company that was very restrictive with internet access and one that was wide open.
Working in IT I found the overly restrictive company made repairs and troubleshooting increasingly difficult since many times I had to research a problem at home and then fix it at work. I remember one incident where we had a scsi backplane go bad on a server that was out of waranty, they had a couple of lower techs hammer against it for 3 days before passing it to me. I looked at the error logs, ran some diagnostics and looked up some error codes, had the problem isolated in 10 minutes, but ended up getting written up for "using the internet" on company time. I found that after a while I did the bare minimum required not be fired since half the time I was doing busy work at home and the real work at home anyway.
The other company was a telco provider we had unrestricted access, it was great troubleshooting and repairs had an amazing turnaround time, but there were people that abused the priviledge. Eventually they weeded themselves out through poor performanace reviews or being called out for slacking off. Basically it comes down to what kind of employees you have, if they are responsible and take their job seriously internet access isnt a problem, its a matter of trust. If you dont trust your employees you either need better ones or perhaps need to find out what you may be doing that causes them to have no dedication to the job.
I see this all the time at my company, and in the long run, it leads to burnt-out employees. We've had much more success with staff retention and productivity my asking that employees do not work from home (to the point of canceling almost all of our GotoMyPC accounts), do not stay late (with exceptions, of course). If employees want to get their work done, they've got to do it during the work day. If they don't, well, they face the same situations that most employees who fail to meet their objectives face...
Work is work. As an employee (and this is the part of the legal definition according to the IRS, btw), your employer has the right to tell you how and when you do your job. If you want to work on your own schedule, you should be freelancing or consulting.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I've been a self-employed freelancer for eight years who took a full-time job six months ago. In this time I've been able to observe that the single biggest drain on employee productivity is farting around on the Web.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating corporate firewall fascism. However, it seems to me that for employees with poor self-management skills unfettered Web access is an enema for provoking ass-blasting levels of laziness. It is a procrastination enabler for those who are poor are organizing their time.
What's the solution? Obviously we should all be graded upon hiring to determine whether we're elite enough to control our own net access, or whether we need net nannies. Okay, that may be less obvious and more simplistic and stupid but still -- you see what I'm getting at: painting employees with too broad a brush is tricky here, but abuse of net privileges is personality dependent.
(/me looks around, checks for managers.)
Well, I'm off to read MeFi and fuck around with my blog. Give me a heads-up if anybody important is coming.
These stories are free but worth money.
As a sysadmin myself, I was put in charge of our Internet security and web site filtering strategy.
Initially, they implemented a Squid proxy that was set up so either you were granted "completely unrestricted" access, or "restricted" - which meant you could *only* visit web sites in an "allowed" list. The "unrestricted" access was, of course, originally only intended to be used for the sysadmin himself, and perhaps the owners of the company.
What ended up happening over the years (before I ever worked for them) was "key" people in many different departments received "unrestricted" access, because they threw huge fits or became too big a drain on the admin's time - asking for access to slews of sites needed for puchasing, getting price quotes, etc.
After looking at a number of options, I ended up using Dansguardian site filtering combined with Squid. The cost of software licensing or subscriptions was zero - making it MUCH easier to get approval for. (And if it didn't work out, nobody was going to "force" me to keep trying to use a broken solution, just because we spent $$$'s on it already.)
Our goal was always to put the brakes on productivity losses (and even to prevent potential lawsuits stemming from someone viewing porn and another employee being offended at seeing said porn, or what-not). As has been proven time and time again, unless you completely deny someone Internet access, he/she can eventually find ways to get to sites you'd rather not have them using while at work. The idea is to implement a solution that stops as many "grave offenses" as possible, while appearing pretty much invisible to regular Inet users.
I've found that a nice "side benefit" of doing this is the fact that you also tend to screen out some of the biggest contributors to loading spyware and other nasties on people's PCs. (Porn sites are a big offender in this area, for example.) But no, we didn't get into the site filtering as primarily a "computer security" issue at all.
Digital Immigrant?
Uh huh.
I work in IT (as people probably know) consulting and service a 911 dispatch call center.
The workstations are restricted from using the Internet, with the exception of a (very) few government and/or explicitly job related sites - through a proxy server (squid).
Also, in the same government complex, 5 of the computers in the jail are also restricted in the same way (different site list, though).
Why?
Because having free and unrestricted access to the Internet only ends up with people downloading games/spyware/junk/explicit content. Intentionally or not. And when you rebuild a machine (that you're on-call for 24/7) in the middle of the night a few times, you'll also lobby the management to allow the restriction.
That's right. I recommended and implemented the almost total Internet ban on those machines.
And no, the computers do not run with Administrator users (they DO have to be Power Users, for the applications that are used) - but some of the nasty malware bypasses the Windows security models....
= Grow a brain...
>Why do people expect to be given free internet access at work?
They also *gasp* make personal phone calls sometime. Sometimes to the babysitter or their spouse! We must implement a whitelist for the phone immediatly.
Seriously, work is a compromise. You want humans to work for you, then be prepared to meet them halfway on their social needs. Or watch yourself get a reputation for being an arrogant boss and a 'fascist company.' Talent will never come knocking at your door and you'll be stuck with people who love or can tolerate harsh policies. People who dont use the web as the resource that it is, people afraid to make a personal call, and people who end up in a stokholm-symdrome-like way defending these silly policies. Not to mention how competitive is a company with these draconian policies? In my experience its crappy little small business with paranoid micro-managing bosses who demand hardcode filtering.
Also, professional work is rarely sitting at a machine and putting in x amount of work like a typical blue collar job. Its collaberation and social skills. Its finding out new things. That means you need tools to communicate. That means there will be slow periods and downtimes. That means using the internet with as little restriction as possible.
Also, there's a real difference between a technological and social problem. If someone slacks on their job because of the internet (or any reason) it becomes obvious after a while. If this happens its not because you lack a decent filtering system its because you lack a good employee.
Lastly, if security is such a concern, I believe very few, if any, popular windows exploits work when the user doesnt have admin access. A simple security change like this, which is something that hsould have been done long ago, makes the web very safe. Blaming poor security practices on the web is just being silly.
I work for a software company here in eastern Canada. We're in the top ten of privately owned software companies in Canada. We're about 200 employees. At our office in Moncton, there are no restrictions on internet access of any kind. In fact, I'm at work right now posting this message and I have no worries of my boss or anyone else watching what I am doing because in this place of work, all of the employees are trusted to do their job and get their work done.
I find it's a lot more about the philosophy of the company as a whole. Here, most employees work 8:30-5:30 with an hour for lunch. No one's watching the clock and telling us we were 5 minutes late or took an extra 10 minutes for lunch. The idea is that the managers know the staff do their work and as long as the work is done, it doesn't matter if you surf the net or take a longer lunch. Just don't abuse it.
I have plenty of colleagues who surf the net, IM, stream audio, and plenty of other non-work related stuff with the internet and they have been doing it for years. They'll do it in front of the bosses, even the COO & CEO and there's no issues. The issues don't exist because for starters, everyone knows that they have a job to do and they do it. The company also makes sure that they hire people who are not going to abuse it or go too far. When someone abuses it they are confronted and the issue is dealt with. If they continue to abuse it, and their work suffers, the employee is let go. But here, it happens so little because people are paid well, treated well, treated fairly, and they all know it and respect it so there's no problems.
I can see the whole issue of "security" but where I work, we have good security software which does its job, and an excellent IT staff who are well trained, well educated, and well experienced. They do their job. The regular staff are well trained about things they should and should not do. I've seen no issues with security or huge virus outbreaks here yet and admittedly, I'm not in the IT department but when a virus hits, everyone knows.
I think the thing is that many companies are poorly run and when things start falling apart, they blame the employees for surfing the internet instead of addressing the real problem. I worked for one firm where a controller came to me and wanted me to monitor someones internet time because she thought they were doing too much of it. The employee maybe surfed the net for a whole 15 minutes of a work day, if that. Turns out, the controller was let go because she was incompetent (sp?) and couldn't manage her staff and time right. It wasn't about internet abuse. It was about having the wrong employee working for you.
My point is, it's not about just saying you can have access or not, it's part of the whole environment and not just a technicality about internet access. I've always been of the type that if the company gives a little, they'll get back far more, provided they have the right kind of people on their payroll.
No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
the access of your employees, you have a problem. If you recongnize that one of your employees is addicted, do what you would do when he would be an alcoholic: talk to him and send him to the doctor. If you recongnize that too many employees are addicted or that their attitude towards the job is in a way that they spent thair time on ebay, you should think what's going wrong in your company. Maybe fire you director of human ressources, give mandatory courses to management about how to lead and motivate people. If you come, after all, to the conclusion that somebody is abusing the net and not doing his work because he is the wrong person for the job or the job is the wrong job for him, let him go. No restriction which you set can make him an efficient worker.
The only thing which i would be seriously concerned is security and increased administration cost. I would suggest to request the employes that they do theier private sutt in a virtual machin, which is not connected to the intranet (= on a separate VPN).
Too many children (all ages, Im talking mentally) are worried about what can I get. You work for a company.
Why is it "childish" to say "what do I get in return for giving you my work?" This isn't about breaking rules, it's about people not WANTING to work places where said rules exist. What's unreasonable about that that's reasonable about saying you don't want to work outdoors during the winter if the company uniform is shorts and a tshirt?
All these PHB types are ranting "well, I would fire them for that." Big deal. The entire point of the article is THEY DON'T WANT TO WORK FOR YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE. Bad news for you, if MS takes this to heart (if they didn't already), then it's going to become a "best practice" since that's how the business world works (unless they get a patent on "increasing worker morale by not being an overbearing cock," that is). You do what more successful companies do.
Its a perk if they allow these things, but i dont think they should be expected
I think you're actually agreeing with the Microsoft person here. That's exactly what they're saying.
Open internet access is a perk, and it's one that young employees value. So if you want to recruit and retain people, it's something that as an employer, you should consider. Someone might be willing to work for $35k a year at a place with unrestricted internet, but wouldn't touch a locked-off place for less than $40k. (I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass, admittedly, but you see my point I hope.)
I know people who work in informationally secure environments, and they get paid more than I do. But they need to be, because I wouldn't work there without being paid a lot extra -- I value having access to GMail, being able to keep my cellphone on me, being able to read Slashdot during slow periods, etc. Although I find it distracting and don't do it, other people even keep AIM running from work, to talk to their spouses/kids/whatevers at home, and this isn't a problem.
If I was considering a move to a workplace like theirs, where the computers are totally firewalled and nobody has install rights on them, I wouldn't do it unless there was a substantial increase in some other form of compensation, to offset the loss of these niceities.
That's all anyone is saying; you don't have to provide your workers with Internet access, but a growing number of young, educated people expect it, and probably won't take kindly to not having it around. If you want to compete, you'll either give people what they want, or you'll make it up in some other way (probably with pay).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If unrestricted internet access from work is so important for you that you'll refuse a job, then you're most likely one of the people who shouldn't be allowed that unrestricted access.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I'm an ICT teacher, and recently went to a conference where there was a presentation about so-called Digital Natives (today's kids) and Digital Immigrants (adults).
/. crowd) a 'Digital Native', despite my age. Plus, for every kid with 'techno-joy', there will be another with 'techno-fear' (to paraphrase Mr. Izzard).
Apparently, the fundamental difference between us old-fart teachers (I'm 25, by the way) and today's kids is that they have grown up surrounded by technology to such an extent that their methods of working and interacting with others are totally different to ours.
For example, today's children are likely to be much better multi-taskers. They are used to an environment where the television is on, they are typing to friends using IM, chatting to other friends on the phone whilst simultaneously using Wikipedia to research that night's homework. That feeds back into today's classrom environments, because some kids can't cope without a busy, multi-tasking environment. Their idea of hell is to be sat in silence for an hour trying to revise, or working solidly on a piece of coursework without taking time-out to do something else every other minute.
All in all it was an interesting presentation, but I felt the speaker's idea that the dividing line is purely age based was nonsense. I'd consider myself (and I' d imagine a lot of the
If you come work for a brokerage firm or a bank, and you pass the criminal background checks, the credit checks, the fingerprinting (and subsequent possible FBI check) and so on... but are then expecting to have wide open access to send/receive any sort of arbitrary data, you're absolutely delusional.
It's not about "Fascist company" but about "protecting YOUR money that you trust us to keep safe for you".
If you'd like your bank tellers to start browsing the internet unfiltered and unprotected from the same terminals they check your accounts with, that's your choice- but I'd prefer to keep the systems that hold my money slightly more restrictive, thanks.
I totally understand the need to use the internet as a wide-ranging contact system, research tool, promotional space, and everything else that we know and love. I couldn't do my job without it. But there's limitations on what you can allow people to do, particularly when sensitive data and money are involved.
Bad practices lead to lost money, lost customers, and lawsuits.
But really, in the financial world, if you need access to specific information you already probably have it via any number of trusted private information delivery systems, so the need to "surf the web" is a bit less. We pay big $$$ for realtime accurate data, so it's not like you need to go hit finance.yahoo.com all day long.
Something makes me think we work in very different environments. Where are you at? An ad agency? Marketing? I can see the need there for less filtering. But not from where I am standing.
my 2 cents.
EOM
I think it depends what you major in and what kind of skills you have.
It also depends on how picky you are in terms of what kind of work you'll do, or where you want to live. People who only want to work in a particular city (e.g. NYC, Boston, DC, etc.) or only want to do a particular sort of work, may well have the limited options that you describe. But such was not my experience, or that of other people I know. Granted it was a while back and the economy was a bit different then, but I definitely had a choice of places to work when I graduated college. But then again, I didn't have a lot of other requirements besides a paycheck: I was willing to relocate and travel, and my skills were fairly general.
Obviously, how much "say" a recent college grad has in where they end up working, changes radically depending on the economic environment. When companies are competing for new employees, as they were during the mid to late-90s, workplace perks become significantly more important than during a downturn, when the job itself is almost like a perk. And as I mentioned, the competition for employees differs radically from one region of the country to the other. A company in Boston might be beating college grads off their doormat with a stick, while one in Phoenix, Arizona might be desperately seeking young workers. It all comes down to tradeoffs.
I think that the internet access is similar to the attitudes companies had regarding dress codes a few years ago. Young employees saw suit-and-tie operations not only as personally restrictive, but also indicative of a corporate culture that they might not have liked; in response, a lot of places changed to "dress casual" over time. While we can argue about the merits of professional attire all day, there was definitely a lot of change as a result of companies trying to get rid of the stodgy appearance, and many of these improvments were aimed at recruiting new workers. Internet access could be similar: companies that don't restrict seem like they'd be better places to work, for reasons unrelated to the internet itself -- less overbearing management, more trust of employees, etc.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Have you guys, or someone you know of, considered "sprinkling" communal machines with universal access around the office? Restrict work machines to a whitelist, put the communal machines on a separate subnet without access to company resources, ...
Have communal machines conveniently, but visibly, sprinkled around the office. Let these communal machines have complete access to the internet but no access to company resources. Work machines would have a whitelist. The nice thing with this solution is that the responsible employee that is just going to spend a few minutes reading mail or news can do so, but the irresponsible employee who spends excessive amounts of time will be noticed by fellow employess. A publicly visible monitory also will reduce the porn site hits.
Note that DansGuardian is GPL but claims to be proprietary. From its copyright page:
In other words, if you truly believe those mutually exclusive claims, you have to install it at home for your own personal use, then redistribute that copy to your office (as is your right under the GPL). Either that, or you could buy a "download license", which is right up there with SCO's "Linux License" for sheer return on investment.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm in the Business Analysis Dept, which really just writes software specs. I would say in a given day I do a solid hours work if any at all. There were days where I had more, but not many. I aksed around to some friends I've made here and it appears no one does much work.
Basically, I surf the web all day or bring a book and read it. My cube is back in a little cubby hole all by itself, and no one comes back here ever. I often wonder why I even come in here most days. I would do work if I had it. I actually go ask my manager for assignments every few days and he never has any. So he gives me some BS work like "get familiar with this spec" which involves reading a 600 page spec that I will never need to work with.
They have decently strict filters here and it makes people mad. I think the general idea is that if we have nothign to do at least let us surf the web a bit more freely. Anyways the whole point of this post is that if I had stuff to do the filters wouldn't really make me mad. I wouldn't be online too much and might not notice. But with nothign to do I bump into them constantly and get annoyed and try to bypass them.
I worked for a company that went from wide open to proxy. As I was the most internet-experienced tech on the support team, anything that needed to be researched fell to me. Also, I browse with multiple sessions of a browser open. Always have. Next thing I know, I'm getting called into the IS Director's office and given a list of where I've been. I pointed out each url and explained exactly why I'd been there, all work related. Their reply, "well.. this looks like you're not working, so don't do this again." Basically, they were asking me to not do my job. Until I left, I spent more time worrying about if I looked like I wasn't working.
Next company was wide open. Sure I had AIM open, bounced ideas off some techs I knew on IRC once in a while, but the pressure was off and I got more done.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
Are better off without them.
As an integrator, VAR, developer, security consultant, and chief cook and bottle washer for many firms, I advise my clientele with respect to their internet connectivity, and the expense and disbursement of the same. Given the strict liabilities of corporations, it is unfeasible to permit unrestricted access. Furthermore, I don't find it surprising that this discussion is coming from Redmond, which offers one of the most difficult Operating Systems on the market, in that it's increasingly difficult to secure Windows of any description and therefore it's probably just more cost effective to give free reign than it is attempt to limit the corporate liabilities presented by the deployment of M$ products.
It should also be painfully obvious that internet access is not free, but must be paid for by the corporation, and unfettered access in ANY environment could prove unnecessarily costly. In these difficult economic times the onus is on upper management to ensure that the operation of the company is streamlined in such a way as to ensure both maximum productivity and profitability.
In the Canada there are PIPEDA legislative restrictions in place that must be met with respect to user/customer privacy, and as such, in even a well considered M$ environment, it is not possible to grant unrestricted internet access and comply with the rules. Granted it may be possible to provide a properly cordoned internet access, but this should only be available to employees on their break times.
As the by-line suggests, productivity is still the bottom line, and employees (digital natives or any other such ludicrous monicker) should not be the defining force behind internet access policy. It is widely held that a measured approach is preferable. One that can enable all stakeholders without potentially compromising any corporate/consumer data, and maintain operational efficiency to ensure that at the end of the month the company can still afford to honour the paycheques they pump out.
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Most people in this thread are completely missing the point that has been made in the original article. I attribute this to one of two things:
1.
The comments that have risen to the surface here have been made primarily by Digital Immigrants who have learned to adapt to their technological surroundings but have never and probably never will completely integrate those technologies with their minds. You may have a plethora of gadgets and you may administer hundreds of boxes, that does not make you a digital native.
Digital natives have been born in and have grown up in an environment where their every action, every thought has been melded with technology. Instantaneous rich interactive communication is a way of life for them and goes to their very core.
Taking a cell phone away from a teenage girl may not be physical abuse, but mentally it most certainly is. It is tantamount to locking someone into an isolation cell or taking away their faculty of speech. Not as harsh as both those conditions, but lacking the reference material, certainly it is perceived in that way.
I am a knowledge worker and I use digital technology to search, find, process, refine and publish knowledge. I need free internet access to be able to give my best and work to my peak. Not being able to IM restricts the people whose knowledge I can benefit from and with whom I can forge relations. Being behind a firewall where I can't FTP, SSH or use POP only worsens the situation and I feel crippled everyday I have to plug my laptop in at work. I resent being there any longer than I absolutely have to.
Yes, I don't need these services to do my day to day work. But to be able to express myself to the fullest and be a complete individual I most certainly do. That raises the question, has my employer hired me for the person that I am and my needs for communication or to be just another worker drone in his cubicle.
Employers would best take a page out of the Chie Happiness Officers book and take it to heart: http://www.positivesharing.com/
2.
A Design Anthropologist's views may strike most people at Slashdot a bit odd but it probably is because she is talking with people and about people. The notions she distills are very valid and interesting if you are making systems aimed at people.
It is the people, stupid! And to the right decisions in high level design companies would be smart to get more input from the humanities.
-- Alper
we restrict Internet access, but in a smart way. All parts of the Internet are available before work, after work, during breaks, and during lunch. The firewall restricts access to many sites at other times. However, the firewall shuts off 15 minutes before any break starts and kicks in 15 minutes after the break is over. So employees know it's not allowed to waste time online during work hours, but they still have a sense of responsibility about it. If you're 15 minutes into work time and the connection craps out on certain sites, you know you've broken the rules. It isn't usually a problem.
Thats true if you have a manager who is responsive and actually knows what they are doing. The manager was the one that instated the policy. He was from a totally non-tech background and was one of those "promote from within" managers from a different department. Im sure he is probably gone now but he was adamant he knew better no matter how difficult it made the job for the rest of us.
I am a little surprised. I don't think I saw anyone admit that they recognize their own surfing habits cost them. It seems many recognize "other" people can have issues with it.
Full unfettered access destroys my productivity at times. I follow a thought and boom an hour has gone by. I would definitely prefer to be subject to whitelisting/blacklisting. First things to block: Slashdot and digg of course.
I know I would be doing a much better job if aimless surfing could be eliminated. But it is just so easy to click a link and read stuff, or comment on stories on slashdot. Our buisness communication depends heavily on our internal web so we all have contstant connectivity and at times external access can be handy, but I would be 100% in favor of restrictions.
I really think productivity would go up quite a bit. Most of my friends all admit to surfing too much on the job (we are all techies).
I am an info junky and always have been, even before getting Fidonet, I used to read tons of magazines about technology/science etc. In an environment with unfettered access is like a kid in a Candy store. Look: Shiny new Mazda roadster with retractable hardtop, planets 8, 9, 12 or 50?, New rumored Canon 400D DSLR, New ATI Radeons (damn I got sidetracked while writing this to read about new Radeon). You get the idea.
So Yes please, bring on the filtering. Some of us just can't handle unlimited access to information.
I used to work for a company that had pretty serious Internet filters, and they monitored the Internet access at the company in real-time. It was not unknown to get a call from the people monitoring security at the company if they noticed something funky going on your computer. They had good reason though...the former management team had been found in some serious ethics violations costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars and almost landed the execs in jail.
I really had no problem with the "normal" filters they had on most of the time, but once in a while, they put the Uber-Super-Anal filters on that would restrict your access to basically read-only Internet. During these "outages" you couldn't go to any online shops, incl. tech bookstores like Bookpool.com (Amazon.com was blocked as well). Some tech resources were also restricted for some reason. The "super siikrit probations" were never announced in advance, nor were we told when they ended. You just noticed, all of a sudden, that half the Internet is gone. And then hours or days later, it was back.
It was definitely one of the reasons why I quit that job.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I saw that done years ago at a major Hollywood animation studio. The internal network, used for feature animation, was completely isolated from the outside. The external machines were set up as kiosks, and unconnected from anything else. But this was in 1998.
By 2002, they weren't doing that any more. They'd switched from SGI to Windows, and Windows needs to talk to the mothership in Redmond.
Heres how it is. While you are employed by the company towards a specific end, during those hours the company is putting money into your pocket, you work to meet those ends. If you need to make a personal phone call, use your own phone, on your own time, unless its an emergency and you have no alternative.
You do not get to use company equipment, company internet access, company phone calls, or company time for your own personal needs.
That kind of attitude from an employer only works if you're paying by the hour for unskilled labor.
Personally, I take home the same pay if I work 30 hours or 70 hours a week. I get projects assigned and I have deadlines, and those things come due no matter where I am. If I have to leave in the middle of the day to take care of something personal, I might work from home that night or over the weekend to make sure my projects get done. The end result? I probably work more hours a week (and am more productive) than someone who works straight from 9 to 5 but never a second over. Plus, I'm happy doing it.
From a business point of view, company equipment, company internet access and company phone lines are dirt cheap compared to an employee. For a medium sized company, those other expenses wouldn't even comprise 1/10th of a single employee's salary. (I know; I pay all of those bills for a medium sized company) As long as that employee is getting their work done on time it doesn't matter if they're sitting on IM all day talking to their wife, occasionally unwinding on slashdot, or calling their doctor.
As I see it's not what employers are banning it's the way and the fact that thye do at all. If a person has clearly defined responsibiliites and they are living up to those responsibilites and not doing things that cause harm to the company like surfing porn which can bring law suites etc then leave the person alone to do the job they are hired to do. If they are not doing what they are being paid for then discipline and termination is in order. It's the bean counter and middle management tirants that care about this minutia and it's they who need to do something more productive than hover and lose sleep over surfing habits. Stop treating people like commodities and show some respect.
My solution was to set up an Apache-SSL server on one of my machines, hook a CGI proxy software into it, and run an SSH server on a high port. That then allows me to browse the web and still get into my systems at work. Avoiding the stupidity of remote evesdropping is also alleviated by plugging my laptop into the network and faking to the Windows domain controller.
Sounds like you've bought into the factory/robot mentality.
Working in a factory or in telephone support is different from working in a job which requires thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. People can't invent new solutions for things for 8 hours straight, with only a rigidly-timed lunch break. Our brains don't work like that.
Sure, if your job is flipping burgers and refilling soft drinks, it doesn't take much brain power to do that, and there's no reason to be goofing off on the job. Just turn your brain off and follow the routine, day in and day out. But if you're trying to devise creative solutions to complex problems, this simply isn't going to happen according to a rigid plan, timed to the minute.
If you'd like your bank tellers to start browsing the internet unfiltered and unprotected from the same terminals they check your accounts with, that's your choice- but I'd prefer to keep the systems that hold my money slightly more restrictive, thanks.
There's a big difference between a bank teller job and a professional knowledge-worker job. Bank tellers are really not much different from McDonald's cashiers. I wouldn't expect them to be surfing the net either while they're taking my order for a Big Mac.
I don't think anyone here is calling for unskilled laborers to have internet access at work at all. Slashdot caters to an IT/scientific/engineering crowd, so obviously most people here are going to have that type of job in mind when they talk about things in the workplace. Just because you live in your parents' basement and work at the bank taking deposits and giving withdrawals all day doesn't mean you need to bring up that type of work environment in a discussion like this. You're lucky your job hasn't been replaced by an ATM yet.
I currently have all non-work related internet access shut off in my company. This is not because I wish to, or because management is paranoid or whatnot. It's becuase of the Payment Card Industry Cardholder Information Security Program. It states that if any company that accepts/processes/stores/handles credit card information HAS to lock down interent access. Failure to comply with this program could lead to losing your merchant account or fines of up to %$500,000 per instance of fraudulent credit card use. I would love to let my employee's check the news/e-mail/slashdot, but unless this regulation is modified or done away with completely, I can't afford to take the chance. For more info on this see www.visa.com/cisp. BTW, my company actually does enough credit card volume that we have to have security audits, even though we've never had an instance of fraud. Open internet access would fail me on the audits.
Chester and Lester are your employees. What Chester does in 8 hours Lester can do in 2 hours and at the same level of quality, but Lester can work only for 2 hours per day. I take it you would pay both employees the same rate per day, right? If so, that was Brushfireb's point. And I agree with your point that it's a good idea for Lester to "look busy" in order to maintain group morale.
Otherwise whats stoping me from grabbing this 10 meg spreadsheet with all kindsa of useful customer info on it and emailing it to myself at home?
What's to stop you from running naked down the halls? What's to stop you from buying a shotgun and killing 4 people? What's to stop you from taking a dump on your boss's desk?
Are you incapable of self-control to the point where you need someone physically preventing you from doing wrong? Do you need to be bound and gagged and transported Hannibal Lector-style on a handcart everywhere you go?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.