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How To Lose Your Job, Thanks To The Internet
The New York Times has up an article discussing the trend of employers tracking the 'free time' activities of their employees via their web presence. "When they do go off the clock and off the corporate network, how they spend their private time should be of no concern to their employer, even if the Internet, by its nature, makes some off-the-job activities more visible to more people than was previously possible. In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one's off-hours can have career-altering consequences." The piece likens this activity to the 'Sociological Department' that the Ford Company ran to monitor the home lives of their workers. Overstatement, or the corp as Big Brother?
Yeah this internet thing might end up having some impact on the world....
To keep your real name offline to the best of your ability. I see no reason for people online to know my real name, or tie it to my internet activities.
You should simply use an alias and never reveal that alias to an employer. I realize that it's a good opportunity to increase your chances of employment by allowing an employer to take a look at your online work but, its simply absolutely none of their business. If you are really desperate for the extra bang on your resume I suggest immediately afterwards you change to a different alias and notify all of your friends that you need to change in order to protect your anonymity from your employer (Via private means of course).
So posting those drunken, pot smoking pics of myself on a publicly viewable online source (e.x facebook) might not be a good idea? That's news to me.
It's probably not a good idea to get totally trashed, strip naked, and broadcast yourself all over the internet?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/29/jim-chomas-career-joins-the-deadpool-maybe/
Better tell that dude.
um...
(looks over shoulder)
that uh...
i'll tell you later, gotta go
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fascism is older than the internet. Witch hunts are older than that. What you see is a bunch of companies that think they are so powerful that they can tell you to do and think as they say, 24/7. With government granted franchises, rubber stamped consolidation and bad joke anti-trust enforcement big company perception is not that far from reality. Shutting down online expression is both an exercise and enhancer of corporate power, just as book burning and other forms of censorship have been.
If your company is like this, do yourself a favor and quit.
If you do something in public in your own time, it can and will affect your employment and is of concern to your employer. No bank wants an employee that's a convicted fraudster. No school wants teachers who are porn stars. No police force wants an ex-con as an officer. The issue isn't whether you conduct these activities in your own time or not, or if the Internet was used. The issue is that you're in a trusted position, and that your employer may have the right to terminate your employment if they perceive a conflict of interest, or if something you've done or are doing in your spare time means you can't effectively do your job.
Now if employers terminate people unreasonably for being part of a political organization, due to their ethnicity or religion or for some other discriminatory reason the existing legal protection needs to come into play (as is the case of Stacy Snyder mentioned in TFA - terminating someone for being seen with a large glass of alcohol is moronic - that said she's better off with a different employer if that's how her current one acts). We don't need new special laws for the Internet. We may need minor adjustments to existing laws to take the Internet into account. We certainly don't need special protection for morons be they employer or employee.
Are we really suppose to have sympathy for morons who don't know what they put on the net is public?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You go to a lot of trouble to explain what employers should and shouldn't be able to fire someone for doing, and then you go and call people who exercise these rights "morons". WTF?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Wasn't this covered in a Boston Legal episode already? It was the one where the cross-dressing lawyer and his female friend did a singing and dancing routine that made its way to Youtube and he almost got fired.
It sounds like the companies in question might be using the excuse that "we need to keep up a good company image." There's something to be said for that...but there's also something to be said for taking it way, way too far. People in the armed forces should have to worry about acting out in uniform, a FedEx employee shouldn't have the same fears.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
if you link your online accounts to your real identity, you have to keep in mind that it is just the same as if you actually said what you posted line in reality. that in mind, you should have the same standards for your online account that is linked to you as you would in real life. anything you want to say that you wouldnt want linked to your name, you should really post under an account that your employer cant link to you or if that isn't possible somehow, don't say it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Just because it wasn't possible before to know what you're employees are like is not only not the point, it's also very much the point. On the first note, more information is a good thing. And you if can discover that your employee is whatever you consider weird, you're welcome to stop working with them. On the second note, if you can discover that your employee is whatever you consider weird, so can your clients. A public face is a public face, and if an employee intends to work in a job where that face matters -- i.e. the face of the company -- then yes, their on-line activities count just as much as their off-line activities.
My father taught me this when I was six, and it rings true here. At a baseball game, some reporter was going around asking for public opinion regarding some baseball issue. My father denied the interview saying that he was the officer of a public communications company, and should not be presented publicly by this reporter; even on a matter as unrelated as his opinions on baseball.
Now, I own and operate my own company. And yes, I look for good people to work with me. You'd beter believe I want them to be good people all-around. Their welcome to vent to me, and they can insult me to my face all they like. They can insult my clients to my face as well. But when they do anything that my clients can see, or to which my clients have access, they had better conduct themselves in a manner that I deem suitable.
Right or wrong, if my client says that they don't like my employee, I take that very seriously. Accidents and general human error are acceptable in moderation. Disregard for my business -- even during off-hours -- is completely unacceptable.
In my perspective, many employees (I don't mean only mine, I do in fact include many of my friends that work for others) consider their employment to be a right. No matter how good you are at your job, your employor has invested way more time and way more effort, and way more RISK into the business than you'll ever even consider for as long as you're an employee.
You don't deserve squat -- that's why you get nothing but money for your time. You work is appreciated, but the intelectual property isn't yours, and the risk wasn't yours, and the value-rewards won't be yours. The clients aren't yours, the company isn't yours. There's an enormous risk in starting your own business, and it's a gigantic under-taking to maintain any business. Being a cog in the machine is worth the grease, and little more.
My father would come home, after long days of negotiating some government contract for the communication company for which he worked. After a successful victory, he'd boast to his wife how he'd saved the company millions of dollars. She'd turn to him and say: "so, how much of it is ours?". Of course the answer is zero. That was his job, he did it well, he got paid as expected, plus or minus an annual bonus. The given victory meant nothing financially.
Know that when you work for someone else, you get to avoid the many headaches that go into running a business and being accountable to an entity that you've created. Also know that when you go out on your own, you deserve all of the glory, credit, blame, and defeat.
In my current job we had a client who said that anyone who came on their job site needed to be able to pass a drug test. It was a big job, months of work, and the techs were told that they could take the drug test and be guaranteed work in a single location, or not take it and bounce around between jobs. We occasionally work at military installations, and again certain techs will work there and others won't.
My employer knows that I participate in online forums and that I hold some non-standard political beliefs and they really don't care as long as it doesn't affect my work. If they wanted to restrict my activities I'd find another job.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Just last week on the tonight show, we told this nigger joke in front a baby nigger, and since he couldnt speak english (not like any nigger can), he wasnt offended. We thought it was histerical though.
Privacy is a good thing.
Seriously, i'm not racist, but i do beleive no word is ever too evil, too bad, or should ever be held against you. HOWEVER i must post my point anonymously in fear of the rest of the world that doesnt get it.
You are not your job, no matter how hard corporate america wants to own you. They have NO control over your private life. Blow the fucking building up of any employer that dare control your life.
-Tyler
First rule of new fight club... you're owned by them, now that you realize it... what just are you going to do about it?
Um, I actually know a teacher who does pornos.
Please bring written copies of all jokes performed privately or publicly since the beginning of your employment at this firm, and a listing of dates of any public and/or private performances, including but not limited to performances at comedy clubs, television shows, and standing around in bars telling jokes to your buddies. Thank you very much for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely, HR Department, Megacorp
If you're a real geek - just remote desktop to lab machine and login as your boss id+password and browse the internet ;)
If your job has you isolated in a cube farm with utterly no contact with the outside world during work hours, I'd say you can do whatever you want in your off hours. Today, jobs like that are getting rare and likely to be non-existent in the near future.
Let's say you have a technical job that involves nothing more than talking to an occasional tecnical partner of your employer. When the person you're talking to finds something outrageous about you, do you think it isn't going to get around? Worse, let's say they are a rabid fundamentalist and find out about your Wiccan postings on the web. Sure, it isn't any of their business but that hardly stops anyone anymore. If you can't communicate with the people you're supposed to communicate with as part of your job, it is going to come back to you. Yes, it is a round-about path up through your company's partner and back down, but it still happens.
If you have a customer service job, magnify this by about 100x. If your employer is ever connected with your online identity and you do something outrageous or offensive to some, it will come back around to you in the end.
Can your employer afford this sort of nonsense? Not usually. So much so that if your off-hours activities affect you, your job or your employer in any way you are going to need to find a new job that didn't get burned.
Finally, if you think your off-hours activities have no effect on your job, what would you say about a cop that belongs to the KKK or other white power group and patrols a black inner city area during the day? No connection? My guess is that police department is going to get sued by some big-name black folks if something like this ever came out. Even if he never does anything, the connection will taint everything. Your job may not be as sensitive or as public, but you can't isolate your life completely between work and non-work. Can't be done.
You don't even need internet to get fired for what you do off job.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-02-16-pregnancy-bias-usat_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-22-pregnant-teacher_x.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4636907.stm
http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2007/09/27/employees-fired-and-fined-for-smoking-obesity-and-blood-test-results/http://www.digg.com/health/Employees_getting_fired_for_smoking_or_being_obese
http://www.workerscompinsider.com/archives/000587.html
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/11/30/off_the_job_smoker_sues_over_firing/
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-28029.html
google for more
I also fail to see how a picture of you drunk on a saturday night half naked compromises your ability to do your job if all you do is work in an office where *everyone* including the boss gets drunk and half naked on a saturday night.
We're mostly geeks here.. we work in offices where people will behave, well, like people when they're away from the office. To fire someone for doing that is tantamount to discriminating against them for being human.
On the one hand, I have very little posted under my real name, and what I do is just general responses on tech forums. I don't have a myspace page; I have photos but they are on a home webserver. Probably based on my posts, people could tell I use Linux, don't like Windows, and don't like Apple's attitude (but forced to chose between Windows and OSX, would chose OSX.) If they saw the photos they could tell where I've gone on a few vacations.
On the other hand, it's simply none of the employer's business what happens off-hours. In the case the NYTimes uses as an example, I hope she wins. A single photo of someone drinking..something.. is not a big deal, and the other excuse of a "well-groomed and dressed" rule is ridiculous -- this obviously means at work. If they mean 24x7, employees would have to stay dressed while asleep, and have their face waxed so they don't get 6 o'clock shadow while they sleep.
I know for a fact *I* wouldn't be fired for that kind of photo. At work, people at my work are casual but reasonably professional. Off work, they drink, some people I used to work with got into barfights like every weekend, they smoke pot, a few have done 8-balls now and then, a few have been into tatoos, knives, and guns. People don't drink, do drugs, fight, or play with guns and knives at work, so what they do offtime is simply irrelevant, period. That's the way it's supposed to be.
I always post as ac. If I can't post ac, then I don't post.
... Even so, I have always behaved as though my online activities could be traced. Even as ac, I assume that if 'they' cared deeply enough they could trace me.
I am approaching retirement and it isn't likely that I will ever have to explain a twenty year old post on a job interview
It isn't easy to avoid posting as yourself. My daughter's friends arrange their social activities on facebook. If she wasn't willing to go on facebook as herself, she wouldn't have a social life. That could be a problem for her down the road. We recently had the case of someone whose buddy posted an embarassing picture of him and it linked from his own facebook page. It was right there in his employer's face when he went looking on facebook.
Maybe there should be a law that personal information on the internet has to 'evaporate' after a fixed amount of time. No fifty year old should have to explain or defend the opinions he expressed thirty years previously. It is almost guaranteed that he doesn't believe them anymore anyway.
The article I read was about the second case you're talking about. Unreasonable discrimination based on legal activities outside the workplace.
You seem to have made up your own article entirely. I didn't read anything about convicted fraudsters, or teacher pornstars. Can you point us towards the article to which you're responding too?
AccountKiller
I want to quote this first:
If you do something in public in your own time, it can and will affect your employment and is of concern to your employer. No bank wants an employee that's a convicted fraudster. No school wants teachers who are porn stars. No police force wants an ex-con as an officer. The issue isn't whether you conduct these activities in your own time or not, or if the Internet was used. The issue is that you're in a trusted position, and that your employer may have the right to terminate your employment if they perceive a conflict of interest, or if something you've done or are doing in your spare time means you can't effectively do your job.I agree that "conflicts of interests" as mentioned above do have a right to be known to employers. However, when does this stop becoming an genuine effort to root out the so-called "stripper teacher," and become an threadbare excuse to fire someone for lack of conformity? Let me illustrate. I am always 110% work appropriate when I am on the job, however in my off hours I wear alot of piercings, I show tattoos, I like to go out and have drinks and hang with friends. There is, with today's digital camera boom, a good chance pictures will be taken of these activities in my off time. Now, if the place I work for is generally church going, khaki and polo button down straight edge family types, they might absolutely abhor my personal life, even though I don't bring it to work. Now the issue becomes, "if one worker doesn't fit the company image in and out of work, cut him loose." Can you see how easy the line between business interest and privacy can get blurred and abused? It feels like a door for socialized work places(sans government). Maybe I make a slightly paranoid case, but self expression is highly important to me; I'd hate to live half a life for fear of losing my job.
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
I understand that a person with large amounts of cash and electronic transfer information shouldn't have a history of stealing cash and via electronic transfers (similar enough to fraudster). I can understand police forces not wanting most ex-cons because they have to uphold the law and not violate it. However, I fail to see why a school should be allowed to rule on the sexual activities of a teacher.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Would you really want to employ somebody who posted their drunken-partying photographs on a bulletin board in the center of town?
Quite simple, laws suck. There are reasonable things for which an employer shouldn't discriminate. For this conversation, I'll go with skin colour. My refusing to hire a programmer because she's black isn't reasonable, and that being criminal is acceptable to me the vast majority of the time. However, laws tend to over-step their bounds -- or lawyers tend to flex laws to encompass their client's situation. My refusing to hire a programmer because of her religion is perfectly reasonable. In my case, our development schedules often include days that are religious holidays. I can't lose my employees to "a higher power". So while I don't care about their god, I need to ensure that they don't all share the same god because I can't lose them all on the same day.
Anyone employee who exercises that particular right against me, doesn't see the problems with which I am faced. So when I refuse to hire her because her schedule doesn't accomodate the job's requirements -- or potential requirements -- her lawyer can easily swing that into a religious issue, which simply isn't fair to me.
Same goes for a mother versus a single man. And hey, if they wine and dine potential customers often, a vegetarian simply isn't acceptable. Now I'm not going to write the job description to include the expected diet, but I am going to expect my employee to eat when my client takes them to a steak house.
That's why those people are morons. Because they think that their personal life has nothing to do with their employer. When in reality, their employer's life is fully integrated with their employer's business, and your personal life is fully a part of your person -- your person being the one that's employed.
you may not want to work in a company doing this anyway....
If you don't have a choice, there goes another piece of "freedom" sacrificed to nitpicking tigh-asses unable to get a life, instead paying to their corporate, political or religous gods and philosophies instead.
Seems to be the trend and the general fear factor goes up a notch more.
In the first place, folks are humans wanting to enjoy their lifes and that aspect seems to be getting lost more and more.
I am a "semi-well-known" open source guy (name is being withheld to protect the innocent) and I was recently working for IBM on a well-known open source project for which they have taken over. They saw I had a web page up that listed me as a principal owner of my consulting company. The page wasn't changed since before I started with them - much over a year ago...and is even proven by an archive.org review. They now just "figured it out" and canned me...no questioning...no inquisition... They said they Googled me and found I was a CTO of this company...I was CTO before I started. What is funny is I was an outstanding employee for IBM and won 2 "Thank you" awards the Friday before the canning from different areas within IBM....go figure...
All worked out...started a contract the day the canned me...guess I'm better off w/o them.
Some of us have been around since the early or mid 80's. Back then, it was accepted practice to post on usenet with your real name. Nobody thought, at the time, that those posts would end up archived forever.
I never posted anything I'd regret later, but some other people were not so lucky. It's one thing to stand here in 2007/8 and think how silly it would be to post something you'd not want certain people to see using you real name. But back in the day, there were only a few hundred or thousand nodes on the net, depending on when you got here, and nobody really had any idea that their every word (in a then-ephemeral medium) would be archived in perpetuity.
I can't find me online without using the wayback machine.
On the one hand, I post very little under my real name. Usually I post anonymously. From my real posts, people could probably figure I like Linux, don't like Windows, and don't like Apple's behaviours. But, if forced to chose between Windows and OSX, I'd pick OSX. My photos are on a personal web server, and people could infer when I went on vacation from them.
...something... is ridiculous. And the second reason, because of a "groomed and well dressed" rule, is more ridiculous -- obviously, that is intended for on-the-job. What, all employees there have to stay dressed even in bed, and wax their face so they don't wake up with 6 o'clock shadow? That's ridiculous.
On the other hand employers really don't have business firing people over online activities. In the example given, firing someone for drinking a single cup of
Luckily I work somewhere where this is no problem. People behave on the job, and can do anything they want on their own time. I know for a fact that people that have worked at my current place of employment have drank, gotten into barfights, smoked pot, done the occasional 8-ball, and some were into guns and knives. Well, they don't drink, do drugs, fight, or play with knives and guns at work, so it's simply irrelevant to work. This is the American way -- off-work time is off-work time and people can do whatever they want in that time.
Holden's are shit cars BTW ;-)
Excuse me, but I was talking to syousef (465911), not you. Although your opinion is interesting and well thought out, you're simply not capable of answering the question which I directed to him. If you meant to reply to him instead of me, please excuse this post, otherwise please butt out of our conversation, it's very rude to attempt to answer for him as his opinions obviously differ from yours significantly.
I, personally, am of the opinion that employers should be free to hire and fire people for whatever reasons they like.. assuming of course they are owners of the business.. if they are just agents of the company then clearly it is up to the owners to decide the policy, but that's where the buck stops.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why not just let people be? Time and effort into investigating if your employee feels you are a frustrating boss with a small time neurosis and a paranoid streak are surely not worth the company time or money. It's a "conspiracy theory" right in the open.
Woe be to the company that takes an action against someone for whom they find negative information which was put up by someone else. Such "sociological offices" would be highly unlikely to be able to prove the true source of the posting. IP spoofing is ridiculously easy. Someone who loses their job over such unproven and unprovable data (except by a truly exceptional forensic sysadmin) could have a fine time collecting on a wrongful termination suit, and take the "sociological office" weasels down in the process, and ruining the stock price of of the company by pushing the story onto the media by playing the aggrieved little guy with a little overacting.
To someone even minimally trained in psycops and IP diddling for whom such stuff appears, it should occur that one couple protect themselves from such an action by posting equally off the wall junk, spoofing the IP to hide the fact they posted it themselves, to bait the boneheads trying to make a case. Posting some equally disturbing info about these who're performing the the search would let them know they've been bested in such a way that they dare not continue without outting themselves on the process. One can even make it obvious but unprovable who did it (or had it done for them) without the hyperactive little HR people being able to do anything about it, except perhaps admit they're not good enough at this for the company to use their services, possibly even getting them cut from the salary list.
The best defense if a good offense. The best offense here is to make them publicly shove proof of their own inadequacy up their own ass. A person could have enormous fun and possibly set themselves up for a healthy early retirement. Getting the fsckheads who tried to out you fired would just be icing.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
He didn't call people who exorcise their rights "morons". He said that people who don't understand that the Internet is public are put their shit on it are morons.
The Idea that someone would post something trashing their current job and then expect that no one connected to the job would ever see it is moronic.
An employee is selling their time to an employer, not their life, not their soul.
(I'd grant an exception for celebrities who are explicitly selling their face, name and reputation for use by the employer, but I think that's a silly business anyway)
I find that their sense of ethics is usually quite impaired.
Have gnu, will travel.
Two of the three examples you cite are about people who have been convicted of a crime. Convict status is something you don't need the Internet to find out and is something where there is a legal reduction in rights. The third example of a teacher moonlighting as an actor or model for pornography is rather an extreme and (I believe intentionally) inflammatory example. It is by necessity a public profession and one in which participation could be revealed even if no Internet existed.
Where I live, the state of Georgia here in the USA, your employer has the right to terminate you for any reason whatsoever (excepting of course discriminatory reasons based on minority, religious, veteran or disabled status) or without cause. So its not about the right of your employer to terminate. Its about the wisdom of terminating someone based on something you found out about them online. Any competent manager should be able to tell whether you are doing your job well or not, without the aid of facebook photos showing your drinking, getting high, or snorting coke off a strippers tits. If you can do your job, why should it matter what you put on the net?
You seem really fond of the word moron and its variants which you use thrice in your post. It of course refers to someone with diminished intelligence. So in response to your question, should I have sympathy for someone who has limited intellectual faculties, my response is yes. Of course, I do. What kind of monster are you that you don't?! But perhaps your repeated use of moron and variants is an indication of your own limitations, in this case of vocabulary. Maybe you meant to describe the individuals as foolhardy, naive, ignorant... In all of these cases, I still have sympathy for them. Everyone makes mistakes, but the Internet can trap those mistakes indefinitely like a fly in amber. Preserved for who knows how long... It is a major shift from a time when even the most celebrated of mistakes a person might make would fade in the collective memory and only diligent searching of newspaper archives, public records, and other references would uncover it.
I think your callous dismissal of the serious issue raised here is unwarranted. If anything it contributes to the ignorance that your deride (inaccurately with the word 'moron'). You suggest that people should already be aware of an issue at the same time you mock the fact that the issue is even being discussed. Obviously, given that people are ignorant of it, it needs to be discussed more, not less!
Ok, myminicity .com assholes. Playtime is over.
.com people hopefully more traffic than they were bargaining for.
I've really had it with the myminicity.com crowd, and to put a stop to this nonsense I've set up a little website.
Stop posting your myminicity links here and elsewhere, if myminicity.com wants to grow they can surely find a way to do it without inconveniencing others.
If you don't then I'm calling on the rest of the audience here to report those links to the site above and if they want to help a little further to place a 1 pixel image tag on their website which will give the myminicity
For starters I've placed one on http://ww.com/ , feel free to come and help.
This is just another spam wave and if this doesn't get stopped now then it will be seen as a vindication of the principle and before long there will be 100's of sites doing this.
Rewarding your users for bad behaviour has to be one of the most annoying marketing tactics that has ever been devised.
MP3 Search Engine
Isn't Ford going bankrupt and losing all its business? That should show how successful this employee model is working.
Quote one:
"But when they do anything that my clients can see, or to which my clients have access, they had better conduct themselves in a manner that I deem suitable."
Quote two:
"You don't deserve squat -- that's why you get nothing but money for your time."
What kind of stupid Scrooge attitude is this? Your employees don't deserve squat, yet they better behave on your own time as *you* see fit?
Are we really suppose to have sympathy for morons who don't know what they put on the net is public?
If you do something in public in your own time, it can and will affect your employment and is of concern to your employer. Unfortunately, not all are lucky enough to be able to shape their own progress(with any practicality).
There's a difference between someone posting of their off-hours activities and businesses looking for something to can someone by. The latter is an intrusion by the employer full stop. Allowing this kind of stuff to happen just makes for office politics in the bad kind. You don't deserve squat -- that's why you get nothing but money for your time. You work is appreciated, but the intelectual property isn't yours, and the risk wasn't yours, and the value-rewards won't be yours. The clients aren't yours, the company isn't yours. There's an enormous risk in starting your own business, and it's a gigantic under-taking to maintain any business. Being a cog in the machine is worth the grease, and little more. But that does not justify lording over employees for any reason in any condition. They're the ones that make your work possible, and deserve the utmost respect for their work. Infighting and disregard for morale negatively affect your product. Play God somewhere else where it won't affect anybody. In the absence of strong protections for employees Thanks to Reagan, and Taft-Hartley, are there any meaningful protections left that havent been destroyed by succeeding administrations?
(No, Austrian style "economics" do not count, as the employer has the upper hand, and mobility is not universal)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
My employer tracking my internet activities!! This is scary. listen_to_slashdot
If I'm employing a salaried worker, then they're never "off the clock." When they're thinking about work, that's work I'm employing them to do. I own their ideas because they are my employee, and that's how work-for-hire works.
People know who works for who, and so my employees' actions reflect on the company. I have to protect the image of my company. Firing someone for having a drunken binge and then gloating about it online reflects poorly on the professionalism of my company, and therefore could result in a loss of revenue, and that could result in a stock holder lawsuit. So you see, even if I didn't want to, I have no choice other than to constantly monitor the actions of my employees and reprimand them when they're actions run counter to the company's interest.
If potential employees didn't like this behavior, then they wouldn't interview or accept offers from my company. That's just how the free market works, and since people do work for me, that shows they don't have any problems with this arrangement. The free market works again! And anyway, they posted the things online, so they gave up any privacy, so they should just accept the consequences.
And finally, this is all private surveillance instead of government so there's nothing wrong with it.
* * *
Of course, I was being sarcastic, but I fully expect there to be multiple posts that reiterate these ideas, only for real. There are plenty of people in today's America that want to essentially repeal the 20th century. I strongly suspect because there are people that for whatever reason, never saw power they didn't like, because they have the delusional belief that someday they will have that power.
Employers can read your email because they own the network. However they can't listen into your phone calls, even though they own the phones. The difference? One law was passed in the 30s or 40s. The other in the 90s.
The lassie faire free market capitalism is model. Nothing more. It's an ideal model, not unlike ideal wires in electrical engineering. They don't exist. The perfect market doesn't exist, because it hinges on perfect information, which doesn't exist. The market doesn't capture lots of things, namely pretty much everything that doesn't have a directly quantifiable cost. Even if you could assign a cost to these things, which you can't, the market doesn't necessarily work fast enough.
While it's all well and good to be careful of your own online identity and to never use your real name in the end it's all rather pointless if you have friends. I write about my friends online all the time and frequently post pictures of us with all sorts of searchable meta-tag information.
No, they're an example of why we keep worker protections in place. Yes, thuggery happens on both sides, but business owner doesn't mean demigod. Unfortunately, the 1980's turned the US the wrong way around.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's been obvious for a while that universal
surveillance is not as impossible as it once
seemed, but the surprise is that there is such
a large audience.
*http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/
Say I posted some pictures of myself performing autofellatio on 4chan while my furfag friend yiffs me in my anus with a dog's squeaktoy. What business is it of my employer's? Can I not sue them for discrimination?
/b/?" be sufficient enough to scare the potential firer from firing me?
And wouldn't "oh yeah? What were YOU doing on
It's only fair - after all, I monitor my work email during my "off hours" so why shouldn't it monitor me back?
You know, this problem wouldn't exist if it weren't for the fact that every human being is a hypocrite. Before you judge Joe for his drunken night and that photo of him with the strippers, take a good long look at your own life. If every single human being had every moment of their life exposed on the internet, EVERYBODY would be screwed.
People are sickening with the speed at which they'll rip another's reputation to shreds. This isn't a question about who leads an unscrupulous lifestyle - the fact is, we all have those moments. Just because yours haven't made it online for all to see doesn't make you a holy saint. And it sure as hell doesn't give you the right to ruin an employee's life in the name of "protecting the children/clients/whatever-group-you're-using-as-an-excuse".
What people really need to do is to stop worrying so much about image and reputation. Sorry, if you possess a squeaky clean image and spotless reputation, chances are you're far too frickin' dull and boring. Or, you really are a Bad Boy(TM), but you're too goddamn phony and stuck up to admit it to anybody but yourself.
Just my dollar and 2 cents.
Pics or it didn't happen.
There are those of us who don't have to worry.
While I think there should be complete separation between what you do for a living and what you do privately for fun, that separation is an ideal that has never really existed. There are valid arguments on both sides of the discussion, societal trends will change over time as well. Discretion has always been a valuable quality.
That being said, everyone of us is a famous public figure on the internet. Our "public" image needs to be "crafted" and managed. Your "public" statements need to be well considered and support the positions you wish to define yourself. The stuff you would be embarrassed to have as public knowledge or considered by your employer or customer should be done fairly anonymously.
Here's the most important part: make sure you have a "good" public searchable persona and use multiple various hotmail accounts when you are going to say something that is going to cause trouble.
Remember, the technology that allows "them" to find you, also allows you to hide from them. Just make sure you do.
Quite simple, laws suck.
Really? You think it sucks that Mister Policeman will object if he notices somebody hauling away your stuff one fine evening?
If not -- and I presume that if you think about it, you'll come down on the "not" side -- the next step is to realize that most grownups realize that living by rule of law don't depend on whether or not it happens to work in one's favor at the moment.
My refusing to hire a programmer because of her religion is perfectly reasonable.
The folly of going on public record with this statement where somebody in a legal dispute with you might dig it up, on this thread no less, just broke my irony meter.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Well, in markets where there is actual competition, the market should sort this out.
Doing research about employees' online activities costs a company money. Ending employees' contract because of their activities costs companies employees that cost them money to acquire, and who supposedly did good work. Knowing that your company is watching you even when you're not on duty is probably not good for morale. That could cost the company, as well.
There might actually be benefits to doing this kind of monitoring.
So, in the end, companies that monitor their employees wisely will gain, and companies that go too far in their monitoring will lose. Assuming actual competition, it will be more difficult for companies that lose in this way to compete with th ones that win.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I think this guy speaks for all of us: http://www.xkcd.com/137/
You, sir, have a great username.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Your clients only bring it up because they know you can do something about it. If your hands were tied, they wouldn't bother.
It is probably better this way because if you "protect" the employment relationship (like Europe), you basically make employers very fearful of hiring anyone. That also produces a very immobile, unflexible and fearful workforce.
The real reason employers don't act arbitrarily in most cases is pure self-interest: it is risky and hard to train and integrate new employees. A dismissal that others think is wrong is likely to very negatively affect morale in the remaining employees and is very ill-advised unless you believe they are all slackers and you want to axe the whole dept.
This was modded 5, Insightful by people who also never got invited to a party : /
Oh, wait, nobody is complaining that people might get fired for being like that.
What does it say that it is so easy to identify those behaviors which are questionable?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If you can, change your surname to "Smith".
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Aren't those people who don't understand the public nature of the Internet the very ones who are exorcising their rights?
You can agree that people have certain rights without thinking that they're smart for exercising them. The KKK has the right to speak about their views, but having said that, I still think they're morons.
Fuck the New York Times.
They are corporate media.
Forget about Right Wing, or Left Wing.
THEY'RE CORPORATE MEDIA
They blackout the fact we've lost the Constitution.
They blackout the fact we've lost our Bill of Rights.
They blackout the fact elections are rigged via electronic tabulation and many other ways.
They blackout the truth behind a lot of heavy shit right now.
Fuck the New York Times.
That's the pointy end of the risk you keep going on about accepting. You can't have it both ways; either you've accepted and accounted that possibility, or you're no more exposing yourself to risk than you claim your employees are.
Businesses don't exist outside of persons. They produce nothing in and of themselves, though they are quite often a drain on society. People, by and large, are quite valuable to governments. Most live productive lives, contribute to their communities, and (more importantly to their government) reliably pay their taxes.
What governments are leery to discourage is investment, but that's an entirely separate discussion.
For the vast majority of employment relationships, I disagree with this kind of monitoring. It encourages "control-freak" types to impose their sense of right and wrong on others.
:-)
However, here's an example of why it might be necessary in some situations. I work for an airline. Names withheld to protect the innocent, of course. For those who don't know, airlines are powered by a very young, very underpaid workforce of junior flight attendants and pilots. For every senior captain with a fixed flight schedule, there are hundreds of crew on reserve filling in the gaps. Average flight attendant pay is just around $17K a year the first year. Add to that the fact that for most of them, this is their first job in the real world and they're getting paid to fly around to strange places. This combo has led to some interesting goings-on in the past. Think lots of drinking and the associated mayhem that goes along with it. Federal law requires these folks to be 100% sober when they show up to work. Yes, that's testable and you're fired instantly if you fail. Now, losing your pilot's license (and by extension, ability to make a living) is a really good deterrant. 99.999999999999% of the time, they come back from their wild nights just fine. But, it's all about perception. Would you want to fly on an airline that even gave the impression of condoning crazy flight crew behavior?
For my airline and almost every other one in the world, it's an instantly dismissible offense to be seen anywhere near alcohol wearing any part of a uniform. I agree with this 100%! I work with our training staff a lot, and they tell me that at least one newbie every couple months gets thrown out of training for this. It's for the same reasons outlined in the NYT article. If some crew member winds up on YouTube wearing a lampshade and an [name removed] uniform or badge, what are people supposed to think??
These kinds of scenarios, like public-trust positions, do demand a little bit of proactive monitoring. If you're an average cube jockey, then your employer shouldn't care about your personal life unless you can't perform your job anymore. However, when your (non-trustworthy) junior staff can get you on the front page of the paper, you have to put some limits in place.
Now, we need to deal with the second part of the problem... People really need to be educated and told that everything they put online is permanent, available to anyone and will follow them forever. We have a whole generation of college students who are just getting started creating permanent records for themselves by posting MySpace pictures of their drunken activities. When I have a kid, it's going to be told that as soon as it can understand. One of the problems is that this stuff is going to hang around long after the sites that host it are gone...everyone has to be comfortable with seeing a naked, drunken video of themselves at 21 when they're 50 and applying for that senior director position.
This will be like when the internet hit and we all learned that everyone likes porn. For a while people were "perverts", now it's understood because everyone does it. Facebook will teach us what people are really like, and once the lid comes off, we will know that everyone is a inappropriate for work, and it won't matter. However I feel sorry for the people who will be fired in the mean time. Wait long enough though and all those people in management will have their college activities posted. Everyone will be Paris Hilton and it won't matter.
No one cares what you do in your off time. No really they don't. But if you're going to perform watersports on a dog, while licking ice cream off an asian prostitute, while sodomizing a bum, at least put it under an alias.
The shit people do and then link to their name is ridiculous. If I post something under my given name that can reflect badly onto me and the company I work for. Now at the same time if I post something under a pseudonym (kinglink is one) then that at least should not be considered the same thing. However at the same time if I link my account to my last name in any way (signing a post with my real name?) then again that becomes public knowledge. My company likely knows kinglink is me, that's fine I'm not betraying my company I'm not being stupid, I'm not trying to hide who I am, but the minute I would need to believe me, Kinglink will not be the name I try that with.
At the very least let's all realize that the internet is here to stay. So it's fine to post a picture of you as a fairy in a pride parade. But at the same time also realize someone searching for your information is likely to find and can and will make opinions on you or your background based on it.
Oh and a little hint, if you're playing hooky, and you take pictures DONT POST THEM ON FACEBOOK OR ANYTHING LINKED TO YOU! There's too many stories about this with people getting busted. Or again at the very least tamper with the date and time on your camera before you take your pictures.
What you just basically said is you discriminate against an employee based on their religion.
What you just basically said you do, has gotten many an employer sued and quite successfully so.
You, holophrastic, are bullshitting. You are not a manager, nor do you run a business. Not here in America, you don't.
Perhaps you run a business in some third world shithole, but in America, you would be eaten alive.
I on the other hand DO manage a data center in a financial institution and I would utterly FIRE you if I found out you were monitoring a worker's life after work hours. I would fire you and put it in the newspapers.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The point about lawyers flexing laws is pretty much legit, as is the observation that laws have consequences, some of which may expose you to negative impacts in running a business. The question is whether or not the goods they're crafted to bring about are worth it.
I'd agree that requiring employers to make allowances that mean they need to consider a single man and mother equally means there may be calculable drag on employers. That by itself doesn't mean it's not a good idea, it simply means there's no such thing as a free lunch. The question is if that's the best place to pay/way for the problem of mothers who don't have sufficient incomes in their households, and if it's by and large an acceptable tradeoff.
In my case, our development schedules often include days that are religious holidays. I can't lose my employees to "a higher power"
I'd argue that it's also better to have a society that doesn't discriminate based on religion than it is to have businesses at peak efficiency, too, but that's not really relevant to your statement. Because you're not talking about operating a peak efficiency -- any development schedule that can't accommodate up to a dozen holidays a year and a weekly sabbath of some kind (whether spent in piety or revelry or somewhere in between) is already screwed up, likely negatively influenced by fatigue and diminishing returns, and it ought to scare off any developer with good sense, who ought to run hard and fast unless you're offering some unusually good compensation.
Even if, however, the documentation fell the other way, it's possible that the good done by encouraging a society that doesn't discriminate based on religious belief might outweigh the business economic case.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Wow. Posting on a public forum and then bitching out another member even though they had some good insight. The DURRR of the year award goes to you.
They can all bite me. What I do in my free time is not the business of my employer and never will be. To that end work and my "real" life are completely separate things. My privacy is not for sale for any price and never will be either.
Now if employers terminate people unreasonably for being part of a political organization, due to their ethnicity or religion or for some other discriminatory reason the existing legal protection needs to come into play
Keep in mind that "at will" likely means you don't have to give a reason. If a reason has to be given, as long as it doesn't involve illegal job discrimination, it will most likely be accepted in any court proceedings. "Our clients complain that her clothes are boring" would probably pass muster. I'm not certain that people holding particular political opinions or affiliations are an enumerated protected class.
Keep in mind also that any HR functionary who can't find a legally-justifiable excuse for firing (or not hiring) any arbitrarily-selected person really doesn't understand his job.
If people would already respect privacy as it is, there would be no discussion at all.
...
If everybody would understand the thin line inbetween the 8-16 job and the time which has been done outside payment hours, there would be no discussion at all.
Some people are taking George Orwell a bit too literally with his visions towards the future; since not only your body and soul is owned during working hours but also outside working hours now! You and your ideas are owned on work-and-private time as long you are in that company ?
Why not quit instead of being company property? Why are people so lax lately about their own *$# rights?!?
Wasn't slavery banned years ago? I could call this a form of slavery where the company defines how you can live your life.
We only got one life to live, if that fact only gets more respected, people might start to see the precious time they got in life, with things you can do -now- and maybe never later again because you waited too long or you are too old to do it.. Do you really want to be enslaved to that corporate mind?
It's not because someone pays you for your services they also totally own your body and future. Image or not; if people would think in this way private = private & work = work, there wouldn't be an image; since "image" is only something relative created by few who want to set a standard
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Whoosh.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I write this a am member of the military so I have a bit of understanding about the extremes of this argument.
First, the type of employment matters a lot. Technically, military personnel are under a "Personal Services Contract." We are paid no matter what we do, where we do it or even IF we do it. I do not clock in or out, I receive no overtime, comp time, sick time. I have annual leave but technically it is simply permission to be away from my duty location for a period of time. Given the nature of the contract, it is perfectly reasonable for my "employer" to have an interest in my personal life.
Compare that with about 99% of the jobs out there any the question becomes more clear. If I get paid overtime or receive comp time then the portion of my day that you do not pay for is my business. If you want to be involved in that part of the day, pay up.
Now the argument is normally image. If I am doing table dances at Hooters at 1 AM how can I represent the company at 9 AM. I have no problem with that either but it needs to be clearly spelled out in the Performance Work Standards. If I work in the mail room and my interaction consists of the letters and the box they go in, you would have a hard time getting away with saying the company image had been damaged. Of course none of this applies to "at will" employees. Where companies screw up is when they TELL an at will why they were fired. Idiots, just fire them.
Back to my situation. My employer has complete control of my life. 99% of the time, my employer does not exercise that control. Anyone who has been even close to a military base knows that soldiers drink and do dumb things. The mere fact that the military CAN punish people for off duty behavior prevents a lot but not all dumb stuff. Still, we are not a machine and decisions are made by PEOPLE. Most military leaders understand the where the line is and when it has been crossed. They know because the military is unique in this county as the only large organization that ONLY promotes from within. Everyone starts at the bottom meaning no one gets to a decision maker position without spending far more time subject to someone else making decisions. Right now we are struggling with blogs and MySpace because of generational differences in leadership. Nothing new. It was Rock and Roll vs Big Band in the 60s. Almost everyone I know has had a boss at one extreme or the other - either holding prayer meetings or starting with drinks at 1500 (3PM) on a Tuesday. Neither one is good. Most of us shoot for the middle but most actually end up far more "liberal" then most people outside the military would think. We tolerate far more off duty behavior than most people believe simply because the alternative is so crushing on moral. IMHO civilian companies could learn a lot from seeing how the military restrains itself despite the tools for total control.
This sort of story always reminds me of the book by Arthur Clarke (and another guy...Baxter?) called "The Light of Other Days".
Basically, some invention is created that lets people see what's going on elsewhere, and then it is modified to allow you to see back in time...basically, all privacy is gone.
At first, it is shocking, and embarassing, and then everyone gets used to the idea that nothing is private, and then it's no big deal.
There's a lot more to it (and I haven't read it in, oh, six years) but it always crosses my mind when this employer-overreacts-to-personal-data story meme shows up.
Probably true, although that doesn't mean it's right.
Why not? Maybe the *parents* don't want that, out of misguided paranoia, narrow-mindedness and general stupidity, but as long as the teacher keeps their out-of-school life out of school, what's the problem? The school may follow what the parents want, but as before, that doesn't make it right (and unlike in case of a bank, it probably isn't even about business risks, real or perceived).
Why not? I can't think of anybody who'd make a better cop than someone who's already familiar with the criminal subculture, who's been part of it and who now wants to build up a "normal" life and not only get a regular job again but also give back by becoming a *cop*. They'd sure be a better cop than all the doughnut-munching Chief Wiggums out there.
Which is why we need a Continental-style, legislated wall of separation between private and working lives. Quite simply, nothing I do whilst "off the clock" is any of my employer's business, unless I invite him to watch.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Look, it's a cripple! Let's throw rocks at him.
I bet I can hit him on the temple and kill him! That's what he gets for being a cripple.
Ha ha!
1. The whole idea behind law and prison sentences being finite is that there is a finite price to pay for any crime. You were maybe young and dumb, you did something stupid, you paid for it. That's it.
If society thought your crime is so heinous, and you can never be trusted again, they could have kept you in jail longer. There are life sentences too, you know.
Releasing someone but then saying that they can't ever get a decent job again, or (in some places and for some crimes) they can only live under a bridge because anything else is close to where children live and they once peed in public... is a farce. If you can't trust them to live a normal life, don't release them in the first place.
2. Here's another thought for why we don't give prison for life, or capital sentence, for everything from jaywalking to mass murder. It's because then you lose any incentive to not escalate it. If you get the same life sentence for robbing someone as for shooting them, then there's no real reason why you shouldn't just shoot the bugger and take his wallet off his corpse. At least dead he can't identify you, and the penalty is the same anyway.
3. It gets funnier when you start picking on people like porn stars, who didn't even break any laws. So basically you're already proposing to deny employment to some people just because of some groupthink pretense that we're all so puritan and chaste.
For bonus points, probably most dads and half the moms in the mob with pitchforks and torches, probably watched porn before. But yeah, let's pretend we're outraged, because the neighbours might like us less if they don't see us in the mob. It's that kind of herd instinct that sometimes makes me disgusted of the whole human species.
Here's a thought for you: "A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." -- Adlai Stevenson
Here's another thought: if you think something is that detrimental, make a law against it. That's what rule of the law is all about. If you don't, then accept that it's _not_ in fact wrong to do that. Too lazy to look for a quote, but that's roughly been Andrei Sakharov's thrust in the USSR, where they loved to enforce a little bit more -- and occasionally something completely other -- than what the law said.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
who says it was me (I) who put that video up?
Here I am, enjoying my drunken rave - having a great time, I even leave my phone at home.. no disturbances for me this new years' eve.. just me, my friends, that cute girl I met and jello shots.
A week later, I get fired, because my boss saw a video of it.. turns out the girl was his niece; go fig. Now what video? I don't know - I certainly didn't take any, let alone give it to him. Turns out that somebody else was shooting some video of their friends.. I don't know them, they don't know me, but I sure was in the background of their video.
Not everything is a "babysitter caught doing drugs", but may still be something you don't really want to share with the world for whatever reason; but you don't always have a say in this yourself.
So the solution is not so simple; unless you're saying that the real simple solution is to live puritan life 24/7 so that there is never a chance of anybody, anywhere, catching you doing things that might be perfectly acceptable in the situation you were in, but perhaps not so acceptable to your employer.. parents.. whoever/whatever.
What is it boy? Little Timmy lost his job?
(You're probably looking for the word laissez-faire...)
While it is a topic of concern, why waste time with it until it does become a legit concern? Don't we have enough real problems on our plates right now that we don't have to go fishing for "virtual pet peeves?"
Come on Slashdot, you have enough real material that you don't have to resort to this!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Isn't it more that the ones who are exposed as (whatever) are "punished" in that manner?
Every single person has 'secrets'.
It's not a matter of who's a deviant, or abnormal, it's just a matter of who (by chance) is known to be X so they can be judged Y by the mass hysteria of normality.
Trusted position my ass.
EVERYONE's a deviant.
If you do something in public in your own time, it can and will affect your employment and is of concern to your employer. No bank wants an employee that's a convicted fraudster. No school wants teachers who are porn stars. No police force wants an ex-con as an officer. The issue isn't whether you conduct these activities in your own time or not, or if the Internet was used. The issue is that you're in a trusted position, and that your employer may have the right to terminate your employment if they perceive a conflict of interest, or if something you've done or are doing in your spare time means you can't effectively do your job.
This argument isn't valid because you came up with three professions that have higher than usual ethical standards and then presented situations where people in those positions would clearly be in opposition to those ethics (except for maybe the schoolteacher part, but I'll give you that for the sake of argument). For starters, if you've been convicted of fraud then you're not going to get hired at a bank. If you're an ex-con you're not going to get to be a cop. If you're a convicted drug dealer you're not going to be able to be a pharmacist. But none of these examples are cases where your activities outside of work could cost you your job, these are examples where laws or professional standards of conduct were broken. These are cases where you would clearly be precluded from holding those positions by laws or professional ethics. In short, they are job-related activities even though they took place outside of work. The article is talking about much less severe cases that are not work related.
For example, what happens if you go out with your friends on a Friday night and have a few too many beers and pass out. Should you lose your job if someone at work finds out about it? What if you're married and it turns out that you're fooling around on the side? What if you're a total man-whore who's hooking up with every skank in town after hours, but shows up for work on time every day and does a good job? Should you be fired just because your boss doesn't like your social activities?
What if your boss is a staunch Republican and contributes to the Mike Huckabee election campaign, and he sees a picture of you on TV or on the web at a Barack Obama rally? Or even worse, at an anti-Chuck Norris rally? Should he be allowed to fire you for that? What if your boss is deeply religious and he notices on your Myspace profile that you're a staunch atheist and linked to the Brights web site? Or how about the reverse? Heck, what if you're a Muslim of caucasian heritage (i.e., you don't have an Arab name) and your boss finds out about your religion and fires you? If a person wants to go to a pro-life or pro-choice rally, should they have to worry about losing their job if someone that they know from work sees them there?
We're not talking about criminal behavior here, or other behavior that would legally or ethically preclude you from holding a specific job. We're talking about behavior that is truly outside the scope of anything related to the business that could still end up costing a person their job under the right circumstances.
If you do something in public in your own time, it can and will affect your employment and is of concern to your employer.
No, it isn't.
As long as you are in your workplace when requested and do the job for which you are hired, your company has no business whatsoever in any legal activities you decide to pursuit.
You are selling yourself cheap if you allow your company to fuck with your personal life. If they ever attempt to intrude a rude "I dare you, and I am talking to my lawyer" should be more than enough in most cases.
In the UK such intrusion could be used to build a case of unjustified dismissal.
No bank wants an employee that's a convicted fraudster.
Pointless example in two levels: a bank would screen employees for situations like this, most likely no work relationship would be ever established, also what is the point of doing your time if you are considered guilty forever? If anything a convicted fraudster could be a great asset on identifying fraud.
No school wants teachers who are porn stars
Why not? I would have no problem with that. A good teacher is a good teacher, if after that he does something else, it is their time. If anything this statement says more about your moral hangovers than about the issue at hand.
No police force wants an ex-con as an officer.
Why not? What about having served your time? Who could be a better "mole"? Do you ever get out of that box in which you are thinking?
The issue isn't whether you conduct these activities in your own time or not, or if the Internet was used. The issue is that you're in a trusted position, and that your employer may have the right to terminate your employment if they perceive a conflict of interest, or if something you've done or are doing in your spare time means you can't effectively do your job.
You are embarrassing yourself by failing to understand what the issue is (you reading comprehension powers are sorely lacking).
Firstly, you are mixing free time while in a current job with criminal activity previous to joining a job. 2 of your lame examples commit this stupid mistake.
Let me bring an example more pertinent: most serious companies nowadays will not allow discrimination based on sexual preferences (heck, some companies celebrate diversity of sexual preferences). In the same companies you are bound to have very religious people that will go to their churches (or mosques, bless them) to talk about the evils of homosexuality. As much as I abhor religious zealots, as long as they are respectful at work with all their colleagues and do their job, what possible excuse would be there for a company to chastise a religious person for publicizing his beliefs on their free time?
Now if employers terminate people unreasonably for being part of a political organization, due to their ethnicity or religion or for some other discriminatory reason the existing legal protection needs to come into play (as is the case of Stacy Snyder mentioned in TFA - terminating someone for being seen with a large glass of alcohol is moronic - that said she's better off with a different employer if that's how her current one acts). We don't need new special laws for the Internet. We may need minor adjustments to existing laws to take the Internet into account. We certainly don't need special protection for morons be they employer or employee.
Why should religious affiliation should have priority over making an ass of myself? As my example above shows, there could be as much ground for making life of a religious zealot difficult as there would be for messing up with a tasteless muck posting embarrassing stuff in Facebook.
Since a company is not arbiter of the morals of its employees, then it should not be taking that role, otherwise, sooner or later it will be brought up to account by somebody that feels offended for the inaction of a company in respect to somebody else.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Apparently having your exec position on a real ale society come up when googling your name is not impressive to some people.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Agreed. There's big difference between this guy and someone else in the same situation. First of all, high school principals shouldn't be drinking and driving. Secondly, if they are pulled over for a DUI they shouldn't be calling their friends on the police force to get them out of it. But I'm a systems engineer. I'm not held to the same standard, and my getting a DUI shouldn't affect my ability to work.
A few weeks later your boss calls you in her office and wants to know why there are photos of you posted on the internet in which you are obviously drunk, with beer in one hand and a drunken floosy in the other. You and her are clearly making sexual gestures, a joke at the time, but unfortunately the punchline is lost in the photo. Worse yet, you're doing it while wearing a baseball cap bearing the corporate logo. You say "but, I don't know those got on the net".
Later, you find out your friend (or co-worker) Y was snapping photos with his cell phone and posted them to his myspace account. You curse him as you pack your cardboard box and promptly escorted from the building.
Morale of the story. Not everyone has the power to prevent others publishing information about you, be it text, photos or videos. It can happen, has happened, and will continue to happen. Your post was far from "insightful"; it was merely ignorant and unsympathetic.
Oh yes, ever heard of dontdatehimgirl.com? I'm sure your future boss will appreciate reading all about you upon googling your name and finding all the dirt your ex-girlfriend spilled on you. Have fun with the job search.
Camping on quad since 1996.
This is possibly another alternative to the two futures David Brin sees - the Transparent Society and the Surveillance State, a cross between the two... the corporate surveillance society. It seems to be the current trend.
I have no idea if you're trolling on purpose or not but I have no intention of getting into a protracted argument with someone who's got an attitude like yours.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
But no law guarantees using that right won't have consequences like losing your job or business.
I don't know art but I know what I like. Same thing with what employees post in their spare time. One of the guys on our volunteer fire department is seriously racist. His opinions are not shared by myself, the city or the department. If he keeps his mouth shut we can tolerate diversity of opinion, even some the rest of us might find highly objectionable. If he publishes a racially charged letter to the editor in the local paper, we'd likely have to suspend him. His employer might be looking at losing business if he keeps him on staff. He didn't do anything illegal, provided he wasn't advocating violence, but there are still consequences. Freedom of speech is not a license to kill.
Now let's suppose he merely posted pictures of some drunken but harmless escapades. We still might have to suspend him from the department, or limit what kind of calls he could answer. Imagine the department getting sued because of the way we handled a motor vehicle accident response and the opposing attorney parades those pictures in front of a jury. Could he have been impaired on the scene? Or hung over from the night before? Who else on the department might be involved? It would raise a doubt in my mind if I'm on the jury.
This isn't as clear cut as we might like it to be. Some employers will certainly go too far with monitoring employees online activities. What happens if the employee gets fired because of pictures of them at a Democratic fund raiser in a Republican leaning company? I think most reasonable people would agree that's not right. Where as if he was advocating segregation because one race or another was inferior, that's a different story.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You seem really fond of the word moron and its variants which you use thrice in your post
Thanks for keeping count, but seriously who the fuck uses the word thrice in everyday language?
I'm not using the word moron to indicate "diminished intelligence" of the kind we attribute to physical disabilities. I'm talking about people who are too lazy and who choose to remain to ignorant to realize that their actions on the Internet are public. The anecdotal evidence in plentiful and it's not difficult to understand. You can discuss it until you turn blue, these people are more interested in their playstations and reality TV. I suggest you stop making excuses for people who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The USA a democracy? Hahahahahhahahahahahhahaha.
It is quickly becoming as bad as the former USSR. The USSR was under control of a single Party. The USA is in control by a few big corporations. That now have their own Stasi.
You suckers are being run (over) by corporations! Hahahahahahahaha.
You arguing a very specific case where a third party violates your privacy rather than your boss does not invalidate the GP...especially since the GP is, well, right. If someone films/records you without your knowledge or permission then they should be prosecuted under existing statutes. Once knowledge is out there though... Most posts in this thread seem to miss the simple fact that social pressures are what control a society. As long as you choose to live in a society, you will be subject to the subtle and not so subtle pressures brought to bear by its members upon you. This isn't about witch hunts, it's about shunning. Look up the concept and you might be surprised that people don't 'have it in for you', they just don't like you or want to be around you.
"Our clients complain that her clothes are boring" would probably pass muster
Perhaps if the employee is an entertainer. That'd be a reasonable complaint if the employee were a stripper or a clown. Probably not so for a lawyer or construction worker.
You're right though in that it's easy to make an excuse for hiring or firing someone that doesn't mesh with the actual reason for that action. That's where evidence of behaviour comes into it. Using your example if HR came up with the boring clothing example a good lawyer would help find witnesses that saw the client in less than boring clothng to counter.
The real problem is that if an employee's employer no longer wants them around, even if they win the legal case, they're better off to move on to a different job and employer. Bosses and HR departments don't easily forget and can hold grudges for decades. The employee finds themself having to forever defend their actions (which would never have been questioned if the employee hadn't won a legal case). Minor indisgressions or deviations from rules or procedures that would normally be overlooked suddenly become a new reason to terminate the employee.
My point is that new Internet specific laws will not protect the rights or wishes of either employee or employer. We already have laws.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Funny, my Swedish teacher in upper secondary school had actually been in a pr0n-sort-of-movie back in the 70's. It's not hardcore, but being it's a Finnish movie, it has explicit nudity and sex scenes (in the US it would probably be edited or rated X or whatever). Everyone thinks it's all a myth, until it's shown in TV. After that, nobody can look at him with a straight face...
Still, he's a good teacher and nobody has had a problem with his past.
The whole idea behind law and prison sentences being finite is that there is a finite price to pay for any crime
Lovely idea. Bears no resemblance to the reality of law, but nice sentiment.
PART of your punishment can be finite while other parts can be indefinite. Part of your punishment can be jail time. The other part may be something else. For example there are crimes that you can commit that make you ineligible to hold office, practice as a lawyer, or run a company. Hell there doesn't have to be any jail time involved. Take a look at the rules for bankruptcy.
Your failure to actually have a grasp of the law kinda invalidates your entire argument. If you're going to comment on law spend a little less time with the philosophy books and a little more time learning about law.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I don't use the corporate LAN at work... I use a laptop and connect with a PCMCIA cellular modem from Sprint PCS... When I need to access the corporate LAN, I VPN in in plug in my ethernet cable... There is no reason to be on the corporate LAN. It just allows others to snoop (or tcpdump) on what your doing.
As long as you are in your workplace when requested and do the job for which you are hired, your company has no business whatsoever in any legal activities you decide to pursuit.
That's simply not how the real world works.
You are selling yourself cheap if you allow your company to fuck with your personal life. If they ever attempt to intrude a rude "I dare you, and I am talking to my lawyer" should be more than enough in most cases.
More than enough to get you fired. I think you're confusing how you wish the world would be with how it actually works.
Pointless example in two levels: a bank would screen employees for situations like this, most likely no work relationship would be ever established, also what is the point of doing your time if you are considered guilty forever? If anything a convicted fraudster could be a great asset on identifying fraud.
People get through the screening. You'd be surprised. I took a seminar on internal fraud prevention a year or so back. The stories were incredible. The idea that a convict is the best to catch other convicts is a fantasy that conveniently ignores the fact that often the convict's still looking for ways to commit fraud.
In the UK such intrusion could be used to build a case of unjustified dismissal.
Depends entirely on what the employee did and whether it violated any company code of conduct.
Why not? I would have no problem with that. A good teacher is a good teacher, if after that he does something else, it is their time. If anything this statement says more about your moral hangovers than about the issue at hand.
Firstly you don't comprise the entirity of society and as such you don't get to make up all the rules. Secondly it's hard to do your job as a teacher when the kids are busy making lewd comments and pinning up naked pictures of you on the wall. I happen not to care a great deal about porn - I certainly don't have a moral stance that it makes the teacher low. I do however think others will come to this conclusion and that the teacher's position is therefore undermined. I'd like to hope that some time down the track attitudes will change. But I won't bury my head in the sand like you do, because right now and today a teacher can't publicly be a porn star. It's not accepted by society.
Why not? What about having served your time? Who could be a better "mole"? Do you ever get out of that box in which you are thinking?
I made the same comment to another poster. Part of the punishment may be prison time for a crime. Other parts may include not being permitted to engage in certain kinds of business. Eg. there are rules about a bankrupt being a CFO for a company etc. A common misconception is "you've done your time, you've paid for your crime". That's not how the legal system works and in practice it can't work like that because it would allow for repeat offenders to abuse the system. The extremist view that they should be locked up until they can be trusted is another childish fantasy which would only lead to further overcrowding of prisons.
You are embarrassing yourself by failing to understand what the issue is (you reading comprehension powers are sorely lacking).
You're embarrassing yourself by failing to understand the difference between arguing a point and making a personal attack.
Firstly, you are mixing free time while in a current job with criminal activity previous to joining a job. 2 of your lame examples commit this stupid mistake
Okay first of all if you're going to engage in a serious argument don't call the other person's argument "lame". It makes you sound like an acne ridden 16 year old that thinks they know how to solve the world's problems but barely knows how to tie his own shoelaces let alone spell the word shoelace. There are better more adult words than "lame"
There was no "stupid mistake" in my examples. They were extreme and obvious examples of spare time activities affecting a p
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Moral of the story is actually that if you're doing something in public, you can expect it to be publicly known about. In reality in your story you might even be able sue your friend for posting your picture on the net (defamation etc). I don't like your chances of winning though.
The other moral of the story is that if your employer has a problem with the way you act in public you either need to change your public behaviour or your employer, or quite likely both. A sensible employer is not going to take idle gossip like dontdatethegirl unless it's very strongly backed with evidence.
I hope your story is hypothetical, though taking a look at your "homepage" I don't doubt it could very well be personal experience.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
No, this is not societal pressure.
This is IMAGINED societal pressure. In other words, complete and absolute overreaction.
This is someone THINKING that because, say, some girl MAY have been drinking alcohol -- probably was -- that that somehow means she can't be a teacher.
At issue is the expectation for our day-to-day lives to be held to the same standard we keep while on the clock at work. Yeah.. maybe it's not a good idea to post shit like that online. Fact is, though -- if you don't WANT to see that sort of shit about somebody? Don't look for it! Simple as that.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
When you walk onto a job site you essentially have no constitutional rights. Unless you live somewhere with strong labor laws, work under a civil service code or are part of a union.
The US constitution only covers the relationship between the government and individuals, not between private individuals.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I just wanted everyone to know:
Everyone - Have promiscuous sex, drink, avoid church, overspend, do drugs and listen to loud music. You have my approval.
If you think my approval is worth anything in your life, you're an idiot, you can add go play in traffic to my list.
There, I think that's pretty controversial. I'll write back if anything interesting happens.
Half of you neoLibertarians cheered when companies started firing employees who smoke at home. It's all about the holy dollar. Control is just a tool to whittle down the pool of candidates they can screw. Believe me - I work for a huge company that's been embroiled in so many age discrimination lawsuits that now they just treat everyone like shit and hope that the older workers quit on their own. Young early career people tend to care less because they figure, somewhat accurately, that they have more job mobility if they quit or get fired.
This is why you don't post under your own name. At least you can plausibly deny it if they are smart enough to figure out who you seem to be.
Without a court case and a warrant they wont be able to prove it was you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Show me a smoker who can refrain from smoking while at work and I'd accept your premise. Likewise, show me an obese person with a littany of weight-related health problems that opts to pay for their OWN insurance. In otherwords, self-destructive and (mostly) controllable behaviors that directly affect the workplace are fair game. Voting for Hilary Clinton, listening to NPR, being an atheist, or driving a Hybrid, are not. One issue is a public-health issue (smoking, or obesity, for example) that directly affects those around it, and the other is just stupid insecure group-think conservatism being pushed on everyone.
So how would my company work out which of the circa 60k members of "Anonymous" I am? By the way I'm the one in the suit with the afro wig...
your company relies no janitors cleaning your office spaces. Without your janitor, you will lose employees or be closed down. If you get someone else to do it, that takes people you're paying more money for cleaning toilets. So you're the only one you can miss out from the productive work to clean your toilets.
So you do it. You get paid HUGELY for it.
Or respect the workers who are willing to do a job you don't want to do for less money than you're willing to do it for.
In a world with YouTube and video phones there is little guarantee of privacy. In the immediate future only the wealthy and very proactive technorati will have reliable countermeasures to keep their private life private.
Best defense: don't be interesting/rich/important enough for anyone to care.
Ask me about my sig!
In my home state at least, most teachers have a "moral turpitude" clause in their contracts. It's one of those general things for use by principals who don't won't 1,000 bible-thumping rednecks showing up with protest signs because one of his teachers got hired at the local strip club. Basically, this means they can fire you for anything even remotely controversial--which, in most Southern states, includes about everything except being a bible-thumping redneck.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It can only be imagined social pressure if no one is really pressuring you. I'm sorry to say that social norms exist and there is no way to fight against them without harming your own social status. This is a fight you can't win.
They could be exercising their rights, but that is separate from the idea that the Internet is public.
and rights aren't always free. The only real protections you can have is from the government putting limitations on them. And even that is dicey in some situations. But there is really nothing stopping private people from being offended and reacting or retaliating. Either way, that is separate from someone not understanding that the very same thing they access everything in the world with isn't publicly available to everyone else who has gotten a simple Internet connection and a computer like they did.
Imagine a guy getting hit by a car he couldn't see because he was holding a sign large enough to block his view while crossing the Freeway. He would/could be exercising his rights, but at the same time a moron for not being able to see cars coming at him when crossing the freeway.
Eh? Screw that, once you bring health into it, you can find a justification to control anyone's life 24/7. Employee is into skydiving, motorcycle racing, or rock-climbing? Might hurt himself and raise health insurance costs, fire him. Employee is too fat, too thin, eats too much meat, drinks too much, drinks too little, doesn't get enough sleep, etc... fire him.
Because I'm not allowed free food so denying me employment has consequences BECAUSE government says taking food is stealing.
you know, i had a similar thought when i realized that the total hours of TF2 i've played in the last 2 weeks is posted for the world to see. then i realized that it was more hours than i had spent working in the same period of time and got concerned.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
...They're not saying "act the way we want you to". They're saying "don't act in a way that will make our customers leave us".
I'd be less than certain about that. I'll grant that some are acting as you describe. Perhaps the majority. But it's certainly not unknown for corporations to have rules that enforce on the employees the morals that their bosses want them to have. It's happened frequently in the past, so I'd be surprised if it weren't happening now.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In order to effectively restrict economic retaliation against free speech, you would have to remove most all freedom from commerce (Yes, you must buy the soup made by Nazi-commie Satanist Pedophiles, because they have the freedom to be that way.), and that ends up stifling a whole lot more freedom of a whole lot more people.
All that is necessary is a labor code that restricts the ability of emplerys to retaliate against employees' off-hours activities, along with some mechanism to enforce this provision.
It is well within the rights of governments in capitalist nations to determine what is or is not enforceable in a contract. A contract is ultimately created by the state and enforced by the mechanisms of the state (leaving aside the "contracts" enforced by private thugs and organized crime).
You do not need to eliminate a free economy, you do not need state socialism, you do not need a centrally controlled economy to do this. Your argument to this effect is a classic "straw man".
The notion of a contract is central to capitalist economies. Enforcement of non-retaliation via regulation of contracts is consistent with the basis of free capitalism.
And BTW, states within the USA have the ability to set their own labor codes. Some states do in fact have provisions restricting the ability of employers to terminate or penalize employees for off-hours activities. California is one such state. These provisions have not lead these states to "remove most all freedom from commerce" (as opposed to states like Texas, with a near-feudal labor code).
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Well being obese and having current, measurable, self-induced health problems is different than the "chance" of getting hurt in a sky-diving accident. But your point is valid. My example was a pretty poorly formed "slippery slope" scenario. My point, until you perfectly smashed it, for example, was that we shouldn't be able to discriminate against Type 1 diabetics, because it is genetic, but Type 2 diabetics can get back to human weight levels and the diabetes goes away (I think this is true?), and thus can be held liable for their poor health. (Unless, of course, there is some OTHER non-controllable medical condition causing the obesity or type 2).
The problem is that not only do social norms exist, but so the "the morals I want everyone else to have". And so do "The moral opinions about other people having a good time while I'm stuck at work."
And they aren't the same as the morals by which most people live their lives. Or should be forced to live their lives.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How about people using the fucking brains in their fucking heads and using some common sense?
While I don't necessarily agree that an employer should take into account some drunken bitch's half-nude self-picture posted on her myspace when deciding if she should get a job, I do think that it shows some underlying problems that person has, which, could come up and affect job performance.
If people wouldn't do stupid shit like that and post it in the public...
And while thinking about that - if it's in the public domain (i.e. on the public internet), then perhaps an employer SHOULD be able to use it - after all, background checks are background checks - be it references, criminal, or drug....so why shouldn't this be able to be used?
Careful on that slope buddy. I've been there, it's slippery. As long as all the people you interview are the same, in terms of discrimination, you're in good shape. But if some are older, or different genders, or different religions, or different ethnicities, you could set yourself and your company up for an employment discrimination lawsuit.
"But no," you say, "I'm just filtering for best fit." And that might work, more or less, but you pretty quickly come across people who are different from you, and if you turn them away because, let's say, they don't get your jokes, or they're not funny, and they happen to be a woman/Muslim/Asian/person-over-50... Well, what's the difference between discriminating based on personality (highly subjective) and discriminating based on race (also highly subjective)?
Now, age/sex/religious discrimination lawsuits don't happen that often in hiring situations, but if you're considering candidates for internal promotion, it gets pretty sticky.
Of course, fundamentally, the problem I see with your approach is that it boils down to hiring people you like. And in that pool of interviewees, people you've just met, the ones you like are the ones most like you. So you end up hiring people like you, turning away people who are different, and this hurts your organization. You need diversity of opinions, ideas, and personal experience to solve problems. Does your company want you to be comfortable, or productive? OK, team cohesion is important, but only because it helps performance - it's a means, not an end. Sure, you can get by with an army of clones, but you'll be doing yourself and your company a disservice.
Hes probably just viral marketing both sites.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Like it or not this is what it's coming to. At this point the best I can hope for is that the cameras face all directions so that everyone has to be on their best behavior - not just us proles.
Zig Heil!
Why were you seen shopping at a Jewish store comrade?
Stacy Snyder was denied a teaching certificate by the government (the public university that denied it is part of government).
So in that case the 1st Amendment DOES apply.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
These days about the wildest pictures you're likely to find of me come out of our office parties. And I'm hardly the one dancing and whatnot on top of the bar...
In short, some employers are simply idiots and think this kind of thing matters.
"So the solution is not so simple; unless you're saying that the real simple solution is to live puritan life 24/7 so that there is never a chance of anybody, anywhere, catching you doing things that might be perfectly acceptable in the situation you were in, but perhaps not so acceptable to your employer.. parents.. whoever/whatever.""
...Didn't Jesus try that? Not once did he insult, or post lewd pictures, or otherwise do anything that would be considered "politically incorrect".
The Pharisees tried to trick him many times too, and it didn't work.
"Give to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is God's"
"He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone"
Yet, as hard as he tried not to piss anyone off, the "powers that be" STILL managed to railroad him, get him a kangaroo court conviction, and haul him off to be crucified.
These are just examples of how even the most innocent person on earth can nevertheless become the butt of someone's vendetta.
You can still get screwed even if you're innocent.
WEll, no. She wasn't denied her teaching certificate by the government, she was in subordinate and didn't pass the qualifications to get her teaching certificate issued by a school. At no point in time did the government say don't give her a certificate.
What happened was she gave students her myspace site address and encouraged them to visit it. She had posted pictures of her intoxicated and with alcohol in her hands. She was instructed that it was inappropriate to do so and that is needed to stop. She refused to stop it or alter the offending pictures and wasn't given credit for her internship which was part of her certificate requirements.
You can argue all day long that because the school is run by the government it is a government first amendment problem. But the fact is, she was denied the credit for insubordination. She took a professional relationship to unprofessional levels and in the process promoted teen drinking. If you think that is something the first amendment protects, then you will be just as dumbfounded when she looses her lawsuit. She admits to sending student there after it was initially complained that it was offensive under the relate to Pennsylvania's Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators. Simply changing the caption from drunken pirate to pirate or something similarly amusing would have ended it. Instead, she took offense at her warning and then acted unprofessional which led to the decision to not qualify her.
It wasn't the picture in itself, but her actions after the picture became an issue. And she knew full well about the consequences of those actions, part of her schooling was to learn the Pennsylvania's Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators.
but Type 2 diabetics can get back to human weight levels and the diabetes goes away (I think this is true?),
Wrong, wrong, wrong! You don't know the first thing about diabetes. It is lifelong, dead beta cells stay dead, damaged nerves and small blood vessels and nephrons stay damaged or dead.
Prejudiced and uninformed.
"diabetes never goes away" (except gestational).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
My concern about this is that it will make it MUCH easier for companies to get away with firing whoever they please.
Sure, companies may lose out if they act like jerks, but not before you're already suffering from not having a job.
Only when enough employees value their morals more than their financial survival will companies even bother paying attention.
It's all nice and good to say "to hell with evil", but what if that so called evil was holding you hostage by threatening your job or your life? A gun to your head, in any sense, can very much change your beliefs and perceptions.
If I want you to do what I want, then putting a gun to your head is very effective.
And with debt closing on all sides, losing your job may very well feel like getting your head blown off by a gun.
OK, so, for the sake of the argument, let's suppose that the off-the-clock, rowdy-drunken-behavior-of-employees-posted-on-facebook has a negative impact on the employer. (Imagine a conservative town with a lot of word-of mouth business or something, use your imagination)
So then what we're talking about here is two conflicting rights: Right to freedom of speech vs economic rights/well being of employer.
Does anybody really want to make the case that some employer's bottom line is more important than freedom of speech?
The real problem is, when most western democracies were writing constitutions, the modern "corporation" as we know it didn't exist. So people like the US founding fathers didn't see the need to enshrine protection against oppression by corporations in the constitution.
So most constitutions don't have much to say about interactions between you and your employer, they tend to address interactions between you and your government.
We either need to (A) update this or (b) kneecap the power of modern corporations (more sensible solution).
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Your fired for not wearing enough flair when your NOT working.
There is a reason why I am Anonymous Coward.
He's continuously re-elected, ran a string of rent boys out of his apartment and turd burgled congressional pages without consequence.
Granted he's from 'The People's Republic of Massachusetts' but it still disproves your argument.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I hope that his online comments and what he says on the internet does affect his business.
Just a quick check and I find, "Type 2 is initially treated by adjustment in diet and exercise, and by weight loss, especially in obese patients." (source: wikipedia). So yes, I am "prejudiced" against people who bring on an illness that is caused by their own lifestyle habits. I was "uninformed" on the cure, since there is no cure, but the treatment is to lose weight and control one's diet, which makes my original example even more valid.
"Now what video? I don't know - I certainly didn't take any, let alone give it to him. Turns out that somebody else was shooting some video of their friends.. I don't know them, they don't know me, but I sure was in the background of their video."
That situation hasn't come up yet in reality, all I've heard about is idiots allowing comments about smoking pot on their myspace page or that 25 yr old wannabe teacher who had pictures of her drinking on her myspace with the title "drunken pirate".
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Guess what, the same employees who NEED the next check are the 9 out of 10 who are pretty much worthless air thieves.
The one out of ten that you really NEED to make your company grow doesn't NEED your check. They certainly do 'get decisions'. Your attitude is going to drive away the employees you most need to keep. Is the guy who works unpaid overtime to fix a coworkers screwup taking responsibility?
BTW you state down thread that your incorporated, so quit lying to us. You have no more 'Ante'd the house' then any employee. Anybody can lose the house by not having the funds to make the mortgage.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That your employer ought to have no say whatsoever about what you do outside work, unless they can demonstrate a bona fide job requirement that you be of "good conduct" (whatever that means...) while not on the clock.
Seriously, I sell my labor, not my soul when I take a job. You're taking a job, not joining a cult. Who gives a fuck if your "morality" is in line with your employers? If I decide to have a roman orgy, complete with transvestites and farm animals, on the weekend, as long as it doesn't interfere with my performance at work, it ought to be none of my employer's business.
This is, on a side note, the reason why workplace drug testing is so objectionable. If I'm an airline pilot or a bus driver, you can test me for impairment/intoxication while I'm on the job, or you can make a requirement like the pilot's rule-of-thumb of "12 hours between bottle and throttle", but testing to see if I smoked a joint on the weekend? Go fuck yourself.
It seems like there's always a lot of employers out there who want to treat their employees like serfs. Sorry, it's a simple contractual relationship between me and my employer. I will do such-and-such tasks between the hours of 9 and 5 (or whatever the contract stipulates), but my boss doesn't get a say in anything else in my life.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Another way of looking at this sort of scenario is employers who all of a sudden want to add to their contractual relationship with their employees without compensation. Your boss deciding "OK, you can't put anything on facebook that might embarrass the company", after contracts have been signed and everything is really no different from your boss all of a sudden deciding that you have to work an extra 10 hours a week with no additional pay.
Let me say it again, folks. You're accepting a job, not joining a cult. You're selling your labor, not your soul.
Whether by legislation or by employees just flat-out refusing to work for this sort of employer, we need to smash down this attitude that some employers have that they can treat you like a serf.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Um, no, actually.
The things you're talking about here with the ex-con cop or the convicted fraudster applying for a job at a bank fall under the term bona fide occupation requirements.
So, you can't legally refuse to hire a guy in a wheelchair, unless he's applying for a job as a firefighter, where you could quite sensibly claim that the ability to go up a flight of stairs is a bona fide job requirement. However, unless somebody wants to make the claim that "not being photographed drinking what could be alcohol" is a bona fide job requirement for a student teacher, then we're talking about something entirely different in the Stacy Snyder case. Let's not confuse "bona fide job requirement" with "asshat boss who thinks that by signing an employment contract, he owns his employee's body, mind, and soul."
Same applies to the fraudster applying at the bank - a clean criminal record check is a bona fide job requirement. The fact that there can be a case made, in some circumstances, that your private, "off the clock" behavior can constitute a bona fide job requirement does not give employers a blank check to stick their nose into the off hours behavior of their employees. No, but we ought to have sympathy for people unfortunate enough to work for employers who think that an employment contract turns employees into serfs and gives the employer the right to dictate off-hours conduct upon pain of dismissal. Look, there was a time, when there were no particular laws against sexual harassment, or discrimination on the basis of a disability, for example. And back then, there were always status quo defenders saying "well, if she didn't want her boss to hit on her, what was she doing wearing that skirt to work?" to a woman being sexually harassed. Times change.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
I know exactly what you mean. I run a company, and one one of my biggest clients, probably 85% of our revenue, well, he just plain doesn't like jews. So there were a couple of jewish employees that had their religion listed on their facebook profiles, so I really had to let them go. After all, it's just business. Sarcasm aside, you do see my point, right? OK, that's all fine and well and good. But if I'm your employee, by that same philosophy, you get to have control over what I do while I'm at work, and that's it.
My employer doesn't like something that I said online? (or, anywhere else, for that matter) Well, all you bought was my time, not my soul.
If you want to have a say over my conduct when I'm not at work, and off the clock, well, either make a case for it being a bona fide job requirement to "do or not do activity X" (examples like the convicted fraudster applying for a job as a loan officer, or the cop with a criminal record) in my off hours, or go pound sand. You only pay me for my time, which is entirely fair and correct, but you only get to have control over my conduct during those hours when I'm "on the clock". Anything else is none of your business.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
No school wants teachers who are porn stars.
Please explain to me what the detrimental relationship is between providing any form of education and performing in sexually related entertainment.
This to me is really the core of this issue. It isn't that obvious things like counterproductive and illegal activities can have a negative impact on your employment status, it is that private activities can be effectively monitored for 'moral violations' based on whatever standard might be decided uppon by a given employer or industry. This is especially problematic in situations as I have pointed out, where the activity in question is in actuality completely irrelivant to a person's career, but is considered 'morally objectionable' for whatever reason. Even worse is that a set of religious fundamentalist style moral standards may be adopted as a common basis used by virtually every major employer, leading to an incredibly negative impact on personal freedom for all practical purposes, for anyone with opposing personal moral standards.
Encrypted pipe using the free NX server from nomachine.com
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
'You're not buying me, you're only hiring me.'
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I read an article on the web about "The Outer Limits" episode called "Obits", where the government has the technological capability to maintain surveillance on anyone. The article went on to discuss how close we are coming to this today, through the use of traffic, store, bank, and drug enforcement cameras. The article went on to discuss a British counter terrorism surveillance which is able to track people from camera to camera. I remember reading about "Total Information Network", later renamed "Terrorist Information Network", and wonder how much of this already applied in the interests of National Security. Sort of like renaming the "War Department" the "Department of Defense." Its mission was perhaps far more accurately described by the old label. [Read Smetly Butler's book "War is a Racket" for a great discussion.] Moreover, with Amdocs and various other cell phone companies maintaining and selling records of your telephone contacts, Credit card selling your spending habits, this really opens the channels to Big Brother. Also, someone once pointed out that with the impregnation of common consumer devices with RFID tags, it is getting easier to track everyone quite closely. Yes, there are ways to get around some of this, but with enought redudencies in the system, it may be impossible to avoid being tracked. While as we support this action when it comes to tracking terrorists, the line is drawn when the populace decides to take action against its government. Chile was able to suppress dissension largely through well established surveillance techniques, and a strong armed police force. I am sure that the government doesn't care about most people, unless its population starts thinking about a revolution. All of a sudden, our constitutional freedom "To overthrow the government by any means necessary" becomes a commie witch hunt. We laugh at the Soviet Union and the intrusion into its citizen's lives, but we are becoming very much like that regime. The USSR did not intrude into civil liberties, but did so out of a need for self preservation.
This isn't about pushing the bosses' moral agenda: This is about preventing the loss of customers. It doesn't matter how wrong it is, it's going to happen.
Is it a real, quantifiable threat of loss of customers, or a bosses' moral agenda rationalized as such?
"You're taking the piss right? If I need to explain why a deeply held belief - one that people have fought and died for - is more important than your right to make an ass of yourself, I don't think you're rational enough to converse with."
People have fought and died for freedom as well. Think about it...
The things you're talking about here with the ex-con cop or the convicted fraudster applying for a job at a bank fall under the term bona fide occupation requirements.
If you'd read the rest of my responses, you'd realize that's exactly what I said (though I did not use the term "bona fide job requirements". You'd also realize I made 2 other relevant points:
1) If the employer is able to demonstrate that your activities do affect your job (for example people won't hire your firm while you work for it due to those activities, or your position is undermined in the community you're meant to serve). A recent example: The young spears sister getting pregant may mean her show is not continued because they no longer believe you make a good role model.
2) That may be how it is suppose to work, but in practice an employer who feels wronged or slighted will find one or more minor transgressions of your work conditions to crucify you with.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
What you meant to say was: The unions that have sold out to capitalist gangsters are held up as examples of how unions should work. They don't bring "added value". They just play good cop to the fascist corporations' bad cop. Sorry, jackass... nobody's buyin' it.
I still belong to one forum that was probably among the first on the web
EBCDIC porn?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Were living in times where everything you do online can and will be seen by - everyone - and thats about it...everyone who CARE about you and what you do, are you really that important? Maybe its time to have a drink or two dear mr. Bond, shaken - not stirred.
...I am more famous than most people, famous like a movie star? No - famous like its possible to track my every move, Ive made mistakes, Ive said things that wasnt so smart but it was what I thought at that time in my life. In my experience - my online life have never really truly stood against me even though I have some WEIRD stories out there...not to mention my somewhat geeky and weird lifestyle that are known to those who are interested in what I have written. I have had MANY jobs - some as a direct result of my "Online-life" and someone as an result of good ol "knocking on the employers door". They ALL check people out - heck...I did it myself ...I googled people for my "bosses" just to see if they had something behind them that we should know about, Im in no way perfect myself - but life is to short to check on the whole planet - and mostly - all my employers have judged me on how I appear to them - and how I "blend in" with the companies. Yes - Ive worked for some of the absolutely BIGGEST companies in the world .... chances are 99.9% that you know them, Ive been under heavy security control there - but never questioned for my ethics or the way I am, not even my somewhat weird geeky...demented even...online life, no...I was judged on the WORK I did - every time. Sure...Ive had my run-ins with my bosses, co-workers...but thats our personality...were REAL people...with REAL issues, the net makes no difference - really!
The point is - far too many people take their online business too seriously. Dont do anything online you wouldnt do in real life - because your online life is the same as your real life - you are namely responsible for every move you make no matter WHERE you make it.
Lets go ego-tripping for a while. Not many people in here know me, Im under an alias here - but I can tell you that over the years Ive been on the net
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I am sorry that you had to go through this, getting fired and all that. ......
What's the link to the video though?
This isn't about pushing the bosses' moral agenda: This is about preventing the loss of customers. It doesn't matter how wrong it is, it's going to happen.
Because customers have absolutely nothing better to do with their lives than sit around and google every employee of a company before they do business with them. I sure am glad I don't go to Wal-Mart (Target is a block closer), I'd have to spend centuries to do all the research required!
Come to think of it, shouldn't the bosses have something better to do with their time?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I suspect you are a troll posturing as an imagined asshole businessman (if you are real bankruptcy is inevitable, you know nothing about mitigating risk) anyhow..
You think the normal QC process is 'finished', ship? No programmer can make that standard on non-trivial software. You can't.
Assuming you do run some sort of software business you need to establish at least semi-formal QC processes and hire a dedicated tester or two (they're cheaper then coders and usually do a better job of testing mundane stuff that 'shouldn't have changed'). People can't proof read their own writing nearly as well as someone else can, software is no different. If you haven't had to say 'doh' about some bug that slipped by you, you haven't coded much.
For thought: Is your attitude 'employees are like slaves' in any way reflected in your employees attitude 'five o-clock, outa here'.
The working 'just hard enough not to get fired' syndrome is hard to get rid of once entrenched. Everybody is watching everybody else to see if they find anything new to get away with.
Every place I've seen true don't give a shit attitudes, it went back to management not properly rewarding initiative and hard work (or rewarding ass kissing above all else, even more toxic). If employees perceive 'the game' as un-winnable the reasonable response is to quit or slack off (the good ones quit fastest). It's damn near impossible to get rid of once established.
For myself I'm blessed with a network of former coworkers (we all knew who actually produced) in more or less the same position as me. We form teams as needed without often resorting to hiring unknown subs. Granted less money for me, but much less stress.
Finally, depending on your business, you might want to look into an 'errors and omissions' bond/policy to protect yourself. Given you stated levels of exposure I'm surprised they aren't required by your clients.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
See, two things. Mitigating risk is a tactic of yours, it's not one of mine. Mitigating risk in a poker game is generally a poor idea for winning against good players. Mitigating risk, especially in business, amounts to taking less risk. Taking less risk means reducing potential rewards. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but I've gone all-in, and that's my tactic -- for better or for worse. That's what I want to do, independent of what you prefer to do with your life.
That brings me to my next point. You clearly state what I've been told, and experienced, many times: software development requires testing, QC, and QA -- along with detailed specifications, unit testing, contracts and client agreements. In my opinion, that's a pretty standard business model for this industry. I've worked in it; I don't like it, and I think that it can be adjusted.
If development requires testing, then development was done poorly. If QC isn't incredibly simple, then developers couldn't be trusted. If QA isn't more than a formality, then the designer was inexperienced.
Of course, as a programmer, I've made stupid mistakes and had stupid bugs. But that's alpha testing, or shotty workmanship. If I finish something, and it has a bug, then I'm an idiot -- plain and simple. Not only should I be held accountable for errors that I 'deliver', but I should be fixing it on my own time, not company time. There are, of course, exceptions when dealing with new technologies and clearly innovative efforts -- but not for routine programming.
I give, as a thought experiment, the idea of an experienced programmer programming something incredibly simple, that he's programmed before. Now, I am under the impression that it should be done perfectly, with no bugs, upon first delivery -- after alpha testing. As a programmer well experienced in my chosen avenues, there are many things that I've done before, and what I consider simple is more complicated than what an amateur would consider very difficult.
QC, again, use it a few times the way that a client would. We're talking minutes of testing. It either works, or I made a mistake and need to correct it. QA simply matches that to the suggested specifications to see if it performs what was requested, or something completely different. Unless the developer misunderstood the original concept, QA can never fail.
Now I used to work for a large programming company, with large specifications, and large meetings, and large complications. QA was vital, and tool longer than the programming. Which brings me to the next set of points. The specifications were too large. Scores of pages for a simple concept, and worse, scores of pages for a complicated concept. Re-iterated stupidities -- like "clicking on the login link will take visitors to the login page" and "clicking the login button will attempt to log them in" and "the login button will be capitalized". Hence, QA was important. There were also inexperienced programmers, so QC was important.
I don't believe in large specification documents. Quite frankly, I don't believe in programming specifications at all. The client isn't a programmer, and so can't possibly sign off on them. The client can only sign off on business objectives -- so that's what I have them do. The project designer then gets to set up global designs like rough database structure, and wide-ranging functionality requirements. Everything else is left for the programmer to decide -- the experienced programmer who should be making those decisions in the first place, and with no help from others who have no clue or aren't doing the work in the first place.
I don't believe in making clients jump through hoops, legal, technical, and functional. I'm here to solve their business problem. I don't justify the programming language being used, nor the hardware on which it's running. The technical programming specifications are no different. As for features, anything that doesn't come up during a conversation about their
If you think the situation of a third party posting videos and the (unintentional) subject of that video becoming targeted in one way or another is hypothetical, you've been living under a rock.
Especially in schools, kids are taking videos of eachother and uploading those to tons of places; and most of the people in those videos aren't too keen on it hitting the web. Not a "zomg the children!" thing - it just happens to be the most common form.
Here you go - December 31st, 2007:
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=42116&sid=1&fid=1
That's from a teacher who took it in good spirit - as did the parents and the staff.
November 14, 2007:
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Nov14/0,4670,ODDCheerleadingTeacher,00.html
That teacher didn't fare so well. After criticism from parents, staff put her on administrative leave. She eventually handed in her resignation.
That's the first I've heard of that angle to the story. Have a citation for that?
If true, it changes things a lot. Especially since it appears to involve ON the job conduct...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!