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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?
Yes, you should pay for chasing year dreams. You'll be amazed what you can get when you're willing to pay. Now, I support comedy, and hey, if you're in my area, I've got a comedian who organizes monthly shows, he's always looking and I'd be happy to introduce you.
But if you were working for me (ehem, if you are working for me) and you're avoiding my work to go and do something else, then yeah I've a right to know. And if you're acting as my salesman, and one of my clients is offended by you enough to drop me as a supplier, then yeah I'll be upset with you.
Now, in both of those cases, I'm a perfectly understanding employer, I not only support comedy, but I'm with you when you say that it's supposed to be offensive and that's a part of the entertainment, and my client shouldn't care. But if one does, I will have to do everything I can to appease them. And so it'll be easier for me if I know what you do, the fact that you do it, and am ready to appease any offended clients.
You will undoubtedly find employers who will refuse to work with you for such reasons. And I support their having to do so. Of course, I also support your going out on your own, throwing everything you have at your comedy, and finding out if it's worth doing full-time. Succeed and do it, fail and ditch it. If it's just your hobby, well, you need ot find an employer willing to take whatever shit comes from the clients on your behalf.
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.
Yeah, you're right about all of that -- especially the being one-sided. Let me clarify one thing. Any employer that tries to restrict everything that their employee does is just plain retarded -- in every sense of the word. But I support restricting ANY, not EVERY.
My business isn't affected by the vacation videos of my employees. But my business is affected by the political affiliations of my employees. The types of clients for whom I work will care about some things and not about others.
So if you work for me, you're going to have to understand that yeah, I'll have to restrict your religious activity, and your political out-cry. You're welcome to be drunk and nude on camera as much as you like. If my clients see them, they'll comment to me, and I'll say something to the effect of: "yeah, he's crazy after hours, but you should see how wonderful his work is". I've actually had to do just that on numerous occasions.
But when it comes to religion and politics, I'm screwed. I have many clients that are themselves religious, or that require special schedules, or that are themselves politically oriented. I can't say that my employee's political support doesn't affect the project because either it does, or my client thinks it does. And they need to be able to trust the work being done.
So when I say that an employer should be able to choose who gets hired and who gets fired, I mean for ANY reason, not for EVERY reason. And if you'd ask me, during an interview, I'd tell you straight out if your lifestyle collides on any of the few things that matter to my clients.
Hey, I've had to fire someone because her father used work in an industry that competed with two of my clients. The funny part is that my two clients compete with each other, and it was fine for me to work for both of them (heh, fine. it was contractually worked out). But it wasn't accepted to either of them that my employee's father used to work in the industry and may have friends on the other side.
It wakes sense, they were worried that I have no control over her father, and can't possibly stop him from relaying project information to their competitors. But hey, I had to fire her because she couldn't work on any of those projects, and someone else could.
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.