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Employees Would Steal Data When Leaving a Job
An anonymous reader writes "Employees openly admit they would take company data, including customer data and product plans, when leaving a job. In response to a recent survey, 49% of US workers and 52% of British workers admitted they would take some form of company property with them when leaving a position: 29% (US) and 23% (UK) would take customer data, including contact information; 23% (US) and 22% (UK) would take electronic files; 15% (US) and 17% (UK) would take product information, including designs and plans; and 13% (US) and 22% (UK) would take small office supplies."
Escorting people out of the building and revoking their access privileges the second they get fired is actually warranted?
Emotions! In your brain!
That's actually pretty saddening. I would have hoped that people were more honest and trustworthy than that:(
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Leaving on my own? I'd take nothing except my paycheck.
Fired and I deserved it? A few pens. Pack of paper.
Fired and I didn't deserve it? I'd GIVE them a lawsuit.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I just want my stapler back... The new ones aren't as good as the swinglines.
The obvious, interesting follow-up question is, how many of them would sell, share, or otherwise exploit that data? Would they take measures to protect it, or simply misplace it? I figure at least some of that's got to be people who don't see the point in deleting that sly backup they made so they could work on their reports at home, or whatever, and those are people who don't represent a threat to company security. "Stealing" data itself causes the company no harm. Using the customer list to set up one's own business, losing that data on the bus, or selling on some trade secrets, is where the concern lies.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Just what we need, more ammo to put multi-year non-competition agreements on employees.
I live where that one really big business used to be, what was it called... Apple hated them... IBM or something I think. =P I've seen thousands of jobs slashed here in my time, and a lot of those people walked out the door with a clause behind them stating they couldn't even begin to work in the industry again for at least a year.
A year is a long, long, long time for your typical family to drop from working wages to unemployment.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
This is what happens when companies are disloyal to their employees. The employees become disloyal to the company. If the executives would stop being greedy, arrogant shithead; stop fattening their pockets at the expense of the company, the shareholders, and the employees; and treating employees like expendable resources instead of people, this would not be a problem. But, they are psychopathic assholes, so it is going to continue.
"according to Harris Interactive."
If this is the same "Harris Interactive" that spams me 100x per week with polls to gather personally identifiable information from me for marketing purposes, then I'd say the "study" is probably bunk.
At my severance interview, the boss told me that the really good pens were on the top shelf.
Have gnu, will travel.
I knew a man who played the system quite well when leaving a job. He gave three months notice on his resignation letter, and they immediately revoked his access and escorted him from the building, but had to keep paying him for the three months.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Bosses admit that they expect employees to do more work for the same amount of pay.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Yeah, I can see the getting even with office supplies. "They may have demanded 100 hour weeks, treated me like dirt, and spat me out on the street the second I started showing the slightest signs of burnout, but I got a pen with their logo and 100 sheets of A4 paper! Take that, corporate oppressors! They're probably already regretting the day they decided to fire me!"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When I get sacked, I plan to grab all the doughnuts I can and run out of the building screaming incoherently.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
If I were a tech company owner I'd worry more about off-shored employees taking code/secrets with them. I know a contractor company that is now developing a competing product to something our vendor hired them to write in the first place. So our vendor basically paid them to develop the skills and domain knowledge they would need to build this thing, got a so-so quality product from them, and soon they will have a new competitor. Note: I don't know any of the legal issues involved. Seems like there should have been a non-compete clause in there somewhere, but either it's being ignored or it was never there in the first place.
Does this imply that people are rotten, or that the relationship between employer and employee is adversarial?
Maybe things have changed, or maybe I am coming to realize the reality that has always been. My perception is that there used to be a non-adversarial relationship between employer and employee. I think that has changed. I think you see it in every annual review, which resembles little so much as pulling teeth. The middle manager is pitted against the employee by the upper management basing the middle manager's compensation on how little he can get the employees to stick around for.
Smaller businesses have been getting driven out by the efficiencies-of-scale corps, so there are fewer and fewer jobs where the top guy is the one who talks directly to employees. I would wager it is easier to tell a middle manager to be adversarial than it is to be adversarial yourself. (hmm, tangent; which also hints at one of the natural forces of wealth concentration)
Anyway -- are people rotten, or are they responding to what I see as a shift in corporate culture? Corporate culture is bringing adversarial behavior within its walls. Perhaps it is only natural for that training to affect people's behavioral patterns. Or at least their sense of loyalty.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It's because companies frequently let their normal employees treat IT staff in ways that are fireable offenses if done to the rest of the company. Call them up, foaming at the mouth screaming because the email server is down, for example. Or God forbid that an in-house developer has a few bugs in their app.
My wife is an in-house developer at a large company. I can't even begin to count the number of times she and her group have been savagely attacked by users who are so fucking stupid that they literally freeze up if a single new button appears in the UI.
The dirty little trend I've noticed is that 9 times out of 10, the people who attack her are non-technical female employees. Most men don't dare attack a female developer at that level, especially not one who is competent (the second worst fury, aside from a scorned woman, is HR coming to the aid of a woman like that against a bombastic man). Male developers also often don't hesitate to humiliate users who treat them like that.
He's too boring. I might steal Lore, though.
Or maybe Tasha Yar. MmMmmMmMMmmmmmm Tasha Yar.... auuruhghglglglgllll
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
If you are laid off from your employer, how are non-compete agreements enforceable at all? I am suspicious of your claim that people who had their "jobs slashed" would still be under a non-compete of anykind.
It's like unemployment. You don't just automatically get unemployment if you are out of work. If you are terminated for cause, then you get no unemployment. If you quit on your own, you get no unemployment. However, if you are laid off, then you will qualify for unemployment.
Non-compete agreements have the same basic legal structure. You can't be held to a non-compete if your employer lays you off as a normal part of downsizing. You may very well be held to a non-compete if you are fired for cause and/or quit on your own.
The distinction is subtle, but important in the eyes of the law.
I know a guy who did the same thing and was fired on the spot. He was escorted out and paid only through the end of the day. I was the one who fired him.
I don't know why that company would have to keep paying your friend. Once you offer up the fact that you plan to resign, the company is under no obligation to do anything else for you. In fact, they could have just as easily said "no" and fired him right there and then (like most employers will do).
Please, please, please do not follow the parent's advice on this. In almost all cases, it will not turn out well for you. I speak with authority because I am an employer and have dealt with this very issue recently. Attorneys were involved, counsel was sought, etc, etc. I am not talking out of my ass on this one.
Yep, exactly .... What these surveys DON'T collect is information on WHY individuals felt entitled to, or at least ok with walking out with company information or property.
You don't see 49% of American workers openly stealing property from their neighbors or other people they do business with, right? (If you did, you'd have practically every other person in line at the store getting arrested for shoplifting!)
In my current job position, I'm privy to quite a bit of company "proprietary information" and I have no interest in taking/keeping a bit of it. (Among other things, I wouldn't even really know what to do with it if I had it. I don't work for an I.T. related firm, though I'm in I.T. Their information and customer data is worthless to me, personally.) But I do remember working for a PC service place once before where I *did* hang onto a bunch of customer records. Why? Because after making every effort to work with the owner and his struggling business, he turned on me, falsely deciding I was "out to get him/sabotage his business", and quit sending me service calls with no warning or explanation. (To this day, I never really got a satisfactory answer to what was going on ... I was able to put together some of the pieces, though. I *think* what happened is his receptionist/office assistant decided she needed references or leads for a new job, so she started going through his customer lists to find contact info for people she knew would say positive things about her. The owner came in that night and saw his stuff had been gone through, so he assumed it was me, planning on stealing all of his customers.)
At that point? I realized I still had the opportunity to hang onto a lot of his customer data because he had left it up on a web site calendar/scheduler application and not locked me out or deleted it yet - so I downloaded it and started soliciting the people directly. He threatened a lawsuit with a boilerplate letter from his attorney, but they didn't have a leg to stand on, because I never even signed a non-disclosure or non-compete agreement with them when I worked there! In the end, he decided to ditch his business and get a full-time job elsewhere, and many of his former customers were very pleased to know I was still around, because I was the one doing 90% of the service calls to them in the first place.
I can't help but take customer contact info, when my superiors gave out my personal phone number to customers against company policy, and now the customers call me because I am the one that can fix their issues.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Your post is a glowing example as to why you never give two weeks notice. Simply wait until Friday at 4:30pm and let your employer know this will be your last day, and start your next gig on Monday.
Talk about not ending well. But then I said "That was well-done sir!" and he was so amused that he put his pinky up to his lips and gave me an evil laugh.
Believe me! I was there! That guy has like a Doctorate in Evil! Don't mess with any employers ever!
-- How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.