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.
Well I am an Apple fan boy but Ill still offer my $.02. I needed a HD based MP3 player for an educational setting. Because the institution was government and because the IT folk were all Windrones, I was very meticulous in conducting a fair shootout of an iPod (3G 20GB B/W), Archos and a Dell. The iPod won hands down despite being impossible to use effectively without iTunes (that was a negative in the decision matrix).
The Archos was the easiest for file management because we could treat it like an external HD for loading content. The problem was it was a complete disaster for the user. After a month of intensive use I could not get to the same track twice in a row or easily find a track. Our need was for effective use of over 40000 sound files between 20 seconds and 20 minutes long. A key requirement was ease of repeated listening (language education). It simply could not be done on the Archos. It also has significant reliability issues, a strange power adapter and horiable form factor (sharp edges). On the positive side it had great battery life and a built in mike.
The Dell was the cheapest and almost as easy for file management as the Archos. The user interface was so bad it was the first eliminated. The thumb wheel method of navigation caused pain after less than 5 minutes of what we needed to do. As long as you just turned it on, hit play and listened, it was great. But we needed to be able to go tract to track, back up, move forward, etc. It was so bad, we never got to battery life. Despite being the cheapest and the number one choice of the IT folks (Dell fan boys!), it was never seriously considered.
The iPod was the most expensive, required a separate, semi fragile external mike (Tune Talk) and the hardest for file management. iTunes is monogamous. I needed to manage on a 10-1 ratio of students to iTunes enabled computers. With help from Apple and a lot of tricks we got it to work. Most importantly, all the pain was on me and my staff, not my students. Students learned in minutes how to use their iPods. It was 180 degrees from the Archos. Archos made an engineer gadget. Apple made something useful to the user. We went though a lot of pain with the 3G iPods but when the iPod video came out, we got a HUGE payoff. We had everything in place to exploit it giving us interactive video lessons. Over 4000 iPods are in use at this institution today. We made use of the other test models as external HDs. Hype didnt kill them, crappy design did.
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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.
Well I am an Apple fan boy but Ill still offer my $.02. I needed a HD based MP3 player for an educational setting. Because the institution was government and because the IT folk were all Windrones, I was very meticulous in conducting a fair shootout of an iPod (3G 20GB B/W), Archos and a Dell. The iPod won hands down despite being impossible to use effectively without iTunes (that was a negative in the decision matrix).
The Archos was the easiest for file management because we could treat it like an external HD for loading content. The problem was it was a complete disaster for the user. After a month of intensive use I could not get to the same track twice in a row or easily find a track. Our need was for effective use of over 40000 sound files between 20 seconds and 20 minutes long. A key requirement was ease of repeated listening (language education). It simply could not be done on the Archos. It also has significant reliability issues, a strange power adapter and horiable form factor (sharp edges). On the positive side it had great battery life and a built in mike.
The Dell was the cheapest and almost as easy for file management as the Archos. The user interface was so bad it was the first eliminated. The thumb wheel method of navigation caused pain after less than 5 minutes of what we needed to do. As long as you just turned it on, hit play and listened, it was great. But we needed to be able to go tract to track, back up, move forward, etc. It was so bad, we never got to battery life. Despite being the cheapest and the number one choice of the IT folks (Dell fan boys!), it was never seriously considered.
The iPod was the most expensive, required a separate, semi fragile external mike (Tune Talk) and the hardest for file management. iTunes is monogamous. I needed to manage on a 10-1 ratio of students to iTunes enabled computers. With help from Apple and a lot of tricks we got it to work. Most importantly, all the pain was on me and my staff, not my students. Students learned in minutes how to use their iPods. It was 180 degrees from the Archos. Archos made an engineer gadget. Apple made something useful to the user. We went though a lot of pain with the 3G iPods but when the iPod video came out, we got a HUGE payoff. We had everything in place to exploit it giving us interactive video lessons. Over 4000 iPods are in use at this institution today. We made use of the other test models as external HDs. Hype didnt kill them, crappy design did.