100% agree, love this game, had it since it was released, the only game that is installed on my machine at all times, others come and go but TF2 is the go to for quick fun
I have worked in IT all my life, from the jack of all trades to specialized technologies.... on call all the time, i have had my fair share of events where 60 people swarm my desk as i type away and talk on the phone trying to resolve the issues.... my view of this....
other people can have the anxiety... i am here to do my job to the best of my abilities, i get paid to do that, i get paid to be on call, so i will do that... i have projects that i know will fail, projects that i am struggling to meet the timelines for and problems that i can solve, and problems that i can't solve... last I checked, that is IT period.
If you have real issues with anxiety and coping with this "crushing pressure" go work in another industry, IT isn't a walk in the park and if you can't balance work/personal and your own emotions, IT isn't for you.
Sure that sounds harsh, but again, in IT, get used to it.
They chose the perfect time to do the survey, most companies I have ever known someone at would do it in Dec/Jan for Calendar year, Mar/Apr if their fiscal year ended then, or Oct/Nov if their fiscal year ended then. So in my view it is an expected 66% NO.
I hate it when information like this flows around. 100% of people agree**
** - Survey of 10000 people with 1 respondant
Re:Employee monitoring is not really new
on
Employee Monitoring
·
· Score: 1
But if companies put in position mandates "Other duties as assigned" which can include monitoring others. I think that it is good to watch what is going on but not to the extent of social networking sites and GPS etc. I personally monitor the enterprise for mob behavior such as a 400% spike in internet traffic with people watching the world cup or streaming radio. I then crunch the numbers and show what the cost of said traffic is to the business and let the business decide if it continues or if I stop it.
My job is to ensure a stable and high performing network for the enterprise, part of that is watching what people are doing and stopping things that can degrade the stability or performance of the network as a whole. I don't look at it as monitoring co-workers, I see it as monitoring the network, what I am paid to do. The fact that humans are the ones generating the traffic doesn't matter, I really don't care who is doing it, just that it is being done.
We aren't here to single people out (unless asked to), just do the job that we are paid for.
I recently was forced to part with my old IBM System 36 and corresponding hard drive that was 350lbs and the size of a dishwasher. The system 36 was the original 700lb model 5630. They were used as end tables but didn't fit with my wife's tastes. I am proud to say that I was able to get the box up, with connected terminal and actually pulled data off of it (printed) in 2005. I was challenged by some friends to make it work to show it could still be put to use and damn it, the yellow paged manuals I still had made it easy.
My tech hoarding earned me some extra income as I won the bet making it work. So don't throw it out, your tech buddies will pay good money to watch you fight with 20 year old tech.
We have a password policy as well, with the no repeating characters, previous 10 passwords not allowed, not allowed to change the password twice in 48 hours, must have special character, upper and lower case and numbers, can't contain any part of user id or name, must be 9 characters in length, must start with a letter...... and that is just the domain password, rules for internal systems are just as crazy but some don't allow special characters etc so you are forced to maintain 50 passwords and user id's even though LDAP is the "only standard moving forward"
I sit next to the security teams, on password change day I yell and then remove the piece of paper on my cube's name badge and replace it with the updated passwords. They don't like me. I have proved that leaving your user ID and password at sight level at your cube doesn't mean someone will use it.... so far
The key is that they stated they were missing deadlines and producing poor code. I don't claim to work a solid 8 hours every day, I probably do more like 6, but I make sure to meet all deadlines to the best of my ability. If that means sometimes working 5 days, 8 hours productive a week I do it (sometimes many more hours but may not be productive). My boss sees that I do this so when there are no deadlines he doesn't mind if I piss off work for a day here or a few hours there.
If work objectives are being met, fine. If they are not, management needs to step in and find a way to get the workers to get the job done. Not forcing solid work as that will fail, but finding a way to make them more productive by giving them some freedoms to control their own schedules and still get the job done.
Work ethic is a huge deal for me, it pisses me off watching people talk about hockey and not get the job done but if they are getting their jobs done, I am the first to jump into the conversation and have a little fun at work.
I love the fact that/. allows ads to be disabled. I enable every once and a while and click around just for fun.
What I really dislike are the ads that take up 80% of the screen such as the new CNN ads for Lexus and Mac that expand if you accidentally hover over them and take up the whole screen. The honor system works if you prove that you aren't trying in your face ads. I don't mind the occasional flashing ad in a small section of the screen, chew up my whole screen or have some loud audio and I visit the site a lot less. Show me your product or service and I will make a personal decision. Jam your ad in my face and I won't even take the time to see if you really are 1000 times better than your competition.
I choose to pay $5 and unlock it from the comfort of my home. I picked my last phone up from a carrier with no contracts for $50 more than the carriers with contacts, then paid $5 to get it unlocked, and signed up at the more expensive carrier on a month-month service.
Maybe the kid is really just pushing his dad to let him spend his days in the strip club but the dad would rather pay the 20k fines than get his boobie shop closed for underage customers
But they cut paper and used glue... I bet they had to calculate the proper amounts using a complex model and ensured that the colour scheme was to the recipient's liking. It's not like they just cut paper, spread glue and jammed a phone in the middle like my 2 year old does.......
100% agree. I had a manager that questioned every time that i was 5 mins late. I tracked the number of hours I worked late, covering for others when their cars broke down etc. When my manager next pulled me aside I haded the sheet and said, dock my pay for the 30 mins I have been late this week, but please also process my 10 hours of overtime with documented badge in badge out times. They stopped bothering me.
As for the topic, I would say that if management doesn't have to be 100% non-technical. It is what you make it. I managed a team of people, did 10% management work, 90% technical and my boss was happy as they did little to no management of my team and we continued to out perform other groups so they let us be. You can make any position what you want it to be if there is a good higher level management above. So look far above, if you like what you see, take it. If there is micro management, run for the hills.
100% numeric pager or Blackberry with unlimited data plan and cell service? If I was asked to carry a numeric pager, and work all hours and not get paid I would be out the door. If it was a Blackberry with full data plan and unlimited cell useage, maybe that would be enough for me. I currently get paid $1.50/hr for carrying and nothing for the time I spend if I get paged. I accepted this. I used to get paid $1.50/hr and OT for what I worked but got paged 2000% more. So the company giving me a phone with data at no cost to me plus $1.50/hr regardless if I get paged or not is worth it. If I get paged a lot, I train that group how to fix things so they don't have to page me. If they paid me for OT for responding, I probably wouldn't train people how to fix things as I would want the $$$. So this may be an indication that users require some additional information so the pages don't happen, or at least happen less frequently.
There are so many variables it is really just up to what you want to put up with. If you don't like the situation, find a different one.
Living in Ontario, there are many laws that aren't enforced, like not being a tool and driving down the shoulder in a traffic jam. The police enforce that rule once per year. My best bet is that most of the people who get tickets are the people that don't do it on a regular basis, just got caught the once they did it. The people who drive around with their phone stuck to their ear will never get a ticket. Such is life. Just because this rule is in place, doesn't mean I am not still going to be watching for distracted drivers. It isn't their phone that is the issue, it is their driving skills in general. Take the phone out of the picture and they are still distracted by shiny objects.
I was tasked with this same issue in a huge corporation where I can't control the hiring of only useful people, nor could I spend the $$ to educate those who needed it. I used a Sharepoint site that had full DR and tracking for changes, tasked people to create a simple document for tasks they commonly did, then I just created a Master Document that contained sections with links to the documents that others had created or the ones that I created. The master document is currently about 90 pages of links to documents. Updates to any document are approved before posting to the site. There is a document template for any new processes that are created and they are tagged with review dates to ensure they are kept up to date.
The secontions in the master include "Basic Tasks", "Problem Determination" or "Standards"
Seems to work for me and the 200 other people that use it. It is available to 1000 people but only a fraction use it. Can't fix that with any documentation or application.
Sometimes it isn't about the company but the clients. In my last job my employeer deserved me walking out and not telling them anything, my clients on the other hand had contracts with them and needed support. Due to a nice flaw in my contract, I gave 6 written notice instead of 6 weeks written notice and walked out. 15 mins prior to that I e-mailed each of my clients with hundreds of support documents so they could keep business moving. My old boss was pissed off royally but all the clients were happy as they had documentation to provide to the next tech that came in the door.
Not trying to kid anyone. Why would I pay $50 for a game and $3 for insurance when I can pay $0.25 for a DVD to back it up myself. Then I don't need the hassle of driving to the store and fighting with someone that it actually doesn't work and I did buy it at that store.
Perfect example, back before I got smart about OS choices, I BOUGHT a copy of Windows 95 on floppy. After initial install, I messed up some things, went to re-isntall and disk 13 (strange but true) didn't read. I contacted the store I bought it at, they said go to M$, I went to M$ and they said buy another copy.
Ever since then, I have backed up every legit disc I have ever paid $0.01 for. So when I bought my first CD Burner and was called an evil pirate, I just laughed it off.
I will continue to back up every bit of data I ever see. I do not currently have a mod chip in my Wii but as soon as one of my legit game discs gets damaged, I will have one installed, and not feel the slightest bit guilty for doing so.
I work for a small company that does IT work for hospitals and utility companies. After attepting to run 100% Windows, a few hospitals were sick and tired of all the down-time due to corrupt databases and other software problems. They asked for a solution and Redhat was the solution. They now have 2 Redhat servers and may be moving one more in the near future.
A utility company had an old Alpha box with Digital Unix on it running their billing software. The company switched to a Windows platform and now their are slowdowns all the time and the company is on the machine 2 hours a day clearing corrupt info and running maintenance on the program. I don't think that it is long before they switch back to *nix.
All-in-all, I have seen more and more people moving their systems simply because they have realized that it doesn't take an IT specialist to point out the fact that the longest uptime on their NT servers is 3 months and they are always worried about them, where as they tend to forget that they have a *nix box in the building because they never have to touch it.
I agree... my experience with the P4 during everyday work has been non-impressive... as far as I can see, my Athlon 1.2 destroys the P4 1.3 I have at work in normal day to day use including MP3 encoding and digital video rendering...
With the price of a P4 I don't understand why people insist on buying them
Slashdot Mirror
100% agree, love this game, had it since it was released, the only game that is installed on my machine at all times, others come and go but TF2 is the go to for quick fun
I have worked in IT all my life, from the jack of all trades to specialized technologies.... on call all the time, i have had my fair share of events where 60 people swarm my desk as i type away and talk on the phone trying to resolve the issues.... my view of this....
other people can have the anxiety... i am here to do my job to the best of my abilities, i get paid to do that, i get paid to be on call, so i will do that... i have projects that i know will fail, projects that i am struggling to meet the timelines for and problems that i can solve, and problems that i can't solve... last I checked, that is IT period.
If you have real issues with anxiety and coping with this "crushing pressure" go work in another industry, IT isn't a walk in the park and if you can't balance work/personal and your own emotions, IT isn't for you.
Sure that sounds harsh, but again, in IT, get used to it.
They chose the perfect time to do the survey, most companies I have ever known someone at would do it in Dec/Jan for Calendar year, Mar/Apr if their fiscal year ended then, or Oct/Nov if their fiscal year ended then. So in my view it is an expected 66% NO. I hate it when information like this flows around. 100% of people agree**
** - Survey of 10000 people with 1 respondant
But if companies put in position mandates "Other duties as assigned" which can include monitoring others. I think that it is good to watch what is going on but not to the extent of social networking sites and GPS etc. I personally monitor the enterprise for mob behavior such as a 400% spike in internet traffic with people watching the world cup or streaming radio. I then crunch the numbers and show what the cost of said traffic is to the business and let the business decide if it continues or if I stop it.
My job is to ensure a stable and high performing network for the enterprise, part of that is watching what people are doing and stopping things that can degrade the stability or performance of the network as a whole. I don't look at it as monitoring co-workers, I see it as monitoring the network, what I am paid to do. The fact that humans are the ones generating the traffic doesn't matter, I really don't care who is doing it, just that it is being done.
We aren't here to single people out (unless asked to), just do the job that we are paid for.
I recently was forced to part with my old IBM System 36 and corresponding hard drive that was 350lbs and the size of a dishwasher. The system 36 was the original 700lb model 5630. They were used as end tables but didn't fit with my wife's tastes. I am proud to say that I was able to get the box up, with connected terminal and actually pulled data off of it (printed) in 2005. I was challenged by some friends to make it work to show it could still be put to use and damn it, the yellow paged manuals I still had made it easy.
My tech hoarding earned me some extra income as I won the bet making it work. So don't throw it out, your tech buddies will pay good money to watch you fight with 20 year old tech.
We have a password policy as well, with the no repeating characters, previous 10 passwords not allowed, not allowed to change the password twice in 48 hours, must have special character, upper and lower case and numbers, can't contain any part of user id or name, must be 9 characters in length, must start with a letter...... and that is just the domain password, rules for internal systems are just as crazy but some don't allow special characters etc so you are forced to maintain 50 passwords and user id's even though LDAP is the "only standard moving forward"
I sit next to the security teams, on password change day I yell and then remove the piece of paper on my cube's name badge and replace it with the updated passwords. They don't like me. I have proved that leaving your user ID and password at sight level at your cube doesn't mean someone will use it.... so far
The key is that they stated they were missing deadlines and producing poor code. I don't claim to work a solid 8 hours every day, I probably do more like 6, but I make sure to meet all deadlines to the best of my ability. If that means sometimes working 5 days, 8 hours productive a week I do it (sometimes many more hours but may not be productive). My boss sees that I do this so when there are no deadlines he doesn't mind if I piss off work for a day here or a few hours there.
If work objectives are being met, fine. If they are not, management needs to step in and find a way to get the workers to get the job done. Not forcing solid work as that will fail, but finding a way to make them more productive by giving them some freedoms to control their own schedules and still get the job done.
Work ethic is a huge deal for me, it pisses me off watching people talk about hockey and not get the job done but if they are getting their jobs done, I am the first to jump into the conversation and have a little fun at work.
I love the fact that /. allows ads to be disabled. I enable every once and a while and click around just for fun.
What I really dislike are the ads that take up 80% of the screen such as the new CNN ads for Lexus and Mac that expand if you accidentally hover over them and take up the whole screen. The honor system works if you prove that you aren't trying in your face ads. I don't mind the occasional flashing ad in a small section of the screen, chew up my whole screen or have some loud audio and I visit the site a lot less. Show me your product or service and I will make a personal decision. Jam your ad in my face and I won't even take the time to see if you really are 1000 times better than your competition.
I choose to pay $5 and unlock it from the comfort of my home. I picked my last phone up from a carrier with no contracts for $50 more than the carriers with contacts, then paid $5 to get it unlocked, and signed up at the more expensive carrier on a month-month service.
I hate locked in contacts, but also hate ads.
I have seen 945 of the spellings in my inbox just last week.... damn spammers
Maybe the kid is really just pushing his dad to let him spend his days in the strip club but the dad would rather pay the 20k fines than get his boobie shop closed for underage customers
But they cut paper and used glue... I bet they had to calculate the proper amounts using a complex model and ensured that the colour scheme was to the recipient's liking. It's not like they just cut paper, spread glue and jammed a phone in the middle like my 2 year old does.......
wait......
100% agree. I had a manager that questioned every time that i was 5 mins late. I tracked the number of hours I worked late, covering for others when their cars broke down etc. When my manager next pulled me aside I haded the sheet and said, dock my pay for the 30 mins I have been late this week, but please also process my 10 hours of overtime with documented badge in badge out times. They stopped bothering me.
As for the topic, I would say that if management doesn't have to be 100% non-technical. It is what you make it. I managed a team of people, did 10% management work, 90% technical and my boss was happy as they did little to no management of my team and we continued to out perform other groups so they let us be. You can make any position what you want it to be if there is a good higher level management above. So look far above, if you like what you see, take it. If there is micro management, run for the hills.
100% numeric pager or Blackberry with unlimited data plan and cell service? If I was asked to carry a numeric pager, and work all hours and not get paid I would be out the door. If it was a Blackberry with full data plan and unlimited cell useage, maybe that would be enough for me. I currently get paid $1.50/hr for carrying and nothing for the time I spend if I get paged. I accepted this. I used to get paid $1.50/hr and OT for what I worked but got paged 2000% more. So the company giving me a phone with data at no cost to me plus $1.50/hr regardless if I get paged or not is worth it. If I get paged a lot, I train that group how to fix things so they don't have to page me. If they paid me for OT for responding, I probably wouldn't train people how to fix things as I would want the $$$. So this may be an indication that users require some additional information so the pages don't happen, or at least happen less frequently.
There are so many variables it is really just up to what you want to put up with. If you don't like the situation, find a different one.
Living in Ontario, there are many laws that aren't enforced, like not being a tool and driving down the shoulder in a traffic jam. The police enforce that rule once per year. My best bet is that most of the people who get tickets are the people that don't do it on a regular basis, just got caught the once they did it. The people who drive around with their phone stuck to their ear will never get a ticket. Such is life. Just because this rule is in place, doesn't mean I am not still going to be watching for distracted drivers. It isn't their phone that is the issue, it is their driving skills in general. Take the phone out of the picture and they are still distracted by shiny objects.
Since when did Slashdot become CNN's day after repeat? Must be a slow geek week as this isn't the first repeat
Zicam
for 100-500 leases, i would set it up on the cisco boxes.... also ensures the zero cost approach which always makes management happy.
I was tasked with this same issue in a huge corporation where I can't control the hiring of only useful people, nor could I spend the $$ to educate those who needed it. I used a Sharepoint site that had full DR and tracking for changes, tasked people to create a simple document for tasks they commonly did, then I just created a Master Document that contained sections with links to the documents that others had created or the ones that I created. The master document is currently about 90 pages of links to documents. Updates to any document are approved before posting to the site. There is a document template for any new processes that are created and they are tagged with review dates to ensure they are kept up to date.
The secontions in the master include "Basic Tasks", "Problem Determination" or "Standards"
Seems to work for me and the 200 other people that use it. It is available to 1000 people but only a fraction use it. Can't fix that with any documentation or application.
Sometimes it isn't about the company but the clients. In my last job my employeer deserved me walking out and not telling them anything, my clients on the other hand had contracts with them and needed support. Due to a nice flaw in my contract, I gave 6 written notice instead of 6 weeks written notice and walked out. 15 mins prior to that I e-mailed each of my clients with hundreds of support documents so they could keep business moving. My old boss was pissed off royally but all the clients were happy as they had documentation to provide to the next tech that came in the door.
Feel better now? Love the useless posts... like this one
Not trying to kid anyone. Why would I pay $50 for a game and $3 for insurance when I can pay $0.25 for a DVD to back it up myself. Then I don't need the hassle of driving to the store and fighting with someone that it actually doesn't work and I did buy it at that store.
Perfect example, back before I got smart about OS choices, I BOUGHT a copy of Windows 95 on floppy. After initial install, I messed up some things, went to re-isntall and disk 13 (strange but true) didn't read. I contacted the store I bought it at, they said go to M$, I went to M$ and they said buy another copy.
Ever since then, I have backed up every legit disc I have ever paid $0.01 for. So when I bought my first CD Burner and was called an evil pirate, I just laughed it off.
I will continue to back up every bit of data I ever see. I do not currently have a mod chip in my Wii but as soon as one of my legit game discs gets damaged, I will have one installed, and not feel the slightest bit guilty for doing so.
I work for a small company that does IT work for hospitals and utility companies. After attepting to run 100% Windows, a few hospitals were sick and tired of all the down-time due to corrupt databases and other software problems. They asked for a solution and Redhat was the solution. They now have 2 Redhat servers and may be moving one more in the near future.
A utility company had an old Alpha box with Digital Unix on it running their billing software. The company switched to a Windows platform and now their are slowdowns all the time and the company is on the machine 2 hours a day clearing corrupt info and running maintenance on the program. I don't think that it is long before they switch back to *nix.
All-in-all, I have seen more and more people moving their systems simply because they have realized that it doesn't take an IT specialist to point out the fact that the longest uptime on their NT servers is 3 months and they are always worried about them, where as they tend to forget that they have a *nix box in the building because they never have to touch it.
I agree... my experience with the P4 during everyday work has been non-impressive... as far as I can see, my Athlon 1.2 destroys the P4 1.3 I have at work in normal day to day use including MP3 encoding and digital video rendering... With the price of a P4 I don't understand why people insist on buying them