You are making a typical mistake in judgement - you assume that because they look at those KPIs, they don't look elsewhere. That may be true for some bad examples, but does not in general follow. Usually, you have a set of supervisors who are responsible for maintaining things like availability of the hotline by juggling call times, agents available, etc. - and then you have a set of quality assurance people who monitor calls, make test calls, etc. to measure call quality.
Measuring how long an agent is on the phone with a customer is not related to the value of that time. A short call may seem better, but could actually cost the company more money. [...] Just because there *seems* to be an objective benefit to knowing the number of available agents doesn't mean that knowing the number benefits your company.
That's not even what I'm talking about. Seems I have to be more explicit:
A call center requires to know how many of its agents are available to take calls, how long average calls last, etc. etc..
It does so not in order to judge the value of time or agents or whatever. Most do, of course, but that's not my point. The objective necessity is that a call center will have X calls inbound at any given time, and Y agents available. It needs current numbers to decide just-in-time whether to take the calls or route them to an overflow call center (usually outsourced and more expensive). It needs statistics on call durations, etc. to make estimates for tomorrow and future days in order to plan the workforce it needs available, when to hire more people, etc. etc.
Nowhere in all of that does the individual agent even matter, nor does the call center need to have his numbers available. In one case that I worked on, representing the employee interests, in this very situation, our compromise solution was that the agents were assigned random pseudonyms, so that supervisors had all the numbers they needed, but without the ability to identify individuals.
Does that include those relating to spammers, and the putting to death thereof?
Yes, because the more civilized punishment for spammers makes sure that it is a very slow, very painful and very public (to discourage the others) death.
Alternatively, in countries that don't have the death penalty anymore, I'm willing to settle for a compromise of life-long torture.
If nobody sees you traveling faster than light, then how can you say you did so at all?
By evidence. If I go to some nearby earthlike planet, collect a few soil samples and come back, and it takes, say, a year then even though nobody watched, I can be fairly certain that it has actually happened.
If censorship is the law then yes, it is the right thing to do. If you don't like the law, getting it changed is what you should try first.
And, whatever else those governments do in evil thinks, when it comes to insulting their prophet, they actually do seem to represent the majority opinion of their people.
Because y'know, this method is working out just perfectly for North America right now.
Most westerns hate their government. In fact, I personally consider our Chancellor Merkel the worst possible person for that job, entirely incompetent, completely without vision or values and interested only in the perpetuation of her power.
But very few of us are dissatisfied enough to actually work on overthrowing the government. Lots and lots of arabs, on the other hand, are.
No, it is not. Arbitrary rulers and their arbitrary whims
That's exactly the attitude I am talking about. Quite a few of those "arbitrary rulers" were elected in elections that were every bit as fair, unbiased, unpolluted by big money and bribery and with clear winners by considerable margins as, say, the election of GW Bush.
You may or may not like it, but first and foremost, these are the governments of other people. It is not up to you to judge them, it is up to their people.
What would be good is the voluntary association of viewers and content provider be freed from the violent intrusion by 3rd parties.
That is your set of values. For every one of you there are two muslims who will say something different. Who are you to claim that your morale is superior to theirs? I am intentionally excluding the cowardly murderers.
I'm not advocating moral relativism - there certainly are morale absolutes. Any morale that includes sentences ending in "...shall be put to death" is certainly inferior to one that has a more civilized punishment. However, I am also not a friend of moral absolutism, the view that your values are the only correct ones. They may even be - for you. Doesn't mean they are for other people.
And finally, even if these are corrupt, evil governments headed by arbitrary rulers - it is none of your fucking business as long as they don't intrude on your rights or those of your friends or allies.
You have an issue with management and consider much of it worthless. I actually agree in many cases. But that wasn't the point here. Worth or not, there is no objective benefit to the company of knowing the exact number of managers sitting at their desks every minute of the day. There is an objective necessity for a call center to know the number of available agents.
Actually appeasement is better than the intended response.
That's not stupid. Getting provoked into a dumb over-reaction is certainly not the smartest thing, either. Unfortunately, thanks to Bush, it is what people in many countries expect of the USA.
But there are alternatives inbetween. Certainly bombing Libya is not the right answer, but making it clear and obvious that attacks like that won't be tolerated, demanding clear statements from the other arab nations regarding the security of your diplomats there, and then if they don't do it, withdrawing them and all financial aid and other support would be a first step.
Finally closing down Gitmo and putting each and every single one of its prisoners in front of a proper judge would be the next one. It might sound arbitrary, but there is a connection: Get the fuck rid of this image of yours that the US does evil things just because it can. You can't hold others to standards that you don't satisfy yourself.
I said "minute-by-minute". Of course you need to know if you have enough managers, programmers, cleaning ladies, etc. - but you do not need a minute-graph of how many of them are at their desks RIGHT NOW, while for some jobs you do.
That money isn't given as free gifts. The US buys something with it. Influence, mostly.
Not that I'm not with you. Basically, here's what I think would really, really help world peace:
a) stop all that aid money, to everyone (including Israel!) b) get all soldiers back home c) let them simmer for a decade or two d) if they come to us and want something, e.g. trade, then we can tell them terms. Like "sure you can get computers, but we would first like you to give women equal rights. No? Ok, if you want to remain in the middle ages, you don't need computers."
Of course, that doesn't work because they have so darn much of our(*) oil and our companies want to sell them stuff for profit, especially weapons and such.
(*) that's a satirical comment, if you didn't catch the reference
I wouldn't exactly put up a billboard of Jesus fucking a donkey if I live in the bible belt, though. The chance to be murdered is still considerably less than doing something comparable in most muslim countries, but it is uncomfortably above zero.
They do get it. Dawkins especially is not trying to convert anyone who already is religious. When he is discussing them, you can clearly see that he isn't trying to convince his opponent, his words are intended for the audience.
Refusing to take it down entirely is good. Blocking it in countries where the authorities want it blocked is also good. Refusing to do that would be a typical USA "we know better than you" move, and that is a big piece of the reason why the US is hated in so many places around the world.
If people within the country don't like what their government is doing, it is their job to solve that problem. If they need help, they can ask for it. Don't force "help" on people who may or may not want it.
They should use the method most appropriate to the task/context, no matter what hierarchy level is affected.
Most management jobs do not require minute-by-minute tracking, and neither do most other office jobs where your thinking process is what the company pays for. But for call centers and other service functions, external availability is what is important and having statistics on how many agents you have available right now is an important business decision, e.g. whether or not to route calls to external service partners.
I used to work full-time in an elected position representing employee interests, so I do have a bit of expertise on the subject.
That said, I can not comment on "legal", because that is a matter of your local laws, and I only know my local laws well enough to say that.
Aside from legal, however, this is completely inacceptable. The employer does have an interest to track whether or not you are working, but when you are not working, you are spending private time, and what you do in your private time is your business.
If you are in a position to negotiate, ask what the real interest of the employer is. Almost certainly, he doesn't really care if you take a piss or bone his secretary. What he wants to know is that you are not working and probably what kind of break you are taking in the sense of an answer to the question how soon you will be back. A solution here would be to make two options of breaks, one regular and one short break, where the short break option does the employer that you'll be back shortly (duh).
Then again, he just might be a Big Brother control freak, in which case you need to get enough support from co-workers to put pressure on him and tell him that you and lots of others are not willing to accept that invasion of your private time and that either the bathroom breaks are paid time, or you will continue to book them as regular breaks and he can take you to court if he thinks he stands a chance of winning. Do consult a lawyer before telling him that last piece, though. In my country, you would almost certainly win, but your laws may vary.
We say "cause", but that's far from the truth. If watching a movie makes you kill someone then you were already ready to do that before, the movie just triggered it.
I had the luck of having a great history teacher in school, and one of the most important lessons he taught us was the difference between causation and occasion. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was not the cause for WW1, but the occasion that started it.
Same here, the movie was the occasion that started the violence, but in no way was it the causation.
We believe that tailoring your web experience â" for example by showing you more relevant, interest-based ads, or making it easy to recommend stuff you like to friends â" is a good thing.
"believe" being the key word there.
AdBlock all the way. I don't brake for ads anymore.
Yes, if you evaluate them as hyperlinks you fucking moron. That's a feature if you use it for a QR reader on your phone intended to be pointed at posters, etc. - but for a reader to verify documents or bank notes or whatever, it would be so unbelievably stupid that I'd instantly fire the developer who wrote or included that piece of code.
Really, have they been handing out the stupid pills again?
Slashdot Mirror
You are making a typical mistake in judgement - you assume that because they look at those KPIs, they don't look elsewhere. That may be true for some bad examples, but does not in general follow. Usually, you have a set of supervisors who are responsible for maintaining things like availability of the hotline by juggling call times, agents available, etc. - and then you have a set of quality assurance people who monitor calls, make test calls, etc. to measure call quality.
Measuring how long an agent is on the phone with a customer is not related to the value of that time. A short call may seem better, but could actually cost the company more money.
[...]
Just because there *seems* to be an objective benefit to knowing the number of available agents doesn't mean that knowing the number benefits your company.
That's not even what I'm talking about. Seems I have to be more explicit:
A call center requires to know how many of its agents are available to take calls, how long average calls last, etc. etc..
It does so not in order to judge the value of time or agents or whatever. Most do, of course, but that's not my point. The objective necessity is that a call center will have X calls inbound at any given time, and Y agents available.
It needs current numbers to decide just-in-time whether to take the calls or route them to an overflow call center (usually outsourced and more expensive).
It needs statistics on call durations, etc. to make estimates for tomorrow and future days in order to plan the workforce it needs available, when to hire more people, etc. etc.
Nowhere in all of that does the individual agent even matter, nor does the call center need to have his numbers available. In one case that I worked on, representing the employee interests, in this very situation, our compromise solution was that the agents were assigned random pseudonyms, so that supervisors had all the numbers they needed, but without the ability to identify individuals.
Does that include those relating to spammers, and the putting to death thereof?
Yes, because the more civilized punishment for spammers makes sure that it is a very slow, very painful and very public (to discourage the others) death.
Alternatively, in countries that don't have the death penalty anymore, I'm willing to settle for a compromise of life-long torture.
If nobody sees you traveling faster than light, then how can you say you did so at all?
By evidence. If I go to some nearby earthlike planet, collect a few soil samples and come back, and it takes, say, a year then even though nobody watched, I can be fairly certain that it has actually happened.
It's another problem that needs solving. People once thought you would suffocate if the train goes too fast.
So agreeing to censorship is good?
If censorship is the law then yes, it is the right thing to do.
If you don't like the law, getting it changed is what you should try first.
And, whatever else those governments do in evil thinks, when it comes to insulting their prophet, they actually do seem to represent the majority opinion of their people.
Because y'know, this method is working out just perfectly for North America right now.
Most westerns hate their government. In fact, I personally consider our Chancellor Merkel the worst possible person for that job, entirely incompetent, completely without vision or values and interested only in the perpetuation of her power.
But very few of us are dissatisfied enough to actually work on overthrowing the government. Lots and lots of arabs, on the other hand, are.
No, it is not. Arbitrary rulers and their arbitrary whims
That's exactly the attitude I am talking about. Quite a few of those "arbitrary rulers" were elected in elections that were every bit as fair, unbiased, unpolluted by big money and bribery and with clear winners by considerable margins as, say, the election of GW Bush.
You may or may not like it, but first and foremost, these are the governments of other people. It is not up to you to judge them, it is up to their people.
What would be good is the voluntary association of viewers and content provider be freed from the violent intrusion by 3rd parties.
That is your set of values. For every one of you there are two muslims who will say something different. Who are you to claim that your morale is superior to theirs? I am intentionally excluding the cowardly murderers.
I'm not advocating moral relativism - there certainly are morale absolutes. Any morale that includes sentences ending in "...shall be put to death" is certainly inferior to one that has a more civilized punishment.
However, I am also not a friend of moral absolutism, the view that your values are the only correct ones. They may even be - for you. Doesn't mean they are for other people.
And finally, even if these are corrupt, evil governments headed by arbitrary rulers - it is none of your fucking business as long as they don't intrude on your rights or those of your friends or allies.
We are talking about totally different things.
You have an issue with management and consider much of it worthless. I actually agree in many cases. But that wasn't the point here. Worth or not, there is no objective benefit to the company of knowing the exact number of managers sitting at their desks every minute of the day. There is an objective necessity for a call center to know the number of available agents.
Actually appeasement is better than the intended response.
That's not stupid. Getting provoked into a dumb over-reaction is certainly not the smartest thing, either. Unfortunately, thanks to Bush, it is what people in many countries expect of the USA.
But there are alternatives inbetween. Certainly bombing Libya is not the right answer, but making it clear and obvious that attacks like that won't be tolerated, demanding clear statements from the other arab nations regarding the security of your diplomats there, and then if they don't do it, withdrawing them and all financial aid and other support would be a first step.
Finally closing down Gitmo and putting each and every single one of its prisoners in front of a proper judge would be the next one. It might sound arbitrary, but there is a connection: Get the fuck rid of this image of yours that the US does evil things just because it can. You can't hold others to standards that you don't satisfy yourself.
I said "minute-by-minute". Of course you need to know if you have enough managers, programmers, cleaning ladies, etc. - but you do not need a minute-graph of how many of them are at their desks RIGHT NOW, while for some jobs you do.
Interesting proposal, but you forget something:
That money isn't given as free gifts. The US buys something with it. Influence, mostly.
Not that I'm not with you. Basically, here's what I think would really, really help world peace:
a) stop all that aid money, to everyone (including Israel!)
b) get all soldiers back home
c) let them simmer for a decade or two
d) if they come to us and want something, e.g. trade, then we can tell them terms. Like "sure you can get computers, but we would first like you to give women equal rights. No? Ok, if you want to remain in the middle ages, you don't need computers."
Of course, that doesn't work because they have so darn much of our(*) oil and our companies want to sell them stuff for profit, especially weapons and such.
(*) that's a satirical comment, if you didn't catch the reference
Thanks a lot for posting that. This is one of those few comments that deserve more than +5.
Mostly, yes.
I wouldn't exactly put up a billboard of Jesus fucking a donkey if I live in the bible belt, though. The chance to be murdered is still considerably less than doing something comparable in most muslim countries, but it is uncomfortably above zero.
They do get it. Dawkins especially is not trying to convert anyone who already is religious. When he is discussing them, you can clearly see that he isn't trying to convince his opponent, his words are intended for the audience.
It's amazing how much and how often things that "incite violence" are held responsible, but the people doing the violence aren't responsible?
This.
There's a lot of video material out there that I find disgusting and outright evil.
Here's my solution: I don't watch it.
What happened to us that our response to violence and aggression has become Appeasement again? Have the lessons already been forgotten?
Why don't I read anything about the manhunt, arrests and upcoming trials of the murderers? Is the police even looking for them?
I actually like what they are doing here.
Refusing to take it down entirely is good. Blocking it in countries where the authorities want it blocked is also good. Refusing to do that would be a typical USA "we know better than you" move, and that is a big piece of the reason why the US is hated in so many places around the world.
If people within the country don't like what their government is doing, it is their job to solve that problem. If they need help, they can ask for it. Don't force "help" on people who may or may not want it.
No, they should not.
They should use the method most appropriate to the task/context, no matter what hierarchy level is affected.
Most management jobs do not require minute-by-minute tracking, and neither do most other office jobs where your thinking process is what the company pays for. But for call centers and other service functions, external availability is what is important and having statistics on how many agents you have available right now is an important business decision, e.g. whether or not to route calls to external service partners.
Apparently, there are dumb questions.
Yes, anyone can become a programmer.
Just like anyone can become a manager, a circus clown or a painter.
Does that mean he or she will be any good at it? I doubt that.
I used to work full-time in an elected position representing employee interests, so I do have a bit of expertise on the subject.
That said, I can not comment on "legal", because that is a matter of your local laws, and I only know my local laws well enough to say that.
Aside from legal, however, this is completely inacceptable. The employer does have an interest to track whether or not you are working, but when you are not working, you are spending private time, and what you do in your private time is your business.
If you are in a position to negotiate, ask what the real interest of the employer is. Almost certainly, he doesn't really care if you take a piss or bone his secretary. What he wants to know is that you are not working and probably what kind of break you are taking in the sense of an answer to the question how soon you will be back. A solution here would be to make two options of breaks, one regular and one short break, where the short break option does the employer that you'll be back shortly (duh).
Then again, he just might be a Big Brother control freak, in which case you need to get enough support from co-workers to put pressure on him and tell him that you and lots of others are not willing to accept that invasion of your private time and that either the bathroom breaks are paid time, or you will continue to book them as regular breaks and he can take you to court if he thinks he stands a chance of winning. Do consult a lawyer before telling him that last piece, though. In my country, you would almost certainly win, but your laws may vary.
Mod parent up.
We say "cause", but that's far from the truth. If watching a movie makes you kill someone then you were already ready to do that before, the movie just triggered it.
I had the luck of having a great history teacher in school, and one of the most important lessons he taught us was the difference between causation and occasion. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was not the cause for WW1, but the occasion that started it.
Same here, the movie was the occasion that started the violence, but in no way was it the causation.
Then they aren't true Apple fans.
If they were, they would
a) own an iPhone 4 and could compare
b) read all the news about the iPhone 5 and know it is taller
Basically, anyone who has watched TV for a few hours knows that it is trivial to find a couple suckers on the street for even the dumbest things.
We believe that tailoring your web experience â" for example by showing you more relevant, interest-based ads, or making it easy to recommend stuff you like to friends â" is a good thing.
"believe" being the key word there.
AdBlock all the way. I don't brake for ads anymore.
So what were you expecting or hoping for that would have been incentive enough to upgrade?
Nothing specific. I was hoping Apple would've come up with something.
can send you to a site that infects your system
Yes, if you evaluate them as hyperlinks you fucking moron. That's a feature if you use it for a QR reader on your phone intended to be pointed at posters, etc. - but for a reader to verify documents or bank notes or whatever, it would be so unbelievably stupid that I'd instantly fire the developer who wrote or included that piece of code.
Really, have they been handing out the stupid pills again?