The people running the call center are equally if not more at fault than the person who was stealing the account information.
I worked at a large hosting company that has in house support. Cell phones are NOT allowed in the call center. In fact you can't even have a pen or pencil there. They use 8 x 10 white boards for immediate notes and those never leave the area. Access to external email is blocked. I don't know the rest of the security procedures but I have no doubt their internal email was screened as well.
What they did was illegal, immoral, and just plain wrong. Overall it was a decently well thought out plan but there were inevitable points that would lead back to the source. The kicker was the CRM system tracking. If the guy had been more security aware on his home computer they probably wouldn't have had enough evidence to convict him of anything.
A timely reminder of how far people will go to find ways around security measures.
"Facebook Rejects Female Engineers' Code More Often Than Male Counterparts, Analysis Finds"
Maybe it's just not as good, unless every female programmer signs it with "Coded by a Female Programmer!" That, and the little hearts above every lower-case "i".
The problem was that it didn't pass internal peer review in an environment where the vast majority of peers were of the opposite gender. So of course they knew who was submitting the code. A possible reason was that their code was subject to more rigorous review than the other genders' code.
So your argument holds no water. It also is a slap in the face to those of us who are female and code as it was meant to be. I wonder how well your code would hold up to a rigorous peer review.
I can see them hiring the less-than-stellar American employees - the recent grads, the low end of the bell curve, the burnt out ones - and using them to be the face of the company where needed. So these poor schmucks will end up managing the offshore resources until they can't take it any more and leave.
As long as they offer a moderately decent salary there will be people who take it, especially if they spin the job correctly. If they offer remote work they'll get a lot more and possibly better candidates. All American and right her on sovereign soil.
No matter what it's going to be an outsourcing, offshore front. The question is how much will flow through the local hands before it gets to the clients.
The source of this is body shops. They're the ones paying $35k and charging $80k pocketing the difference.
Instead of that let them get paid 1% of the take home salary of the visa holders. Maybe 2% if we're feeling generous. When they start making $350 - $700 per person per year then the business isn't sustainable and the problem diminishes significantly.
So what about that $45k difference? Where does that go? Good question. I'd say it goes into job training programs and scholarships.
I know. I'm a dreamer. But the problem lies with how profitable it is for companies to bring in these indentured servants. There needs to be a way to take away the profit so they move on to some other leech business model.
The picture of their 'hip working space' is downright depressing. Concrete floors so every sound is magnified, tables so you need to fight for space when it gets busy, no visible power stations (might be for photo purposes but might not), no privacy at all. No place to meet with clients.
Honestly you would be better off going to your public library and using their wi-fi and work spaces. Your taxes are already paying for them and they don't mind when people are there for long periods of time. They're even catching up with the times as some of them allow beverages in covered containers so you can have your coffee at your work area.
It would be an interesting concept if they had tiny office-type areas that were closed off so you could work with a small team, on a conference call, meet clients, etc. As it is they're just turning their employee break rooms into pseudo-conference rooms.
If someone spends $90,000 on a brand-new Tesla and a "service call" costs a few hundred dollars, that's likely a reasonable and expected expense for a complex machine, as long as those service calls don't happen too frequently. By comparison, farmers are spending 2-3x more on high-end computer-controlled farming equipment, so what is a reasonable cost for service calls? Again, not trying to justify a vendor ripping off a customer, but from a cost vs. maintenance expense ratio, bitching about a few hundred dollars seems like a hollow complaint. Bottom line is your farming equipment needs more than a 1/2" wrench and a flathead screwdriver to work on these days, just like your new car.
Are vendors being greedy, or are they controlling what an end-user can do with their equipment because of the complexity, and perhaps even safety? Joe Mechanic sure as hell isn't gonna pop the titanium lid and DIY his Tesla battery bank. If it turns out to be little more than vendor greed, then certainly ensure that it becomes fair for all parties involved.
Those who hate the complexity of modern equipment have a simple solution too; go buy 40-year old shit.
You need to do some more research. Farming is very time sensitive. If they have the right to repair and it's changing out the fuel pump then they can get back to work in very little time. As it is they have to wait until an authorized repair person replaces the pump and tells the software it's OK to start working again. For no other reason than they control the software.
Most farmers can do a lot of mechanical work on their own. When the vendor is required to provide access to manuals and computer diagnostics (like the auto industry was beaten into doing) then suddenly their income from their mandatory service department is going to plummet. That's the real reason they do the software lock in.
Yeah, but be careful... replace too many jobs, and you'll be flagged as a "job hopper" and suddenly find it way harder to replace a job. The system will squeeze you every way it can.
Not so much in IT any more. With the decided lack of consideration companies have for retaining staff these days it's quite common to see mid to high level people moving between jobs and consulting with breaks in the middle. As long as you can give a quick summary during the interview they pass it off.
I think its less for 'hit by a bus' and more to remove you from the environment long enough that any fraud/embezzlement schemes you might have fall apart.
If your fraud scheme falls apart in 5 days you set it up wrong.
It might sound useless but I worked at a bank where an AVP got called into the office on the 4th day of his mandatory 5 day vacation. Turns out he had been kiting checks for a client and because he wasn't there someone else caught on. He was escorted out again.
For IT this gets a little trickier since we tend to build a LOT of automation and have remote access to systems. So even if we're not in the office there's a very good chance that someone who is doing illegal things would have their bases covered per networkBoy's comment. But the people who handle money all day tend not to have our options.
That's all good if the pedestrian just mindlessly walks into traffic and didn't have the right of way. Sometimes it's the driver who's to blame. Just this morning I was poking around in the phone while waiting for the "walk" light (and sound). I hear it, briefly look up and start walking...only to almost be hit by a car. Fortunately, I was in the most hospital dense part of the country, but what the hell!? This never would have happened had the driver not ran the red light!
Hrm. Did I miss the part where you looked both ways before crossing the street? A walk light is not enough. You need to be aware of your surroundings. Briefly looking up from your phone doesn't count. YOU could have avoided the accident had you looked to see a car about to run a light and plow into you. So really you do share fault in this accident.
People - put your darn phones away when you're in motion. That includes both walking and driving.
Instead of subsidizing broadband to people's homes redirect that funding to libraries and schools. Give them as much broadband access as they want. That way it's available to everyone.
Why should we subsidize Netflix and pron for anyone?
Please stop putting a "sexism in tech" story on the front page.
It's a major problem in technology that really needs to be addressed if this country is going to be competitive in the future. It's unfortunate that it's so inflammatory, but it needs to be addressed.
Correct. It needs to be addressed. And putting it on the front page of tech sites keeps it from getting pushed to the side like it has been for far too long.
That HR manager was trying to persuade the engineer that she wasn't going to find a company that wasn't sexist so she should take the job at Uber. At least they're honest about being sexist right?
I've been in corporate IT for 25 years. I'm female. Things have changed over the decades but there's still sexism in the hard tech areas. Women have risen in testing, QA, BI reporting, BA, etc. but for the heads-down work it's a struggle.
I RTFA and it seems that his problem isn't just with the aggregation it's with the fact that the reviews of mere viewers are given credibility. He cites the decline of Movie Critics as the reason why these types of things aren't useful.
With a few exceptions official movie reviewers were easily bought and would give stunning sound bites for movies. Those would be plastered all over the advertising and say just what the studios wanted to hear. Since they can't buy off the viewers with anything but good movies of course they're not going to like aggregation.
As many comments have said - if 999 out of 1,000 reviews say your movie sucks then there's an excellent chance your movie sucks.
That would be true if people treated yellow lights as the law requires. If you're in the intersection when the light turns red, it wasn't because you couldn't stop in time, it was because you tried to beat it instead of stopping.
Yeah. That land zeppelin behind me humping my exhaust system while the driver is texting and putting on makeup is reallllllly going to stop because I'm stopping at a light that just turned yellow. Shortened yellow light times and red light cameras may reduce T-bone accidents (and increase revenue) but tend to increase rear end collisions for this exact reason.
The alternative offered? To "quit" his job and lose severance and other benefits. Why he (and them) complied? Because he's near retirement age and doing anything else would be end-of-life economic suicide.
That's an involuntary termination, not quitting. When companies try it generally it is a legal quagmire. If it is even slightly questionable companies will generally offer a huge settlement package rather than risk a drawn-out lawsuit fighting in the courts; and since they're leaving the state the drawn-out lawsuit would be in a state they no longer are local to, further increasing cost.
I'm curious, did you talk with a lawyer before accepting the deal?
My company has something similar happening right now. Here's where it gets tricksy. At least for employees in CA if they're offered a relocation package as part of the deal and they decline they are considered to have left the company voluntarily. In a way. It does have an impact on their unemployment benefits. So talking to a lawyer is a very good idea when presented with this situation.
So they surveyed about 2,000 people. Out of the 22 million current customers. I think that falls into the "statistically insignificant" range of data samples.
If you want to be the hero in the department, clean up other people's messes — the impossible jobs that no one else in the department wants to handle.
This. I've done this. I've mentored people entering the workforce on this. If you do the jobs that no one else wants to do then you're the one they keep. Because shit gets done.
The downside to doing that (besides doing the jobs which sometimes turn out not to be so bad after all) is that you need to continually remind management that these things are getting done BECAUSE you're doing them. Otherwise they get used to not having pain points without realizing that someone has picked them up.
For some reason I remember them lining us up and that big multi-needle injection gun being pushed against our arm, a band-aid applied, then we all went out for recess. Was this a local/regional thing or am I seriously misremembering my grade school days?
I RTFA and it's not like that. Instead of going through the correct legal channels to request the photographs the police immediately jumped to a warrant to take EVERYTHING the guy had that might have been used to conduct his business. This was the overreaching warrant that was granted.
After he was sufficiently terrified of losing his livelihood they once again asked for the photos. Except now they offered to drop the warrant if he did.
During the hearing he almost wasn't able to even attend. He never got to answer any questions. His solicitor was asked things that couldn't be answered without recourse to him or the NUJ (National Union of Journalists). The NUJ representative wasn't even allowed to observe.
The article has been updated to state that the warrant is no longer in force. Probably. He's justifiably uncertain about that one.
The judge should be severely reprimanded for this one. The police used their position to blackmail him into giving them what they wanted. Pure and simple. They had a proper legal course of action to request the photographs - one that could be challenged - but instead chose to go the jackbooted thug route and the judge upheld it.
I'd estimate maybe 5% or so of the women you'd find on a dating site are legit -- and frankly, maybe 1 out of ten (or less) are anyone you'd want to have anything to do with anyway. Internet dating sites are more or less the last resort for the desperate, and as such not worth anyones' time.
I guess I'm in that 5%. Maybe even the 1 out of ten you cite. Because I'm real, my profile is honest, my pictures are current, and I'm not trying to be anyone but who I am. My main picture is me in a Jayne hat FFS.
I also guess that you're a neckbeard who will only look at the Google scraped model pictures and start your message with some offensive comment about their anatomy. Meant as a compliment of course.
When all you get is declined maybe the problem is closer to home.
Actually, my reference was to the act of talking to the woman ever, at all. I saw a Q and A session where a group of women were asked if talking to a woman was sexual harassment if she wasn't interested - Most said yes. Because the simple act of talking to a woman is not saying you want to screw her, and women have been taught that any male who isn't gay wants to screw her. Sad when they look at the world obsessed with the thought that everyone wants to screw them. And you needn't worry, unless I have been properly introduced, I will not speak to a woman at all. Even then, it is to say "hello" and no more. I wonder if ignoring women is a form of sexual harassment?
I also find this.. sad. As a woman if someone is talking to me and I'm not interested it's not harassment. It may be annoying but it's not sexual unless the person escalates it beyond expressing interest and won't take no for an answer.
I talk to all kinds of men. I have no idea if any of them want to 'screw me' nor do I care. I've had men compliment me on my clothing, my hair, etc. and I've taken it as a simple compliment and nothing more.
As for Tinder it sounds like they're creating algorithms that match on some key values and spit back results when they're found. Nothing new to see, move along. What direction of swipe would that be?
It's still in the developmental stages so I don't want to reveal too much at this point. But I can say it involves water and a secret ingredient called "soap".
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter
Requiring someone to remember to do an infrequent and short task at a point 1 or 2 years in the future
Bullshit.
I could write a PowerShell script in maybe 10 minutes that will list all of the computers in the domain, connect to them, and check for expiring certificates. I can get a reminder in advance---90 days, 30 days, a week, whatever I want. All I have to do is one thing: understand my job.
Alternatively, some tools (like Nessus, which is FOSS) have audits which automatically check for expiring certificates. They can be configured to email a report, and you can notified every day/week/month if you have expiring certs.
This is a stupid, incompetent failure. You can build or buy a tool to avoid this problem very easily. Compared to using passwords, the only reasonable complaint is that you require decent sys admins.
You forgot the part where you were part of a RIF 18 months ago and now your script points to an email address that no longer works. Good on you for automating it but it still takes coordination and adequate staffing to make it happen.
Instead of bragging about how great you are maybe you could look at the challenges of managing a huge infrastructure and see how some things - important things - can be overlooked because someone 'just made it happen', didn't document it, tied it to their personal account, and then is no longer there.
I tried that in America right after graduation. I changed jobs about once a year (after boredom set in) and after four years, it caught up with me - suddenly nobody would talk to me because I was a "job-hopper".
Back in the day...
Actually I wasn't making an old-timer joke. Maybe 15 years ago it was a red flag to see a series of 18 month jobs on a resume since the expectation was that you would be in a job for at least 5 years in order for us to recoup our investment. Those skips looked like someone stayed just long enough to gain some experience and then moved on to fresh pastures.
Not so much these days. Given how easily companies toss their people to the curb having a number of jobs in a short time isn't necessarily something that will send your resume to the circular file. Mind you I'm speaking about the IT industry so YMMV.
A job or two, followed by some consulting, another job, some more consulting. It's all work. And given the economy it's pretty typical of what happens to technical folks.
Back on topic for this thread. People are getting married later (if at all) and birth rates are in decline. There's nothing wrong with the concept of spending your youth doing a variety of jobs and gaining a wide range of experience. Stocking shelves may not sound glamorous but it shows that you're willing to do the work that's in front of you. After a certain point it will lose its allure and they'll find longer term jobs. Or not. The options are there for now.
Slashdot Mirror
The people running the call center are equally if not more at fault than the person who was stealing the account information.
I worked at a large hosting company that has in house support. Cell phones are NOT allowed in the call center. In fact you can't even have a pen or pencil there. They use 8 x 10 white boards for immediate notes and those never leave the area. Access to external email is blocked. I don't know the rest of the security procedures but I have no doubt their internal email was screened as well.
What they did was illegal, immoral, and just plain wrong. Overall it was a decently well thought out plan but there were inevitable points that would lead back to the source. The kicker was the CRM system tracking. If the guy had been more security aware on his home computer they probably wouldn't have had enough evidence to convict him of anything.
A timely reminder of how far people will go to find ways around security measures.
As always technology is 'easy' when you have no idea how it works.
The problem was that it didn't pass internal peer review in an environment where the vast majority of peers were of the opposite gender. So of course they knew who was submitting the code. A possible reason was that their code was subject to more rigorous review than the other genders' code.
So your argument holds no water. It also is a slap in the face to those of us who are female and code as it was meant to be. I wonder how well your code would hold up to a rigorous peer review.
I can see them hiring the less-than-stellar American employees - the recent grads, the low end of the bell curve, the burnt out ones - and using them to be the face of the company where needed. So these poor schmucks will end up managing the offshore resources until they can't take it any more and leave.
As long as they offer a moderately decent salary there will be people who take it, especially if they spin the job correctly. If they offer remote work they'll get a lot more and possibly better candidates. All American and right her on sovereign soil.
No matter what it's going to be an outsourcing, offshore front. The question is how much will flow through the local hands before it gets to the clients.
Just like fixing healthcare and the tax code revising the entire IT infrastructure for the federal government should be easy right?
The source of this is body shops. They're the ones paying $35k and charging $80k pocketing the difference.
Instead of that let them get paid 1% of the take home salary of the visa holders. Maybe 2% if we're feeling generous. When they start making $350 - $700 per person per year then the business isn't sustainable and the problem diminishes significantly.
So what about that $45k difference? Where does that go? Good question. I'd say it goes into job training programs and scholarships.
I know. I'm a dreamer. But the problem lies with how profitable it is for companies to bring in these indentured servants. There needs to be a way to take away the profit so they move on to some other leech business model.
The picture of their 'hip working space' is downright depressing. Concrete floors so every sound is magnified, tables so you need to fight for space when it gets busy, no visible power stations (might be for photo purposes but might not), no privacy at all. No place to meet with clients.
Honestly you would be better off going to your public library and using their wi-fi and work spaces. Your taxes are already paying for them and they don't mind when people are there for long periods of time. They're even catching up with the times as some of them allow beverages in covered containers so you can have your coffee at your work area.
It would be an interesting concept if they had tiny office-type areas that were closed off so you could work with a small team, on a conference call, meet clients, etc. As it is they're just turning their employee break rooms into pseudo-conference rooms.
You need to do some more research. Farming is very time sensitive. If they have the right to repair and it's changing out the fuel pump then they can get back to work in very little time. As it is they have to wait until an authorized repair person replaces the pump and tells the software it's OK to start working again. For no other reason than they control the software.
Most farmers can do a lot of mechanical work on their own. When the vendor is required to provide access to manuals and computer diagnostics (like the auto industry was beaten into doing) then suddenly their income from their mandatory service department is going to plummet. That's the real reason they do the software lock in.
Not so much in IT any more. With the decided lack of consideration companies have for retaining staff these days it's quite common to see mid to high level people moving between jobs and consulting with breaks in the middle. As long as you can give a quick summary during the interview they pass it off.
It might sound useless but I worked at a bank where an AVP got called into the office on the 4th day of his mandatory 5 day vacation. Turns out he had been kiting checks for a client and because he wasn't there someone else caught on. He was escorted out again.
For IT this gets a little trickier since we tend to build a LOT of automation and have remote access to systems. So even if we're not in the office there's a very good chance that someone who is doing illegal things would have their bases covered per networkBoy's comment. But the people who handle money all day tend not to have our options.
Hrm. Did I miss the part where you looked both ways before crossing the street? A walk light is not enough. You need to be aware of your surroundings. Briefly looking up from your phone doesn't count. YOU could have avoided the accident had you looked to see a car about to run a light and plow into you. So really you do share fault in this accident.
People - put your darn phones away when you're in motion. That includes both walking and driving.
Instead of subsidizing broadband to people's homes redirect that funding to libraries and schools. Give them as much broadband access as they want. That way it's available to everyone.
Why should we subsidize Netflix and pron for anyone?
Correct. It needs to be addressed. And putting it on the front page of tech sites keeps it from getting pushed to the side like it has been for far too long.
That HR manager was trying to persuade the engineer that she wasn't going to find a company that wasn't sexist so she should take the job at Uber. At least they're honest about being sexist right?
I've been in corporate IT for 25 years. I'm female. Things have changed over the decades but there's still sexism in the hard tech areas. Women have risen in testing, QA, BI reporting, BA, etc. but for the heads-down work it's a struggle.
I RTFA and it seems that his problem isn't just with the aggregation it's with the fact that the reviews of mere viewers are given credibility. He cites the decline of Movie Critics as the reason why these types of things aren't useful.
With a few exceptions official movie reviewers were easily bought and would give stunning sound bites for movies. Those would be plastered all over the advertising and say just what the studios wanted to hear. Since they can't buy off the viewers with anything but good movies of course they're not going to like aggregation.
As many comments have said - if 999 out of 1,000 reviews say your movie sucks then there's an excellent chance your movie sucks.
Yeah. That land zeppelin behind me humping my exhaust system while the driver is texting and putting on makeup is reallllllly going to stop because I'm stopping at a light that just turned yellow. Shortened yellow light times and red light cameras may reduce T-bone accidents (and increase revenue) but tend to increase rear end collisions for this exact reason.
My company has something similar happening right now. Here's where it gets tricksy. At least for employees in CA if they're offered a relocation package as part of the deal and they decline they are considered to have left the company voluntarily. In a way. It does have an impact on their unemployment benefits. So talking to a lawyer is a very good idea when presented with this situation.
So they surveyed about 2,000 people. Out of the 22 million current customers. I think that falls into the "statistically insignificant" range of data samples.
This. I've done this. I've mentored people entering the workforce on this. If you do the jobs that no one else wants to do then you're the one they keep. Because shit gets done.
The downside to doing that (besides doing the jobs which sometimes turn out not to be so bad after all) is that you need to continually remind management that these things are getting done BECAUSE you're doing them. Otherwise they get used to not having pain points without realizing that someone has picked them up.
For some reason I remember them lining us up and that big multi-needle injection gun being pushed against our arm, a band-aid applied, then we all went out for recess. Was this a local/regional thing or am I seriously misremembering my grade school days?
I RTFA and it's not like that. Instead of going through the correct legal channels to request the photographs the police immediately jumped to a warrant to take EVERYTHING the guy had that might have been used to conduct his business. This was the overreaching warrant that was granted.
After he was sufficiently terrified of losing his livelihood they once again asked for the photos. Except now they offered to drop the warrant if he did.
During the hearing he almost wasn't able to even attend. He never got to answer any questions. His solicitor was asked things that couldn't be answered without recourse to him or the NUJ (National Union of Journalists). The NUJ representative wasn't even allowed to observe.
The article has been updated to state that the warrant is no longer in force. Probably. He's justifiably uncertain about that one.
The judge should be severely reprimanded for this one. The police used their position to blackmail him into giving them what they wanted. Pure and simple. They had a proper legal course of action to request the photographs - one that could be challenged - but instead chose to go the jackbooted thug route and the judge upheld it.
I guess I'm in that 5%. Maybe even the 1 out of ten you cite. Because I'm real, my profile is honest, my pictures are current, and I'm not trying to be anyone but who I am. My main picture is me in a Jayne hat FFS.
I also guess that you're a neckbeard who will only look at the Google scraped model pictures and start your message with some offensive comment about their anatomy. Meant as a compliment of course.
When all you get is declined maybe the problem is closer to home.
I also find this .. sad. As a woman if someone is talking to me and I'm not interested it's not harassment. It may be annoying but it's not sexual unless the person escalates it beyond expressing interest and won't take no for an answer.
I talk to all kinds of men. I have no idea if any of them want to 'screw me' nor do I care. I've had men compliment me on my clothing, my hair, etc. and I've taken it as a simple compliment and nothing more.
As for Tinder it sounds like they're creating algorithms that match on some key values and spit back results when they're found. Nothing new to see, move along. What direction of swipe would that be?
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter
You forgot the part where you were part of a RIF 18 months ago and now your script points to an email address that no longer works. Good on you for automating it but it still takes coordination and adequate staffing to make it happen.
Instead of bragging about how great you are maybe you could look at the challenges of managing a huge infrastructure and see how some things - important things - can be overlooked because someone 'just made it happen', didn't document it, tied it to their personal account, and then is no longer there.
Back in the day...
Actually I wasn't making an old-timer joke. Maybe 15 years ago it was a red flag to see a series of 18 month jobs on a resume since the expectation was that you would be in a job for at least 5 years in order for us to recoup our investment. Those skips looked like someone stayed just long enough to gain some experience and then moved on to fresh pastures.
Not so much these days. Given how easily companies toss their people to the curb having a number of jobs in a short time isn't necessarily something that will send your resume to the circular file. Mind you I'm speaking about the IT industry so YMMV.
A job or two, followed by some consulting, another job, some more consulting. It's all work. And given the economy it's pretty typical of what happens to technical folks.
Back on topic for this thread. People are getting married later (if at all) and birth rates are in decline. There's nothing wrong with the concept of spending your youth doing a variety of jobs and gaining a wide range of experience. Stocking shelves may not sound glamorous but it shows that you're willing to do the work that's in front of you. After a certain point it will lose its allure and they'll find longer term jobs. Or not. The options are there for now.