Reasons not to post on Company time

[richlevy]

Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs

This is why I do not post from work. One of the reasons I don't use a screen name is to remind myself that I am responsible for what I say. IMO, an employer owns the computer and the phone so they have a say in how it is used.

As for what is posted on a person's own time off-site, I'll go to the mat for the spirit of the First Amendment there. Everyone should remember that the First Amendment is not absolute. However, besides slander, libel, death threats,incting riots, etc, it pretty much is.

I believe Robert Heinlein once wrote of the expression 'spit on the floor and call the cat a bastard' (do an Internet search on the phrase). While a company can claim "my house, my rules", I can make the same claim in my house.

The reason we in the United States have a tradition of privacy, is that public behavior seldom reflects private behavior. To put it mildly, if all companies had 'morality clauses' in their contracts and knew what their employees were doing, 3/4 of the American work force would be unemployable.

Of course, in pre-Internet days (P.I.) a company may not know have known that their marketing VP was a transvestite headbanger, or at least could have plausible deniability. If he or she now has a weblog or hosts a fansite, this is more easily found.

We are in for interesting times.

[jaguar]

bwhahahah she worked for the herald sun, I'm sure she wasn't too fussed about losing the job. Most of these examples did something stupid, like the girl posting pics in her uniform on company planes. The google guy abused his position to post an adword that should not have been allowed which is why he was fired. He was however walking a damn fine line just by discussing the details of internal google remuneration etc anyway. Bitching about a company on your own time in a non-obvious way however is a whole other kettle of fish. I think you'd have a fair case for unfair dismissal, depending where you lived.

[Guyute]

My Company has a very strict IT policy, and if you can believe him, my Operations Manager gets a printout (or could if he wanted to) of every website visited using one of the office PC's. In addition, someone in my head office actively monitors who is visiting what websites among the 300 computers in my company. All of our PC's use one server in Toronto to access external nets, so it is very easy to watch.

You would have to be either extremely naive or just effin' stupid to post to a website like that and be surprised when you get shown the door.

To some it is a little draconian, but to be the Devil's Advocate (<--should that be capitalized?) my company spent thousands of dollars in salaries in November trying to get rid of JUST ONE VIRUS that someone got from a website. I can see why they start to get ticked when someone is shitting on them from one of their own PC's...collectively the company I work for has over 1400 PC's sharing a network so people doing stuff like that should do it from home...

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don't use the company network, equipment or time for personal web stuff. Everything is monitored and my boss gets a report on every employee summing up the time they were on and what they were doing.
Remember Radar telling about the Boeing site in CA where rather than take games off the PCs they had him set it up to pop-up a warning if someone opened a game?
Don't forget if your boss doesn't like what you're posting on your own time, and with your own equipment he can't legally do anything...but paybacks are a bitch.

[smoothmoniker]

It always makes me laugh when people get hacked off about this. I have employed people to work for me before in various capacities, and I know how incensed I would be if I walked into the studio and saw the artist ready to record, and the engineer just sitting there playing a game of solitare on the console.

Why do the rules change just because you're dicking around online during company time as opposed to doing it in real life?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Why do the rules change just because you're dicking around online during company time as opposed to doing it in real life?

That's the problem.....too many people think the rules don't change when they go to work. They certainly do! At work they make the rules...at home you make the rules. Bet they're not the same.

[wolf]

My boss can get that printout generated also.

I think he did a couple of times, but he has enough trouble trying to keep up with his regular work ... he really doesn't give a good goddamn who's looking at what online. Just in case, though, every now and then, we make sure we go to sites that the netnanny doesn't seem to know about ... oh, we also don't have a clear company policy with respect to what we can and can't look at at work.

He knows that if we're busy, we're working, and if we're not busy, we're clear to play. The nature of our business is such that we have to be there, we don't get breaks, we don't get to leave the office. People who work for real businesses certainly have different issues than I do as far as workload. There are never "projects" or "things I should be doing" in the conventional sense ... if I see someone, there's a flurry of paperwork, and I spend a good amount of time waiting on somebody else ... be it the doctor or the insurance company, so there's dead time on a good shift. And that's when the surfing commences.

The only "rule" as such is that we're not supposed to install any new (particularly game) software on the work machines. (the boss, incidentally, was a man who used to play Duke Nukem Deathmatches on the office network. We all did. But he's the boss now, and has had to make a blanket policy because the stupid people install things and fuck things up and make things hell for the smart people ... so he had to say no installations or you're fired.)

So, we do some webgaming, and read email, and I do have the high score for Minesweeper on all the office machines. This would be more impressive if I weren't the only one who understands the rules, but I do have the high score anyway.

The only reason I don't post to the cellar is that I can't be sure that once I start I'll be able to get all the way through before I lose my new post flags. I don't want to miss anything.

[Undertoad]

I have an absolutely terrible span of attention, and tend to work in "bursts", 200% during hour one, 50% during hour two. Luckily system administration calls for exactly that sort of approach. I wouldn't work for an employer that didn't let me play games in my downtime. Similarly I expect that my home games will be interrupted with system admin emergencies. The way I see it, if you can call me at 11 PM with an emergency and not pay OT, it's OK for me to be playing Nethack at 11 AM while I wait for the second cup of coffee to kick in.

When I was an employer I built a strong team of talented people and let them do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. We always had too much talent for the amount of work we had. (Of course I went out of business but it was the sales model that failed during the bubble, not the amount we got done.)

[Undertoad]

Also, if an employer can't get the project done with the number of people hired that is the employer's problem. Plan for 40 hour weeks I always say, but they start planning for more than that and then lose people and pretty soon it's an emergency and you the employee are supposed to feel bad about it and work harder because they screwed up. At this pont I usually try to figure out how charitable the employer has been towards me, and behave accordingly.

[limey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Also, if an employer can't get the project done with the number of people hired that is the employer's problem. Plan for 40 hour weeks I always say, but they start planning for more than that and then lose people and pretty soon it's an emergency and you the employee are supposed to feel bad about it and work harder because they screwed up. At this pont I usually try to figure out how charitable the employer has been towards me, and behave accordingly.

I don't think any employer recognises nowadays that if your average bunch of employees can't get the work done in the time then it is POOR MANAGEMENT. More employees or accepting fewer jobs/commissions are the ways around that. What seems always to happen is that the good employees' willingness to turn in that extra 5% now and again for their employer becomes expected of them, and then they're expected to turn in another 5%, and so on. it makes me sick, frankly (why else do you think I live on the edge ...? And even here it happens!)

[richlevy]

Well, I just spend 13 hours at work yesterday. I went in at 11am and came out around midnight.

When I joined this department it was understood that this was part of the job. I do it on average about once every three months with a small team of people to switch on changes to a business system. The free food is pretty good though, with snacks, pizza, and steam trays of chicken and stuffed shells. Of course, if I became observant I would not be able to do it, since these events always happen on Saturdays.

One thing I do like is that our department head was there for most of the day.

After all of the preparation, the actual day goes pretty fast. Watching for problems, checking the system, supporting the users. I was sitting at my desk a lot of the time, but if I had to list exactly what I did I couldn't. Out of the 13 hours, I got to read the newspaper for about 5 minutes and about 10 minutes of surfing the net. I ate at my desk, but exactly what I did for over 12 hours is hard to explain. There was paperwork, checking results, but no additional coding, since no additional changes were made. We downloaded data, printed reports, and dealt with jammed printers. I didn't even eat that much.

When I was on stage I had the same feeling. You really don't remember how much time you spend backstage waiting for your entrance.

I don't look forward to it but I don't hate it. For me it's just part of the job. The key for me is seeing managers putting in the same time. In my department everybody works hard, and on the technical and user sides there are no pure managers. In theory, if there are no system issues or bad data, my job is easier than the users, who have to crunch numbers and check the data online for about 8 or 9 hours. Clients come in and do their own validation, and we wait until they sign off on it. Since everything has to come up on Monday morning, there really is no option for failure.

So I'm home today after getting about 7 hours of sleep. I want to go to a concert at Longwood Gardens today just so I can tell myself I got out and salvaged some of the weekend, but I'm still pretty wiped out.

I'll wait and see.

[garnet]

I've seen both sides of this--at my last job I saw people get fired for checking personal e-mail, and my current job is very lenient about internet usage. If you accomplish what you're supposed to, they don't care if you check your e-mail or post to an online forum. Most of the people I work with (myself included) rarely take lunch breaks and work lots of hours of uncompensated overtime, so it's not a big deal if we take breaks here and there. I'm sure it would be different if you're spending hours looking at porn or downloading games and stuff. If you're dumb enough to do that, you deserve what you get.

[Trilby]

[quote=garnet] Most of the people I work with (myself included) rarely take lunch breaks and work lots of hours of uncompensated overtime, [quote]

Garnet, I don't recall if you've ever said what exactly it is you do--but, you must really love it. I don't know of one person I work with (including myself) who would work one minute uncompensated. And things where I work just keep getting worse. They are cutting staff so much that it is dangerous for patients AND staff (few months ago a tech was beaten up because a patient wanted a cigarette and it wasn't "cigarette time"--he's not back to work yet-had to have surgery on his hand because of it) and they keep piling on more and more duties that less and less people are supposed to accomplish. Every time I walk in that unit there is something more they want and everyone is bumming. All because they hired a "Ph.D." Nurse and her job is to Save Money by all Means Necessary. I hate those ivory tower nurses who haven't seen a patient since 1952. There's a reason there is a shortage. Who wants to work like that?

[garnet]

Originally Posted by Brianna

Garnet, I don't recall if you've ever said what exactly it is you do--but, you must really love it. I don't know of one person I work with (including myself) who would work one minute uncompensated.

I work for a well-known animal rights organization that shall remain nameless. :p

Pretty much anyone there could be making a lot more money elsewhere, working shorter hours, and be under a lot less stress. For most of us, we're there because we want to be. I don't love every minute of being at work, and I see some horrible stuff (in fact, I sometimes take "Cellar breaks" at work just to clear my head). But I've done the corporate thing, and I felt like I was wasting my life on something that didn't really matter. I make less than half as much money now, but am much, much happier!

[busterb]

I guess I was just po - fodder for all the companys I once work for as a welder, pipefitter, foreman & super. But you never knew when A ROF or fired was coming. Hell I've been hit in the ass by endgate 15 minutes before quiting time. Get your tools & go. Then next day pick up check & see where someone liked you, 5 or 6 hundred bucks travel pay on top. Then next job SOB looks in your tool box to see if you stole anything. The one whose doing the looking has no idea what there looking for.