Negative Effects of Workplace Net Monitoring 396
Masem writes "Business2.com reports that while many corporations have monitoring tools and restrictions on Internet usages for non-work related activities, these can have negative effects on the productivity of the workplace. The report notes that people have to take days off from work to deal with personal business that could have been done in a few minutes or hours from a work net connection, and that employee morale is generally down when net controls are in place." A related study suggests employees spend more time doing work from home than playing at work.
Admit it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Admit it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Admit it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but you're still using company bandwidth. I don't write my Slashdotting hours on my timecard, but I'm still consuming company property for personal use. I have mixed feelings about the ethics of Slashdotting on work computers. I work in tech, so in a way I'm just keeping on top of recent developments. I also work for a university that I attend as a student, so really the bandwidth is mine to use as a student if not as an employee. But these are questions we should consider when we catch ourselves mindlessly reloading Slashdot ten times/hour.
Re:Admit it! (Score:5, Informative)
Why, real simple, knowledge equals growth. I spend 2 years lurking, just learning. I got to say slashdot gives the best education for every stupid line you write.
Plus the shared knowledge of the community gives me the edge up on others. So, yes, slashdot should be a required reading at all firms that are in the tech field.
Onepoint
Re:Admit it! (Score:4, Funny)
So, folk at your shop are the local expert on hot grits and goat-rutting?
Re:Admit it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you submit a bill to your company for your home bandwidth charges when you check your work email at home or when you connect in remotely on your day off? Even if you charge by the hour, what about your computer costs? Electric? Heat and A/C?
Re:Admit it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously most companies have broadband connections, how much bandwidth are you really using?
I agree it can become a problem if that is all you are doing, but how can an employer complain if I get my work done in a timely manner and read up alittle on technology, news, whatever on the side? Arguably it would take longer to do my work if I don't get breaks and I would certainly be much less happy if I couldn't take that time and surf a bit.
Re:Admit it! (Score:3, Interesting)
My office has a T1, and between the hours of 9 and 5, my averate throughput from ibiblio is 12kps. I could do better with a 28.8 modem. as soon as everyone goes home, i can get 160kps. -- and we've already blocked all the popular p2p ports.
Re:Admit it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Salary = No hours, no overtime. Just get the work done.
I get paid the same if I work a 30 hour week or a 70 hour week. If it's the latter, you'll be damn sure that I will be taking many breaks.
Re:Admit it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Admit it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Admit it! (Score:4, Funny)
I do, it's under "research".
Re:Admit it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Admit it! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Admit it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Admit it! (Score:2)
On a related subject, the BBC reports [bbc.co.uk] that the new email filtering system at the House of Commons is blocking mail containing Welsh, apparently mistaking benign Welsh content for English obscenities.
Re:Admit it! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Duh! is the only appropriate response (Score:5, Informative)
I was the porno cop at a 150 employee telecom company a few years ago. Highly paid programmers with tight deadlines turned out to have
At the end of the day, two people left before the ax swung, the sexual harrasment was institutional and only slightly blunted
3% - 5% in any company are going to have some sort of problem and it ought to be dealt with on a performance basis rather than using a squid enforced police state.
Re:Duh! is the only appropriate response (Score:5, Funny)
Man, that is harsh, using tentacled sea creatures to discipline employees. Throwing squid into my cube everytime I hit a porn site^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSlashdot would get me to stop. Hell, any raw fruits de mer would succeed.
Now if you're employees like calamari, well, you're screwed.
Re:Duh! is the only appropriate response (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our calamari overlords.
*ducks*
Re:Duh! is the only appropriate response (Score:4, Funny)
Not me. I voted for Kodo.
Re:Duh! is the only appropriate response (Score:5, Informative)
The bottom line is that, yes, this should be dealt with on a performance basis, but what do you do when you realize that an employee is underperforming? Do you just give them a warning that they are not performing at the level you expect them to? Or, do you turn to these tools for that individual to prove that they are wasting huge amounts of company time (at least to the manager, if not to the HR department and the employee himself)?
That's what we have always done and it has generally been effective without causing ill-will from employees. If you hire someone to do a job, and they are not doing that job, then you need to somehow show why if you intend to fire them (at least here in California, I don't know if you can just fire people for no reason in other states) or even if you just want them to do a better job. Also, there is NO employee I've ever met who likes the extra workload because they have to work with someone they know is screwing off while they are working hard.
Nobody gets pissed off when you fire jerks who refuse to do their work. Believe me, there are plenty of people out there who seriously think it's OK to talk on the phone ALL DAY (I'm talking 4-8 hours non-stop) while they work, and screwing off on the internet in IM, porno sites, Hotmail, etc. is no different. There will always be people who will abuse their freedoms at work and we have to use tools case-by-case to weed them out.
Aside from people who can't get their jobs done, we have always given employees a lot of leeway on doing personal things during company time. Nobody cares that I'm posting this right now, and I don't care if other employees do things like this either, as long as they get their jobs done! Performance has to be king to keep everybody happy!
Easy bypass... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Easy bypass... (Score:3, Insightful)
And if all else fails, we have http-tunnel, or even a gprs aircard.
Are you a thief? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Are you a thief? (Score:3, Funny)
You are a TERRORIST if you bypass your employer's Internet filtering/monitoring software through SSH/VNC/RDP.
Real Americans have nothing to hide.
Re:Are you a thief? (Score:3, Funny)
Really, for shame. You know better than this.
You should be using up sick days to read Slashdot.
Absolutely (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Absolutely (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, HydroSequre (NAWSDOC:HSQ) announced today groundbreaking new water-cooler monitoring technology. The system, called "Chiller", incorporates microphones, video cameras, and electrically-charged floor plates to ensure that the water cooler is not a source of productivity loss.
"Employers provide water to employees to meet critical business-related hydration needs, not as a source of titillation and gossip-mongering. Corporations can't afford to subsidize the time-wasting chit-chat about last night's hockey game or who's schtupping whom in HR." commented Lloyd Getalife, Executive VP of Productivity Marketing.
Note to the humor-impaired: It's a joke. Successful or not, it's supposed to be funny. And God forbid if I should accidentally stomp on someone's trademark, securities listing, or business plan. In that case, it's accidental parody and protected by what little is left of fair use doctrine.
Re:Absolutely (Score:2)
Chalk up your slashdot time to personal development/research/etc.
After all, you must have come up w. at least ONE useful hint/idea/solution to a problem while reading the posts here :-)
It's certainly better than what's on the office radio right now (talk radio re: Michael Jackson - ugh!)
My bad (Score:5, Funny)
I just showed this to my boss... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No it isn't (Score:2)
Take days off? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can do it on the web from work in a few minutes, why would you need to take a day off to do it from home? The web is open 24 hours! Take a few minutes at home to get it done in the evening instead of taking the day off. If you don't have an Internet connection at home, go to the library. That's just ridiculous.
Re:Take days off? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree totally. I do occasionally take days off for personal business, but that is for things like car maintenance and the like, where I could not possibly be at work. Things like online banking, online bill pay, and auctions are not an excuse to take a day off.
However it is a horrendously bad idea to block access to things that are not directly inappropriate, like porn and online casinos. I highly doubt you are losing more than 10 - 20 minutes a day on this, and how much time is lost in impromptu meetings in hallways, at watercoolers, etc or long lunches? I would say that the costs at my old company(where I had to implement this) were far higher than the benefits of a few minutes of time lost.
Re:Take days off? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Take days off? (Score:2)
Re:If you cannot afford Internet at home (Score:2)
If you really fire folks for abusing Internet usage on a weekly basis, you REALLY, REALLY need to fire the people responsible for hiring all these asshats in the first place. They are the real problem.
SSH Tunnel (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SSH Tunnel (Score:3, Interesting)
"Hmmm, Mike's set up an SSH tunnel between his desktop and an IP address in the range of an ISP - I wonder what *valid* reason he's doing that for..."
Re:SSH Tunnel (Score:3, Interesting)
Work at work (Score:3, Insightful)
On another point I say two can play at that game. You want me to work every second I am at work that's fine. But when that clock hits 5:00 I drop everything and leave.
Re:Work at work (Score:2)
1) People are lazy.
2) People feel they owe their employer nothing, and have no loyalty. (perhaps partly justified)
3) The modern work ethic seems to be show up in the morning, go home in the late afternoon, and make sure your work all gets done. Whether you do that at work or at home, and when you show up or go home (within reason) seems to be less and less concrete.
If I'm given a three hour job at 4:00 that MUST be done today, and am not getting overtime for it, then be damed if I make sure my coffee breaks don't go over 15 minutes. Alternatively, if I'm on a punch clock and my workday is over at 5:00 then I'm going to work my ass off until that very moment.
I think ultimately the workplace has become more relaxed, which gives slackers and whiners more room to complain without getting their lazy asses fired. The rest of us will just enjoy having more freedom in how we get our work done. (and work more effectively for it)
Re:Work at work (Score:5, Insightful)
In general people cannot properly focus for more than a few hours on one issue without taking a break. If people are going to take breaks anyway why not let them access the net (of course, I don't think they should be accessing porn sites and such from work, but why not Slashdot, etc)?
Of course at this point some programmers will chime in about how they can focus on their code for 12 hours... Save it for someone else. In my experience people who do that tend to write substandard code, because usually the best way to solve a thorny coding issue is to STEP AWAY from the computer (or switch away from the code editor anyway) for a while and let your mind think of other things while it processes the problem. Sitting there beating the problem over the head with more and more brute-force code is not the way to solve it.
Re:Work at work (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with everything you said. It's just impossible to focus on work for 8 hours straight, especially one that requires a lot of concentration, like programming. I've found that when I'm coding a difficult problem, I have to step away from the computer for a while and just sit and think about it. Sure, I could come up with some shitty hack on the fly, but in order to do the job right you need breaks every now and then. I guess pr0n should be forbidden at work, but I don't see what's wrong with visiting "family" websites like
Re:Work at work (Score:5, Insightful)
The economist George Akerlof modeled the cooperative aspects of the labor market formally in a paper called "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange" ( Quarterly Journal of EconomicsVol. 97, No. 4, pp. 543-569).
I find the view that reading /. or making phone calls at work is "stealing" to be naive and simplistic --- so much depends on subtle (or not so subtle) levels of effort that cannot be measured or coerced. The poster's comments that "two can play at that game. You want me to work every second I am at work that's fine. But when that clock hits 5:00 I drop everything and leave." illustrate this perfectly.
blog-O-rama [slashdot.org]
Re:Work at work (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between an employee whining about having to work 8 hours a day, and a business realizing that regular breaks actually improve productivity. This is especially true for humans in creative professions. Taking a stroll (or even Slashdot) can often get you a solution faster than staring at the problem.
The second point is that people remember to do things when they remember. Let's say you suddenly remembered that you need to order a gift for someone. You can either take a few minutes to get it over with, or try to remember it for the rest of the day. Which one is likely to distract you from work more?
On another point I say two can play at that game. You want me to work every second I am at work that's fine. But when that clock hits 5:00 I drop everything and leave.
Exactly. The question is not which policies employees dislike, but which policies actually improve productivity.
Re:Work at work (Score:3, Offtopic)
I would leave 30 minutes early 3 times a week to go to my martial arts classes.
I was a salaried employee, so I got paid the same no matter what.
My boss, her boss, 3 of the programers, and untold support people took between 5 and 8 smoke breaks, each lasting 15 minutes or more per day.
I was asked to stop leaving 30 minutes early, my response, "If I get a crack habit can I keep my current schedule? Because all of you guys are taking half a dozen 15 minute breaks a day while I skip lunch."
That didn't go over well. I got lectured so much... That was when I decided to quit. Still took me a couple of months to find a new job and really get ready to leave. But eventually I got out of there. The job was hell...
And incidentally I hate smokers. I hate them SOOO much, with their free extra breaktimes.
Kintanon
I use to work in network security (Score:5, Interesting)
I felt like I was peeping, looking at people's web habbits. It was truly the low point of my job. However, the execs (who were given access) thought it was a hoot, and (rumour has it) spent hours snikering over this stuff.
I just noticed none of this is really "on topic"... oh well
Re:I use to work in network security (Score:3, Funny)
As the designated netcop for my company, I find it is a good way to get interesting leads to enjoy at home. Plus, no one would think twice about my looking at those sites at work, as "I had to see what kind of a site it was..."
Perspective my friend, Perspective!
We simply published the proxy logs. (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a couple of porn sites and some *serious* bandwidth hogs the first few weeks, but nothing since. I can't imagine a reason to hire people specifically to do this kind of crap, sounds like someone has too much money.
[1] You have to login to the gateway proxies.
Intel's policy: REASONABLE personal use. (Score:5, Interesting)
Zero monitoring is done for "performance management"--all that is handled through an employee's management chain. The expectation is that employees get all their work done. If they deliver good work on time, who CARES how much they surf? We treat our employees like adults, and find that the vast majority of them are able to manage their time properly.
Senior management long ago decided to embrace the Internet economy--how hypocritical would it be for Intel to forbid our employees from participating on company time and Internet connectivity?
I eBay online, bank online, read news (and /. too) online, and yes, I'm posting from work. It's a wonderful policy, "reasonable personal use." If in doubt, ask your manager: it's as simple as that.
Re:Intel's policy: REASONABLE personal use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, they also encouraged gaming breaks once a day as stress relief, about a half hour.
That was the most productive company I've worked in, both personally and as a whole.
What type of monitoring? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can also see that if a technology company (for example) blocks sites like slashdot (for example), that could possible be harmful. There seems to be a fine line of the control that is put into place and the up-keep of morale.
There is also a thing call respect and honesty. Yes, somethings can be done faster while at work without net monitoring, but is the company really getting what they are paying for? (that is the worker, and the product s/he produces)
The question is, "Is what I am doing honest towards the company or not?"
Re:What type of monitoring? (Score:2, Funny)
Good luck with the layoffs Bob!
Re:What type of monitoring? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What type of monitoring? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, I admit it, I do a ton of stuff online from work: banking, shopping, reading news sites. Doing "errands" online keeps me here instead of going out to do them, which people do. Reading news is no different than reading the paper on a break, which people do. So I check Slashdot occasionally. I don't go outside every 30 minutes to have a 10 minute cigarette either.
I don't need to "surf", I haven't really randomly done that for about 5 years. I use the net as a tool. I don't look at pr0n at work either. They do have filters set up to block questionable pages. But the problem is that they simply subscribe to a service that gives them a list of sites to block. One guy I know was looking into buying furniture or something, and a major department store's website was blocked. Some legit tech sites are blocked too, I have tried to go there to read some articles. Things like ifilm.com are not blocked, but The Onion is. Which one is a bigger waste of time/bandwidth?
The problem with filtering is that it is that it isn't perfect. If I had full access, I wouldn't violate company policy simply because I value my job. Too bad that this doesn't apply to everyone.
Re:What type of monitoring? (Score:3, Insightful)
well, duh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked with people that made 5-10 personal calls every single day.
Now, take a look at how many services have moved over to the web. Airline reservations, hotel bookings, banking and much more can be done over the web.
I think that companies are really making too big of a deal out of "lost production because of internet usage."
Place the blame where it should be placed - on the employee whos productivity suffers.
Re:well, duh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter what the work environment, people aren't going to be maximally productive for all 8 hours. Employers just need to come to terms with that.
Re:well, duh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
ESPECIALLY in a job where people's lives are on your hands, do you really need the added stress of insufficient breaks (or of "God I really fucking need to piss!")?
Sounds like a recipie for mistakes and disaster.
Well, that's exactly what we wanted to hear!! (Score:5, Funny)
It will?
Er, yeah - this report says so.
Hmmm... Well, on the basis of it, you'd better continue peer-to-peer filesharing and pr0n surfing then...
As a manager I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
As a manager I don't care if my employees surf the web at work. When I assign them a task I have a good idea how long it should take. If Joe Blow always takes longer than expected, I'll fire him, web surfing or not. If Jane Bleep routinely finishes her work ahead of time, I'll make sure she gets the biggest raise, come evaluation time, plus I'll praise her work in the next team meeting, and little could I care if she reads
You hiring? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As a manager I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
As the owner of a small programming firm I take the same attitude. Manage by objective. Deal with problem employees as exceptions and not the rule. And deal with problems swiftly - the other employees know when a co-worker is f*cking the dog and they resent it. After a while they'll begin to wonder why they're working so hard.
We carry this a little further... programming takes an enormous amount of concentration. If you have family problems then you aren't going to be much good to me. Go home and get them straightened out.
The result has been an extremely loyal, hard working group who will, without being asked, stay to complete the job no matter how long it takes. They are, of course, paid for that time and food is brought in when required... but they don't have to ask if they'll be compensated. They know they will.
The rules here are... don't do anything illegal and if you find some good porn - you have to share it.
Net monitor policies (Score:2, Interesting)
I tell them I monitor it, and I kind of do with the squid proxy for porn related... yes, I'm evil and squashing your rights to disallow you watching fisting or beatality videos here at work...
but it's common knowlege in all the offices I maintain and supply that I dont give a rats ass what you do or where you go...BUT, if you are the source for a virus attack or I get complaints... I will fry your but hard.
Overzealous monitoring is only done by people that really need to be on medical leave and treated for the social and mential disorders that they are afflicted with.
Re:Net monitor policies (Score:4, Insightful)
Have them do something on their system to demonstrate.
My pager then goes off as they begin to understand.
Explain "spam" and what to do with inbound. Outbound is, well, just unacceptable. Other minor guide lines, etc.
I have a secretary that I *know* is instant messaging with her daughter in a far away state. I "monitor" phone bills too and have seen such calls from time to time. Nothing regular and lengthy -- but family *is* part of who you hire. People, we *are* all just people...
I'd rather have her chat when she can. I know when the work isn't getting done. People also know that anybody and everybody wanders the building and may end up looking at your screen at any time. What was the passing game to do 20 years ago in your office? Same problem, different era.
Yeah, I _could_ try and *CONTROL* people and make their will mine. I would also have very hostile employees...
Restrictions not the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Everquest... (Score:5, Funny)
Working from home... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a black-and-white issue (Score:4, Insightful)
The articles referenced speak to the issue that companies are pretty much forced to block certain sites for liability reasons - porn, hate/violence and gambling being the most common. Some companies (one I used to work for) blocked more, including online shopping. When you get to that level, different companies are going to adopt different policies, and it's ridiculous to try and say "one size fits all".
If you're in a manufacturing site with one supervisor responsible for 50 people being paid by the hour, the supervisor can't monitor every employee every second of the day. They need some help, and filtering is a valuable tool. If you're at a high-tech company of professionals with a supervisor who's responsible for 8 people, it's a lot easier to detect and manage any performance problems related to excessive surfing.
Re:Not a black-and-white issue (Score:4, Insightful)
"Are you getting your job done?"
If people are fulfilling the responsibilities of their jobs, then we don't worry. If they're not, then there's a problem, and it's a problem that just blocking access to certain web sites is NOT going to fix.
steve
Issues with the 8-hour work day (Score:5, Insightful)
The question they fail to ask, though, is: why do people waste part of their eight hour day? Because they don't need eight hours every day to do their jobs. Maybe they need twelve one day and four the next. Maybe they need six months of fourteen hour days and six months off.
I think a larger issue needs to be addressed: do we still need the traditional eight-hour work day? If you're in a reactive job (manning phones or a cash register), I can understand it.
For everyone else, it is just for appearance's sake. "Quick! Look busy!"
Re:Issues with the 8-hour work day (Score:3, Interesting)
Some services (especially banks and physicians) are only available for a small part of the day. There may be some overlap, but what can you do when a customer-service line or bank closes at 4:00PM and you don't get out of work until 5:30PM?
Slowdowns during the day aren't uncommon. As someone else said, when you're waiting for a program to compile, it's an opportunity to look at the Internet or personal email. There can be a brief lull between meetings, waiting for coworkers, etc.
do we still need the traditional eight-hour work day?
Try collaborating with a group in a different timezone -- preferably overseas. When you only have an hour or two when everyone is "in the office", organization and communication becomes difficult and slow. The same thing would happen if everyone picked their own hours and days.
Re:Issues with the 8-hour work day (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't until the LATE 19th century. It was really not until Pavlov that conditioning of humans seemed to be a real possibility.
This is why people are no longer free. The desire to micromanage free people like they are machines is inherently inhuman. The untold misery of modern world can be traced to that single fact.
Most of the attempts at conditioning workers to accept drudgery and to do so without any loss of efficiency is what created the modern school system. Public schools were created to solve the problem you have just presented. For the most part, they have worked. People no consider it completely normal they are not paid for a specific task, but to serve a function like a machine. Before, a farmer was paid for his produce. A mason was paid for the buildings he constructed or parts thereof. The cobbler was paid for his shoes. and so on...
Blame Andrew Carnegie and Charles Schwab (of US Steel, not his grandson of the broker fame) and their ilk. They looked upon us ignorant masses and decided to whip us into shape.
Business 2.0? (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, weren't these guys one of the original hypemongers of the "new economy," telling us that the way dotcommers ran their business would become The Way? Yeah, I'll be sure to take their business suggestions real seriously. Now, why the hell should an employer have to pay for an employee doing personal things for "a few minutes or hours" (Hours?! Jesus.) when they're supposed to be helping improve the company?
That and the second part about employees doing more work at home than goofing of at work all boil down to one thing: Learn how to manage your friggin' time properly and you won't have to worry about that.
Sometimes filtering is necessary (Score:4, Informative)
I'd love to be able to trust ALL network users, but unfortunately it is not possible in a manufacturing facility. If this was purely an office setting, then our T1 would be unrestricted.
There's nothing wrong with posting form work! (Score:5, Funny)
****BOSS NET FILTER ACTIVATED!****
I love my job and want to apologize to the world for stealing company electrons for my own personal use. I am the happiest corporate drone of all time and would like to remind all employees that reading
The Real Problem Is... (Score:3, Interesting)
I need a net connection (Score:4, Interesting)
2. As a programmer, I'm often presented with short minutes of downtime, while I recompile. My habit of switching to my browser at these moments is very deeply ingrained. The reason I read
Pass me a hanky. (Score:5, Insightful)
Administrator morale is generally down when employees are free to download every spyware app known to man, then complain to IT about their Windoze boxes blowing up while they were entering their network passwords into Gator.
I used to bust people (Score:5, Interesting)
When I ran the network for a 60-person architecture firm, I used to bust people for porn, but nothing else. Every new employee got the same schpiel: "Do what you want with your computer, aside from setting it on fire. See these settings here? They're company-wide. You can change 'em, but they'll be back in the morning. Here's where you make your own custom settings. You can't install anything from your browser, which is for your own security; ask me if you want to install anything else and I'll probably say yes. One thing - no porn."
It worked well, and most people said it was much more lenient than other places they'd worked. The company's policy was "no porn" and I supported it whole-heartedly. I don't care if people watch porn, but doing it at work is (a) nasty and (b) begging for a lawsuit.
I'd bust someone, usually a new hire, about every six months. Some of them did a brilliant job of sanitizing their machines, but they couldn't get to the proxy logs. They'd get a stern talking to by the principals, enough to make most of 'em wet themselves, 'specially when presented with a list of all the sites they visited, and we had no repeat offenders.
I Can Remember This 15Years Ago (Score:3)
where monitoring was close, if not closer than
what I see today.
One of them was where I was working for the
Department of Defense. We all worked in an open
area. The desks were set up like desks in a large
classroom. There were not deviders or partitions.
In front of the room was the glass enclosed (not
frosted glass, mind you, but the clear kind)
office of the manager. He might has well had
his desk in front, just like my teacher when I
was a little boy in school.
4 people shared each phone. The computer terminals
were on tables along one side of the room, also
in plain site of the manager's. office.
No newspapers were allowed. If you spent too
much time talking with someone, the manager is
bound to notice and look up with a frown.
A buzzer sounded at 7 AM when the workday started.
The horn of the lunch truck signaled the beginning
of lunch. A buzzer sounded at 3:30 in the
afternoon for the day's. end.
Another job I had was in a high security
environment. A closed circuit TV camera was
mounted in one corner of the room, visible to
all desks. The person at the monitor for that
camera could see all of us and what we were
doing.
IMHO, this is monitoring.
Mark
Monitoring software not the biggest problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
All day websurfing is a sign of other problems (Score:3, Insightful)
- Hire decent, reliable people. (seriously, who can't point to half the people they work with and go, "why were they hired in the first place?") You should be able to tell based on their interview, credentials, past performance, etc, if you are about to hire a responsible person, or a day-trading addict. If you can't, maybe you shouldn't be the one hiring people. Find someone who can.
- Give people work to do, and expect it gets done on time. If you have an employee that CAN piss away 7 hours reading Slashdot, then you should probably "down-size" them. How about assign projects, give them a reasonable time to do it, and let them do it. If they can do the work well, and give themselves some free-time to surf, hey, whatever. If they surf the whole time, and the deadline rolls around and nothing is done or the work is shoddy. "goodbye".
- Check on your employees once in awhile. Do managers just have teams they never talk to? Yes, probably, the manager himself is probably in his office beating off to goatce.sx. How about hire managers that round robin their employees, staying in touch with them, checking on them, helping them. You'll find those idiots that always seem to have Minesweeper on the screen when you walk in, real fast. No need for Big Brother.
You shouldnt be hiring humans if you want robotic fixed patterns of movements and actions. I dont know about everyone else, but very much of the time Im staring off into space or glancing at CNN.com, the problems at hand are bubbling around in my head, imaginging the scenarios out, taking in the big picture of the project... then when I lay hands to keyboard, I do it once, and I do it right. It just seems to me, it should never have to get as far as this elementary school spy bullshit.Hate it, but necessary evil (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, it depresses me.. I despise the times I have to check the logs, knowing that some coworkers cannot seem to maintain some professionalism, even if they aren't being actively managed at 2am.
No surf at work then no work at home (Score:5, Insightful)
net controls caused bankruptcy! (Score:3, Funny)
THAT DOES IT! (Score:3, Funny)
Firings will continue until morale improves!
---
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
Monitoring Doesn't work (Score:3, Informative)
We all got our work done before deadlines.
Then the 'management' instituted this internet/mail watch. One video clip e-mailed *to* me later wound up hurting 15 guys on the cc list. The guy who sent it was banned from the net. The rest of us were all banned from the net for 30 days and we didn't even have to have seen it. I hadn't even checked my mail before they summoned us into one room to chew us all out.
I left the company three weeks later over this as did several others. Now, for the people that still work there, they say the company morale sucks and morale was never like it was from 1998 to 2000. Too bad, too. Really great bunch of people they were.
Now, the company has gone through four layoffs and is working with a skeleton crew.
Catching jerks with pr0n, warez, mp3s... (Score:3, Insightful)
- Systems repair because some jerk downloaded some pr0n4U.exe file that fucked up his machine
- Systems repair where people fill their hard drives with pr0n, mp3s, warez
- LAN slowdown because people are downloading pr0n, mp3s, warez
The list goes on and on! You know what *I* think of people who do this crap instead of work? Lazy bastards! So do you know what I think of spying on them?
Pointless.
I mean, you knew who did work and who didn't. I don't care what employee A's reason of lack of work was, he wasn't working! He could have been reading highly technical manuals, staring off into space, embracing co-ed frottage at the water cooler, whatever. He/she's a slacker! And not in the good "Bob" way, either. I could have told you that without any bandwidth-stealing monitoring software.
The fact is, if you can't tell how an employee is doing with proof of work... you got bigger problems._
_________________________________________________
www.punkwalrus.com [punkwalrus.com] - a journal into the forays of living mysteries
Morale (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought, and still do think, that this was a complete waste of her time.... After all, isn't observing web based stats of employee web use just as bad?
net surfing (Score:3, Interesting)
I was also busted for visiting the MSDN site as well as other C++ websites. I'm a programmer.
A co-worker who conducts ALL his personal business from work ( he blames it on all his phone calls from home being long-distance and his mortgage) had pages and pages of non-work sites he had visited in 2 weeks time. Not a word was said to him.
It's fine to be restrictive, but be consistent.
Re:Linux? (Score:2)
Provided you are not a troll, hasn't anyone walked over yet to see why they are having trouble "supporting" your box? Or don't they care?
-BrentRe:Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what you are saying is that they aren't actually actively monitoring employees desktops, they just have the ability to take over desktops remotely to support them. You don't ask them for support, so they don't need to connect to your desktop.
I have a friend that worked in a really large company who went to do some "updates" to computers in the marketing department. He came upon one employees cube and there was Red Hat instead of NT running on the computer. Fortunetaly, I had introduced him to Linux, so he thought that was cool and moved on.
-BrentRe:Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
From: Management
Re: Corporate "watchdog software"
In regard to your comment #5252053, the administration would like to point out that we HAVE found out, and request that you would kindly remove all personal belongings from your cubicle by the end of the day. You can find boxes in the supply room.
Sincerely,
PHB
PS: Don't bother coming in on Monday.
Re:Linux? (Score:2, Funny)
Woohoo! Three day weekend!
Re:Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Running a properly configured GNU/Linux system to solve that problem is like buying steel doors, deadbolts, window bars, and $3,000 security system for your house. Now, do you still have the UPS man leave your packages on the sill of the front door?
Maybe you're spoofing your box's identity when you connect to the company's internet onramp? Swiped someone else's IP address, didja? That'd help, but there's still other things you'd have to consider.
Try this, too:
https://proxy.magusnet.com/-_-[your url here]
Are you sure they don't? (Score:4, Informative)