On Thu, 31 May 2001 James Sutherland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yep. Your employer is paying you to do a job. As long as you do that job
> properly, without breaking the law etc, they can't complain - and
> monitoring behaviour not directly related to your performance is BAD.
<snip>
> Ultimately, that's what you're paid for: not to spend X hours/day doing
> something work-related, but to keep those servers running to the best of
> your ability (or whatever). It doesn't matter if they spend twice as long
> on coffee breaks as other staff - all that matters is "do they do the
> job?".
Maybe I should be more greatful for my job. I've always thought my
employer was a little more laid back than most, but apparently he's well
outside the norm.
Do get the demographics straight, I work for a consulting company in the
US (the employer is Canadian). He fully recognizes that employees need
slack time. Last staff meeting he said "We always need to find the best
use of our time. Sometimes the best use will be pingpong. We all need time
to recharge." We're "required" to take an hour for lunch, although no one
complains if you don't. If you work substantial overtime one night, you
are expected to show up late the next morning.
As for our computer usage, we are asked not to run "instant messaging"
programs (a firewall concern?), and I just found out we aren't supposed to
listen to streaming radio broadcasts, but no one takes that rule
seriously. There is a line in the employee handbook that says net access
may be monitored, but if they did, I'm sure I would have gotten in trouble
by now. Or maybe they monitor it, but don't care what you do so long as
you aren't selling company secrets and so forth.
I need a certain amount of slacking to be productive for the rest of the
time. I'm thrilled that I can do this without worrying that some
management shmuck is going to get pissed. Hell, I can download a new
distro and have the junior sys admin burn it onto cd for me. (We are a
100% windows office, so this isn't remotely work related.)
Maybe they just realize that happy coders are a hell of alot more
productive and creative than bored coders.
I can't see porn as justification for monitoring. If they were downloading
and sending massive photos of their nephews and cats and so forth that is
the same problem. If someone's computer is having problems because of the
massive amounts of porn on it, can't you tell them "Hey, could you clear
up some space on the hard drive?" If they are playing quake all day,
someone is sure to notice. People have been slacking off at work /long/
before the advent of the internet.
I don't recall if it has been covered, but can you compile usage
statistics for each user legally? Or not even individually. Just to say to
management "This percentage of the bandwidth is used by employees. This is
how much we need to sustain our business functions without employee net
access. Since we use so much for employee net access, we may need to
upgrade X, Y & Z to ensure reliable functioning of our business
functions."
If it really causing tech problems, you can probably quantify it in a way
management will care about.
-- Avery
------------------------------------------------------------
"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve
neither freedom, nor security." --Benjamin Franklin
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