On Thu, 31 May 2001, A Kozic wrote:
> 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.
This sounds like a reasonable and flexible environment - just the kind of
place I'd like to work in. Just the kind of place I have worked in, for
that matter, but my experience is all in the academic field.
Now, your employer COULD clock-watch, timing every break, insisting you
turn up by 9am every day and complaining about long breaks - but that
would harm morale, and ultimately productivity, so only an idiot would do
it. (Sadly, the world isn't short of idiots...)
> As for our computer usage, we are asked not to run "instant messaging"
> programs (a firewall concern?),
Could be a traffic concern, or just the way they can tie up outbound
connections doing nothing - also, there are a few worms spreading this way
which AV programs struggle to detect...
> 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.
They've probably just spotted it isn't worth the effort to comb through
logs looking for "abusers": the staff time wasted doing that will far
outweigh any benefits - if you do have someone seriously slacking, it'll
be obvious with or without logs.
> Maybe they just realize that happy coders are a hell of alot more
> productive and creative than bored coders.
An important point to keep in mind, that: nailing the staff to a desk 9-5
M-F might look more "productive", but you will end up with the demoralised
staff not good enough to go elsewhere.
> 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.
Absolutely!
Key point: just because technology means you CAN do something does NOT
mean you SHOULD do it. OK, it's easier for employers to spy on their
staff than it was
> 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."
Or just get a separate ADSL (or whatever) link for employee surfing: that
way, it can't interfere with your company WWW server etc. Just regard it
as a staff "perk", like the free coffee, soft drinks etc companies give!
> If it really causing tech problems, you can probably quantify it in a way
> management will care about.
Yes. For that matter, if it's causing a problem, how come you can't detect
it without spying on the staff?!?
James.
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