Unlock Internet or Risk Losing Staff? 519
Dan Warne writes "People don't want to work for employers who heavily restrict internet access, a senior Microsoft executive said in a keynote speech at the opening of Tech.Ed 2006 Sydney today. From the article: 'These kids are saying: forget it! I don't want to work with you. I don't want to work at a place where I can't be freely online during the day," said Microsoft Senior Design Anthropologist Ann Kiera. She dubbed internet-wary employers "digital immigrants" and said the new wave of younger workers were "digital natives".'"
Nothing to see here move along... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn work filters.....I'm quiting
What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue of internet access at work and its use is a curious one. We have been allowing people to use the telephone at work for years in a limited fashion. As long as it didn't invade the work day too much it was sort of accepted. It also generally wasn't recorded.
Internet is just telephone communications. No different. Treating it differently isn't wise. The employers are right though if the use gets out of hand.
There is of course the problem of not knowing what browsing is legitimate anyway. This isn't easy to determine either. Remember that clicking on a link might be accidentally the wrong one or you might be searching a topic and get one of those trick sites listed for the Porn types. It isn't really a matter of any or filters, it is a matter of content and time.
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not treating it differently. Show me an employer who doesn't mind employees spending all day on the phone making personal calls. That's the problem. Like you, they don't see the difference.
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they are.
Show me an employer who doesn't mind employees spending all day on the phone making personal calls.
Show me an employer who places indiscriminate blocks on numbers that you can call during the day, in order to prevent you from making calls that *might* be personal.
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me an employer who places indiscriminate blocks on numbers that you can call during the day, in order to prevent you from making calls that *might* be personal.
Show me a telephone number which you can dial and that, by the simple act of connection, results in the infiltration of your company's office such that your Intranet data (e.g., customer personal info, credit cards, etc) can be leaked out.
I'm not saying they should block everything or even anything. But, treating browsing the web the same way as a telephone call is horribly short sighted from a security perspective. I imagine that information leaks out, the leadership will have more worries than how the employees feel about having their Internet access restricted. Look at the recent situation at AOL. I know that was not the result of a random virus, but that result is certainly achievable with a well crafted virus. If you are a big enough target, it is a legitimate worry.
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Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If people have projects, and they complete them on time, with good quality, then what does it matter? The problem is that many managers (myself included, occasionally) fall into the trap that people should be working all the time, and thats really not a good way to do things. Some people are incredibly productive for 2 hours, and do nothing for the rest. Others work diligently, but slowly, for 8 hours. At the end of the day, if they turn out the same product, what does it matter?
THe real problem is that most management and large companies do not have effective project and work measurement systems and expect their employees to work like robots.
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if I were an employer, I'd not pay the faster worker any more than the slow worker if the former didn't actually do more work in total than the latter. I'd pay people by the amount of useful work they did, if i could, not by their appearance of being busy!
however, I work for an organisation which is very wasteful of money and time, such that it's like swimming in treacle to achi
Chester and Lester (Score:3, Interesting)
Chester and Lester are your employees. What Chester does in 8 hours Lester can do in 2 hours and at the same level of quality, but Lester can work only for 2 hours per day. I take it you would pay both employees the same rate per day, right? If so, that was Brushfireb's point. And I agree with your point
Re:What is the "right to" browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Working in a factory or in telephone support is different from working in a job which requires thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. People can't invent new solutions for things for 8 hours straight, with only a rigidly-timed lunch break. Our brains don't work like that.
Sure, if your job is flipping burgers and refilling soft drinks, it doesn't take much brain power to do that, and there's no reason to be goofing off on the job. Just turn your brain off and follow the routine, day in and day out. But if you're trying to devise creative solutions to complex problems, this simply isn't going to happen according to a rigid plan, timed to the minute.
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Have you not heard of Social Engineering? Same risk, possibly without the automation, but not dangerously far away.
The problem is that any kind of filtering is not likely to have the desired impact. A former employer had a Big Brother system installed, and the net result
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Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, New York Times? Get me your best reporter, I've got a memo in my hands that outlines SuperMegaCorp's plans to test drugs on people by lacing their subsidiary's canned foods.
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about this.
Most of the best hacks are via social engineering.
The classic social engineering hacks are done via telephone.
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Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
My first job after college was as a computer programmer for the US Federal government. We had a few older employees who rarely did any real work, but spent most of their time making personal calls and talking to other employees who were also avoiding doing any real work. I remember one guy who was close to retirement who honestly only did any real work for about 1-2 weeks a year when they made him escort the Inspector General team around. Another guy who was waiting for retirement used to spend about 2 hours each morning in the bathroom reading the newspaper as he was taking a dump. No, I don't think he had a physical problem that required him to sit on the toilet that long. Reading newspapers at your desk was one of the few things that actually was frowned upon, so he found a way to kill 2 hours every day by going to the toilet and reading his paper there. Although I've never worked for a state government, from what I've heard it's pretty much the same story there. It can be almost impossible to fire government employees, so they just accept that some of the people are going to goof off most of the time. These people rarely get promoted beyond a certain level and at least where I worked, the only people who ever got into management were the people who actually did real work.
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Well, you get far enough and make enough money and then you start to slow down and goof off. There is nothing written in stone that says that we have to work 8 hours a day for our whole lives. I th
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have seen soooo many cases where management dictates that IT implement a technology "solution" to a management problem. I believe this stems from management's "not wanting to deal with it" and "foisting responsibility for dealing with it onto underlings." It's the same reason why middle managers exist; as a buffer between the people who are instructed to do their work stupidly and upper management who dictates the stupid way to work. Upper management wants to make decisions in a vaccuum, and have those decisions obeyed without question. This is why creative underlings who question and have fresh ideas about how to manage are not promoted and "yes men" and toadies are.
Hence, internet filtering. If the internet is filtered, underlings must, by definition, obey the rules without question. Perhaps not without grumbling, but the grumbling - interestingly - is often directed at IT for implementing the filters. Hey, guess what? IT doesn't give a crap about what you do at your desk, and we'd sure as hell rather not have to manage and monitor an internet filtering system. You wanna point fingers? Point higher.
Re:What is the right browsing? (Score:4, Insightful)
What creates the problem is that management often have misguided ways of measuring whether they think someone is working or not. If your background is in technical support, or sales, or running an assembly line, browsing the web likely means you are ignoring something else that you are supposed to be doing.
If you are say, an engineer (software or otherwise), then you need to be keeping yourself informed about what is going on in your industry, and with the technologies avaialable to you. More than that, though, the biggest parts of your job are problem-solving and designing things, and you can't just sit in front of an IDE, UML modelling app, or CAD diagram and spit some stuff onto it -- you have to have some idea of what your design is first. Most of the real work gets done in your head, and if you are stuck on something, staring at it will not make an answer appear. Things sometimes need time to percolate -- so you read slashdot and check out things that interest you for a while.
Someone above mentioned being extremely productive for 2 hours and doing nothing else the rest of the day -- hell, there are plenty of times when I do nothing for several days except contemplate how I'm going to build something. Then when the idea has coalesced enough, I hunch over my keyboard for a solid 10 hours on each of the next three days, oblivious to the world and not noticing that it is past time to go home.
A lot of managers, and especially upper executives who may walk by your cube on the way to their private washroom, don't understand that a software engineer is not the same thing as a typist. This is why a company needs to have objective ways to measure an employee's performance. Good work is measurable -- it is not always observable.
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Sure, if you're a welder on an assembly line or doing other real (i.e., soon to be replaced by robots) work. If you're a professional, however, the office is just a place. Your projects and deadlines are just the same whether you're at work or at home. You're no more "on their dime" at work than at home. There's nothing special about where you happen to be sitting right now.
That's what it means to be an
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Except I can't get a virus that infects the entire network from my phone. If I browse out to a site that drops some piece of malware on my computer, then my computer can spread the infection to the entire network.
Depends on when and where (Score:5, Insightful)
It also depends on how picky you are in terms of what kind of work you'll do, or where you want to live. People who only want to work in a particular city (e.g. NYC, Boston, DC, etc.) or only want to do a particular sort of work, may well have the limited options that you describe. But such was not my experience, or that of other people I know. Granted it was a while back and the economy was a bit different then, but I definitely had a choice of places to work when I graduated college. But then again, I didn't have a lot of other requirements besides a paycheck: I was willing to relocate and travel, and my skills were fairly general.
Obviously, how much "say" a recent college grad has in where they end up working, changes radically depending on the economic environment. When companies are competing for new employees, as they were during the mid to late-90s, workplace perks become significantly more important than during a downturn, when the job itself is almost like a perk. And as I mentioned, the competition for employees differs radically from one region of the country to the other. A company in Boston might be beating college grads off their doormat with a stick, while one in Phoenix, Arizona might be desperately seeking young workers. It all comes down to tradeoffs.
I think that the internet access is similar to the attitudes companies had regarding dress codes a few years ago. Young employees saw suit-and-tie operations not only as personally restrictive, but also indicative of a corporate culture that they might not have liked; in response, a lot of places changed to "dress casual" over time. While we can argue about the merits of professional attire all day, there was definitely a lot of change as a result of companies trying to get rid of the stodgy appearance, and many of these improvments were aimed at recruiting new workers. Internet access could be similar: companies that don't restrict seem like they'd be better places to work, for reasons unrelated to the internet itself -- less overbearing management, more trust of employees, etc.
Quite right (Score:3, Insightful)
That and all the chat channels, the streaming music videos, and all those flash sites.
Spyware! I need my spyware! (Score:2)
Hep me! Somebody hep me!!!!
Well, you know... (Score:2)
Is that the real reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now this statement isn't true at all. Anyone who has ever worked in network security realizes what a complete nightmare this is and that "technology" is having a hell of a tough time keeping up. This article is completely dismissing security as the reason for blocked websites. Leaky browsers and constantly exploited new technologies have made security a serious priority. (I'm not even gonna go into the irony that these comments were made by Microsoft execs...)
A company I had worked for recently had systematically blocked most popular online services over the past couple years. Myspace, hotmail, AIM, gmail... And I see the reason behind it considering we were in a sensative compartmented information facility that restricted external communication (not even allowed to have a cell phone). The company couldn't afford to have a large-scale information leak caused by viruses and/or non-secure communication.
However, there were always ways around. I could still check my old college email through their website, which was not on the restricted list. There were endless forums that were also left unrestricted (they left slashdot alone, thank god). And there was recently an incident within the company recently where someone was fired for pornography. So the general frustration stemmed from the fact that people could still spend all day on forums and looking up porn, but I wasn't even allowed to check my gmail, update my myspace, or send an IM. However, I'm sure the company would've like to block every forum, porn site, and web-based email site if they could. It's just not something that is in any way possible.
At any rate, I don't think most companies are blocking these sites because they are seen as unproductive, but rather for the risks that they pose.
--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He answers that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong
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I suppose it makes our IT peop
re: I disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Initially, they implemented a Squid proxy that was set up so either you were granted "completely unrestricted" access, or "restricted" - which meant you could *only* visit web sites in an "allowed" list. The "unrestricted" access was, of course, originally only intended to be used for the sysadmin himself, and perhaps the owners of the company.
What ended up happening over the years (before I ever worked for them) was "key" people in many different departments received "unrestricted" access, because they threw huge fits or became too big a drain on the admin's time - asking for access to slews of sites needed for puchasing, getting price quotes, etc.
After looking at a number of options, I ended up using Dansguardian site filtering combined with Squid. The cost of software licensing or subscriptions was zero - making it MUCH easier to get approval for. (And if it didn't work out, nobody was going to "force" me to keep trying to use a broken solution, just because we spent $$$'s on it already.)
Our goal was always to put the brakes on productivity losses (and even to prevent potential lawsuits stemming from someone viewing porn and another employee being offended at seeing said porn, or what-not). As has been proven time and time again, unless you completely deny someone Internet access, he/she can eventually find ways to get to sites you'd rather not have them using while at work. The idea is to implement a solution that stops as many "grave offenses" as possible, while appearing pretty much invisible to regular Inet users.
I've found that a nice "side benefit" of doing this is the fact that you also tend to screen out some of the biggest contributors to loading spyware and other nasties on people's PCs. (Porn sites are a big offender in this area, for example.) But no, we didn't get into the site filtering as primarily a "computer security" issue at all.
Do desktops need complete access? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do desktops need complete access? (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to add authentication to the mix, instead of transparent proxying you will need users to configure their browsers for your proxy on port 3128 or 8080 (you can still use the VLAN redirect thing for ports 8081 8082 etc). Use the msnt_auth plugin for Squid and now users can use their Windows domain login for web access. Only problem with msnt_auth is it only allows up to 12 chars for the password and some characters are not allowed, so users with wacky passwords may need to change them in order to get online.
DansGuardian's stupid licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that DansGuardian is GPL but claims to be proprietary. From its copyright page [dansguardian.org]:
In other words, if you truly believe those mutually exclusive claims, you have to install it at home for your own personal use, then redis
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I don't think you can release something under the GPL and then say it's not for commercial use, like another poster said, anybody can just download the code and redistribute (that's the right the GPL grants!) without strings at
Re:Stolen Data (Score:5, Insightful)
They also *gasp* make personal phone calls sometime. Sometimes to the babysitter or their spouse! We must implement a whitelist for the phone immediatly.
Seriously, work is a compromise. You want humans to work for you, then be prepared to meet them halfway on their social needs. Or watch yourself get a reputation for being an arrogant boss and a 'fascist company.' Talent will never come knocking at your door and you'll be stuck with people who love or can tolerate harsh policies. People who dont use the web as the resource that it is, people afraid to make a personal call, and people who end up in a stokholm-symdrome-like way defending these silly policies. Not to mention how competitive is a company with these draconian policies? In my experience its crappy little small business with paranoid micro-managing bosses who demand hardcode filtering.
Also, professional work is rarely sitting at a machine and putting in x amount of work like a typical blue collar job. Its collaberation and social skills. Its finding out new things. That means you need tools to communicate. That means there will be slow periods and downtimes. That means using the internet with as little restriction as possible.
Also, there's a real difference between a technological and social problem. If someone slacks on their job because of the internet (or any reason) it becomes obvious after a while. If this happens its not because you lack a decent filtering system its because you lack a good employee.
Lastly, if security is such a concern, I believe very few, if any, popular windows exploits work when the user doesnt have admin access. A simple security change like this, which is something that hsould have been done long ago, makes the web very safe. Blaming poor security practices on the web is just being silly.
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It's not about "Fascist company" but about "protecting YOUR money that you trust us to keep safe for you".
If you'd like your bank tellers to start browsing the internet unfiltered and unprotected from the same
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There's a big difference between a bank teller job and a professional knowledge-worker job. Bank tellers are really not much different from McDonald's cashiers. I wouldn't expect them to be surfing the net either while they're taking my order for a Big Mac.
Re:Stolen Data (Score:5, Interesting)
You do not get to use company equipment, company internet access, company phone calls, or company time for your own personal needs.
That kind of attitude from an employer only works if you're paying by the hour for unskilled labor.
Personally, I take home the same pay if I work 30 hours or 70 hours a week. I get projects assigned and I have deadlines, and those things come due no matter where I am. If I have to leave in the middle of the day to take care of something personal, I might work from home that night or over the weekend to make sure my projects get done. The end result? I probably work more hours a week (and am more productive) than someone who works straight from 9 to 5 but never a second over. Plus, I'm happy doing it.
From a business point of view, company equipment, company internet access and company phone lines are dirt cheap compared to an employee. For a medium sized company, those other expenses wouldn't even comprise 1/10th of a single employee's salary. (I know; I pay all of those bills for a medium sized company) As long as that employee is getting their work done on time it doesn't matter if they're sitting on IM all day talking to their wife, occasionally unwinding on slashdot, or calling their doctor.
It's like free coffee. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you're actually agreeing with the Microsoft person here. That's exactly what they're saying.
Open internet access is a perk, and it's one that young employees value. So if you want to recruit and retain people, it's something that as an employer, you should consider. Someone might be willing to work for $35k a year at a place with unrestricted internet, but wouldn't touch a locked-off place for less than $40k. (I'm pulling
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What's to stop you from running naked down the halls? What's to stop you from buying a shotgun and killing 4 people? What's to stop you from taking a dump on your boss's desk?
Are you incapable of self-control to the point where you need someone physically preventing you from doing wrong? Do you need to be bound and gagged and transported Hannibal Lector-style on a
So phones too? (Score:2, Interesting)
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The question is, how bad does the employment situation have to become before you start finding employees that will put up with that attitude and how quikly will you lose them to the competitor the moment the econom
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Okay. But don't forget that people are human. Everybody has intellectual curiosities about something, and often those are related to the career they're involved in. I work with a bunch of artists. As a result, there's a lot of traffic headed towards CG forums. Sometimes there are informative articles
*Shrugs* (Score:5, Insightful)
2) WTF from TFA:
*shakes head* Child abuse?
3) It's Anne Kirah, not Ann Kiera. I know she works at MS and has a ridiculous job title, but at least try to spell one of her names right.
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Seems strange to me as well, but remember, times-are-changing. What 50 years ago was considered a light punishment would be considered child abuse today.
If you're going to surf at work... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and you'd better not spend a bunch of time on your cell phone in my office either. Everybody has emergencies...nobody has them so often that I should know which ringtone your girlfriend is.
Oh, and get off my lawn you damned whippersnappers.
Re:If you're going to surf at work... (Score:5, Insightful)
So normally I sit down with a goal, I think about how to go about implementing it, I bang out the code, and then I have a few minutes of downtime (sometimes more) while the damn thing compiles. Now most of the time I use this time to think about the next step of the problem, or to jot down notes of possible issues to take a look at, or to finally get around to answering e-mails about other issues in the code, etc. but if none of these are pressing then I don't feel guilty at all browsing around online for a few minutes. As I write this I'm waiting for my first build of the day to finish so I can get started.
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When your boss finds out that this downtime could be better spent dividing the code into smaller files to reduce compile time, you're going to be fired.
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Except the build system doesn't handle dependencies properly anymore, and the boss doesn't want anybody messing with it right now.
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Same week I was running a long and really boring set of database reports. Bring up the report, change a few things, set up the distribution list, start the report, check slashdot while waiting for the report to finish, make sure the report ran correctly, put report in distribution queue, rinse, repeat. The reports all built on each o
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Read "The Mythical Man Month" by Fredrick Brooks. The OP is likely correct. The best programmers are between 20 and 100 times more productive than the worst (I don't recall the exact numbers, but this is close.) Most people involved in writing software should be doing some
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That means all your people are ones who can be "productive" for 2x4 hours continuously, starting from your mark ? You're labelled "funny", but still, in case you're serious, I'd really like to know what planet you're writing from.
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That said, nobody (well, very few people) are 100% productive for four hours straight. Still, I don't provide magazine racks, several daily newspapers, or televisions in the office area. The internet can be a real time sink - it's like going into a well stocked library, it's very easy to get distracted and lose 30-40 minutes. I'm just as guilty (hell, I'm on
Tough (Score:5, Interesting)
YRO? (Score:3, Informative)
Immigration Reform (Score:3, Funny)
Amazing how you can pervert one science to make yourself sound smarter. Senior Design Anthropologist? What does she do? Dig through old Commodore PET and TRS-80 computers looking for clues to the outgrowth of the Internet?
Would be nice for a change... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, unfettered internet access is frequently not a good idea, especially for security reasons - people downloading malware, etc.
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There are other solutions as well:
1) Develop a skill that is in high demand and you'll have many opportunities
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i wouldn't say that... I'm confident in my skills and know that i could have a replacement job in a reasonable amount of time (4-6 months) if i decided to leave my current job (or lost my job due to downsizing etc) and i make sure i have enough money in savings where i can live off it for 6 months without a problem. The problem is that it is a buyers market for people who aren't very good at what they do and for people who are not able to relocate. Plus peo
Please.. (Score:2)
What's up with those job titles? (Score:5, Funny)
Duh (Score:2)
If I'm responsible for my company's server, why can't I read slashdot/forums/other, or maybe read bash.org when I'm bored?
Not allowing employees (specially IT staff) to browse freely is like not allowing a secretary to write e-mails for her friends, you get the idea.
Blocking is not the answer for many sites (Score:2)
Ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about treating your employees like responsible adults instead of toddlers?
You know, if you don't chain employees to their desks, they might get up and wander around all day, instead of working.
I'll be unpopular and say web filtering is good (Score:3, Insightful)
I want my teams focused on the job at hand during the day when the entire staff is around to help each other out. Having people working outside normal hours, while admirable (kind of), may be unnecessary if more work and less surfing is done during the day.
Re:I'll be unpopular and say web filtering is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you considered perhaps that a desire to make developers work 9-5 and deprive them of web access in the office might, maybe, lead to you only hiring those who can't get work in companies with less oppressive policies?
"I want my teams focused on the job at hand during the day when the entire staff is around to help each other out."
And what do your teams want? The most productive developer I've e
Re:I'll be unpopular and say web filtering is good (Score:4, Insightful)
That strong-armed attitude is definitely very prevalent in the business world and is exactly the kind of thing that demoralizes employees.
When I first started at that previous employer, I had a different boss... one who gave me room to do what needed doing. The result: I would regularly put in 60 to 80 hours per week (on salary). When the new boss (the one who I said sounded like your post) came in, he made it very clear that he was very much against comp time, telecommuting, and flex time. He wanted everyone there the same times... roughly for the reasons you mentioned. I went from 60 to 80 hours a week to watching that clock. I was in at 9:30 and out at 5:30 every day. If there was an emergency that required extra hours, my attitude and thus my performance were most definitely negatively affected.
If management treats their employees like children and creates an environment of monitoring and restrictions, they will find that morale and productivity decrease over-all. That kind of environment will not attract creative, energetic people, it will drive them away. Even in non-creative jobs, a bit of online shopping or visits to the DMV site or aonline bank sites keep people from having to take time off (cough, cough, I'm sick today) to take care of personal tasks that can't be done off-hours.
Re:I'll be unpopular and say web filtering is good (Score:3, Insightful)
However, are you sure that the deliverables are late because your guys are ogling chicks on myspace?
My experience has been management will give you as much work as they can, up until projects start becoming late and affecting business. There will never be the perfect balance of just enough work to fill the 8 hour days of all your employees. S
That was my attitude when I got out of college. (Score:2)
Site blocked (Score:2)
Company has the right.... (Score:2)
And I have the right to work at another company that has a more open internet connection.
I worked at one job where 6 months after I was hired they installed websense on the firewall. It took me and the other coders 45 min to get an anon proxy working. A week later they removed websense cause two thirds of the company was using proxies. Of course the net admins at this job weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.
So in other words... (Score:2)
My place of work... (Score:2)
Quote taken out of context (Score:5, Funny)
Employer: Of course we have Internet, but our firewall restricts access to "inappropriate" sites during working hours.
Kids:Forget it! I don't want to work with you. I don't want to work at a place where I can't be freely online during the day. I'll just move back in with my parents and use their DSL.
Parents: Sure, OK. What do you think would be a fair rent?
Kids: Rent? Where are we suposed get the money to pay rent?
[parents and employer exchange significant glances]
Parents: Umm, honey, I don't know if they explained this in school. "Work" is the eight hours out of the day when you do things you'd rather not be doing so you can pay for things like food and rent.
Employer [taken aback]: Eight hours?
interesting discussion (Score:5, Funny)
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it depends on the type of employee (Score:5, Insightful)
Working in IT I found the overly restrictive company made repairs and troubleshooting increasingly difficult since many times I had to research a problem at home and then fix it at work. I remember one incident where we had a scsi backplane go bad on a server that was out of waranty, they had a couple of lower techs hammer against it for 3 days before passing it to me. I looked at the error logs, ran some diagnostics and looked up some error codes, had the problem isolated in 10 minutes, but ended up getting written up for "using the internet" on company time. I found that after a while I did the bare minimum required not be fired since half the time I was doing busy work at home and the real work at home anyway.
The other company was a telco provider we had unrestricted access, it was great troubleshooting and repairs had an amazing turnaround time, but there were people that abused the priviledge. Eventually they weeded themselves out through poor performanace reviews or being called out for slacking off. Basically it comes down to what kind of employees you have, if they are responsible and take their job seriously internet access isnt a problem, its a matter of trust. If you dont trust your employees you either need better ones or perhaps need to find out what you may be doing that causes them to have no dedication to the job.
Been there also (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The workday is 24 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this all the time at my company, and in the long run, it leads to burnt-out employees. We've had much more success with staff retention and productivity my asking that employees do not work from home (to the point of canceling almost all of our GotoMyPC accounts), do not stay late (with exceptions, of course). If employees want to get their work done, they've got to do it during the work day. If they don't, well, they face the same situations that most employees who fail to meet their objectives face...
Work is work. As an employee (and this is the part of the legal definition according to the IRS, btw), your employer has the right to tell you how and when you do your job. If you want to work on your own schedule, you should be freelancing or consulting.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is why I am doing consulting. And every once in a while I end up in a gig where I cannot connect my own notebook to the company internal network, or where I cannot contact my companies online support because outgoing openvpn and ssh are restricted, and where I cannot contact my company email because a stupid security policy is forcing me on webmail instead of dimap.
Well, I am much less effective that way, but the price
Uh huh.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh huh.
I work in IT (as people probably know) consulting and service a 911 dispatch call center.
The workstations are restricted from using the Internet, with the exception of a (very) few government and/or explicitly job related sites - through a proxy server (squid).
Also, in the same government complex, 5 of the computers in the jail are also restricted in the same way (different site list, though).
Why?
Because having free and unrestricted access to the Internet only ends up with people downloading games/spyware/junk/explicit content. Intentionally or not. And when you rebuild a machine (that you're on-call for 24/7) in the middle of the night a few times, you'll also lobby the management to allow the restriction.
That's right. I recommended and implemented the almost total Internet ban on those machines.
And no, the computers do not run with Administrator users (they DO have to be Power Users, for the applications that are used) - but some of the nasty malware bypasses the Windows security models....
This is a great litmus test (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If unrestricted internet access from work is so important for you that you'll refuse a job, then you're most likely one of the people who shouldn't be allowed that unrestricted access.
I have and do work with people that would probably look elsewhere for employment if they were not given unrestricted internet access. This is for several reasons. Their jobs would be a lot harder without the internet as a research tool. It is a sign of a company that does not trust its employees, and that is a death sentenc
Digital Native Vs Digital Immigrant (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, the fundamental difference between us old-fart teachers (I'm 25, by the way) and today's kids is that they have grown up surrounded by technology to such an extent that their methods of working and interacting with others are totally different to ours.
For example, today's children are likely to be much better multi-taskers. They are used to an environment where the television is on, they are typing to friends using IM, chatting to other friends on the phone whilst simultaneously using Wikipedia to research that night's homework. That feeds back into today's classrom environments, because some kids can't cope without a busy, multi-tasking environment. Their idea of hell is to be sat in silence for an hour trying to revise, or working solidly on a piece of coursework without taking time-out to do something else every other minute.
All in all it was an interesting presentation, but I felt the speaker's idea that the dividing line is purely age based was nonsense. I'd consider myself (and I' d imagine a lot of the
Have communal machines (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in the 1990s, that worked. (Score:3, Funny)
I saw that done years ago at a major Hollywood animation studio. The internal network, used for feature animation, was completely isolated from the outside. The external machines were set up as kiosks, and unconnected from anything else. But this was in 1998.
By 2002, they weren't doing that any more. They'd switched from SGI to Windows, and Windows needs to talk to the mothership in Redmond.
Companies that Lose Digital Natives (Score:3, Insightful)
Are better off without them.
As an integrator, VAR, developer, security consultant, and chief cook and bottle washer for many firms, I advise my clientele with respect to their internet connectivity, and the expense and disbursement of the same. Given the strict liabilities of corporations, it is unfeasible to permit unrestricted access. Furthermore, I don't find it surprising that this discussion is coming from Redmond, which offers one of the most difficult Operating Systems on the market, in that it's increasingly difficult to secure Windows of any description and therefore it's probably just more cost effective to give free reign than it is attempt to limit the corporate liabilities presented by the deployment of M$ products.
It should also be painfully obvious that internet access is not free, but must be paid for by the corporation, and unfettered access in ANY environment could prove unnecessarily costly. In these difficult economic times the onus is on upper management to ensure that the operation of the company is streamlined in such a way as to ensure both maximum productivity and profitability.
In the Canada there are PIPEDA legislative restrictions in place that must be met with respect to user/customer privacy, and as such, in even a well considered M$ environment, it is not possible to grant unrestricted internet access and comply with the rules. Granted it may be possible to provide a properly cordoned internet access, but this should only be available to employees on their break times.
As the by-line suggests, productivity is still the bottom line, and employees (digital natives or any other such ludicrous monicker) should not be the defining force behind internet access policy. It is widely held that a measured approach is preferable. One that can enable all stakeholders without potentially compromising any corporate/consumer data, and maintain operational efficiency to ensure that at the end of the month the company can still afford to honour the paycheques they pump out.
here at the office... (Score:4, Interesting)
Filter me please. Web access hurts productivity (Score:5, Informative)
Full unfettered access destroys my productivity at times. I follow a thought and boom an hour has gone by. I would definitely prefer to be subject to whitelisting/blacklisting. First things to block: Slashdot and digg of course.
I know I would be doing a much better job if aimless surfing could be eliminated. But it is just so easy to click a link and read stuff, or comment on stories on slashdot. Our buisness communication depends heavily on our internal web so we all have contstant connectivity and at times external access can be handy, but I would be 100% in favor of restrictions.
I really think productivity would go up quite a bit. Most of my friends all admit to surfing too much on the job (we are all techies).
I am an info junky and always have been, even before getting Fidonet, I used to read tons of magazines about technology/science etc. In an environment with unfettered access is like a kid in a Candy store. Look: Shiny new Mazda roadster with retractable hardtop, planets 8, 9, 12 or 50?, New rumored Canon 400D DSLR, New ATI Radeons (damn I got sidetracked while writing this to read about new Radeon). You get the idea.
So Yes please, bring on the filtering. Some of us just can't handle unlimited access to information.
I've quit a job over this issue before (Score:4, Interesting)
I really had no problem with the "normal" filters they had on most of the time, but once in a while, they put the Uber-Super-Anal filters on that would restrict your access to basically read-only Internet. During these "outages" you couldn't go to any online shops, incl. tech bookstores like Bookpool.com (Amazon.com was blocked as well). Some tech resources were also restricted for some reason. The "super siikrit probations" were never announced in advance, nor were we told when they ended. You just noticed, all of a sudden, that half the Internet is gone. And then hours or days later, it was back.
It was definitely one of the reasons why I quit that job.
Already addressed... (Score:3, Interesting)
My solution was to set up an Apache-SSL server on one of my machines, hook a CGI proxy software into it, and run an SSH server on a high port. That then allows me to browse the web and still get into my systems at work. Avoiding the stupidity of remote evesdropping is also alleviated by plugging my laptop into the network and faking to the Windows domain controller.
PCI CISP (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Your employer is free to impose 'no surf' rules or not. You are free to decide if that policy is acceptable or not. Nobody is coercing anybody. So, things are OK right now. Right?
Perhaps one way for you to address this is to start your own business and then do not adopt a no surf policy. All you have to do is create a business that sells a product that lots of people are willing to pay for. That should be easy. Right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:They wont work with it either. Go ahead, lock i (Score:2)
That [undisciplined people] is what you should kick out, not internet access.
There are very few people who can continously concentrate on doing quality job on the same thing for 8 hours, if there are any at all. In fact, I'd say if someobody can do 4-6/8 hours serious productive work (here I'm talking about work requiring continuous, not-negligable amounts of brain usage) that's really good. Why you should
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it "childish" to say "what do I get in return for giving you my work?" This isn't about breaking rules, it's about people not WANTING to work places where said rules exist. What's unreasonable about that that's reasonable about saying you don't want to work outdoors during the winter if the company uniform is shorts and a tshirt?
All these PHB types are ranting "well, I would fire them for that.