Ask Slashdot: Companies That Force Employees To Join Social Networks? 364
First time accepted submitter rubeon writes "Companies can get a lot of mileage out of social networking services from the likes of Google or Facebook. Chat, document collaboration, and video conferencing using services like Google+ Hangouts or Facebook's Skype are seductive additions to an IT arsenal. But a lot of people have privacy concerns about these services, and there's no shortage of horror stories how these sites track and exploit their users' habits. Would you work for a company that forced its employees to join a social network?"
Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, make your profile private and add only the co-workers that you have to. Discuss only work-related activities. If a co-worker mouths off about the party last night or tries to message you about stuff unrelated to work, don't respond to them online and walk to their cube with a "don't be a dumbass" warning.
Most importantly, if the above are not already rules in place, then ask that they be made rules. You can say it's for "security" reasons and they'll eat it right up.
However, I don't have to worry about any of that because I don't social network in private, I don't work for a company with such asinine policies, and I don't do any hanging out with coworkers after work(other than the occasional post-work happy hour with a 2-drink cutoff).
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.
Unless a network enforces one account per individual.
Business/Company account needs no personal info (Score:5, Insightful)
Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.
Unless a network enforces one account per individual.
With different emails, profiles, behaviors, etc how would they notice? Likes, interests, posts etc should be completely segregated between professional and personal. Maybe use different names as well, for example the formal Michael on the business account and the familiar Mike on the personal account. They can't really tell from IP. Maybe Michael is a father's account and Mike is a son's - again, avoid personal info like birthday's etc on the business account. A business account at a particular company has no need to contain birthdays, schools, etc.
Birthdays (Score:5, Interesting)
With different emails, profiles, behaviors, etc how would they notice?
For one thing, correlations between people tagged in the same photo.
avoid personal info like birthday's etc on the business account.
As I understand it, all major social networks operating in the United States collect date of birth to be COPPA compliant.
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has no one ever thought of lying on the internet? Or should i patent is and make millions. this i like the google requirement of using you real name on google+, simple solution is to lie. you have no qualms about lie on license agreement for software saying that you have read and agree to the agreement, so why not telling a lie online.
We're all regular little saints here... really we are. And indeed - I don't see why you can't lie. If companies have stupid policies, I can respond with plain lies. In fact, that's completely legal in The Netherlands already: if employers ask about your pregnancy, plans to become pregnant, or disease status, you can flat out lie and if that ever goes to court you will win the case.
However, joining a social network because the company asks is not the main issue I think. The main issue is people joining that
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"has no one ever thought of lying on the internet?"
O,,,M,,,,G!!!!1!1!1
you sir are a freaking genius!
I'm going to go tell slashdot that I am a 20 year old hot chick that lives in Gnome alaska.
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Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:4, Informative)
Facebook requires your real name.
There is also Eric Holder who wants it to be a felony to violate a web sites terms of service.
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No Facebook says they require your real name, even at that a first name and an initial, or an initial and a middle name are still real names.
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If there can be only one, I'd be wearing a steel neckbrace if my name was John Smith :)
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I know three.
Is that so? And what are their names?
(oh... never mind)
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My wife comes from a long line of Smiths and her brother John Smith the IV, her father John Smith the III, her Grand Father John Smith the II and her great grand father John Smith.
Her Great Grandfather got his name when they came to the USA. Before that they were the Smythes but that was unamerican so they beat him at Ellis Island until he took an american spelling. He would have been John Smythe VII but the racists running ellis island though it was too snooty and wierdly spelled.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:4, Informative)
Just be ware that if you piss off even a single contact, they can turn you in and get your account nuked. So be sure you don't store anything there that you don't have a backup for.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 2: Nobody complains, because workarounds are easy
Step 3: Because everybody accepts the rules, they get turned into laws. You are now a criminal, and anyone who doesn't like you can have you arrested
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:4, Informative)
Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.
Unless a network enforces one account per individual.
Use your work email address to sign up for the work account.
Use your work address for contact information. It is a business related account after all.
Don't fill out any personal data fields you don't need to. (Education, Hobbies, Interests, etc)
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Funny)
Tell them you have dissociative identity disorder and if they won't respect that, all of you will file a class action lawsuit.
I was once told (Score:4, Funny)
I was once told that 2 out of every 1 people working at the BBC has a multiple personality disorder
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Yes, that. Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.
Remember when information compartmentalization was the concern of 3 letter agencies and not part of the everyday life of the average citizen?
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Remember when information compartmentalization was the concern of 3 letter agencies and not part of the everyday life of the average citizen?
So was encryption. Of all things, this is the least deserving of complaining about.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Funny)
I guess some of use are just not as close to our mothers as others.
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I don't think my mother has ever licked my balls, even when I was a baby. But you never know, do you?
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Of course he is doing something illegal. We all are. If you think that you are not, you probably haven't considered your actions very carefully.
Like hell I am! I follow every law to the letter, even the ones that contradict each other! I learned how to do that in Sunday School.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Insightful)
1936 Germany wasn't 1939 Germany either. But nobody did much and three years later, bam, it was.
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Rhineland was occupied during that year. Austria & Czechoslovakia hadn't been annexed. Tirpitz and Bismark were barely started. Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact not in place.
So it still wasn't the finished product and there was time to turn things around, had the will been there.
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Nearly everything people do on a regular day is illegal or a sue-able offense. We're only so lucky that going after the average person would be too costly.
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Also, I try to use social networking really with three categories of activities in mind:
1) Self-promotion: This stuff always goes on the social networking media. That';s what the media is there for!
2) Public thoughts: This is sort of like a mini-blog service. Things can go there if audience-appropriate.
3) Private activities and thoughts: No way in hell am I putting those on a social networking site!
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Facebook does. But you have to be really well connected. It's a lot more selective than slashdot.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is this really a problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Other than Facebook itself, and Google, has anyone actually been asked to join a Social Network by their employer?
(No, Gmail does not count).
I've heard of people being asked to follow twitter, but that's hardly a social network, and its far from bidirectional.
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Agreed...this question.
The submission starts off with the vague "Companies can..." and then makes a couple of similarly tenuous suppositions-masquerading-as-fact. No linked article linked about how this is a growing trend, or even a blog post from someone rampaging that their employer has just instituted this.
Slow news day, I guess?
Re:Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Part of the interview process at my last job (internet marketing startup) was to check prospects' scores on online tools that measured "engagement" in blogging, Twitter, Facebook, foursquare, Google+, YouTube, etc. The company would also send out emails "requesting" that employees post/Tweet/Like events, books, blog posts, awards, or webinars related to the company, made by friends of/investors in the company, and so on. If you didn't have social media "juice," they weren't interested.
Even for tech support positions they weighed social media marketing knowledge alongside tech knowledge, because you had to defend (or upsell) the product on support calls. It's to the point now where they changed the job title of the phone support position to "Entry-level *ub*potter," presumably because they weren't getting people with marketing knowledge.
They'd ask us to mob people they wanted as guests on their weekly marketing show. I don't know what they expect when they do that; it struck me as annoying [twylah.com].
They're also extremely aggressive about responding to negative or skeptical posts and comments, to the point where they'll join MetaFilter [metafilter.com] to post a sales-pitch response [metafilter.com] to a question.
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Yes. But since it's one based on a product that we sell (not a public facing one), I have no issue with it.
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Depends what you define as a social network I suppose, and in general the question applies to any online service. Do you want to count skype as a social network?
And I suppose the same applies to any online service you need to sign up for as part of your employment. You use your employee information as the basis for it, and you make sure your employer clearly understands they are the ones liable since this is part of your work duties and anything that happens to you, your account, or anything done on the
Re:Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Other than Facebook itself, and Google, has anyone actually been asked to join a Social Network by their employer?
My employer - a university department - decided it needed to have a social networking presence. Since I'm the main web guy, that basically amounted to "we want you to join Facebook and Twitter".
We use it these tools to disseminate news about our department and to try to keep more frequent contact with our alumni. But that's as far as it goes - as far as I know, they couldn't care less about my personal activities on there (and my personal Facebook profile is actually separate from I use for work; but don't tell Facebook that! And I don't use Twitter personally). I've made it a point to not "friend" my boss nor most of the faculty who've asked. My (infrequent) personal posts are all set to "friends only"; and I do my bet not to say anything that could come back to bite me.
Of course it helps that I'm a really boring person.
Re:Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Even Google Execs don't use google +
http://mashable.com/2011/10/04/google-needs-to-use-google-plus/ [mashable.com]
One has to wonder just how serious your employer is about this.
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It's a paying job. (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were looking for work, I'd take the job, and just add the bare minimum of details to the site. Get a bit of political clout with the supervisors, then conveniently forget to log in for a week, or a month, or "oh dear, I forgot my password, and I don't know what email account I used to sign up".
Having been unemployed recently, I'd much prefer a paycheck to a bit of already-compromised privacy.
Re:It's a paying job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously
You choose the amount of information you put there.
Unless you are as paranoid as RMS, just sign up using your company email (or a throwaway one) and put the absolutely minimum amount of info.
I'd much prefer a paycheck to a bit of already-compromised privacy.
This
Re:It's a paying job. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Can information leak in? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't use social networks, so don't know a lot of their details. But one complaint that I commonly hear is that people can tag photos of you, and even if you don't have an account, Facebook will link this information together to create a hidden profile of you.
If your employer requires you to use your real name and information when signing up for an external social network, and your friends who use that same social network post pictures and other information about your personal life, is it possible that the network will associate this information with your work account, which will then bring it into your bosses radar?
If it is a private company network, then no problem. But if it is a public social network, it seems like it could create the same sort of problems that occur when bosses force you to friend them with your personal social network account.
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Or, you know... be honest, rather than snubbing your friends. "I don't like using Facebook, but I'm required to, so I only keep business contacts on there. I don't want my boss prying into my personal life."
Re:Can information leak in? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't use any social networks, but I detected a serious problem when "friend" became a verb...
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You raise a very good point, but it should be fairly straightforward to work around it. Arrange with your employer to let you use a different middle name, for all professional social network purposes. Either use the alias or don't include a middle name or initial on business cards, email signatures, or the like. It fulfills their need to have a real person visible for the company, and it helps your need for privacy. It's a win-win, that most likely wasn't considered when the manager wrote the "must use real
IBM Connections (Score:2)
Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same as email (Score:2)
I wouldn't join with the same profile that I used personally.
Exactly. My work email address is different from my personal one, and likewise for social networks. The profile set up by my employer is used for work purposes only - it's got nothing to do with my personal life.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would I have any problem working for a company that forced me to join a social network?
You might not, but some people have privacy hang-ups about them.
Especially since this sounds like a prospective employer, I'd tell the submitter to get a grip. Don't go work for a company that has fundamentally different morals or ethics than you do - that's going to end in disaster.
I wouldn't join with the same profile that I used personally.
The seems to be a current trend, but employers are going to have to get a grip too, Their employees use drugs, have sex, and shoot guns on the weekend (ideally not all at the same time). To pretend otherwise is fantasy and the stock of employees who will pretend that way is going to dry up over time.
Associate with people who like you for who you are and not who you pretend to be and your life will become more pleasant.
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Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
More to the point, why isn't there an enterprise version of G+/FB that a company can keep isolated on their own network?
Why does a company need social networking in the first place for employees?
I can understand trying to follow the crowd and have a "Web 2.0" presence with all the bells and whistles like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, whatever. That's marketing and their never ending quest for the Douche Master Throne. I dislike advertising obviously.
What benefits are there to having the employees participate in a social network? What work activities are appropriate to be public? Is this just another new SEO trick? Are there organizational benefits?
I just don't get it. If you need communication tools, that is not social networking specific. Social networking can have them, but then again, so do many other platforms. Skype can be used to communicate. I have that for business since it makes it easier to communicate with people and is far more flexible then txt messaging (which I refuse to use). You can go for the most expensive communication and collaboration platforms out there like MS Sharepoint that comes to mind. I'm sure IBM probably has something as ridiculously expensive and proprietary too. Google can be used for the same thing.
The question posed does not make sense, either by you or the article submitter, because I fail to see any business value in social networking beyond marketing.
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Lots of reasons. A company may run its own external facing social networking site and ask its employees to participate in order to make sure that their customers are interacting and getting good advice/support. A company may run its own *internal* social networking site for collaboration.
I think when one says "social networking site" you immediately think "Facebook". The world of social networking is much larger than Facebook. That is only one, very large, aspect of it.
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The article submitter doesn't provide any details but there is at least one legitimate business reason for requiring a social network account beyond marketing: Developing applications that interact with those social platforms. If I want to develop an app that communicates with Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Steam, etc. I generally need an account on that service to have access to APIs, documentation, testing tools, and sundry. This makes sense as these companies have been built around the concept of managing
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More to the point, why isn't there an enterprise version of G+/FB that a company can keep isolated on their own network?
AC, meet Yammer. Yammer, this is AC
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They Can Make You Join... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they can make it a condition of your job to join, but can they really make you use it? Just telling them that you don't post much because you're not that kind of guy or gal would be a hard argument for them to refute.
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Why would any company require this? There are already companies trying to get workers to stop using Facebook all day long.
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You can want someone to be a celebrity but there's no way to make that happen anymore than requiring your employers to win the lottery.
This is really a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are so many things an employee can screw up online, I though most of the corporate and government employers would prefer you not be on a social network.
As for the question - who cares? Business accounts are business accounts. You can blog and facebook and plus all you want for the company with a company account. Just to let your business and personal life (accounts) mix. What's so hard about that?
Its no different from company requiring you to (Score:3)
sign up for any other online service like video conferencing etc.
Create account Company_X_employee_2843753875 and use it for work purposes ONLY. Nobody is forcing you to use it at home, do they?
When you leave the company you give them the account and password so there is no BS like this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16338040
Tell them it's against your faith ... (Score:2)
After all, why can't all us "infidels" and "philistines" demand equal respect for our beliefs? Just because ours are based on the real world (and provable) doesn't mean that they are less deserving of respect than other people's fantasies.
Or join- and to make it interesting, make the first one a suggestion about how the company really needs a better sexual harrassment policy.
And make your second post about how you wonder
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And the fourth post will be from management as to their regret in your choice to "seek opportunities elsewhere".
Being a lying idiot is very obvious and gets you nowhere.
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A competent community manager would delete the post and start with some gentle corrective action - maybe a polite note asking you to cut it out. Only after it becomes completely clear that you have no intention of cooperating will it be escalated to your manager. A competent manager would probably be able to figure out the appropriate carrot and stick that would make you toe the line.
Of course, that's assuming a competently run company, and a competent community manager.
I saw one hilarious example of this
Separation is the Key (Score:3)
Just make sure that you maintain a really clear separation between work data that put into this account and your private life and accounts.
I'd opt for no linkages whatsoever between the two.
I'd also ask specifically what happens to that account and the associated data if you leave the company. You'll want it to be nukeable when you go.
That question actually is rather leading. (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work for Jive Software, one of the leading vendors (if not the leading vendor) of Social Business Software, so take it for what you will. I'm just a hosting engineer though - not a marketer.
That said, I think this question actually entails two separate issues. The first one is, will having their employees collaborate socially save them time, money, and energy? I've seen many, many examples of companies coming to depend on social software - there are plenty of examples on Jive's site (and it's not just blowing smoke, I've seen firsthand evidence of this and have even talked to some people on the sales floor who swear by it). Some customers I work with have grown so dependent on social software that they cannot tolerate even a minute of downtime. Social business is, in many ways, the wave of the future, and to criticize companies for trying to get on the bandwagon and realize the benefits for themselves is not something I'm prepared to do.
The other question is: Should the company provide a sandboxed environment for this kind of collaboration, or should they force their employees to use solutions that potentially violate their privacy or have other issues? I'm not going to say that any of the solutions out there such as Facebook have those issues necessarily, but they are obviously very much less sandboxed and do not have the interests of corporate and personal privacy in mind near as much as a vendor whose software can be sandboxed to provide some safety for personal information and company secrets.
At Jive we eat our own dogwood, and we use a social instance of our own software in the company, and I can't imagine working without it. But if a company were to force me to collaborate on publicly available sites where my grandmother (for example) would also post, I'd seriously wonder what they were smoking.
Re:That question actually is rather leading. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some customers I work with have grown so dependent on social software that they cannot tolerate even a minute of downtime. Social business is, in many ways, the wave of the future, and to criticize companies for trying to get on the bandwagon and realize the benefits for themselves is not something I'm prepared to do.
I think that corporate dependence on "social software" is kind of like dependence on crack: it's hard to go a minute without it but that's not because it's providing real benefits.
Yes, in some cases social tools are useful, but in most implementations I've heard about the users become dependent on it because it's their only option, not because it was the best option.
Another analogy: if the New York Fire Department switched from fire engines to wagons pulled by donkeys because other cities were doing it and donkey stock was through the roof, they'd use the donkeys all the time and dread donkey downtime, but that wouldn't indicate that donkeys were a better choice than engines.
Re:That question actually is rather leading. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand your point. If they're dependent on it to the point where work stops getting done of the social network is down, and when significant and concrete cost savings can be proven (again, look at the use cases, I'm not going to repeat them here - I'll repeat that I'm not a marketer) it would become very difficult to make the case that the network being used is not at the very least *adequate* for the needs of the company whom is using it.
Some social networks and social software are better than others (I obviously have my opinions but I don't think I need to spell them out here as to which are which) but when a company is seeing tangible and measurable benefits trying to convince them that their solution is the wrong one is going to be an uphill battle.
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I'm pretty sure I'm not a marketer. I would be a bull in a china shop if they let me anywhere near sales and/or marketing. I'd probably make one or two sales out of sheer dumb luck and cause the rest of my accounts to go away. No, I spend my day working cases, upgrading instances, etc., etc. The marketers are very vocal about what they do on our internal social site, so maybe a little of it rubbed off.
That said, if you have a system, workflows are designed around it, and it's successful, the point still
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You can call bullshit if you want. I'm not really concerned about that. Facts are facts. I can't, however, go into much more detail because I should let those who actually are marketers speak to those things, but there are some testimonials from our customers out on our website, with individual names. Ask them - many of our customers are very socially active, you can find some of them on google+. Then tell me I'm wrong. And here, I'll drop it because arguing it further is not productive.
And just to no
Re:That question actually is rather leading. (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, you use terms like "testimonials" "when significant and concrete cost savings can be proven" "tangible and measurable benefits" "an uphill battle" "get on the bandwagon and realize the benefits for themselves".
It's your tone. It's worse then marketer, you come off as a salesman. I'm sorry, but it's true. To stop that, well, you'd have to stop trying to sell Jive. But it looks like you're paid push the company motto. Or at least expected to.
And this is my problem with companies getting their weedly little fingers into social sites. Corporations aren't social, they just want to push their goods and make a buck. If they get their employees to be their own 50cent army, it degrades the social scene. Tragedy of the commons.
And this got voted up? Why? Hell, at this point I'm paranoid enough that I suspect your fellow Jive employees are responsible. It's "encouraged" after all. So can I trust Slashdot moderation?
Come on, companies don't hire criminals (Score:5, Interesting)
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"I'm fairly young and I already start getting reactions along the line of "Are you a criminal or what?" when I tell people I don't have a facebook profile."
I just let them know Facebook is for noobs and I'm too leet to bother with that shit. Works very well.
This may hit some job discrimination isseus (Score:2)
Like in areas of what groups you are part of and other areas that a job can not ask you about.
Now maybe linked in is ok as long as it stays professional and they don't want you to post / talk about lot's of non work stuff that falls under ares covered by discrimination laws.
Being forced to join wouldn't bother me (Score:2)
What?!?! (Score:2)
Re:What?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are technically correct, you are ignoring economic realities and pressures. Sometimes just because you *can* quit doesn't mean that you will be able to find another job. There are places in the country where if you lose your job, you will have to move.
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I don't know why you're picking on FNC here, but socialism doesn't stop people from leaving their jobs. It discourages hiring and even prohibits firing, and there are plenty of regulations telling people where they can and cannot work.
Re:What?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know why you're picking on FNC here, but socialism doesn't stop people from leaving their jobs. It discourages hiring and even prohibits firing, and there are plenty of regulations telling people where they can and cannot work.
Maybe if you go to a communist country like Cuba or North Korea, but not in any of the more civilized countries you call socialist like Europe. Yes, hiring an employee here in Norway is a much bigger commitment here than in the US, because normally you have a mutual one month termination period for the first six months and three months after that. Normally people work through that period rather than the two week check as I've understood is common in the US and most people find themselves new work in this period so it's not even remotely as hostile as the US. Regardless of that companies will often let you go earlier if you've left for one of their competitors, but this is a voluntary agreement both parties must agree to.
Firing is far from prohibited but unlike the US you may not fire people for any or no reason. Essentially there are three ways to be terminated. The first is because the company has less work, is terminating stores or offices or restructuring that makes people redundant. Generally you can't hire with one hand and fire with the other, unless you've sacked them for work performance (I'll get to that) they generally have a preferred right to other open positions they're qualified for, if you're moving offices and that sort of thing. In short, downsizing is legal but it must be real.
The second way to get terminated is for poor work performance, and I admit this is hard. Basically the key word is document, document, document. You must show that the work performance has been deemed unacceptable, that the person has been informed of this, that they've been given sufficient opportunity to improve themselves and so on. Most often it's smaller businesses that either don't do all the steps, or they have too excessive reactions because they can't afford the dead weight. Larger companies generally do manage to get it right, but due to the cost and termination period involved they generally avoid to.
The third and final way is instant termination, which is pretty much like termination for cause in the US. Note that breaking internal rules is mostly not covered and would go under poor work performance, it is mostly criminal activity like theft, fraud or sabotage and willfully abusing or leaking confidential information, refusal to work and that sort of thing. If the facts of the case are unclear employees may end up suspended instead, which is not yet a termination.
That said, there are a lot of anti-discrimination laws and people given special protection by law, like for example people on sick leave or maternity leave. It does happen, I know a person that was terminated on sick leave but the company was downsizing almost 50% and if an office is closing then obviously everyone lose their jobs, but under normal circumstances they're practically immune to termination. Basically as long as they're doing their job when they're fit to work, you're not permitted to fire them no matter how inconvenient the leaves are.
Not sure what you mean about rules where people can get work, I can get work in pretty much any public or private job. A few require security clearances and a few require checking my criminal record e.g. to get work as a teacher, but for the most part every job is available to me. Of course all the usual caveats with who knows who and all that applies, but that's the same in any country. Oh and while we do have exempt workers, they're extremely few - any normal professional is still an employee with overtime pay. That cuts down on a lot of crap.
Just be yourself... weird like everyone else (Score:4, Insightful)
I distance my work and personal stuff, but they wanted me to follow them, so I did.... no big loss. I've got sufficiently non-mainstream opinions on enough stuff that they really don't want me tying things tight anyway... what with my whole (9-11 was an inside job, Ron Paul for President, Cold Fusion really works, Back to the Gold Standard, we're in the Greater Depression) view of the world... it's non-corporate friendly (besides, corporations aren't people anyway).
I'll patiently wait for JPM and the FED to implode while I read back issues of the stuff from the time monks for a very long time before anyone wants me to be their corporation's friend. ;-)
Be sufficiently human, and only other humans will want to around.... and some will value you highly. Heck, one might even help you make other humans. ;-)
Pseudonym (Score:3)
Damned if you do... (Score:3)
...damned if you don't?
So, first people complain that their employer is blocking or limiting their internet access because they spend too much time on Facebook, now they're complaining that they're forced to sign up for a Facebook account? Oh boy...
A very bad idea - for the company (Score:4, Interesting)
This exact topic recently came up at a local Inn of Court [innsofcourt.org], and after a bit of discussion, the consensus among the judges and attorneys present was that the company would be liable for all the stupid things the employee did with that social network account.
There is a real reason companies typically have one single spokesman and many have a PR department.
Sure (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You two are really obsessed with each other.. you should really get a room.
I know what you're thinking: that's stupid.. we're both guys, and I'm not gay.
You're confused about your sexuality, and you're feelings for each other. You're concerned about your repressed latent homosexuality.
But this 2012, and most people are ok with other peoples sexual orientation.
So please, will you two just hook up already? The rest of us are getting tired of this BS.
Re:"Facebook's Skype?" (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook uses skype for Video chatting. So you have your regular skype and Facebook's skype.
Re:"Facebook's Skype?" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Roll Your Own (Score:5, Insightful)
Why any company would trust sensitive internal information to Google is beyond me.
Re:Roll Your Own (Score:4, Funny)
Why any company would trust sensitive internal information to Google is beyond me.
Why not? They already have it, anyway - I just did a search and found it.
No joke - one place I worked, the best way to find out what was really going on was stick some key executives' names in Google and see what turned up. (No, no criminal records, amazingly enough.)
Re:Sure I would (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, except depending on facebook's "loose" vs "strict" interpretations of their own terms of service, you're violating their EULA by creating that second account.
Of course it's bullshit, just like it was bullshit for google+ to be tied to a real id, and that a social network was an identity service.
It got dropped from the media whcih means:
1) The law still isn't clear on it, and won't be for years
2) They never recanted it, so whenever a story gets loud enough to make the front line news, they can use it to either create a smokescreen or attack our privacy even further with it
3) Any pointy-haired politician that wants to win points with actors/actresses wanting to shut down an unofficial page that's more popular than the official one will be vulnerable to the right kind of pressure.
When it drops off the front page, without a formal, written apology, geeks lose.
Re: (Score:2)
I could not disagree more with every single component of what you just posted.
Re: (Score:2)
On rereading, except for the first sentence before the comma.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You should get a job as a Community Manager. They indeed can make up all the details. Including the name
Re:My response to the manager or HR person.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot say strongly enough how horrifically bad this advice is.
If you make a habit of going to HR when they ask you to do something that is even tangentially related to your job duties and essentially demand a payoff, if you last years it's pretty much a miracle. Hallelujah.