company culture

[cellio]

This Dilbert strip illustrates one of the key cultural differences between small companies and big companies.



Policy-makers see only policy; they often do not think about the messages they're sending. When they do, they often don't care.

Comments

[sethg]

I thought these monitoring systems became much less popular once someone pointed out how much time the executives were spending looking at porn sites.

[cellio]

Perhaps, but "less popular" doesn't mean "non-existent", apparently. By now the executives have presumably figured out how to get around the restrictions.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

We had a rather delightful email sent by a sysadmin at a former employer, gently reminding people that "when on the VPN from home, all your browsing, and I mean ALL YOUR BROWSING is done via company facilities and subjected to our monitoring systems. You may want to moderate your personal choices when the VPN is active".

Which was a nice way of sending several messages, one of which was "why work from home"?

If you make bad behavior impossible, how will you find the assholes who need firing? You'll make them look like me.

[cellio]

Which was a nice way of sending several messages, one of which was "why work from home"?

Indeed. They misguidedly think that working from home benefits only the employee. Their loss.

If you make bad behavior impossible, how will you find the assholes who need firing? You'll make them look like me.

And then when you do find them (because they've found other ways to be assholes, not reformed), that just leads to even more policies that presume everyone is like that, sending the assholes off to find yet newer ways to behave... it never ends.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Well, my morale at my company is sinking. Sigh.

We are about to institute some similar things. We are, however, in a different place - as our company/division is highly profitable, very necessary to their global strategy, and our mode of doing business requires punching large holes in their corporate IT procedures.

Nonetheless, it's going to be an ugly day here, someday. Soon.

[cellio]

Sounds unpleasant. I'm sorry you're being hit by stuff like this.

[madfilkentist]

Better that they tell you than that they don't. At least you can disconnect from the VPN when you do personal browsing.

[cellio]

Yup. Informed is better than un-informed. It's the policy, not the knowledge, that discourages working from home at all under such circumstances.

I haven't tried this, but I gather that the setup of our company's VPN precludes me from working at home at all. Connecting to it disconnects you from everything else -- like, everything on your LAN. How does that interact with a home network where I am not going to reconfigure the Linksys box for each use? My husband used a VPN from home for a past employer and did not face this limitation, so I know it doesn't have to be configured that way, but ours is.

[mortuus.livejournal.com]

I had a conversation Monday on a similar topic. I'd stopped by to visit a friend and fellow employee, and she had just finished with her yearly review and was in a bad mood. She is a very good employee, has brought a huge new task to our company, and does a lot of extra work to maintain and update our Company X databases (which are incredibly important to track all of the tasks and money). However, a couple times she was an hour or so late entering her time into the timecard database, so he marked her entire review down for that.

So I'd mentioned this to another friend and fellow employee, and we ended up discussing how it doesn't matter if you market like mad and bring in new tasks, and it doesn't matter if you have a great reputation that brings in work, and it doesn't matter if you are an excellent employee. I understand if consistently disregarding administrative policies is an issue, but if you are an hour late inputting your time a couple times over an entire year, it is hardly reasonable to see that as equal to or greater than the other stuff.

[cellio]

I once got dinged on a performance review because, while doing my best to stay productive after an injury instead of inconveniencing the company by applying for short-term disability, I was sometimes down a couple hours (a few times over a few months). I left soon thereafter.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

After several years of stellar reviews and fast-tracked promotions, the new director did not give me the tools our department deemed necessary for my new responsibilities. The lack of appropriate tools made my job considerably harder, and my performance suffered since I could no longer do the job well. Predictably, I was called to task for my poor showing and asked why this was. I produced sheaves of documentation supporting my opinion, and was summarily dismissed with a "Well, if you were any good at doing the job we gave you, this wouldn't have been a limitation."

Riiight. A master of one's craft knows better than to claim that the tools given were insufficient to the task, but to not be given any tools at all is another matter entirely.

I later found out that nearly the entire staff defected to another division within 18 months after my removal.

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

What's truly sad is when you find a small company using big company policies because... well.. the big companies use them and they're successful.. so.. ergo...