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There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got
by random4369 8y ago
There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended?
I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy.
Bullies are pretty adept at functioning in these environments. Instead of harassing on monitored DMs, they'll make verbal comments with double meanings, use their leverage to put their targets in unpleasant situations, undercut their targets at meetings etc. Totalitarian surveillance doesn't stop bullies. It just makes your workplace a soul-destroying shithole for the employees who are forced to work in it.
- bruhbruhbruh 8y agoInfinite space of solutions? I think not. If the harassment was in any way sexual, the company had a legal responsibility to investigate. It may have been a timely matter and the best and/or only solution was to read the messages at the offending intern's workstation.
- personjerry 8y agoWould you provide a small list of solutions as examples?
- mabermoske 8y agoHow about ask the intern being bullied to show the bullying messages?
- matthewcford 8y agoAnd the sender deletes the message?
- mfringel 8y agoNo, he chose it because a group of interns was harassing other interns. Words matter.
- chrischen 8y agoTotalitarian surveilance? While you’re at removing that from the workplace don’t forget to instigate democratic revolution in your company as well.
- wfo 8y agoWell yes, this is a good idea, democratization of the workplace and worker co-ops generally promote better quality of life for employees and the surrounding community, less exploitation, less corruption, more justice and similar or better efficiency as the normal dictatorial corporate model.
- jiveturkey 8y agoWell, if you work at Google anyway.
- calcifer 8y ago> totalitarian surveillance > got offended > Bullies > soul-destroying shithole It's funny how these sort of comments always come from recently created throwaway accounts.
- random4369 8y agoPeople can only candidly speak their minds on touchy subjects through anonymity. What a shock, if only we came up with a name for this effect a long time ago? If only that very effect wasn't so ironically relevant to the subject at hand?
- dempseye 8y agoWhy do you think that is? How would you describe the tenor of the comment?
- cechmaster 8y agoI think you're mixing up the way businesses run and how society should run. Two different things.
- spelunker 8y ago> I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. So you and your choosy developer friends work at a place where IT can't access your corporate email?
- enzo1982 8y agoIn Germany (and probably the whole EU) it's illegal for an employer to read an employee's mails without approval of the workers' council for each individual case.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago"probably the whole EU" [citation-needed]. German privacy law is very strict. This might be a good thing, don't get me wrong - but extrapolating this to all the other 27 member states is pure nonsense.
- enzo1982 8y agoThe European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that an employee's communication may not be monitored without prior notice and without specific reasons. [1] This ruling applies not only to the whole EU, but to the 47 member states of the Council of European, including for example Russia and Turkey. [1] https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/echr-monitoring-an-employee-s-electronic-communications-amounted-to-a-breach-of-his-right-to-private-life https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/echr-m...
- Piskvorrr 8y agoI'm aware of this, yet "prior notice + specific reasons" != "approval of the workers' council for each individual case"
- enzo1982 8y agoRequiring approval of the worker's council is how an employer's demand to read an employee's mail is usually handled in Germany. I did not mean to imply that it is handled the same way in the whole EU, just that unsubstantiated monitoring is likely illegal in the whole EU.
- dsacco 8y ago> but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? Sigh Totalitarianism is a socio-political paradigm, not a stand-in word to describe things you think constitute surveillance in the context of a business. Companies require the capability to maintain auditable records of employee activity on the information channels they own and manage. Your company is not recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street, it's protecting itself and other employees from potentially problematic abuse scenarios. These requirements are also directly imposed by a variety of regulations in various countries. When you twist the meaning of loaded words like this to describe things you don't like, you make it very difficult for people to get past the hyperbole and take you seriously. You're conflating assaults on personal rights with the routine and mundane business practice of keeping auditable logs. > I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. I'm not sure what you're getting at here, because almost all the good developers I know work in environments like this. So where does trading these anecdotes leave us? Do you really believe most competent software engineers don't work in companies that do this? In most cases, that means the company is actively breaking the law, or at best making adherence with the law very difficult and error-prone.
- ben509 8y ago> because almost all the good developers I know work in environments But they aren't True Good Developers... /s
- ravitation 8y ago> socio-political paradigm Sigh. And workplaces are socio-political contexts... I didn't find it very difficult to get past his hyperbole, and I frankly find it hard to believe that you did. It isn't hard to argue that monitoring channels that even just imply privacy, regardless of whether they take place in the workplace (or in academia, or at home) is a violation of personal rights - regardless of the fact that you arbitrarily draw the line at "recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street."
- dsacco 8y ago
- twunde 8y agoIf you've worked anywhere with more than 50 employees, your emails are available for an admin to look at. This is required for legal discovery whenever a company is sued. For companies in regulated industries (healthcare, finance, etc) they may actually be required to keep all your communications for a period of time so that they can track if you leaked sensitive data (PHI, PII, trade secrets, etc)
- ABCLAW 8y agoReading someone's workplace messages to resolve a workplace investigation into a workplace dispute between co-workers isn't totalitarian. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy on a corporate slack account.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoYou may be speaking legally in your final sentence but in natural language terms I'd say there is definitely an expectation of privacy in DMs to a named account; and it's not an unreasonable expectation. If one DMs "Alex Murdo" then the expectation would be that they alone would read it, or their nominated person. If one DMs "Graphic Design" department then obviously that doesn't stand. I'd expect contracts and such to contradict this natural expectation however.
- jamespo 8y agonice nirvana fallacy