Amputated Communication Lines

[bethlakshmi]

My work just cut off access to Gmail, LiveJournal, Tribe and several of the game sites that I occasionally vistited. While I cannot disagree that none of these domains related to work - they where things I accessed in my downtime from work. Particularly with Gmail and LJ - it was a way of keeping in contact with kith and kin throughout the day on an hourly basis.

I'm incredibly pissed off, and have been unable to express my pissiness having no lines of communication available to me. This is incredibly obnoxious. And it's part of a creeping tide of limitations on employee behavior that is growing and growing.

I'm pretty much done with this bullshit.

I had been posting under a filter to a limited set of friends that I had been doing a "Zen job search". I wasn't sure that I wanted to move, I liked my company OK, I just wanted to test the waters.

Now I'm sure. This is it. I'm moving on.

I understand the need to control attacks on a network. Particularly for a network that can handle sensitive data flows (although we have entirely offline networks for that). But it's getting ridiculous.

And it points out that it's more important to my company to Absolutely Control Everything Employees Do - and less about letting people have the flexibility to do go work and lead pleasant lives. I don't stop thinking about work problems when I go home, and I don't expect to be cut off from my major communication mechanisms when I'm at work.

In fact, before they cut off all ways to access work from home, I used to DO work at home, just like I did home at work. That's been over for months, due to other insane and ineffective virtual lan policies.

Ah well... time to get over it. I did a nice second interview at Cigital today. It's still a big change from what I'm used to, but I'm interested, and I'm beginning to think I need a big change.

Practical thought: If you need to contact me on short notice, try my cell phone number. I'll be trying to be more diligent about keeping it charged and nearby.

I could change to another email service - I've thought about that... but the thing is - eventually they'll lock everything out. Switching email doesn't change anything, it just delays the inevitable.

Comments

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The place I've been interviewing is very small (by my standards) - ~100 people. That's fairly wierd and risky for me, as I've generally been a very conservative person in my job searching.

But since they don't even have a physical office for the Boston group - the fear of network censoring is non-existant. I'm still trying to figure out if they have The Big Clue. I had a manager who had it, and I'm trying to hunt her down and see where she is these days.

I was raised to be an engineer in a decent company - my parents always said - if you're paid a salary, you're paid a salary to do a job. They shouldn't care how it gets done, if it's done within legal and quality standards. If you finish it in half the time and take a long lunch - fine. If it takes you double the time and you work the weekend - also fine. You do a job, not a set of hours.

I wish companies would realize that the more draconian they get, the more tempting it is to goof off. And people don't need computers to do it.

All that taking away my computer rights has done is make me want to go home exactly when my hours are done. There will be no more "oh! you're hear late playing with your personal mail? Great! I have a question on..." opportunities for my coworkers.

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

Can I come work with you???

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

That was to gold..err..drat forgot the name again, the post above Lakshmi's comment. I like that snow policy

[aminahfiddler.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you. I work for a company that filters everything. It drives me insane. We've worked on ways to get around it. By the way, Our company blocks http://www.gmail.com but not https://mail.gmail.com you may want to try that.

Good luck with the the job search. I've decided I can't yet because we have such a good insurance policy. It both covers my fertility treatments and we have a domestic partner policy (steve can get insurance if we're not married). Both are important to me so it's worth staying on the job for now.

[multigeek.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you don't want to work for EMC. We just switched web filtering software, and the new software blocks livejournal and youtube for "adult content."

Funny, EMC offered a time management course where they told us that you don't have a separate work life and home life. Seems that management doesn't agree.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

You Tube has been blocked here pretty much since I first heard about it. I think I might have hit it once from work when it wasn't blocked. The LiveJournal is new - but I could even deal with that.

It's the web email that kills me.

And I've taken several management courses that say the same thing as your time management course. And even a security course that said "if you remove games and other toys from your employees machines they will both (a) spend more time retrieving and downloading new toys than they did playing with the old ones, (b) manage to find new toys that introduce viruses, spyware other crap you don't want on their network. So... just let them have the safe toys and leave them alone"

Grah.

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

Wowwww that's icky.

You know what..policies like that are just why I got my little gizmo..the Sidekick. My email in my pocket, and ain't no ones business but mine.
And all that other stuff. Muhahahaha. Only its broken and I'm in withdrawl. gack.

Of course where I am now we are only 23 people, we don't filter or lock things down, and if we did I'd probably be the one reviewing it. But still. You never know. And GM tracked everything. Of course there I coudln't have even brought the darn phone in the building because of the camera, which I never wanted anyway.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

It's no fix for the environmental problem, but in the mean time if you're feeling subversive you can route all your traffic to those domains through a port-forwarding external SSH server (or a standard proxy server, but that's more annoying). I assume that they still allow outgoing SSH connections, at least.

Otherwise, good luck in the hunt.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Ah yes... the evil bastards got SSH a year or year and a half ago. Assholes. :(

I don't suppose your company needs an expensive security architect with the least experience in Agile Processes and Extreme Programming humanely imaginable. ;P

We did discover we can route static pages, and a few dynamic pages through a translation program... set it for Weird Language to English, and since no Wierd Language is on the page, you just get the page, verbatim... Sneaky, sneaky.

[jducoeur]

I don't suppose your company needs an expensive security architect with the least experience in Agile Processes and Extreme Programming humanely imaginable.

Not precisely, no. But we *are* looking for a senior Engineer. (Technically, we're looking for someone at the "Principal Software Engineer" level.) I'm not sure whether it matches your resume, but if you'd like, I can dig out the posting. But do bear in mind that we are *tiny* by your standards...

A sign

[(Anonymous)]

Clearly this is a sign that you should find a 2-year contract in Wellington and come and hang with us! Clearly! A sign!

Because I am sure you would want to attend http://www.worldofwearableart.com/

:)

And we would love to hang out with you, too!

Stephen in NZ

Re: A sign

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

I do! I do!

OK... well, I would if I could bring my friends and family with me.
Otherwise I'd miss them as much as I miss you guys.

Maybe I should just quit in January, go to NZ for 6 months and look for a job after. :)