Posts by BlueCollarCritic

Microsoft security tools questioned for treating employees as threats

Re: Bosses and 'mangle-ment'

A lot of that has to do with the size of the business and, as an anonymous user mentioned, if those in upper management worked their way into those positions or if they were hired into them often right out of some ivy league school. If they started from below then they usually have the respect of others and are not as arrogant as those hired directly into these positions. What kills me is that most businesses don't want unions anywhere near the place and yet they do things that foster the necessary environment for unions to start. I've worked at everything form a 1 man operation (I was the only staff) to an international company with 10's of thousands of employees and the best place I worked at was one where the owner knew everyone's name. He treated all with respect and didn't try to play cheapskate when it came to salary or bonuses. If we had a tough year he also didn't lay off a few just so he could keep his own salary or that of his executive staff. %99 of the employees that worked for him would have gone the extra mile and often did because they respected the man whop treated them with respect.

A great saying I read is that businesses seem to forget that for most of human history, employees survived without employers as most were effectively independent laborer or trades/craftsmen. Unless your business is a 1 person operation you can't exist without employees so it's really in the best interest of a business owner to treat their staff the way they want the staff to treat them and not as if they are potential thieves. If it weren't for how our system of governance has allowed crony Capitalism to replace the true free market, real Capitalism, these kinds of companies would have been replaced with better competitors. Since with enough $$ a large company can buy regulations and or legislation to protect them from competition they are allowed to grow in an inorganic way and the upper mgt can treat employees with disregard.

Re: Balancing act

HR (Human Resources) is NOT there for the employees but the employer. That doesn't mean HR won't be of assistance to an employee but only when it's in teh interest of the employer.

Re: Mmmmm...

Smart man. Once you cave to blackmail you're forever a victim of more of it.

In todays world I find it humorous that The Register would label as a coward someone wiling to speak this honestly about the problem. Is it a wonder they might want to be anonymous to avoid backlash from companies that engage in these kinds of unethical acts on their employees?

The only part the original commenter left out is how this kind of treatment of employees is what creates or leads to unions and from what I can tell in my lifetime working with a number of differently sized companies is that most don't want unions to get a foot hold and yet they do things like what this article discusses which help create the necessary environment for unions to start.

Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit

Re: And the interesting thing is...

That real-estate excuse is just an excuse. Most executives are insisting on RTO b/c they can't stand the idea that they can't at their leisure walk over and hover around and observe the employees to ensure they aren't spending even 1 second not working. Most executives who aren't self made (they didn't create the business and or grow it from nothing) have this concept that their being robbed by an employee if for any minute during teh work day they aren't doing what teh executive would consider working. It's confession via projection since most of those executives don't actually work most of the day. AGAIN this is NOT ALL just way too many.

I've worked in retail, Technology, Software for close to 4 decades and I've seen how these bad executive types behave. When I was an asst mgr at a men's clothing store one night one of teh keyholders told a part timer to go get some boxes of clothes and start hanging them; re-stocking. I told the part timer to go back to what they were doing. We had only 1 PT person covering teh floor b/c I was at dinner and the keyholder was as siting another group. After dinner the key holder asked me why I told teh Part timer to effectively go back to not working. I had to explain to him that the person was working; doing their job watching teh sales floor. Just because no one was there that didn't mean the person wasn't working, Too many executives have this same foolish idea bout work; that unless they see you moving then you must be robbing the company of money.

Too often executives are over paid member of wealthy/connected families who without those connections would never make it to an executive level. I don't care what a CEO is doing for their company, there should NOT be the huge pay gap there is between the executives in a company and everyone else. When a company succeeds it's rarely because of just what one person, the executive, has done and yet when teh execs get their bonuses and raises how often are the rest of the employees left out? If they are the business owner that's different because their $$ is at risk but for executives who don't own the company (and having a large shareholder stake isn't the same as owning it) aren't the owner, they shouldn't be getting rewarded when the rest of the employees are not also rewarded. It doesn't have to be the same amount but at least teh same percentages so if an exec get's a %50 raise then so should everyone else or at least most but certainly not just the CEO or even just teh executives should ever get bonuses while non-execs are left out.

Re: And the interesting thing is...

Well said!

Anyone else feel like executives today are not only still a part of the good ole boys club (the wealth elite families of various ethnic groups) but their even less intelligent then prior generations executives and make incredibly foolish decisions like discussed here with RTO plans,

Windows 8 ribbon entangles Microsoft

The New Micro$mooth Origami Interface (Its about Perception, not Usablity)

A lighthearted spoof/look at a seriously annoying issue… The new Micro$mooth Origami Interface replacing the user favorite Toolbar/Menubar:

TO: All Micro$mooth Employees

RE: New Micro$mooth Origami Interface

Its critical in this age of austerity and budget crunches that we at Micro$mooth give our users a reason for paying to upgrade Winders and what better way than to give the Good Old Menu/Toolbar interface a make-over! The new Winders interface will feature our revolutionary Origami interface. The OI as we call it, takes the most commonly used user actions (amongst our narrow testing group) and features them prominently (in Extra Large Font Type) in a super-sized Splash Screen that is sure to grab their attention by dominating no less than 1/8th of the users screen. It will be impossible for users to miss this revolutionary change.

It’s difficult, darn right near impossible in many cases, to convince management to pay for that next Winders Upgrade if the changes are not visible. Even if fixes and improvements are what the users are asking (even begging for in some case) it’s what we do superficially, that which is visible and easily seen, that we can change and help (visually) drive the perception of a major overhaul in the Winders OS thereby justifying the need to pay for that upgrade. The new Origami Interface is paving the way for these upgrades and our executive bonuses.

While there were extensive issues and many user complaints from all markets and user segments when we implemented the Origami interface in our 2007 Office upgrade we are positive that just as they did then the Marketing and Legal department, working together, will help us make the Winders 8 Origami Rollout a perceived success through the downplay, re-direct and all around squashing of all user complaints and providing the various periodicals and news outlets with charts and statistics showing a wide acceptance by all to the Origami.

In closing I’d like to remind all that it is key that you help us sell the world or Origami and we can’t do that if our own employees refuse to use the Origami interface themselves. However we also realize that the Origami lowers production far too much to simply ignore. To resolve this matter we are releasing an internal only version of Winders 8 that will feature an option to swap between the traditional Menu/Toolbar and the new Origami interface. While visitors are in the building all will be expected to switch to the Origami interface and do your work as best as you can.

Thank you for being a part of the team hear at Micro$mooth

Sincerely,

Shill Fates

President And CEO of Micro$mooth Hard Software

NOTE: This material is for internal Micro$mooth use and should not be distributed externally.

Fukushima's toxic legacy: Ignorance and fear

Even Chernobyl Was Nothing Like Chernobyl Was Like

Sorry Lewis but the standby lines of “Radiation is Good for you” and “Nothing to see here, move along please” just don’t work as well as they use. The problem is the slaves, err I mean serfs are starting to ask questions instead of simply returning to their zombie like state in front of the boob tube.

It’s not too late (although your very close to that point) to save this spin piece but you have to act fast and get out that digital eraser.

1) No Chernobyl refs – You don’t have to compare this to Chernobyl to make the spin sound good. Including Chernobyl with comments like “Chernobyl wasn’t even a Chernobyl” not only won’t take with all but the most diehard of government stooges but it just sounds propagandish and I’m talking Orwell’s 1984 propagandish. You know the whole “We’ve never been at war with East Eurasia… We’ve always been at war with East Eurasia “ contradicting line of propaganda just doesn’t work as well these days. Avoid this at all costs.

2) Subtle Sarcasm – Sarcasm is a great and fun way to poke fun at the slaves but you gotta be subtle about it or you could blow your cover. If you’re not well verse in subtle sarcasm then re-read this comment again and again until you are.

I’ll send some more tips your way later.

Take care!

HAIL GLOBAL GOVERNENCE!

X Prize offers cash for oil spill cleaners

The solution to the Oil Spill ALREADY EXISTS

The solution to cleaning up this mess has come in several forms already but the governement (the Feds namely Obama) do NOT WANT THE SPILL TO GO AWAY; not yet a least.

Several tankers/ships designed to celanup ocean oil spills have already made offers to clean this up only to be turned down by the US Federal Governement. This X Prize ocntest is a spin mechanism to distract the public and subtly put out the mesage that no cleanup solution exists curently and that thsi is why the governement has not fixed the spill yet.

Such BS.