Mike Hord wrote:
> Apart from the general PITA which is someone else's opinion of the
> content of a website (I've had a site containing information about
> improving the sustainability of your company blocked as "Occult"
> and a site selling optical equipment blocked as "Pornography", while
> the unquestionably vulgar website "Tshirthell.com" went through with
> no problems), the access times on websites has gone WAY up.
>
> Some days, access to even common and usually fast websites
> (Google, Wikipedia, Digikey) slows to a crawl- 30s to 2min for the
> page to be accessed.  It isn't a load time issue- the request is hung
> in the porno-filter server and, once it goes out, the page load very
> quickly.  Fairly often, the load will fail entirely and a 503 error will
> result- last Thursday, fully 60% of my page requests resulted in 503
> errors.
>
> I have discussed this with my boss, and I know many, many of my
> coworkers have discussed it as well.  It seems that HR would rather
> have us not working than risk that one of us look at adult content
> on work time.

My favorite story on the topic goes back to the days when I was working as a 
contractor for an IT company, installing cables and repeaters for a network 
backbone in a shopping mall in California. There were ten people on my team, 
with each person getting paid at least $250/day. We could not do our work 
for lack of D-rings (a 65-cent piece of hardware). Apparently, just prior to 
the project start, the company implemented a new policy, requiring all 
purchases to go through the purchasing department.

The result? We would report at 8 am each morning, sit around a chat for 
about two hours, and go back to the hotel. Five man-, hotel-, and equipment 
rental-days were wasted, at a cost I would estimate to be well in excess of 
$5000. Could have easily been avoided if the team lead had the authority to 
spend $300 at a local hardware store.

I have worked for companies that treat employees with suspicion and 
distrust, and I've encountered my fair share of paranoid rules and policies 
that accomplish nothing, except badly hurt the morale.

<shameless plug>
In our company, a great majority of employees have office keys and business 
credit cards, and are trusted to make the necessary purchases. All employees 
enjoy a great deal of autonomy in making the day-to-day decisions affecting 
their work. Sure, mistakes happen occasionally (someone gets careless and 
overspends/overpays for an item), but the damage is far outweighed by the 
high morale, enthusiasm, and the number of creative ideas that people come 
up with to overcome the obstacles they encounter. "Trust is the best 
motivator"

The girl who was constantly minimizing her browser window and later was 
found to have been browsing adult and employment sites, was fired after 
three weeks on the job. Today, she would not have lasted three days (this 
was also found to be a very important morale booster).
</plug>

My suggestion to Mike would be, try to get the decision makers to understand 
that their methods are bad for the company, and un-implement the policy. And 
if you find that your words fall on deaf ears, I'd say it is time to start 
looking for a company that does not treat its employees as lazy crooks.

Vitaliy 

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