Thursday, August 02, 2012

About Freaking Time

The push back against employer's thinking your personal life is their business is starting.

For once I believe government involvement is actually necessary.

What are all the HR ladies going to do with all the spare time now that they can't live vicariously through other strangers' lives?

7 comments:

Matt Wennerlund said...

Why are businesses even asking? I don't twitter or facebook, so it is a mystery to me, but is it because bad news about a business can spread farther and faster now, and there is a (relatively) permanent record?

sth_txs said...

I think employers that do this suck, but I don't like laws trying to protect me either since that opens more cans worms.

Anonymous said...

This is also a free speech thing. Companies use FB monitoring as a way to monitor 'socially unacceptable' viewpoints on the part of employees that could cost the company .0003% market share. What is socially unacceptable? Anything that might invite the hateful eye of the left's well-oiled dissent-silencing machine. That's why I back Chik-fil-A even though I back civil unions as well - a company that tells the world "here's our position, if you don't like it then tough." deserves some respect.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Back before FB had restrictions, an employer or co-worker could easily, casually find out how one spent their spare time. Ostensibly, employers trolled FB to find out if folks were using company time to tweet or FB.

When restrictions were finally enacted, employers got all jacked up beyond reason, which leads me to believe that Cappy is right: the HR folk were missing their fix.

Lib Arts Major Making $27k/yr At An Office Job said...

Two words:

Dummy Account

Doktor Bill said...

I'd STILL like to get my hands on the 1st imbecile who agreed to pee in a cup. What you do with your life off the clock is Not your employyanufa 229ers' business.

V10 said...

From the article:

"...some research has shown that 75 percent of employers require their human resources departments to look at online profiles before offering an applicant a job...

...heard of employers rejecting applicants who refused to grant access to their online profiles on the assumption that they must be hiding something..."

I don't use Twitter or Facebook (although I do have an account under my real name with just enough biographical data that old friends who already know me can find me).

A part of me wonders how much I'm slitting my own throat by not having a big shiny web footprint for prospective employers to review.

The other part says 'Fuck the fucking fuckers', since I've long since sworn off looking for work at any place large enough to have a corporate HR department.