Does anyone have an opinion

W

Wayne-I-M

Just interested if anyne has an opinion

In the post (a few lines down) called
Are they in front of their compoters

I think the title says it all

It is a simple thing to do (to aswer the queston with the code) but I
answered that I didn't think this was a good use of access.

Has anyone refused to work on a programme that they thought would be put to
some use that they did not agree with ? and if so would you be prepared to
ive some details

You can leave your name off the post if you want I would just like see if
there was a consensus
 
K

Klatuu

I have done exactly that.
I was once approached by a used auto dealership who wanted a way to make a
car disapear from inventory without affecting the accounting transactions so
he could sell a car for cash, pocket the money without putting it in has
bank, and avoid the taxes.
I refused. It is dishonest and in this case, illegal.
There are other things I would not work on even if they were legal. I will
do no work that violates my moral principals.
 
W

Wayne-I-M

I don't know what it's like for the "good ole boys" of texas but in the UK -
call centres are now starting to be the like the old 18th century seat shops.
You can get your wages stopped if you don't answer # number of calls per
hour - and this can be checked by the telephone log. I could simply put
something like that on all the front ends in our system and the managers of
each office could "coach" the person involved if they did not ..... well you
get it. But --- how ling before the system was used to abck up the stopping
of wages for spending too long at the toilet or 2 mins over the lunch break
etc etc
 
D

Daniel Pineault

At the end of the day, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
I, like you, will not work on certain projects based on my moral values.
This is a personal choice. I think that this also goes towards building your
reputation. I think you are perfectly in your right to refuse to do any work
at any time. It's your business, therefore it should be a reflection of your
person.

I too agree with your questioning the reason for doing what they requested.
Database are great tools... but I draw the line at tracking users as they are
asking and it smell exactly like a call center operation or something
similar, which I would not support either.

That said, the sad reality however, is that there will always be someone who
will do what you refuse. As they say money talks and ....
 
K

Klatuu

The rules there are not much different than here, then.
Although I find that sort of oversight invasive, I don't know that I would
refuse work to monitor performance. I would have to approach it from the
standpoint of my determination of the character of the employer.

The inverse of that is the employer is paying employees to provide a service
and the level and quality of service he expects. Therefore, those not
performing to expectations don't qualify to keep the job.

But, in all our lives we have good and bad days. How an employer views that
fact is important to me. If a normally good employee under performs for a
short time because of external pressure in his life, the employer should be
understanding; but, a consistent underperformer deserves less consideration.

Reminds me of my father who resigned his job rather than fire an employee.
The employee had been with the company for many years and had always been an
outstanding performer. The company (idiots) decided that at each branch, the
lowest performing employee each quater would be fired. This long time
employee had a bad quater (it was in sales), and my father was told to fire
him. He refused, they demanded, he resigned.

So, the point is, that used judiciously, the concept is valid. Used
maliciously, it is evil. But, to what in life does that not apply?
 
W

Wayne-I-M

Information will "always" be abused by "some" people. There was a case (last
week) of my local council using the anti-terrorism laws (brought in after
911) to spy on a woman they thought was putting too much rubbish in her
dushbin.

Nothing to do with access but - it shows that in the wrong hands information
(and in this case regulations) can be used for a creep (that's being used not
for the purpose for which it was 1st orginated

I think the "are they sitting at their computers" - whilst not what pietro
wanted - could if left running long enough, be seen as a good source of
information for other "stuff"
 
G

George

My younger sister is a training supervisor in just such a call center, where
every aspect of every call is timed from response to wrap time. In HER
opinion, and this is her privately expressed opinion and not necessarily
that of the organization, such tactics are quite counterproductive. People
learn to game the system if they are so inclined. Or they become basket
cases if they are inclined to try to meet all the standards. Or they leave
to find other opportunities where the level of supervision is less intense,
shall we say. The good ones, in other words, don't tolerate it for long.

Plus, she says that organizations are actually measuring the wrong thing
when they focus on the clock. Issues like, did the rep actually address the
customer's question, or did they give out a canned response in order to wrap
a call and get on to the next one? In other words, does the customer service
center actually deliver customer service? To make a rather extreme example,
if you tell CSRs they have to handle 20 calls an hour, then anyone who
actually answers 20 calls in an hour is going to be avaluated as a good CSR,
even if they manage to insult 18 of the callers and hang up on the other
two. When those 20 customers decide to go to a different service provider,
no one tracks THAT bit of information back to the CSR who's hitting his
hourly call quota and getting praised for it.

To address the more general question of passing up opportunities, I'd have
to say that I would draw the line at anything illegal or even unethical. I
guess I've been lucky in that I've never had to wrestle with that particular
decision so far.
 
B

Bonnie

I like that answer George. Makes sense. I have some girls that do data
entry for me and I give them incentive bonus if they key over a certain
amount. They are always going to make their minimum but if they can make
pretty good money if they are a little more organized. We've worked together
for years. I don't have to "coach" anyone. Maybe they could reward results
rather than being big brother. Everyone wins when we work as a team.

Now if I could just get some more work!

Bonnie
http://www.dataplus-svc.com

George said:
My younger sister is a training supervisor in just such a call center, where
every aspect of every call is timed from response to wrap time. In HER
opinion, and this is her privately expressed opinion and not necessarily
that of the organization, such tactics are quite counterproductive. People
learn to game the system if they are so inclined. Or they become basket
cases if they are inclined to try to meet all the standards. Or they leave
to find other opportunities where the level of supervision is less intense,
shall we say. The good ones, in other words, don't tolerate it for long.

Plus, she says that organizations are actually measuring the wrong thing
when they focus on the clock. Issues like, did the rep actually address the
customer's question, or did they give out a canned response in order to wrap
a call and get on to the next one? In other words, does the customer service
center actually deliver customer service? To make a rather extreme example,
if you tell CSRs they have to handle 20 calls an hour, then anyone who
actually answers 20 calls in an hour is going to be avaluated as a good CSR,
even if they manage to insult 18 of the callers and hang up on the other
two. When those 20 customers decide to go to a different service provider,
no one tracks THAT bit of information back to the CSR who's hitting his
hourly call quota and getting praised for it.

To address the more general question of passing up opportunities, I'd have
to say that I would draw the line at anything illegal or even unethical. I
guess I've been lucky in that I've never had to wrestle with that particular
decision so far.
Click to expand...
 
J

James A. Fortune

Wayne-I-M said:
Just interested if anyne has an opinion

In the post (a few lines down) called
Are they in front of their compoters

I think the title says it all

It is a simple thing to do (to aswer the queston with the code) but I
answered that I didn't think this was a good use of access.

Has anyone refused to work on a programme that they thought would be put to
some use that they did not agree with ? and if so would you be prepared to
ive some details

You can leave your name off the post if you want I would just like see if
there was a consensus
Click to expand...

In the 80's I was working for an architectural engineering company in
Boston that also has a branch in London. I met and dated a lady doctor
from England who was doing her internship at Massachusetts General
Hospital. When she went back to England we would take turns traveling
to each other's country for vacations. I had bachelor's degrees in
Applied Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering from an ABET accredited
school and excellent work experience. I also nearly went into Systems
Engineering before settling on the ME degree and had enough Systems
Engineering courses to do that instead. I concentrated on the Fluid and
Thermal side of Mechanical Engineering because of its extra challenges
and was even in the Fluids Group of the company I worked for.

Because of their location in England and their special emphasis on
Fluids, I decided to skip the Master's degree and apply for the Ph.D.
program in Engineering at Cambridge U. Cambridge U. liked my
qualifications, but insisted that I could not claim that I had been
accepted there for any personal purposes. They basically hinted that if
I could come up with the money for nine trimesters, in advance (about
$66,000 at the time -- much cheaper than today), that I could get
started in the Ph. D. program doing Lagrangian analysis for the purpose
of optimizing turbine engine performance. BTW, a particularly effective
prod is that if it is decided that a student didn't do well enough in a
particular trimester, that trimester doesn't count and another $7000 or
so needs to be shelled out for another one. I decided to apply for an
NSF scholarship. In spite of GRE scores in the top 5 percentile in
English, Mathematics and Advanced Engineering of the Harvard-MIT pool
where I took the test, my guess is that the NSF rightly concluded that
their money would be better spent sending someone to graduate school in
the U.S. In my interview at Cambridge U., I explained the situation and
they were kind enough to offer me a way to get my Ph.D. there. The deal
was that I could work on a secret British government project. I would
do all the normal Ph. D. work, but simply would not be able to publish
my Ph. D. thesis. Upon completion I would have a normal Ph. D. degree
from Cambridge but the thesis would be classified. I am still grateful
that they gave me that opportunity, but if I ever do a Ph. D. thesis I
want as many people as possible to benefit from the results of the
research. They weren't asking for anything unethical but I knew it was
not for me, at least like that.

Side note: Later in Boston I talked to M.I.T. about the possibility of
doing a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering there (I could at
least afford that). I'll try to quote what they said. "If you do a
Master's degree here, you gain from us and then leave. For us to be
able to get a good return on your education we'd want you to do both a
Master's degree and a Ph. D. degree so that we gain as much in return."
Enough of my friends had gone to M.I.T. to know that five years in a
pressure cooker environment like that would be risky at best.
Eventually, I went back to Oakland U. for a Master's degree in
Mechanical Engineering. I got straight A's so I felt that that wouldn't
hinder me getting into another university if I decided to do so later.
I also decided that becoming a software developer would not hinder me
should I one day decide to go back into engineering.

I almost forgot. In the 80's Raytheon was talking to be about putting
me in charge of the X Missile system. I guess I looked more responsible
than I look today :). They said my mathematical ability would be great
for survivability studies and for retargeting missiles to kill the
maximum number of people. I believe that such work was very important
at the time in order to make the possibility of nuclear exchange as
unappealing as possible, but I think they quickly sensed that it would
make me uncomfortable. My life has been interesting at times. The
events outlined above are not even the most interesting things that have
happened to me.

James A. Fortune
[email protected]
 
W

Wayne-I-M

I would think that you looked into the life of many people - not just in this
forum but in general - you would find out what an interest life they have had
- and were still having.

James, your statement at the end
My life has been interesting at times. The
events outlined above are not even the most interesting
things that have happened to me.
Click to expand...
Make me think you have a greate story to tell. If this was "Newsgroup for
interesting life stories" I would think you get an MVP - not sure sure if
thats how it works :)
 
D

david

That is a common approach in call centres too. A three level system is
common: a base rate for turning up, a higher rate for putting in some
effort (reaching a minimum number of calls), you get fired for not making
any calls at all. That's not pressure: that is just communication between
staff and management.

Incentives are often (normally) handled by social pressure (perhaps
just posting the daily totals for each shift) rather than by carrot and
stick.
Cold Call sales positions need a lot of social pressure + carrot + stick,
debt collection not very much.

Incoming calls can be just as bad as outgoing calls. It is sometimes
very difficult to get reasonable performance measures, but often very
easy to get unreasonable performance measures (how many people
are in the queue?)

In the industry, it is well known that you can overcook your staff. It is
not neccessary to put a stop watch on them to do that: there are many
other ways available. Predictive dialling is another.

Of course, I've used a timer off and on for years, because I've done
contracting. Some lawyers do the same. It isn't always the worker
who is being measured.

(david)


Bonnie said:
I like that answer George. Makes sense. I have some girls that do data
entry for me and I give them incentive bonus if they key over a certain
amount. They are always going to make their minimum but if they can make
pretty good money if they are a little more organized. We've worked
together
for years. I don't have to "coach" anyone. Maybe they could reward
results
rather than being big brother. Everyone wins when we work as a team.

Now if I could just get some more work!

Bonnie
http://www.dataplus-svc.com
Click to expand...
 
J

James A. Fortune

Wayne-I-M said:
I would think that you looked into the life of many people - not just in this
forum but in general - you would find out what an interest life they have had
- and were still having.
Click to expand...

I am sure that nearly everyone has seen something remarkable. I do not
presume that the things I've seen are as rare or as important as what
some others have seen. I simply have an intuition that some of the
things I've seen are a few more standard deviations away from the norm
than that seen by most, almost enough to justify one meaning of my name.

James A. Fortune
[email protected]
 
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