Recession Pushes More Workers To Steal Data 280
An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. "Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it's illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn't stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled 'the global recession and its effect on work ethics,' carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer."
No $10 million, no deal (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless I make enough money to retire debt free, no deal.
Most people will get caught and lose their jobs for tiny amounts of money and poor future job prospects
Work ethics is a two way street (Score:1, Interesting)
Once your employer displays their intentions to sacrifice you for a fistful of dollars, you may feel that sacrificing their interest is also an option.
If the market is an ideal system, regulated by pure greed, then profit = good. Corporations have no morals, just greed.
In such an environment, what's wrong with an employee to seek the most profit from the employing corporation? As long as the employee turns positive cashflow post fines and prosecution fees everything should be fine. Even if the corporation goes bankrupt as a result; as long as the perpetrator's balance sheet is OK, collateral damage does not matter.
Right?
Re:I owe my employer absolutely nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would anyone want to risk hiring someone who demonstrates that they're crooked?
I won't even name my previous employer until the NDA has expired. As for passwords, etc., I do my best to forget them the minute I walk out, after handing them over. I don't even want to be tempted, and it's a small world. It's nice to be called back a year later because they know that, no matter whether you left on good or bad terms, you can still be trusted.
"If you're going to steal for me, what's to stop you from stealing from me?"
"If you're going to lie for me, what's to stop you from lying to me?"
"If you're going to screw someone else over, why should I trust you?"
"Would you do it for a million bucks? Yes? How about a dollar? What do you mean, 'What kind of a person do you think I am?' We already established that with your first answer!"
Trust is easy to lose - and once gone, you can end up like Kurt Greenbaum [kurtgreenb...apussy.com] the "social media director" who is now a pariah because he violated people's trust by revealing a posters' identity and then gloating about it in his column. Don't leave mad - just leave. Life is too short.
Re:Survey was of white-collar crooks (Score:5, Interesting)
And specifically, if they're talking about business folks, as opposed to the IT guys, for example, then "stealing information" may include things like taking your client rolodex with you. While this is still ethically questionable, I don't think it's illegal. If it is, it at least has tacit approval by the entire industry with how pervasive it is.
Survival (Score:3, Interesting)
Company's that don't treat their employees like valued assets will discover it is the very foundation of their business which will turn on them when they need them most. The old-boys-club (or woman's club nowadays) can fall to ruin under the pressure of a survivalist-economy just as quickly as they can layoff a $30k worker in HR rather than cut $100k+ executive pay or bonuses by 1% in order to help keep that worker and their company strong.
No loyalty or sense of community = no loyalty or care of the communities well being.
Re:I'm gonna be rich! (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it doesn't. I was called in to do some consulting for a few months at one place, and one of the sales reps approached me about making an app for him; he had started up a business, had his customer lists, prices, etc., and was skimming customers for his new business while still employed at his current location.
Even if he had already quit, it's still illegal. Customer and price lists are the employers' proprietary information.
I informed the ownership, and gave testimony during discovery with lawyers for both sides present. If I hadn't informed them, there would have been questions asked about what I knew and when, since I had access to everything (a lot more than the dickhead did). I don't need the grief, and neither should you. Act like a professional.
Moral of the story - even a dog knows better than to bite the hand that feeds it.
Re:How convenient (Score:3, Interesting)
In this way, the same effects as regions and LPARs and mainframe access rights are re-achieved in the modern age with virtual desktops and VPN.
A couple of jobs ago, one of the tasks was a monthly data update to a tool our users had, basicly download a certain file from the mainframe and do some tweaks before importing it into a GUI front-end.
The first time I did it without help (i.e. logged into my own account), the next day I got a phone call asking why the hell I was looking at such-and-such business data, as an IT guy you have no need for that. Turns out my boss didn't sign the right form or something, got him on the phone and all was resolved.
I guess my point is that this level of scrutiny has been around for decades, at least in some shops.
Re:Damn right... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Are you going to pay them back the money they gave you in exchange for creating it?
2. Are you that poor a developer that a year later you can't think of a better way to implement something, that doesn't involve misappropriated the code that belongs to them, because they PAID for it?
3. Are you that poor a developer that you're basically a one-trick pony, and can't work on anything other than that one product?
4. Do you have the guts to put your name on it here and now?
Your mother would be ashamed of you.
Re:The New Ethics in America (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a quick point:
Sure, most* have to make a profit long-term in order to exist, but this sounds dangerously similar to "they have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder profits" - which is the basest of lies, because like any big lie, it's been told so many times that people actually believe it.
Of course, when challenged, they can't find the appropriate statute (there is none) so they just go around waving their hands ...
* (there are plenty of corporations whose mandate is definitely not to make a profit. Some are philanthropic in nature, some are purposefully tax shelters, some are NGOs, some are professional corporations charged with overseeing their members to make sure they adhere to standards, etc.)
Re:The New Ethics in America (Score:2, Interesting)
All kinds of businesses do shady employment practices.
My wife works for "one of the better paying" manufacturers in this small town. This plant was spared when they closed a plant in another city and they ended up taking on some of that closed plant's work.
They have been on and off mandatory overtime for the past few months. It is odd since only a few of the lines have enough work (parts to complete orders) available to keep them busy. So far it has been an extra hour per day and will vary between the just the lines with a backlog of work to the whole plant.
My wife told me yesterday that the are now required to come in for 5 hours on the first two Saturdays of December. There is no consideration of previous plans made by employees and this can not be excused. This seems like a gross abuse of manager power and I am not aware of any state or federal laws that forbid it. However, common sense would tell you that this would hurt employee morale since stressing people out with overwork and taking away their days off during the Holidays and Flu season will result in less productivity since more will be sick and come back to work still sick and contagious. Also, when employee morale drops, employees do two things-- 1) quit or 2) if quitting is not an option, they become anti-productive by working slower and making more mistakes which creates more scrap loss and bad product being shipped.
This manager is a douche-bag. He openly refers to the employees as "bodies" and cares more about attendance than productivity. I don't know what he is trying to achieve by these actions. However, my wife is planning to quit when she goes on maternity leave. In the meantime, she is planting the seeds of employee disgruntlement by opening the eyes of the sheeple types to realize how bad the management treats them.
I don't like what strong unions can do to hurt a company but I also dislike what the lack of laws for protecting employee rights can cause in the other extreme such as this.