Employees Would Steal Data When Leaving a Job 457
An anonymous reader writes "Employees openly admit they would take company data, including customer data and product plans, when leaving a job. In response to a recent survey, 49% of US workers and 52% of British workers admitted they would take some form of company property with them when leaving a position: 29% (US) and 23% (UK) would take customer data, including contact information; 23% (US) and 22% (UK) would take electronic files; 15% (US) and 17% (UK) would take product information, including designs and plans; and 13% (US) and 22% (UK) would take small office supplies."
Well the companies take your soul.... (Score:1, Insightful)
... we are just getting even.
Would they use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious, interesting follow-up question is, how many of them would sell, share, or otherwise exploit that data? Would they take measures to protect it, or simply misplace it? I figure at least some of that's got to be people who don't see the point in deleting that sly backup they made so they could work on their reports at home, or whatever, and those are people who don't represent a threat to company security. "Stealing" data itself causes the company no harm. Using the customer list to set up one's own business, losing that data on the bus, or selling on some trade secrets, is where the concern lies.
'Steal' (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you steal data if you copied it? Goes back to the whole MPAA thing with music.
I think it's all about what you can use in the future. If I do a number of excel sheets which are used for layout optimization, and take copies for reference later, is that wrong? How about my outlook contacts which might come in handy later? I think if it's purely business between you and the company, then keep it clean (with the exceptions I used above). If it's ugly, still keep it clean as possible, but don't do them any favors.
No one should be surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have hoped that people were more honest and trustworthy than that:(
Well, at least they were honest with the survey taker...
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:5, Insightful)
So working for a company that treats you like shit, cuts your pay, bullies you to work long hours, and then fires you is fine, but walking with a couple of boxes of pens is sacrilege?
I don't put myself in that sort of position: I don't usually have much trouble finding work, so I walk before I get stressed to that point. But I can certainly understand why a basically honest person might feel entitled to rip off a dishonest employer.
Honesty is a two way street.
In other news (Score:4, Insightful)
Bosses admit that they expect employees to do more work for the same amount of pay.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:3, Insightful)
That's actually pretty saddening. I would have hoped that people were more honest and trustworthy than that:(
Makes sense to me. Companies generally don't show any loyalty to their employees[0], so obviously employees are going to start behaving the same way.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap, etc, etc. These organisations have no-one to blame but themselves.
[0] The only exception to this I've seen in the last ~10 years is small, family run businesses where the employee knows the family socially.
Fruit of our loins. (Score:1, Insightful)
"Employees openly admit they would take company data, including customer data and product plans, when leaving a job. In response to a recent survey, 49% of US workers and 52% of British workers admitted they would take some form of company property with them when leaving a position: 29% (US) and 23% (UK) would take customer data, including contact information; 23% (US) and 22% (UK) would take electronic files; 15% (US) and 17% (UK) would take product information, including designs and plans; and 13% (US) and 22% (UK) would take small office supplies."
I wonder if this is the children of the digital generation that sees nothing wrong with illegal copyright infringement? Glad to see they grew up and became trustworthy adults.
Re:Stealing company supplies? (Score:3, Insightful)
At my severance interview, the boss told me that the really good pens were on the top shelf.
And when Joseph's brothers left Egypt, he planted a goblet in one of Benjamin's sacks. Make sure you're not accidentally taking anything if you don't want a psycho higher-up to stir up trouble should they find out.
Re:So. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, it mentions 'contacts'. Now, if you are a salesman AND the company introduced you to those contacts, then that would be company product. But if you are a computer programmer, copying your contacts is NOT stealing from the company. Furthermore, the courts have also ruled that even if you ARE a salesman, that taking contacts with you that you developed without aid from your company is again, NOT stealing (this is despite the stock brokerage firms repeatedly trying to ignore this law.)
These kind of stories are kind of like the shmucks that complain about IT people using their work PC, during work hours, to check their email. Then they want you to check answer your work emails at home via blackberry, even after working hours.
You need to take this kind of crap with boulder of skepticism
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So. (Score:2, Insightful)
That depends. Taking data is not the same as stealing it.
A lot depends upon the intellectual property clauses in the contract (often restrictive), but sometimes the IP is shared by the company and the individual. What if you work in research and the project was funded by a federal grant? That could very well be public information. What's better: letting your x-staff have a few minutes with a thumb drive and intimate knowledge of the directory information or dealing with the headache of freedom of information requests (which will have to go through your legal department and billed internally, etc...) when the guy sets up as a professor at some university and wants to publish the results or write the next grant (with research data paid for by the public).
What if the data is entirely private? The x-staff member may still have a legal and vested interest in taking and or protecting it. For example: to ensure a patent is filed on the IP (which would be owned by the company more than likely) to make sure he gets his fair share of the royalty checks down the road (again depends on contract). (Or to be able to prove that the x-employee was involved with the project if the company later decides to patent without passing on royalties. Although taking data for such reasons will also have a lot to do with the IP clauses in the contract.
Revoke privileges instantly and you may find yourself with a freedom of information act or a subpoena real quick. A company shouldn't play hard ball unless it's willing to have it hit back. There should be respect all around; for the person who gave a certain portion of his life for the company and for the company who provided for a persons livelihood.
Breaking news! Heads are attached! (Score:3, Insightful)
How could you leave a company and not take a lot of the data with you? ???
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, "Yes, officer, there are Jews hiding in the basement."
Also, contrary to popular opinion, there's nothing inherently dishonest about taking something which "belongs to someone else", tedious capitalist philosophers and their attempt to turn economics into physics notwithstanding. You might start getting dishonest when you swindle stuff from the company by lying, or if you start preaching about how you've never taken anything from anyone without paying. But announcing, "I'd take office supplies from my company if I was fired" and actually doing so is honest.
Moreover, refusing to answer the question, "Did you steal stuff?" is not dishonest. Replying "no" to a question where lack of answer will be taken as a "yes" (i.e. no respect for silence) can be argued as not dishonest.
Those who argue with appeals to emotion use words like "honest" to mean "abides by the principles I preach". That's not a reasonable definition.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:5, Insightful)
Because stealing is wrong?
Re:So. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I care about my work. If I give 2 weeks notice them I'm available for 2 weeks to help them get their shit together so that someone else can take care of what I was doing and I can wrap up any lose ends. If the treatment though is basically to lock me out of everything though, then I'm not even going to bother.
What's the sense in it anyways? If you do that dance every time someone decided to leave then anyone who actually wants to sneak out information is going to do it the day BEFORE they turn in their 2 week notice anyways.
Re:Contacts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So. (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. I've spent periods of a couple weeks developing some algorithm or in a seldom-used programming language and taking a quick look at my old code helps jog the memory and save lots of time. I've done this several times- taking bits of code and other developed knowledge from an employer I've left, including some very places which some consider "security-minded".
But here's the difference between this and the actual topic in TFA.
The intention is to maintain my gained knowledge, not to harm the employer, or in other terms it's an academic act rather than an economic one. I would never take a complete software package, certainly not to go and sell it to a competitor, but also so that I couldn't accidentally cause a harmful release proprietary information.
While technically this is currently defined by legal systems as "stealing", it's an "IP" issue. And here on /. we know how this is apples to "stealing from employer"'s oranges.
Re:So. (Score:4, Insightful)
Work 52 weeks, leave on the last day without giving any notice. Receive 52 weeks of pay.
Option B:
Work 50 weeks, give 2 weeks notice, then work 2 more weeks. Still receive 52 weeks of pay.
Since the total pay is exactly the same whether you give the two weeks notice courtesy or not, the company isn't extending any sort of courtesy. In fact, it's illegal for them not to pay you for the last two weeks.
Re:So. (Score:5, Insightful)
*laugh* My last job basically gave me 6 weeks until my last day, and a rather generous severance package, for which I was grateful. They did, however, get rid of my co-workers almost immediately and left me in a caretaker position to wind down operations of the product. (The ones who were gone right away got essentially the same package as me, but had no further obligations.)
The problem was, as we got closer to the date I was to be done, they were having some issues related to some new business -- a pretty big dollar customer and some deficiencies in the software. The sales people were getting increasingly shrill that we needed to implement certain features which they sold (but didn't exist) or we'd lose the business. There was no way in hell to implement the features in the time line with the remaining resources.
Eventually, I had to tell them that I care 50% less with each passing day, and if this business was so damned critical, why had they let go of the entire development team?
At some point, it becomes something of an abuse of my good will to tell me how vital the product is to quarterly revenues while at the same time telling me they don't need me to do it any more. I don't care if the salesmen/executives aren't getting their bonus any more, that's not my problem.
Sometimes, companies just develop a very screwed up sense of what they should be expecting from the employees they're in the middle of laying off.
Re:So. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm confused. They can't accuse you of literally walking out with the data, but they can, may, and probably should accuse you of figuratively walking out with the data.
Re:Please don't do this....it won't end well for y (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would you want to discourage your employees from giving notice? Unless the guy right out states that he intends to slack off, as an employer it's only to your advantage to get an early heads-up that you will need to hire a replacement.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:5, Insightful)
Your morals =! other's morals. I'm sure folks out there who work 80 hours a week for months on end and then get shitcanned see it a tad bit differently (although I'm not defending stealing in any form, just the perspective)
Re:Please don't do this....it won't end well for y (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post is a glowing example as to why you never give two weeks notice. Simply wait until Friday at 4:30pm and let your employer know this will be your last day, and start your next gig on Monday.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:4, Insightful)
Because stealing is wrong?
So is most of the shit they pull on their employees but as they keep reminding us "It's just business." Morality doesn't come in to it.
Re:So. (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. The moment they mentioned contacts, that invalidated their entire study because it defined as illegal something that quite often is not illegal.
As for "electronic files", again, a lot of employers allow employees to keep their own electronic files on work machines, so it's not necessarily stealing anything. Ditto for email messages, so the employee's attitude could easily be "take everything and delete the work-related stuff later". Which, of course, turns into "never", but that's not because they care about the work stuff, but rather because they realize they haven't looked for any personal email in that mailbox in ten years.
Small office supplies? Well, it's not like the employer is going to put those pens back in the stock room anyway, since they're half empty. And more to the point, they've used their own pens for work, so why not use work's pens for home, too. This may well fall into the category of justifiable, if not strictly legal. And if people are being honest, they have at least a few pens and paper clips from work at home anyway, just from having forgotten that the pens were clipped to their shirts, from having brought paperwork home to work on, etc. So my guess is that this number is low, not because they were raiding the supply closet one last time, but because it would take too much effort to sort out whose pens belong to whom.
So you're left with only one that matters: "product information". Given that the legality of most of the other questions depends on where you are and on how the question was worded, I have little faith in that one, either. Just saying.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:1, Insightful)
That's so fucking naive. Where have you been in the last decade, under a rock?
You can't trust companies at ALL. Period. Not as an employee, not as an investor, nor as a consumer.
Wake the fuck up.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. If the environment you live in is devoid of morals, then you can't fault someone who has no control over the environment for not bothering to act morally.
As the other poster said, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander". If companies want moral behavior from employees, they need to act moral themselves. They don't do that any more, so they have no right to expect moral behavior. Fuck 'em.
If the society is collapsing due to immorality, then the people at the top of society only have themselves to blame.
Re: honesty a 2 way street (Score:1, Insightful)
Most people I know don't start "stealing" from their companies unless they feel they are being wronged in someway. Generally this is due to excessive forced overtime (the company "stealing" the employee's time), making up for expenses they didn't feel they should have to pay out of pocket (IE for office supplies not on the approved list, having to go to a meeting or a convention far from the office without being reimbursed for the extra travel cost), etc.
And by stealing, there are many ways to steal- expensing cabs when you are heading home instead of to a client, ordering dinner before the 9:00 time or whatever company policy says you can, walking out with a pen in your pocket or jotting down a personal note is in the strictest sense, "stealing."
I don't know anyone who has admitted to taking something tangible of significant value for their own personal use- IE a computer/laptop, phone, office furniture or equipment, though I am sure it happens. Intellectual property theft I feel is quite overblown. I don't really know of any firms where you can take any non-trivial amount of code from company A and install it and run it at company B without taking so much time to adapt it to their systems that they probably could have written it from the ground up to begin with.
Re:So. (Score:5, Insightful)
True story time: A friend of mine was fired from a small cash-strapped company in Arizona. They had promised him bonus money for working nights and weekends for several months strait (amounting to nearly 50k). Instead of coming up with the money, the owner of the company decided it would be more advantageous to fire him (without true cause) and not pay up so the balance sheet of the company would look better for his board of directors meeting. The owner even tried to block my friends unemployment claim and invented reasons for dismissing him (lied in court).
Fortunately for my friend, he backed up his work email before leaving. With the email record, he was able to show in court that his boss was a lying scumbag by producing contradicting documentation to his boss's sworn statements and get unemployment. Using the court record from the unemployment hearing showing that his employer fired hims without just cause, he was then able to sue his former employer and get recompensed for the promised bonus money (again producing the email record where his boss stated how he would be compensated and how they needed him to work like a dog for several months).
Had he not backed up his work email it would have been his word against his former employer. He most likely would not have been able to get unemployment and definitely would have never seen a dime of the money that was promised to him.
The moral of the story is that you need to weigh your employers security policy that's there to protect them, against what is required to protect yourself.
Re:Sad Clown:( (Score:3, Insightful)
Like, your sig. I've read your sig. I've "taken it". I know it now. I don't particularly get it, but I could repeat it if need be. What have you lost? Where is the theft? What was stolen?
The state of that information being public or private doesn't change any of that. It makes the the act a breach of privacy, copyright infringement, or espionage. But not theft.
It's kind of a nitpicky distinction, like the difference between manslaughter and murder, but it's there.
Re:Please don't do this....it won't end well for y (Score:2, Insightful)
At the last job I had in England, UK. My contact said three months notice period (applies to both side!!!). So, if I give my notice period, and they no longer want me on the premises, they will have to keep paying for the notice period - that's the contract. Off course, I am also, legally, not allowed to start another job.
**Z
Re:Employers get all the loyalty they give (Score:3, Insightful)
This is so true!
I can't count how many times I've had people tell me something like "Gee, that job offer sounded really good but we're in the middle of a project and it would derail it if I left..." or "....I really wanted to give them 30 days notice but they wanted me right away at my new job and I couldn't do that."
WHAT!? Who cares! Most employers (corporate and small) will terminate an employee without any advance notice if there's even the slightest financial advantage to them, and in fact, that is SOP in most places.
Your employer is not your friend. Your co-workers are not your friends. They do not deserve loyalty.
There was a bar in the ground floor of the building I worked in that had a great sign on the wall:
"People work for money. If you want loyalty, buy a dog."
Re:Employers get all the loyalty they give (Score:2, Insightful)
Your employer is not your friend. Your co-workers are not your friends. They do not deserve loyalty.
Hmm, odd. I consider many of my co-workers to be close friends. And for some reason my employer has this weird attitude that by making sure I remain a happy healthy individual I will somehow yield a better return on investment than if I were to be treated as a disposable asset.
Just because the corporate world in the US has turned into an all out abuse fest does not mean the same applies to other parts of the world. The ability to look beyond the next quarter's profits has not quite been exterminated yet, despite the best efforts of BA programs.