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    Webfiltering - what do you use - assuming you do.

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IT Discussion
    webfilter
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    • DashrenderD
      Dashrender @scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      @scottalanmiller said:

      @Dashrender said:

      What other options should I suggest in how to fix the laziness other than firing someone.

      There is no solution for laziness. Read that sentence to yourself and see how silly it sounds?

      That really was a joke.. I know there is no solution for laziness, all you can do is work around it.

      scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller @PSX_Defector
        last edited by

        @PSX_Defector said:

        If you are going to do it, do it right.

        https://www.forcepoint.com/product/content-security/websense-web-filter-security

        AD integration, transparent, and damn near impossible to avoid. Nothing says "Get back to work drone!" than a block with their name, the reason why they are blocked, and no way around it. And now they are part of Raytheon, you can threaten them with Patriot missiles.

        I've had websense used before. The reason that they are able to do the "no way around it" that you can do with everyone else, is because they use a whitelist. Literally every site that you can go to is listed by them as "work appropriate." Problem is, tons and tons of things are blocked that you might want to use. Like Novell, they block Novell!! How weird is that?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • scottalanmillerS
          scottalanmiller @Dashrender
          last edited by

          @Dashrender said:

          @scottalanmiller said:

          @Dashrender said:

          What other options should I suggest in how to fix the laziness other than firing someone.

          There is no solution for laziness. Read that sentence to yourself and see how silly it sounds?

          That really was a joke.. I know there is no solution for laziness, all you can do is work around it.

          There is a very obvious solution, stop employing and paying lazy people. Employing lazy people is just the most dramatic way to tell non-lazy people that you don't value their efforts. Not only do you want money on the lazy, but you demoralize the hard workers - effectively you mock them for working hard and often, they'll stop.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • DashrenderD
            Dashrender @scottalanmiller
            last edited by

            @scottalanmiller said:

            @Dashrender said:

            As for phones, currently it's expected that people will use their phones for this, because it's off our network, not using our resources, except for power, we let then charge devices at the office.

            The other thing worth mentioning here is that if this is the case, the point should have been to reduce network utilization rather than "people have been fooling around on". This makes more sense if the network is struggling. With only the rarest exception, I would suggest that if this is FB (rather than say YouTube or Netflix) causing this issue, this means that your network isn't up to snuff and people are already unable to work efficiently because the network is too slow and the better solution is to improve the network to where things like Facebook are pointlessly marginal in the performance of it and people are able to all things (fool around as well as work) at high efficiency. This way you solve several problems rather than potentially creating them. And address the actual issue rather than an artefact of the issue.

            Right again, FB traffic does not affect our network performance. Sure we don't currently have a blazing fast internet, but it's usable for us.

            I am going to be upgrading some equipment this year, Gig to the desktop, larger internet pipe, but as you mentioned, the real issue is work not getting done, or not done right.

            PSX_DefectorP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • PSX_DefectorP
              PSX_Defector @Dashrender
              last edited by

              @Dashrender said:

              Right again, FB traffic does not affect our network performance. Sure we don't currently have a blazing fast internet, but it's usable for us.

              Facebook itself, no, it's not a bandwidth hog. But all the things branching out from Facebook, streams of videos, scams, and security risks. I used to block MySpace because of that when I had a limited bandwidth situation. Until I got my Peplink and shuffled non-critical traffic over the cheapest pipe I could find. Yeah, enjoy productivity now when pages load using a 1.5Mbps DSL line for everyone in the office. 😉

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • scottalanmillerS
                scottalanmiller
                last edited by

                When I worked for a place that used Websense to ban Facebook and other communications channels, what happened was a culture of going outside and standing in the courtyard. Because they blocked (and/or tapped) cell phone signals too. So to get a good signal you had to be outside. So everyone was. Everyone had meetings outside, spent every free moment outside, took breaks outside, lingered outside, picked backrooms by the outside doors, etc. It kept everyone away from their desks for huge portions of the day. The impact to productivity was insane.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • stacksofplatesS
                  stacksofplates
                  last edited by

                  This reminds me of workarounds like portable apps also. I didn't have admin access to the computer at the one place I worked, and I was there till 11 at night and really had no work to do past about 8. So I just used portable apps on a flash drive so I could do my business stuff and also play games.

                  scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • stacksofplatesS
                    stacksofplates
                    last edited by

                    Also brings up another question, why do places hire many lazy people vs few who work hard. In reference to the job offer I was recently given, I know based on what I was offered that the other "Systems Admins" make over $50K a year. I strongly believe based on what I've seen and heard that I could replace both of them and do the work myself. If the company is willing to spend upwards of $250K (including taxes, insurance, etc) for 3 people to do this work when 1 could do it by themselves, why would they even second guess giving me or someone else who can do it $150K a year to manage it? They wouldn't dream of paying one person that much, but do think it's ok to pay 3 not good employees that much?

                    JaredBuschJ scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • JaredBuschJ
                      JaredBusch @stacksofplates
                      last edited by

                      @johnhooks said:

                      Also brings up another question, why do places hire many lazy people vs few who work hard. In reference to the job offer I was recently given, I know based on what I was offered that the other "Systems Admins" make over $50K a year. I strongly believe based on what I've seen and heard that I could replace both of them and do the work myself. If the company is willing to spend upwards of $250K (including taxes, insurance, etc) for 3 people to do this work when 1 could do it by themselves, why would they even second guess giving me or someone else who can do it $150K a year to manage it? They wouldn't dream of paying one person that much, but do think it's ok to pay 3 not good employees that much?

                      How dare you be so logical!

                      stacksofplatesS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                      • stacksofplatesS
                        stacksofplates @JaredBusch
                        last edited by

                        @JaredBusch said:

                        @johnhooks said:

                        Also brings up another question, why do places hire many lazy people vs few who work hard. In reference to the job offer I was recently given, I know based on what I was offered that the other "Systems Admins" make over $50K a year. I strongly believe based on what I've seen and heard that I could replace both of them and do the work myself. If the company is willing to spend upwards of $250K (including taxes, insurance, etc) for 3 people to do this work when 1 could do it by themselves, why would they even second guess giving me or someone else who can do it $150K a year to manage it? They wouldn't dream of paying one person that much, but do think it's ok to pay 3 not good employees that much?

                        How dare you be so logical!

                        Hahaha, I apologize. I'll try to tone it down from now on.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • scottalanmillerS
                          scottalanmiller @stacksofplates
                          last edited by

                          @johnhooks said:

                          This reminds me of workarounds like portable apps also. I didn't have admin access to the computer at the one place I worked, and I was there till 11 at night and really had no work to do past about 8. So I just used portable apps on a flash drive so I could do my business stuff and also play games.

                          Similarly when I worked for a large bank they blocked a ton by technology but not by policy. They wanted IT to solve problems without HR being involved. So, since working around the technology wasn't against policy, everyone implemented SSL VPNs (the agentless kind) and threw remote desktops from home back to themselves at the office. It was slow, bandwidth heavy and super inefficient and gave us all access to drastically more than if we had just read our email or whatever. It was the path of least resistance.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @stacksofplates
                            last edited by

                            @johnhooks said:

                            Also brings up another question, why do places hire many lazy people vs few who work hard. In reference to the job offer I was recently given, I know based on what I was offered that the other "Systems Admins" make over $50K a year. I strongly believe based on what I've seen and heard that I could replace both of them and do the work myself. If the company is willing to spend upwards of $250K (including taxes, insurance, etc) for 3 people to do this work when 1 could do it by themselves, why would they even second guess giving me or someone else who can do it $150K a year to manage it? They wouldn't dream of paying one person that much, but do think it's ok to pay 3 not good employees that much?

                            My anecdote on this: I use this one a lot. I used to manage a BK in the mall (sad but true.) At one point we employed nearly forty people (not all full time.) At one point we figured out that the fastest, best staffing combination (that is the fastest times to make food, cleanest store, best food quality, happiest customers... it won all metrics that we had) was Chris in the kitchen, Leanne and Darryn (not sure that name is right) on the cash register with Darryn grabbing the kitchen when needed, and Mark doing the back stuff (cleaning dishes, opening boxes, freezer duty ... all the stuff that isn't the kitchen and cash register) and me managing but acting like a team member, not a manager so filling in wherever someone directed me and only stepping into a manager role for necessary functions like customer complaints, locking up, doing the paperwork, etc.

                            We figured out that all they had to do was be willing to pay us overtime and we could drop 35 people from our employment, run the store faster, safer, with the least food waste and the happiest customers while keeping the existing staff happy with good, guaranteed hours (the mall aspect limited the open hours so this wasn't as crazy as it sounded.) We would have reduced the cost to run labor by something like 70% while increasing quality and lowering other operational costs (insurance, food waste, etc.)

                            They refused to let us even try it. The results? Everyone took higher paying jobs elsewhere, none of us made more the $1/hr over other staff, most not even that. We would have been happy with more hours and knowing we only worked with each other (we were a happy team.) Instead of saving 70% and having the best team around, they were so determined to managed regionally based on outside factors that they lost the good staff and had to staff up, rather than down, running more than ten people per shift and delivering lower quality. The store dropped from the top performer in the region to closing up and going under.

                            Why? Who knows. One thing that I know came up several times (but how do you reprimand the top performers) was they hated that I was a working manager (I was a lead really, just a senior flex position, none of them needed to be managed) and not a thinking manager. But when you have no managing to do, what else can you do to be useful than to reduce the need to hire other people? It's not like by "thinking" better we would grow and get a bigger store with more staff to manage, doesn't work that way. But they couldn't stand it because other managers, especially the regional, wanted managers to stay locked in the office, never get dirty and never mix with the "staff".

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller
                              last edited by

                              Which is extra silly when you consider that me as a manager made $.75/hr more than my cashier. It's not like we were in different tax brackets.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • stacksofplatesS
                                stacksofplates
                                last edited by

                                @scottalanmiller said:

                                was they hated that I was a working manager (I was a lead really, just a senior flex position, none of them needed to be managed) and not a thinking manager

                                Except you were a thinking manager, because you thought of a better and more reliable way to do it?

                                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • scottalanmillerS
                                  scottalanmiller @stacksofplates
                                  last edited by

                                  @johnhooks said:

                                  Except you were a thinking manager, because you thought of a better and more reliable way to do it?

                                  I thought... hey, I'm useless if I'm not working... lol.

                                  stacksofplatesS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                  • stacksofplatesS
                                    stacksofplates @scottalanmiller
                                    last edited by

                                    @scottalanmiller said:

                                    @johnhooks said:

                                    Except you were a thinking manager, because you thought of a better and more reliable way to do it?

                                    I thought... hey, I'm useless if I'm not working... lol.

                                    It seems to big an issue with fast food and retail. They don't hire people who don't have "retail" or "food service" experience, but the people that do are usually not very reliable. Plus, like it's that hard to be able to do those tasks....

                                    scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • scottalanmillerS
                                      scottalanmiller @stacksofplates
                                      last edited by

                                      @johnhooks said:

                                      @scottalanmiller said:

                                      @johnhooks said:

                                      Except you were a thinking manager, because you thought of a better and more reliable way to do it?

                                      I thought... hey, I'm useless if I'm not working... lol.

                                      It seems to big an issue with fast food and retail. They don't hire people who don't have "retail" or "food service" experience, but the people that do are usually not very reliable. Plus, like it's that hard to be able to do those tasks....

                                      BK was good about that. Fourteen and fifteen year olds with zero experience were hired regularly. I was the one and only person that they hired with experience and I had a year of Pizza Hut crew chief, they promoted me from "part time cashier" to "regional bulldog manager" at the end of my first day. Regional Bulldog is an impressive title for "regional manager's circuit bitch". I was the shift manager sent to failing stores to turn them around as a final effort before being shut down. If I showed up in your store, the end was near. The regional manager used me to be their arm to try to turn stores around. Which made me never a popular person to be showing up.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                      • DashrenderD
                                        Dashrender
                                        last edited by Dashrender

                                        OMG - we have a 100 Mb connection - Barracuda wants $16K for a 100-200 Mb webfiler. with $6400 yearly renewable maintenance/support/updates. Can we say highway robbery!

                                        The 50-100 Mb connection level is a mere $6K, with a renewal yearly at $2K. DAMN!

                                        stacksofplatesS scottalanmillerS 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • stacksofplatesS
                                          stacksofplates @Dashrender
                                          last edited by

                                          @Dashrender said:

                                          OMG - we have a 100 Mb connection - Barracuda wants $16K for a 100-200 Mb webfiler. with $6400 yearly renewable maintenance/support/updates. Can we say highway robbery!

                                          Bahahahaha, who the crap would pay that?

                                          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • scottalanmillerS
                                            scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                                            last edited by

                                            @Dashrender said:

                                            OMG - we have a 100 Mb connection - Barracuda wants $16K for a 100-200 Mb webfiler.

                                            "Webfilter". We like to call it an "access node". 😉

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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