All this talk of VPN reports, does anyone know if the company pays for VPN time? Trying to understand the hysteria surrounding VPN use. A few days ago I was at a drop in location where someone was on VPN, another person in the room gasped with horror & said "immediately get off VPN or you will show up on a report". What difference does it make if your work is being performed in a collaboration/engagement zone/office while you are on VPN? If you "swipe in" to the office, it shouldn't matter if you are on the network or VPN?
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If you have an assigned cubicle and don't use it, real estate wants to assign it to somebody who will. If you were given firm expectations on number of the days in the office and choose not abide by that... sorry. The data is there if they want to use it. If your leadership says they don't use it, the data is still there. Your leadership doesn't decide everything.
"My SVP ATO told us point blank. Those reports are worthless and she does not, and has never used them."
Unfortunately my AVP, under that SVP, is telling us to be in the office. The problem is the message is not the same from the AVP down. Though the SVP said she does not look at the reports, someone in HR or elsewhere likely is, and may be using that info to put your name in the surplus spreadsheet. Remember, common sense is not used when determining who needs to go.
Some of the IBM contractors use VPN in the office because there are restrictions on sites they can access. The entire VPN neurosis is getting old.
Basically, everyone in upper management has a hole to plug in their budget. The laziest of the lot don't want to do the work to find creative ways to plug those holes.
Dumping people based on butts in seats appeals to the lazy SVP. Unfortunately, I'd say a majority of our leadership falls into this category.
The real answer is it depends on who you work for.
You people need to start joining leadership calls. These questions have been asked and answered.
My SVP ATO told us point blank. Those reports are worthless and she does not, and has never used them.
I also watched one where a heavy set male AVP ATO C&E told his group they better be in the office and that they were looking at this data.
So, it just depends on who you work for.
Hey if you want to “make sure” and have peace of mind, get other carrier service. It’s kind of a shame to have to resort to that, working for a telecom company, but it have to be that way unfortunately...
We do system support 24/7 and use VPN for off hours plus we are in the office. So if we have high VPN usage, it's not our fault, we're just doing our jobs.
Managemen is eployment at will, however, they do need to be aware of protected classes. They will hit a % of young people to avoid an age discrimination lawsuit even if that person is a great performer. They are also balancing the # of minorities and females as well. The reason everyone has similar titles is to increase the pool #s for layoffs. They are good at this ...after so much ptactice.
We again bring up the exceptions. Mgmt is at will. They don’t have to give a reason for letting them go. Non mgmt can be let go by basically calling a surplus for a myriad of reasons. You work in a office with high attendance problems and lots of wasted time, just surplus people. AT&T is under no obligation to say that monitoring is part of the equation. Technology improvement and loss of business covers everything.
@1zxo That’s what I mean. I always been suspicious that ATT could and will look into “personal” cellphones EMOs of employees. People that drives company cars got those personal phones for that exact same reason, accidents / incidents investigations. Beware...
If you have your personal cell on AT&T network and drive a company vehicle , AT&T WILL look at your records if you are involved in an accident in said vehicle. Your discount on service is subsidized and now AT&T has “the right” to look your cell use history. Know of someone this happened to. He was cleared. He also threw his phone away and cancelled his service and now is with another carrier for his personal cell.
Just wondering where you are going to use all this documentation and argumentation you are keeping after you are notified of surplus? They are not going to give you a chance to debate it with them. You'll be gone and they will deny VPN even had any role in the decision.
VPNs, corporate LAN, COU, etc etc has been discussed here and sure they can and will be gathering information for good and bad reasons. But no one has mentioned about Personal Cellphones usage on company hours and company facilities. I know that if you have a personal phone let say EMO no one should be following it... Its illegal to do it without a court order and cause... BUT, could that accounts being followed or spied on also ???? Anybody with information on that regard ???
The hysteria probably comes from knowing you are relying on management to correctly interpret what they see on the report - primarily understanding where the VPN connection was initiated from. Many of us require VPN access in order to ssh to VMs / servers we support. Someone in my group said my manager disconnects from VPN while in the office when it is not needed. All of this is just crazy, all caused primarily by rumor and a lack of management (at least in my group within ATO) clearly defining expectations, and the lack of Jeff’s follow up to the stupid email he sent prior to the 1/28 surplus. According to a NEWS NOW email last week - he wanted to let us know he has not forgotten his promise and the info will be out soon. WTF is taking so long, Jeff, I think you may be in over your head.
Spied upon typically means you don’t know you are being observed. We have been told about programs such as Idesk, voice recognition, GPS, etc. The company has already told us that it has access and the right to use any information gathered from company facilities. Even something as simple as carrying a company cell phone allows them to monitor the cell phone. We hear but we don’t want to believe. There is a video on the company website talking about being able to track hospital patients as they move around the building. The technology is there for a lot of things.
People working in the field are chased by GPS. Management folks are being spied on by VPN usage or idesk. Trust me, my team gets a report every week with the totals.
People had better start believing that Big Data is producing reports that are a very granular level. You would be surprised about how much they know about something as simple as the Q function. They don’t care about the bs MSOC tallies to assess productivity. Those numbers haven’t been discussed with my boss on the weekly calls in awhile.
VPN usage reports? Badge swipes? b---s---!!! There are lots and lots of employees that work on the field 365 days of the year. They even didn’t see their bosses for months... What they are going to do with their VPNs reports? Lol. Do your work every day and do it right, document it, let everybody know of it specially your immediate boss... everything else will self-take care off... Basics basics my little grasshoppers...
Too true about seeing direct report's screens, amd the hostorical snapshots. Did you see the separate folder with photos from the webcams?
If you've used it at company location & they call you out on it, then the hype is absolutely an exercise in futility and a joke.
Correct. If you use a company computer, access company systems, have a company cell phone AT&T has the capability to not only track what you are doing but where, when and how much is being done. Pretty sure reports are being generated that we have no knowledge of.
I would be less worried about logging in versus what is being done after the login. Having the capabilities to see my direct reports computer screens in real time or go back later and pull them yielded some interesting results. Obviously no time to pull reports or monitor a large group for every minute of the day to see every key stroke and what is being accessed but I would imagine that big brother (Big Data) has those capabilities.
All about where you are and are you logged in enough hours. Be a good soldier now.
Corporate WiFi doesn’t force you to log into VPN lol
If you work in a c-appy dept with a horrible manager then I guess worry about VPN. If not then don’t.
Corporate wifi forces you to authenticate and connect to vpn. It will show the source address of your connection within the corporate network address ranges for company locations. If you log in from home, the beach, wherever, that will show a source IP address from outside.
That would be your defense if you come into the office and connect via wifi/vpn.
VPN reports in the past anyway, have been used to indicate working in other location than company. When we were Flexible workers, we were expected in the office a few days a week, so it your numbers were high they knew you wern't coming to the office. Most of us would just laugh at the report, as our manager didn't care, but had to review it with us couple times a year.
I doubt the company is paying for this time.
The real issue is the company can and does pull VPN usage reports and “if “ they want to use that as a factor in surplus situation, they can and have done so.
I absolutely would NOT use VPN if you were in a company location and it wasn’t absolutely required to do so.
Unless, however, you are someone that wants to be on that list and ready to receive your 6 months severance payment. Just the facts.