Archives: Life (Page 4)
Naked Generations
February 2, 2009 at 19:05 by Mike McQuaid
Came across a really interesting blog on the web the other day called Naked Generations. It’s a company-run blog for a for-profit company, but I must say it’s definitely one of the most interesting blogs I read (out of over a hundred).
Apparently I’m a member of Generation Y as I was born in 1984. As I’ve been working in the last few years, especially in my time at BT, I’ve found myself having a very different attitude to my older coworkers. I’ve sometimes felt that maybe I’m just a “rebel” and need to learn to conform, but reading this blog has been a bit of a wake-up call in helping me to realise why I do some of the things I do and how I can be better motivated.
I’d say it’s a must-read if you are either in Generation Y yourself, or you are a manager who has staff from Generation Y working for you and want to understand how to keep them well motivated.
If you want to find out even more about this stuff, the company behind the blog Naked Generations does consultancy and have worked with some pretty big names already including the British government.
Check it out!
Posted in Life
Bad Phorm
September 22, 2008 at 23:44 by Mike McQuaid
So apparently the UK government doesn’t care about a private company wiretapping its citizens and giving them to another company (for money) as long as when they roll it out to everyone they are sure to ask for permission first (i.e. most probably at the end of a huge EULA).
I can’t say I’m surprised but I am pretty disappointed. When it first emerged on The Register that Phorm had been monitoring the internet communications of BT customers I was a BT employee. When it came out that BT outright lied on to those tech-savvy customers who raised the issue my opinions of my employer had sadly dropped to an all-time low.
I’m not someone who believes in publicly criticising the company I am currently working for (partly because the company I work for currently is awesome) and didn’t want to straight after I left at the risk of seeming bitter or unprofessional but I feel it needs to be publicly stated that I did not at any time agree with the actions that were being taken by my current employer and everything negative I found out second-hand and eventually was part of the reason I left.
I’m not sure what the management of BT that thought that Phorm was a good idea were up to at the time but I feel they may need a little reminding that massively alienating a huge portion of your technical user-base is probably not the best way to run an ISP, considering how much influence we have on our non-geeky friends’ technology choices.
As for their “anonymous” technology, if I’m “anonymous” enough for you to be able to track me across multiple IPs then I’m not “anonymous”!
