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"Play nice, keep learning and don't be an arse."
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's dev rig. Ask, and ye shall receive (as long as you're not being an arse about it)."
Anna
Tech Blog | Visual Lint
"Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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It would be a wonderful world if every employee came to work every day wanting to be productive. I think all personnel problems can eventually be reduced to the question, "Does the behavior you're doing right now help the entire team get work done?" You want team members who can always answer the question positively. You have a personnel issue whenever some behavior fails this test. Sounds harsh, but this is a very touchy-feely restatement of the company-use-only policy that is in very wide use.
Think about it. Everything from excessive facebooking to sexual harrassment can be described in terms of its negative effect on the team.
I would say that "use of company resources (disk, bandwidth, paid time, office space, pencils, postage machine, etc) is for business purposes only", and then interpret abuse on a case-by-case basis.
Company-use-only is the only rule that doesn't lead you into trouble. Unless your managers have super-human hiring skills, there will eventually be some jerk who wants to push the limits. Company-use-only keeps that jerk on a short leash. The jerk will inevitably raise the question of fairness if any other employee was ever known or suspected to do <activity x=""> that you're busting the jerk for. This just means the manager has to address the underlying problem that the employee is a jerk, and stop hiding behind codes of behavior. You have to say, "Maybe so, but your behavior is negatively affecting your/others productivity or cost, and your behavior needs to change."
This works reasonably well in the United States. In other countries, the workplace law may require elaborate codes of conduct attempting to list all acceptable and unacceptable uses. If you live in a country like that, your best bet is to emigrate to a country with better law before starting a software company.
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Due to the legal environment today, any company, large or small needs an Employee Manual that spells out the relationship between the company and the employee. It is far more involved than simple internet policy.
The courts have held that a company is responsible for an employee’s activities on the internet, which is why you will normally find restrictions on what an employee may or may not do on the internet. A company can also be held responsible if an employee gets drunk at a company sponsored event, etc.
The company needs to establish policy’s that cover non-discrimination, sexual harassment, work hours, overtime, benefits, sick and pregnancy leave, intellectual property, travel reimbursement, etc. Even if there are no benefits beyond those legally required, it needs to be spelled out so there is no ambiguity a lawyer can use against the company later.
A decent employee manual will run fifty pages or so. Much of it is CYA on the company’s part, but necessary.
Outlines of acceptable employee manuals can be found on the internet. Here is a link to a Employee Manual[^] template from the Small Business Administration.
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1) There should be Freedom of speech on presenting new architecture's at design time.
2) Scalability of the software should always be kept in mind while designing.
3) Coders (Programmers) should be judged on the basis of knowledge and not age or seniority.
4) Feedback about an Architect/Programmer should be concluded on the basis of "Whether his software component worked or not" and not how good he was at buttering his immediate manager.
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