The Water Cooler

1:54 AM

I am saying that in order to save that question it should be changed to a what is the general expectations from managerment and of the employee type question. The current answers are more of the what is it who does it why type. Those answers dont really belong I dont think.

The easy answer to this question is always do work 100% while at work and never anything personal... but lets face it that is not a realistic objective.

Monica Cellio

2:08 AM

@Chad if the edit would be major and it would invalidate all answers, I wonder about the comparative utility of doing that versus just asking a new question. Which is likely to be better for the site?

Monica Cellio

2:20 AM

Anybody in The Water Cooler good with SEDE queries? I've been thinking about the "professionalism" tag (as a result of it being brought up on meta), and I'd like to know, for the 729 questions tagged that way, how else are they tagged and how often? That is, what's the distribution of tags within that subset of our questions? Wondering whether there are some clear clusters here...

Matt Giltaji

3:51 AM

@monica I'll take a stab at that query tomorrow

Chad

1:36 PM

@MonicaCellio The question in its original form ( and the answers to it) do not belong on the site. Had those answers not been there an edit could have been made to correct the question. Bad answers now make that impossible. Its not that the answers would be invalidated its that the answers do not belong on the site in the first place.

enderland

1:49 PM

delete all the things

Monica Cellio

2:05 PM

@Chad then that seems like an even stronger argument for deleting this one and asking a new question, doesn't it? If neither the question nor the answers belong, then instead of trying to rehabilitate an old question and start over with answers, wouldn't it be less work and cleaner to just start over?

AJ Henderson

2:39 PM

@jmort253 - firefox addon no worky

:(

enderland

2:51 PM

Hi Kilazur, is there any difference between your question and the duplicate question? If so, edit and flag for reopening - it looks like they are exactly the same question. Thanks! — enderland ♦ 8 secs ago

Chad

@MonicaCellio That would be the alternative I would choose if we are not willing to delete the answers and rework the question. Personally I think we should be trying to save the questions, not the answers. But I am only one person.

Answers are only valuable if they make this site better. My opinion is those answers do not make this site better.

@MattGiltaji - <3 the avatar

Monica Cellio

3:05 PM

@Chad that makes sense. I want us to have a site full of quality questions with good answers. I'm open to any way of getting there; if you think editing (and deleting answers) is better in this case, that's fine. I just wanted to ask. (I haven't checked yet; is there a meta answer about this one? If not, could you propose the edit-and-delete-answers resolution there?)

Monica Cellio

3:35 PM

Oh right; this one has already been called out on meta. @Chad, I think one of the answers does partially address the on-topic question, but the other definitely doesn't. The Q title and body don't match, which is part of the problem.

The question in the title ("how widespread...") is not the same as the question in the body ("how can I tell, and how should I modify my behavior"). One answer addresses the question in the title; the other answer addresses both. Perhaps the question should be reworked to match the one in the body (which would be on-topic, unlike the title) and the answers adjusted. — Monica Cellio ♦ 52 secs ago

0

Q: Boss asked me to copy files from ex-CEOs computer

There has recently been a change in the corporate hierarchy. The former CEO/President is now, technically, just an employee (although, to be sure, an employee with a lot of weight) and a shareholder. The new CEO/President has asked me to surreptitiously copy some documents from the ex-CEOs lapt...

^^^ This feels like a question that could be edited to fit better. There's a real workspace problem in there, but it should be de-legalized and made less opinion-seeking, somehow. Anybody up for helping out a new user with the core of a good question?

Mike Van Trufflebutt

I'm not as concerned about the legality issue. There are few countries that wouldn't lock you up if you went onto someone's laptop to get thier data without some sort of permission. I feel the difference between hacking and getting the data properly is a point worth making.

Matt Giltaji

3:54 PM

@Chad thanks :D

Monica Cellio

4:05 PM

@MikeVanTrufflebutt I think the key to the problem is the word "surreptitiously". But the question feels a little too discussion-y/opinion-seeking; can this be reworked into a concrete, answerable question (good subjective)?

Matt Giltaji

@MonicaCellio I found a similar "Boss asking me to do something with my IT powers that I have qualms with" type of question here

8

Q: My boss wants me to 'fix' company records!

Ours is a paperless type of IT shop. All the documents and records are maintained electronically. I am the guy in charge of the databases holding employee records. These include time-sheets, task distributions, ratings and everything except the money. Now there is a big external audit coming up....

professionalism

even after @chad fixed that one up, it still reads as a moral dilemma

Mike Van Trufflebutt

@matt

@MattGiltaji Is it really a moral issue? If you consider the line between misuse of resources/hacking and legitimate work, does that help?

Matt Giltaji

@MikeVanTrufflebutt the moral dilemma is "do I go along with doing something that I feel is not right in order to keep my job or not?"

the answer to that is "get it in writing as a CYA, then go with your gut"

Monica Cellio

@MattGiltaji good find! I think the "how can I figure out/protect myself?" angle in the closing paragraph is key.

Mike Van Trufflebutt

@MonicaCellio I've rewritten the "CEO asked me to copy..." question. What are your thoughts?

Matt Giltaji

4:19 PM

@MonicaCellio for a new title, does "How to behave if I don't know whether my company uses employee monitoring software?" fit better?

did a suggested edit on the title, maybe that will bring it back

Chad

@MattGiltaji That is no longer the quesiton though. The question is How can I figure out if what I have been asked to do is illegal? How can I protect my self if I am forced to take this action?

There is no moral objection there its purely a cya question.

Matt Giltaji

4:36 PM

@Chad I stand corrected, I think I merged both questions together in my head

Matt Giltaji

4:57 PM

@MonicaCellio this query shows the breakdown of other tags on Professionalism questions

to sum up the results, 69 are professionalism alone, 29 prof + interviewing, 14 prof + colleagues, 11 prof + management + communication, 11 prof + work environment, 10 each of prof + management and prof + communication, 9 prof + email, and it drops off after that

I can do a separate query to pull all the raw data (separate row for each question and each tag on the question) if that helps as well.

enderland

5:18 PM

Hmmmm, I think being able to take 2x days off a week unpaid for a short period of time is pretty much like hitting the lottery in the workplace :)

Matt Giltaji

@enderland two days off a week? we call those "weekends" :p

enderland

@MattGiltaji har har har. 4 days then ;)

enderland

5:34 PM

@keshlam great edits! Keep in mind explaining the why makes answers much more useful for future readers who might have related questions. The more an answer explains the why the better it is in these situations, which might be related but slightly different. — enderland ♦ 12 secs ago

Chad

1

Q: A fellow employee keeps making false accusations against me - who can I contact for help?

I am getting accused of hitting, screaming and sabotage of personnel records. Every day there is a new accusation. I have been investigated by HR who found that the accusations have no basis. Still, she continues to make new accusations against me. What can I do?

intervention harassment

Should we just close that off topic - What to do?

enderland

@Chad the title is at least clear :)

Monica Cellio

@MattGiltaji looks good to me, thanks! Just approved it.

@MattGiltaji thanks! So, no great big clusters there, like half of them also being tagged with a particular other tag or something. Good to know.

@MikeVanTrufflebutt that edit (on the CEO question) makes it better. It still feels somewhat like a "is this legal?" question. Maybe instead of the first two bullet points (is it legitimate, and does it put me in criminal jeopardy), we should just ask "what are the likely consequences of complying"? Is that answerable, and is it better?

Mike Van Trufflebutt

9:00 PM

@MonicaCellio the daily rep-cap is 200, right?

or, anyone?

Monica Cellio

@MikeVanTrufflebutt yes, though answer acceptances and bounties don't cap (so if you get 200 in votes and then somebody accepts your answer, you still get the 15 points).

Mike Van Trufflebutt

Thank you

enderland

9:18 PM

@MikeVanTrufflebutt you might enjoy this too - workplace.stackexchange.com/reputation

Mike Van Trufflebutt

@enderland Noice!

Matt Giltaji

11:14 PM

looking for some ways to spend your reopen votes before they refresh at UTC midnight? Look no further!

25

Q: How to push back when colleagues send work to me they can do themselves?

Over the years I've acquired some Perl skills to get the data in a shape I can work with (marketing analytics). Average dataset sizes have grown over the years, and colleagues tend to say "Excel can't handle that" and send the work in my direction. The other day my boss referred to me as the dat...

professionalism work-environment scheduling

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