Gap Inc.’s disclosure that it lost a laptop containing the personal information of 800,000 job applicants leaves me wondering what on earth they were thinking. Why were these applicant records stored on a laptop rather than accessible over a virtual private network (VPN)? Is convenience more important than privacy? The data was lost by an… Continue reading
Archive for September, 2007
Miss Cyber Manners Checks Her Crackberry
Have you heard? Crackberry is now a word. Webster’s Dictionary defines the noun as “a person who uses a Blackberry addictively or obsessively or the device when used this way.” Webster’s doesn’t just add words to the dictionary in a wanton manner. A new study by Robert Half Management Resources finds that 69 percent of… Continue reading
EDS: Unready for a Global Stage
EDS, the wayward outsourcing giant, is stumbling to compete in the global economy. Cost-cutting was the theme of Wednesday’s announcement to shareholders that the company is beefing up its workforce in low-labor-cost regions while offering “packages” to 12,000 U.S. employees. A company spokesman said, “In order to remain competitive, we must constantly rebalance our workforce… Continue reading
What’s New on My Social Network?
I’d like to announce the launch of AfterRusty, a social networking site for my friends, fans, relatives, creditors and associates. You may have heard about corporate alumni networks where ex-employees bitch about their old company. AfterRusty is for people who know me, wish they knew me, or thought they did. For a limited time, I… Continue reading
Job Forecast: All Gloom, No Boom
Though the Bush administration touts a low unemployment rate, these are subpar years for job creation in America. The August jobs report, the worst in four years, marked a rare net decrease in the number of employed workers. For an economy that creates about 50,000 to 100,000 more jobs each month than it loses, the… Continue reading
How Globalization Improves Working Conditions
Opponents of globalization contend that there is an economic race-to-the-bottom underway as first-world economies will be forced to cut their standard of living in order to compete with third-world economies. One prominent supporter of globalization counters that most of the support for this argument is anecdotal – there’s not much smoke and little substance to… Continue reading
