Workplace

Employee blogs--the new legal frontier

A new survey finds that 5 percent of American workers maintain personal blogs and only 15 percent of their employers have a policy directly addressing blogging activities.

The Employment Law Alliance, a practice of employment lawyers, conducted the telephone survey of 1,000 adults last month. The survey also found that of the workers whose companies have blogging policies, 62 percent say the policy prohibits posting any employer-related information and 60 percent say the policy discourages employees from criticizing or making negative comments about the company.

Meanwhile, most of those surveyed think employers should be allowed to discipline or fire … Read more

Sprint Nextel 'insourcing' from IBM

Sprint Nextel appears to be bringing IT workers back in-house from IBM as part of a re-evaluation of the company's outsourcing strategy by its new CIO.

Information Week reported Thursday that Sprint Nextel is giving its IT and customer-service outsourcing deals with IBM a fresh look. Part of that overhaul involves bringing back some workers who had been essentially sold to IBM in one of those "rebadging" deals.

An IBM spokesman declined to comment on the report, but financial analyst Thomas Weisel Partners put out a research note on the deal Friday. "Rescoping of outsourcing contracts … Read more

Bringing pooch to work

The dog days of dot-com glory when Web workers brought their faithful canine friends to work aren't entirely gone. Apparently, dog friendly jobs are still available, if you know where to look.

In honor of the Chinese New Year this weekend, the Year of the Dog, SimplyHired.com has created a new special section of its Web site that enables job seekers to search for companies that allow people to bring their dogs to work. Searching for "writer" in San Francisco on that page reveals six matches, five of them at Google and one at The Nature … Read more

Intel employee count hits 100,000

Intel's expenses are a little higher than some on Wall Street would like, and part of the problem is employees.

The company employed 100,000 at the end of 2005, up from 85,000 at the end of 2004, according to CEO Paul Otellini.

Job hunting a little easier in tech sector

The good news keeps coming for technology workers. A study due to be released this week has found Silicon Valley added jobs in 2005, the first increase in four years.

The valley's job market grew by 2,000 positions, or 0.2 percent, according to the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network, an economic development group.

This news comes less than two weeks after MBA candidates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in interviews with CNET News.com, offered anecdotal evidence that hiring among Bay area tech firms was heating up.

Hiring in the technology sector had declined since the … Read more

Halloween fun in the office

Nothing like a little Halloween dress up to chase those Monday morning blues away.

Many offices are allowing their employees to express their inner ghost and goblin for the season. Several companies reported even having costume contests.

Employees with HP's North America Consumer Computing business, for example, all dressed up in a Dr. Seuss theme as a way to have fun and relieve stress.

"It's a riot," says HP representative Ann Finnie. "The gals dressed as Thing One and Thing Two have been going around the office all morning throwing confetti around and being playful. … Read more

Back to the future

Fans of Guiding Light, a 68-year-old daytime drama - a.k.a. soap, will make its podcast debut Tuesday. Guiding Light, which initially started as a radio series back 1937, will be the kick-ff for CBS.com's latest venture, CBS Netcast.

CBS Netcast will offer podcasts of CBS and CBS.com programs - ranging from "Big Brother" online talk show House Calls to daytime online show Soap Box, the network said Thursday. Fans will be able to load up on the entertainment fare by stuffing their computers, or handheld devices, with these podcast downloads.

Meanwhile, back to … Read more

Of Microsoft and measles

Tech world titan Microsoft attracts plenty of slings and arrows, some of them deserved. But Friday, the company suffered an unfair potshot about its offshore operations.

A posting on popular techie discussion forum Slashdot implied that the company has infected workers with measles as a result of offshoring.

"It appears that a Microsoft worker returning from overseas brought back a case of Measles with them. In fact, they had been back, working, and spreading the disease at Microsoft and other places in Redmond for at least four days prior to being discovered," the posting stated. "Somehow I … Read more

The HP way with words

Carly Fiorina, HP's ousted CEO, is apparently preparing to write a book. And her publishing path, in some respects, will follow that of the late co-founder David Packard.

Fiorina, the charismatic, controversial CEO, inked a deal with Penguin Group and her book is slated to be released in the fall of next year, according to a report in the Mercury News.

And, yes, history does repeat itself.

Adrian Zackheim, Penguin Portfolio imprint publisher, will edit Fiorina's book, which will cover the gamut of her career to date and technology's ever-changing influence on the world, according to the … Read more