This. Especially fucking the corporate bureaucracy! I always enjoyed my work before I joined my current company and, with just how _corporate_ it is, it’s opened up the “where does my meaning come from if not work?” can of worms for me. I had quite a negative emotional reaction to the workplace at first but now I realise I have an opportunity to grow by finding meaning somewhere else in my life.
For reference I work at a large bank, so I suppose the availability/features of our systems/applications is not meaningless for our customers. That said there’s no way I can see my professional experience moving forward here. Maybe experience surviving in a corporate environment counts?
My experience is that this doesn’t apply to the see you next Tuesday word, at least here in Canada. It’s seen as very offensive according to the Canadians I know. Speaking as a Brit, that word is thrown around quite casually in the UK!
Indeed, I'm working at a bank at the moment. There are half a dozen "endpoint protection" agents installed on my laptop, and don't even mention the network filtering - the Docker, Nginx and Vagrant documentation websites are all blocked for example.
I try to work mostly on my own laptop using Citrix in a web browser to access the corporate network so that the personal data I generate in a day (for example, browsing HN during downtime) doesn't get caught up in all the monitoring but this has some obvious limitations. With the security regime in place they will actually ask you about every piece of software you have installed on your corporate laptop (on which you'll need to request temporary admin access to install most software, of course) or about why you visited x, y or z website or why you searched this or that on Google. Like the article says it's best to keep your head down and try not to get noticed - they collect so much information but nobody looks at it until they have a reason to do so.
It would have been if I hadn't married a Canadian in the UK. In fact, if I had wanted to get in on a work visa instead of as a spouse I doubt I would have been able to get in because I don't have any university qualifications and you get lots of bonus points for those. That said, they wanted to know everything about me on the application form - 10 year address & work history, parents & siblings names, addresses and dates of birth, membership of any trade unions, political parties or other kind of organisations, details of the relationship I have with my wife.. as well as the more usual health exam and police check.
Actually planning that move myself. My Canadian wife and I had it planned before Brexit, but Brexit seems to have justified it! Threads like this are a little disconcerting however.
Why is that a flaw in the service? The ISP/mobile operator is essentially the gatekeeper to the Internet; having them block WhatsApp (or anything else) is just a case of them adding a block rule to their DNS.
What would interest me is knowing whether or not access is still blocked if you change your default DNS server to something like 8.8.8.8?
I'd be interested to hear how you made the jump to contracting? I find myself wanting to make the jump from my permanent job (in London) but being anxious about whether or not it's the right time to do so, if my skill set (sysadmin/devops) as it stands will provide value to clients, if I have the right mix of personal qualities to make a success out of it, etc.
To be fair, it was the government that passed a law to legalise such activity; it was the industry that challenged that law and the High Court that overturned it!
For reference I work at a large bank, so I suppose the availability/features of our systems/applications is not meaningless for our customers. That said there’s no way I can see my professional experience moving forward here. Maybe experience surviving in a corporate environment counts?