IBM to Regulate Employee Second Life Behavior

mytrip writes "In hopes of avoiding potentially embarrassing incidents, IBM is taking the unusual step of establishing official guidelines for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit Second Life and other virtual worlds. 'IBM appears to be the first corporation to create rules governing virtual worlds. The move has critics, who say that mandating behavior for the so-called "metaverse" is unlikely to reform impish avatars. They also question why IBM would add a layer of buttoned-down bureaucracy to this relatively rollicking corner of the Internet. IBM executives counter that having a code of conduct is akin to a corporate stamp of approval, encouraging workers to explore more than 100 worlds IBM collectively calls the 3D Internet.'" This regulation may be coming from more than self-interest: IBM sees these environments as management training courses in some ways; working inter-personal skills via chat and human resources via guild activities.

Um...

So IBM sanctions playing Secondlife while on the clock?

This, I have to see for myself.

Apparently.

From TFA:

IBM, whose 20th century employees were parodied as corporate cogs in matching navy suits, doesn't have an avatar dress code. But guidelines suggest being "especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona's appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business."

Okay, aside from the concept of "meeting with IBM clients" in Second Life ... why not just go all the way and license something unique for your company sponsored avatars? Then, if you're representing the company, you use a company avatar.

When you're on your own you can whatever you want to be.

Seriously, anyone who needs to be told what is appropriate for meeting clients really should NOT be meeting clients. In real life or online.

Re:Apparently.

Seriously, anyone who needs to be told what is appropriate for meeting clients really should NOT be meeting clients. In real life or online.

And what happens if someone slips through the radar, gets hired, and conducts IBM business dressed as a flying phallus? Do they fire him? Get sued for discrimination, because there's no written dress code? Not IBM. They've been in the game too long to make naive mistakes like the one you're advocating. It's a litigious society; if you expect something from someone, put it in writing. That's all they're doing here.

Re:Um...

I admit up-front that I don't 'get' the whole second-life thing. It only took me about 20 minutes to realise how dull and pointless it is. There's nothing going on, loads of places you can't go, and its totally boring just wandering around. Also even on broadband the crappy world graphics update so slowly its painful. Literally. You can bump into walls even minutes before they get drawn.

So I wouldn't classify second life as a game as there is no fun or objectives and its very clunky so 'playing' it isn't accurate.

Re:Um...

Years after most people had figured out that the Internet wasn't a virtual world, the idiot media was still going on about "cyberspace". So somebody figured out that if you actually developed the product that the idiot media imagined, you'd get loads of free PR. It doesn't matter that the product is useless.

Re:Um...

I wish I could mod you up. The vision of Internet as a 3D cyberworld completly lacks of imagination, it reuuses what we have to try and predict the future... The internet forum for example has evolved to a specific form which is extremely efficient to handle its task. Absolutely nothing looked like an internet forum 50 years ago...

A cyberspace import limitation of the physical world that get in the way... brought to you by the same people who imagined giant network of tubes to deliver mails.

So...?

When logged onto Second Life at work (or presumably using the same account you use at work), they want you to project the corporate image. This seems reasonable, although perhaps overly anal.

Re:So...?

There are political considerations, of course.

Say, for example, the guys down the hall have been at the company for ten years, and you're a new hire, and they issue to you a challenge to be able to code $something, or find a bug in a particular process, or prove to them how a particular bug can be turned into an exploit. And they're all be-boppin' 'n' scattin' all over you every time they see you, frat boy hazing style, and constantly giving you digs about how,"If you were any sort of real programmer you'd have it done by now" while, in private, constantly reassuring you that it's impossible because they have never been able to do it.

Then, one day, you pull it off. And all of they're be-boppin' 'n' scattin' and taunts and hazing comes back on them from the people in the other building who've been quietly hoping to hell you'll pull off the challenge because, several years back, their department got their budget slashed because the guys down the hall (who issued the challenge and followed it with taunting) managed to come up with a miraculous save on one of their projects and have been egotistical knuckleheads about it ever since. At least until you showed up and put their challenge right back up their nose (where it needed to be).

So now you've become the unwitting participant in a five-to-ten year running ego war between two prominent researchers, both from lengthy lines of prominent publishing research groups, both managing groups of thirty to fifty people with budgets figured in the tens of millions.

Kind of an awkward position, isn't it? Okay, but you're still proud of yourself that you managed to accomplish the $challenge.

Then, one day, when you log on to Second Life... you find yourself surrounded by griefers who never go away and, the day you finally tell one of the griefers to "Shove it!" using rather colorful language, that day is immediately followed the next morning by a reprimand from corporate for not observing the corporate image online.

And then you begin to get snyde in-the-hall comments from the be-boppin' 'n' scattin' hazing frat boy fanclub down the hall that, yes, they're the griefers who've been trolling you on Second Life... but there's nothing you can do about it because they turned you in to HR first, and anything you say now will need to go both against their collective reputation (which, given they came up with the miraculous breakthrough five years ago, is pretty darn big) and the impression that you're just a malcontent who's retaliating against "The Man" and with some psychotic conspiracy theory.

No. No, and No. It is not a good idea for an employer to have any legal authority, either inside or outside the workplace, to observe, monitor, or check on anything you do once you leave their doors.

Re:So...?

I have to say that this is one of the more.. fanciful... posts I've read here in a while.

So...

No flying genitalia in IBM business attire then, eh?

One has to wonder, however....

Are they suggesting that they should be able to govern how their employees spend their spare time, or are they just expecting their employees to play the game when they are supposed to be working?

mrrrph?

I'll see that Huh?, and raise you a WTF?

Rule number one

1) Don't use Second Life. It is embarrassing and no one in the real world cares besides the news media and misc. company bosses.

(it is kinda like the "news media" just discovered that you can make a virtual world online)

"Second" Life?

  IBM would like to discourage employees from

    aimless wandering around
    dressing up as a flying phallus (without a tie)
    crowding around the "hot looking"
    starting conversations with "check out my new script" ...oh and there's new rules for Second Life too.

Is it even legal?

Honest question here (IANAL): can it even be legal for the employer to issue guidelines/codes of conduct for activities that are presumably not happening at the workplace?

RTFA

The whole point of the rules is that IBM is using Second Life for business purposes. It's a no-brainer, really: if you're doing business in SL from the office during work hours then obviously you should act like it.

Guidelines

I'd love to see the IBM Employee Handbook section on yiffing etiquette.

HR Drones

attempt to justify their existence.

Acceptable Second Life Behavior

Damn, all this world needs is another 5,000 people in blue suits.

IBM guidelines

I see a number of people raising concerns about IBM's guidelines and what they mean for employee's personal time.

For those that are interested, you can read IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines, specifically the section On Your Own Time [ibm.com], as well as IBM's Blogging Policy and Guidelines [ibm.com] and the Virtual World Guidelines [ibm.com].

Are these employees IDing themselves as IBMers?

If they are, then Big Blue has every right to tell them how to behave. After all, they are at least in some small way representing the company.

If they are not, then IBM's rights are much more limited: They have only as much right to dictate behavior in the game as they do real-life off-hours behavior. This is usually limited to not violating confidentiality, not doing anything illegal, or not doing anything that would violate a reasonable "morals clause" you see in some employee handbooks. For example, some companies have rules against disparaging their competition on or off the clock. Others have rules against gambling for employees in sensitive positions. These rules would apply in-game the same as out-of-game.

Frankly, a bigger problem for IBM and the rest of Corporate America is probably bleary-eyed employees who spend too much time fighting and not enough time sleeping.

Somebody shoot William Gibson...

...retroactively, please. Sometime pre-Neuromancer would be nice. Bonus: You'd prevent Pattern Recognition while you were at it!

These journalists! They try too hard to be hip; they pretend to be well-versed in technology -- and yet they coin nonsense phrases like "Cyberspace!" It is they who are responsible for this! (Regina Lynn on Wired: I'm looking at you too. At least Gibson wrote some Cyberpunk.) So, while -- fine -- shooting might be a bit harsh, I do think the pillory could be in order...

[Neal Stephenson gets off the hook completely, 'cus even though he had a "Metaverse" in Snow Crash, he at least (1) clearly knows what he's talking about, and (2) wrote Cryptonomicon (and after you write something as mindshatteringly awesome as Cryptonomicon, you can get away with a lot.)]

EOF.

Off hours restrictions

A company that restricts your off-hours activities is way out of bounds. Yes, i know it happens all the time, but that doesn't make it right by any stretch of the imagination.

Now if they are talking on-hours, then thats a bit different as you are on their dime. I cant get to the story to see which we are talking about.

IBM VP keen Second Lifer

Dr. Bob Sutor, IBM VP for Standards and Open Source is a keen Second Lifer. He refers to it quite often in his blog. Recently he has discussed the problems of getting the latest version running on Ubuntu Feisty on his laptops in his blog here:

http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1633 [sutor.com]

Where he posts an image of Second Life running under Feisty. Since the image apparently shows his avatar we now know what the IBM dress code is in virtual worlds - Muscle Tee shirts and sunglasses.

It's A Fucking Game!

block it from work.

it's completely unecessary.

Anyone who uses it is a co-dependent basket case.

Bureaucracy?

They also question why IBM would add a layer of buttoned-down bureaucracy to this relatively rollicking corner of the Internet.

The real question, of course, is to ask why they only added one layer of bureaucracy. IBM manages to add twenty layers of it to everything else they do, to the extent that working in a tech job there just is not even vaguely interesting.

People who comment on this story probably

1. Have never tried Second Life

2. Tried it for 20 min and declared "The graphics suck, the game sucks" (even though technically it's not a "game")

3. Hate Second Life (or any other tech that is popular) and love being "Devil's advocates"

Too Far.....

How on Earth are companies allowed to regulate the private lives of it's employees?

It's not like government jobs, where there is a genuine conflict of interest or national security is at stake. An example would be how Gaming Board employees aren't allowed to enter/gamble/conduct any kind of business in casinos.

Companies that do this, such as Blockbuster, and now IBM, claim that the actions of their employees reflect on the company. That may be true, albeit insignificantly, but it is going to have to be a risk that companies with employees are going to have to accept. Regulating personal and private life for the perceived "image" of a company is definitely going to far.

I don't know about other companies, but Blockbuster Video (aka "Lackluster Video), has a policy that is pretty good at punishing you for personal, non-work related indiscretions:

It is Blockbuster company policy for employees to report indiscretions that may reflect negatively upon the company. Failure to do so can resuly in 'disciplinary action' (*Not verbatim, but the best I can remember. It was really short and simple). Basically, you can be fired any kind of run-in with the law, business-related or not.

Considerations

A couple of considerations that the IBMers probably made: 1. Nobody is as they seem, and everyone has a deep dark secret. Just ask Bill Clinton! 2. People are more likely to say what is on their mind when hiding from behind a computer screen. 3. Its always good to have guidelines for legal reasons.

Better watch out

Next thing you know, they'll be gassing people by the millions with Zyklon-B just because it boosts their profit margins.

Just kidding Second Life users. Your characters are completely safe.

IBM only does things like that in the real world.

Incompatible

Interestingly, for the past two years all new hires to the IBM corporation have been provided with new laptops running the Intel 950xx graphics chipset ... one of the only chipsets incompatible with Second Life ... a coincidence?

Re:...for business purposes

Basically, it's due to the fact that IBM uses tools like Secondlife to conduct business.

So, if business lunches are often conducted at the local DuClaw's, you're automatically banned from playing pool there? If some drunk idiot starts taunting you and getting in your face, in your off hours, with the blessing of the pub owner, you're just supposed to shrug it off because "We might tell your Mommy if you say anything back"? What's to stop IBM from conducting business _everywhere_ on the web and using that as justification to monitor all employees at all times?

Do authoritarians ever draw a line when pursuing their own power?

Re:I work for IBM and...

I used to work for a gaming company and I almost got fired on my first day for mentioning where I worked on my livejournal. THe market department flipped out and called my bosses and boss. Ouch.

I turned the entry friends only.

They are obsessed with media misquoting even a lowly temp help desk worker. I had to sign a legal document saying I can tell my friends where I work and used to work but not anywhere on the internet. Especially /. :-)

I no longer work there but I can still be sued for giving out any information on how our servers work or rumors of upcoming projects. It was strange but I guess the major game publisher had bad press releases and lawsuits where /. ers who worked there quotes were actually used in court.

If I were IBM I would make any remark that I even work there on the net a firable offense.