This site was helpful in documenting the spread of lantern flies (invasive critters that damage trees on the U.S. East Coast) - the more folks that report sightings (of anything not just problem critters) the better for all concerned.
Conversely, its also beneficial to report sightings of helpful bugs/birds/bats/etc. so can get an early warning when a population starts to thin out.
I don't have a linkedin acct. So imagine my shock when I "googled" myself and found a linkedin profile connecting my name to a company I presently have a consulting arrangement with (1099 not W2). I went ballistic and fired off an email to the consulting firm to take down the profile immediately or face legal action (a bluff). Couple days later, the company forwarded an email they received from linkedin confirming the profile had been taken down.
So this is just a heads up that even if you don't have a linkedin account, they will create one on your behalf so might better check (assuming you neither have nor want one).
Are companies now commonly uploading lists of employees to LinkedIn? Is this happening automatically because you got an e-mail account from the company and the company runs on MS Office and you're identified as am employee within it? What triggered it?
This seems like somewhat of a scandal that deserves its own post, but it also needs a lot more details to be trustworthy and for people to understand what exactly is happening.
Also, was there some way for you to take ownership of the profile? Did it depend on verifying a certain e-mail address? Does it require you to get the company to remove it, or could you take ownership and then delete the LinkedIn account/profile yourself?
I rather suspect the information was siphoned to linkedin from the payroll company the consulting firm was using. While there are a zillion small consulting firms, there are a small number of firms which process their payroll (whether to employees or independent contractors like myself). I have no evidence to back this up but after thinking it through, it made more sense than every little mom/pop/medium size niche company all cooperating with linkedin vs a hand full of mega payroll consolidators selling aggregated lists to linkedin. Again, speculation on my part.
What is the benefit that the company derives from that? Kickbacks from LinkedIn? I'm not saying it is, or isn't, I don't understand what the benefit to be gotten from it is. It seems like a lot of effort by one party or the other, unless it is "baked in" to an MS account or whatever.
Also, as the person above had asked: did you have any option/ability to "take control" of the account, or did it have to go through the consulting company was using? It almost feels like someone had a fake ID card made for you. Not a drivers license, but something that would be of greater concern to the person on the ID (LinkedIn profile) than the company making it.
Interesting. That's a possibility... but how much information did the LinkedIn account have? Did it have your full job title? I'm not sure how much information is shared with payroll providers.
Again, there's no real reporting on the internet of LinkedIn creating profiles for people without their consent. If you have any documentation and details, this is the kind of thing worth posting here in full detail and/or contacting a journalist about. Of course, if it was in the past you might not have any of that info anymore.
It reminds me of that thing I had heard of people doing on Facebook years ago. Someone wouldn't have a Facebook account "yet", so one of their friends/family/whomever would create one on their behalf with an assumption that they were being helpful to the other party. "It's all ready to go once you want to login! I knew your email address, so just do a password reset when you start using it. You're welcome!"
I believe even an episode of South Park covered it.
The difference there being that, with the Facebook relationship status stuff, spouses were feeling societal pressure to show a public declaration and "proof" of their partners existence/mutual status. With something like LinkedIn though...does that same sort of pressure exist? Are Hiring Managers (or whomever) feeling some kind of professional pressure to "prove" how many real life people work with/for their company? Does getting the number of users marked as working for that company above a threshold give them secret, special privileges in some locked-off business area of LinkedIn? Or is it just pure clout chasing? It's very odd. It feels like a violation in some way I can't really articulate. "Compulsory volunteer account-to-ID association"? I don't know what to call that. It's gross.
We used to have to destroy org charts and handbooks so that our companies wouldn't get hacked, not they just throw that out the windows and act shocked when something happens.
Yeah. Generally companies would prefer their employee lists not not public. It opens them up not just to social engineering hacking, but also everyday poaching.
I understand why LinkedIn would want more profiles. Hard to understand why a company you work for would be cooperating with them. And if they have the power to take your profile down then they're aware of it. Very strange.
I’ve seen fake accounts created by bad actors attempting to pose as others for gaining remote employment. It’s possible that is what was happening, and the takedown was from LI taking down the profile from the bad actor.
Other times they would just link to real LinkedIn profiles, but the LinkedIn profile will say that they’re not actively looking and are a victim of id fraud basically.
It’s been a huge issue spotting candidates falsifying information since remote work took off unfortunately. They payout is if they can get at least 1 or 2 paychecks before being found out, they’ve made a good profit.
Are you sure they took it down completely, not just removed from public eyes? Majority of LinkedIn income is from businesses, they might still sell it in some form (e.g. stats/aggregates).
Fascinating idea. Since the board starting position never changes, I'd skip the initial table and pivot and just go straight to loading an 8x8 grid with the pieces. I would also make a table of the 6 piece types and movement parameters. So, for ex, the bishop move restriction is dX=dY, the rook (dXdY=0), knight (dXdY=2), etc. Then a child table to record for each piece, the changes in X,Y throughout the game (so the current position of any piece is X = (Xstart + SUM(dX)) & Y = (Ystart + SUM(dY)) and a column to show if the piece was captured. Any proposed "move" (e.g., 3 squares up) would be evaluated against the move restrictions, the current location of the piece and whether or not the move will either land on an empty square, an opponent piece or gulp off the board and either allow or disallow it.
I'm still working on an idea to have a "state" check to know when checkmate happens but that's gonna take a wee bit more time.
But, the idea is very novel and very thought provoking and has provided me with a refreshing distraction from the boring problem I was working on before seeing your post.
A clause I frequently see (as one who performs a lot of contract work) is a restriction on accepting an offer of employment from the client of the consulting firm I'm contracting with. Whenever I see this clause, I redline it out and advise the consulting firm to fashion a buyout clause* with the client. I'm very firm that the consulting firm cannot restrict my employment opportunities.
* The buyout clause is between the client and consulting firm and roughly compensates the consulting firm for the lost profit of the rate diff over the remaining term of my contract with the consulting firm.
I've had a buyout clause used while consulting before. The company was ending their relationship with the contracting company and wanted to keep a handful of individuals.
From what I understand, the contracting firms don't like (reasonably-priced) buyouts because it allows clients to cherry-pick the best 'talent', and basically use the contractor as a 'farm team'.
yes, it's unfortunately common for employers to abuse their workers by keeping their pay and work conditions as awful as possible and using any means possible to prevent them from leaving to better conditions and pay
Technically, restrictions on employees by their FORMER employer. In theory (if valid), they could retain power over you for a time AFTER you are no longer employed.
A similar thing is often done during dismissal: sign away your rights to sue for wrongful dismissal in return for severance. In my case, almost a year's worth of pay seemed like a reasonable severance, so I took it and didn't argue.
Not really. Individuals who can build a company are under no obligation to sell it to anyone placing unreasonable conditions on the sale. If I'm buying your company, I have a concern that you might pull of of the customers back (having started a new company) but the price I'm willing to offer you compensates you for the book of business you are selling to me. That's where non-solicitation clauses come in.
I think the operative principal here is that employees are at a disadvantage w/r to employers. Buyers and sellers are not presumed to be at any disadvantage w/r to each other.
Stopped reading not long after noticing the title of the paper in question.
The very hypothesis is laughable. It is completely irrelevant if the hypothesis is supported or not.
That paper is like flypaper for anyone seeking affirmation of sustainability policies.
I could write a paper tomorrow claiming that [insert conspiracy theory here] is absolutely true and why Big [insert hated industry here] doesn't want you to know the truth and it would be cited until the earth crashes into the sun.
It's not about the truth anymore. It's about opinion validation.
I could write a paper about that but wouldn't hold my breath on getting any cites.
the hypothesis seems pretty important and interesting, even if hard to study (and hard to classify companies, and sustainability, way too many degrees of freedom, so it would need preregistration, etc)
I'm just glad that the dumb idea that Neanderthals were dumb, club carrying knuckledraggers is finally being laid to rest. I hope we eventually learn what happened to them. They survived the choke point of 75,000 years ago only to disappear 30,000 years later. So cool to put a face to the name :-)
Neanderthals are a distinct species. If "human" in the context you are using it is confined to Homo sapiens then no, Neanderthals are not human. If your definition of human is anything in the genus homo then yes, Neanderthals are human.
"Species" and "genus" are human (hey-o) concepts that we impose on the natural world to try and understand it, and ultimately this depends on who you ask.
Conversely, its also beneficial to report sightings of helpful bugs/birds/bats/etc. so can get an early warning when a population starts to thin out.
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