Im being sent to management training I dont need. So it could also be worth asking, Is there anything in particular that youre hoping this training will help me with? After that news, I talked to my former supervisor, who was also laid off, about my disappointment. A lot of this stuff people do put out there themselves. ;). Youre right that the internet has erased a lot of the privacy we could have had before. Also, one person Googled me, found out where I live and looked at Google pictures of the exterior of my house (nice trees!), which I thought was creepy. Wed all appreciate a little privacy and the only privacy we can get is the privacy we give each other. Some jobs are better about including remote folks than others. But that is something that might be interesting to know and even relevant in some cases. When head office people brought in food/sweets to share theyd use the All Staff email list as there was no head office only list, and send a note saying chocolate in the kitchen etc. OP#1, I have always been of the opinion that unless someone elses immediate physical well-being in threatened, its always best to mind your own business. I know its petty, and like I said, I wouldnt say anything, but when I was dealing with traffic during my commute or spending my evening doing laundry I could have done during the day, Id feel like I got the short end of the stick. Thats part of the reason Id give her a pass on it, and just make sure to head it off for next time. In the case that immediately comes to mind, I did social media searches when I was hiring interns to get more context on them. But thats because they need to protect themselves from predators. There are nuances. But to then look them up on Facebook, notice their URL is a kind of username, look THAT up on Twitter, see they tweeted about home buying woes, go look up county records to find their address and go look at their house listing on Zillow etc. But if you do, and you find something incriminating,. I think its a leap to assume that this was punitive. I dont think there is anything wrong with Googling (since its public info, and employers Google job candidates not infrequently), but obviously dont share that you did that! And that is the kind of curiosity that makes for a nightmare coworker. And as you said, within the hierarchy it might not be appropriate to ask but the knowlege might be good. Its not foolproof (for all I know, you have very loose boundaries around this stuff), but mentally putting yourself in their shoes is generally a good proxy for figuring out the boundary between ok and too far. Besides, in my department, we usually want people who show at least a little bit of competence in social media use its part of our responsibility here and you can learn a lot about someones general social media literacy by checking their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. But it absolutely feels like an invasion of my privacy. It is (now) public information. If youre the person writing the specification for a purchase, or the person choosing a vendor for it, your company may have rules about the type of goods and services you may accept as well as limits on how often you may accept them Caesars wife and all that. @Librarian of SHIELD, I very much agree about the line, and how nebulous it is. Yes. But if they put it out there, with their own name, its a little weird but not that weird. We all posted a picture of us eating at whatever restaurant we chose on the Slack channel and talked about what we ordered. And even proving youre the owner of the house and removing the pics (like you can on Zillow) doesnt mean there wont be pics of your house on other sites like Redfin or crossposted from other real estate sites. Thats pretty judgey. At least two of my past addresses show up when I google myself and Ive never explicitly put them online because that would be risky. And Im saying thats not necessarily true. Parle vous that experience into a better fit. Its just that theres very little stop them from doing it if they are so inclined, just like theres very little to stop someone stealing stuff out of an unlocked car. If theyre in tech and they mention they work on open-source projects, its totally fine to look them up on GitHub and see what theyve done. Not continuously (like, I'm not going to be looking you up on LinkedIn when we've worked together for a while), but at the start, absolutely. But if I did an interview 12 years ago on a local public access TV station that has substantially lower viewership thats typically located in a certain geographical area, and somebody at work mentions it a week from now, I think it would be fair to be surprised. There are common misunderstandings about what certain projects actually were whenever someone reads in it print that rarely happen through spoken conversations, because people see it through the lense of their history/experience (common problem for people who leave X industry but stay in tech). I fully understand why someone higher on the list of alt-right targets (LGBT, nonwhite, etc) would want to know before they ended up alone in the office with someone holding those views. While I disagree with the norm, I will admit that most people would be freaked out by someone bringing up info they found online. I can honestly say Ive never thought about googling a coworker. Thats super petty, but also kind of hilarious. Ah, now I can see why thats relevant in a professional capacity actually. If you google Jellybean Uniqueforeignname, youll see someone with an identical name who was part of a public police investigation. When I worked remotely, I thought that benefit FAR outweighed things like pizza Fridays or cupcakes in the break room. Maybe the reason it feels like you are questioning their ability is because you kinda are. An update automatically sending connections for me to everyone everywhere with the slightest, most tenuous connection how many times removed, is a whole different thing and its not just creepy. Coworker: "one who works with another : a fellow worker". And while I agree that we shouldnt necessarily hold all internet behavior against people and that in the ancient internet days, yes people werent thinking about it turning into the internet of today, still Im always amazed what folks share publicly online. That was a top link on Google for my name during that time. Its almost certainly not work relevant that someone has bizzare and bizzarely strong (and in your opinion, highly mistaken) opinions on fan-fic / furries / vaccines / moon landing conspiracy theories / romance novels / anything else. Yeah, I dont Google but I look up bosses, colleagues, and prospective employers on LinkedIn regularly. Im in a little rural spot on the map about an hour away and there is no such thing as delivery out here. And there is probably a process for making sure the background check is accurate, which googling someone may not be. I think that is pretty common and not a big deal, I see in my linkedin profile view others doing the same quite frequently. The brain does a whole ton of shortcuts, and then backfills logical rational reasons that was the objective, rational thing to do if you look at the question logically. I have a colleague who, when you googled her name (which was distinctive), was an entire page of results about how her former employer was suing her for breach of contract. If they google me to find out about my love of competitive butter carving, thats over the line. Right?! Since it was a gift, any money you get from it is pure profit! I think the people who think they should never be googled without a good reason are unreasonable, and wildly out of touch. Its still the fifth or sixth result when you google me, even though I never gave my permission for them to do that and was never associated with their society. Having the wrong opinions about the wrong coworker might result in rather significant harassment and abuse. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profiles-data-collection-non-users-mark-zuckerberg, https://www.amazon.com/BIC-Fashion-Retractable-Assorted-Fashion-FHAP21-ASST/dp/B005YGLA5Y, my company decided to close for 2 weeks last year and charged me a chunk of this years PTO for it, what admin assistants really want from their coworkers, should my spouse have to be background checked for my job, one-way video interviews, and more, my boss keeps asking me to do things that aggravate our community partners, update: my employee wastes a huge amount of everyones time with helpful suggestions and questioning, 8 horror stories for Administrative Professionals Day, HR jokes about firing people, I want to stop giving reasons for my time-off requests, and more. Yes its not ideal but its also not unusual because in a company of very varied job functions a director wont have done all of them. Im talking about someone randomly googling a coworker, finding their address and driving there when you have no reason to do so. I agree that stalking/cyberstalking is wrong, but that is on an entirely different level then googling your coworkers and checking out their social media. Ive written articles for limited distribution journals that are now on the internet. Nosey is pejorative. This is still not a great analogy because someone wearing a cow costume under their clothes is certainly more out of place than the mundane info that is available on the internet about people/coworkers. Thats what is happening in social media. That they asked me in person, then asked another coworker after I demurred, and made them LOOK IT UP IN THE PATRON DATABASE, then TAUNTED ME WITH THE INFORMATION, led to some unpleasant consequences. That metaphor may be why our opinions diverge so wildly. If youre googling someone, youre not accidentally seeing anything. Because I didnt consent to have any of that information available. Then again, Im not even on Facebook. That information is intended to be public. And the IRS doesnt count gifts under $4. People google other people. The question everyone should be asking themselves instead is, When I google myself, what comes up? Google yourself and look. Its funny but the swag capital of the world, the medical field has become anti swag, because of all the major scandals about drug reps bribing doctors a lot of areas no longer even permit pens and pencils, so asking is always good. Once a quarter, we have a budget for a catered team lunch. I still usually use screennames that cant be easily traced back to me, and people were way more intense about it back in the aughts when we all thought posting your real name on the internet meant a crazed murderer would instantly show up outside your house. Ive seen it too many times- the hiring manager will say Oh, theyre not working, so they should be happy to accept $10k below what they were making because theyre desperate. Its an awful practice and shame on their HR/Compensation partners who dont pushback and tell them its unacceptable. For remote employees, they can order food and expense it with the company, which would be part of the budget. I know it is not always possible 100% but if you dont want people looking at your MySpace, LiveJournal from when you were 16/20/24 do your best to try and get it taken down. Not to make assumptions but the tone of a few of the things in LW3 raised an eyebrow and if thats how they are presenting themselves around the office I could see why things arent going well. The patients were notified. See the links below. If you see two people at the grocery store who are clearly having an intense whispered conversation, yeah. And how far back do you look about that and how deep? It was not out of line there to be casually sticking their names into FB to see what came up.) My boss regularly comments on my lawn/yard, but, to be fair, I live a few blocks from where I work and am on a reasonable route for her to be driving past my house every day, and she learned about my houses location during all of the house-buying drama I went through to get a house in an Extreme Sellers Market a couple years back. Thats how my curiosity will be sated. Theyre highly likely to fall under that that threshold. My name is very common and also the same as a slightly famous person so if you just google my name you wont get much unless you add some additional information. This has now trickled down into her minion (my new manager) getting progressively aggressive and toxic with me in private meetings. (Im in a marketing-related field, so I go to check out their brochures and sales pitches to see what I can learn and get a free lunch.). But no one worries about things like branded pens and mousepads, just like they dont worry about business cards, because thats pretty much what they are. On the other hand, outside of legitimate background checks, deep digging is pretty much waaaay over the line. It also brought up their rape conviction. People do on teachers, dates, coaches..it is totally insane. But dont let on that youve done so. It wasnt an amazing house or anything, just a pretty setting and a nice little house. Sit on a board? Ive actually reverse image searched some people from LinkedIn something sometimes just seems really off with some people. But talking to your coworkers about stuff you find online is a different question from looking up your coworkers online. Imagine someone who doesnt want her new office to know she is a survivor of a newsworthy event so she can have one place in her life to feel more normal again. First off, many people put things up in the old days before mega search engines. There are two dozen people on my team, but only four of us in this office; the rest, along with the manager, are in another state. I cant imagine that someone wouldnt like *any* of them. But if you tell your coworkers I googled you in case youre a sex offender. Some of its fairly innocuous (hey, did you hear so and so plays ball and has kids? @Collette I the phone and wallet examples I dont think are really the same or applicable because that is going through someones personal property. I could see reasons why someone might walk a person through a house thats not complete enough to be locked, or be referred to as a build rather than a house. Havent actually bothered to track them down, though.). Along with rechargeable accounts. Right? Especially if you find something embarassing or unflattering about the person. I didnt do a deep dive, I think I just looked at Linked in, and professional publications. It would be worth asking the remote employees if they feel shortchanged because they dont occasionally get to enjoy free food or if they feel the benefits of working from home outweigh getting a slice of pizza or a free cup of coffee every now and then. Thats not prejudging, thats just accurately judging. Somebody will do it isnt even close to being the same thing as this is morally OK and not creepy. @pleaset, good perspective and Im glad you posted this. Im with you on this one. That aggregator stuff is a pain, especially when you have a pretty common name, because it can easily wind up as a mix of mostly-correct stuff from when you were a teenager that then veers widely off-base because you, for example, moved out of the country for multiple years, and that earlier mostly-correct info then gets attached (in the name of continuity, I expect) to someone with your same name who lives in Alabama and has warrants, evictions, serious traffic tickets, jail time, felonies, a bankruptcy, what have you. It might a be a true reality, but its dystopian and we should stop using its one existence to justify it as OK. Curious doesnt necessarily mean creepy, but that doesnt mean that a certain extreme level of curiosity cant veer over into creepy territory. Professional Practices. Me neither. Like, they think I just crawled out from under a rock. Im not allowed to stalk you, break into your house, peep into your windows, or call your phone number 20 times a day and hang up. Yes! What is an acceptable amount of internet research/snooping around on new coworkers? Otherwise it clogs your junk drawer and is ultimately useless. I used to work with Evil Bee, who often lamented she didnt understand twitter. I remember how shocked we all were that Facebook was suggesting you put not only your real name and the college you went to, but even your face on the internet.

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