My first job out of college (~2007) had an open office plan. The development team sat right next to all of the sales people making phone calls during the day. When someone made a sale, they would scream loud and then ring a bell (loud cheers then proceeded from the rest of their team).
This happened at least a dozen times/day. We were allowed to wear headphones, but could not listen to anything streaming online. I would record 8 hours of streaming radio the night before and then transfer it to my Ipod nano in the morning. I was usually so sleep-deprived that I didn't have any time to check the recording before work. Once/month, my Internet connection would go down and I would have 8 hours of white noise (those days were a nightmare).
I eventually figured out that I could RDP into my server at home and stream audio from there, and listen to it through the RDP connection. The Internet filters they were using couldn't detect it.
I think what finally made me quit was when I found out management had screen-monitoring software installed on all of our computers and would review it every hour.
A co-worker discovered it by accident and due to my inquisitive nature (which sometimes gets me in trouble), I tried to telnet into the listening port we found on his computer (to see what it was) and it completely crashed their monitoring software (must have been really shitty software). I was hauled in the next day and questioned to see if I did this with malicious intent and he was fired )I guess they were watching him for awhile and were gathering evidence. He had worked with the company for 5 years).
I got out at a good time. The company in question was in the loan industry and it melted down a year later in 2008 and the whole development team was laid off.
I hated this office experience so much, that since the job I had after this, I've only worked remote jobs (and still do) in my home office or office space I personally rent. I don't think I could ever go back.
This happened at least a dozen times/day. We were allowed to wear headphones, but could not listen to anything streaming online. I would record 8 hours of streaming radio the night before and then transfer it to my Ipod nano in the morning. I was usually so sleep-deprived that I didn't have any time to check the recording before work. Once/month, my Internet connection would go down and I would have 8 hours of white noise (those days were a nightmare).
I eventually figured out that I could RDP into my server at home and stream audio from there, and listen to it through the RDP connection. The Internet filters they were using couldn't detect it.
I think what finally made me quit was when I found out management had screen-monitoring software installed on all of our computers and would review it every hour.
A co-worker discovered it by accident and due to my inquisitive nature (which sometimes gets me in trouble), I tried to telnet into the listening port we found on his computer (to see what it was) and it completely crashed their monitoring software (must have been really shitty software). I was hauled in the next day and questioned to see if I did this with malicious intent and he was fired )I guess they were watching him for awhile and were gathering evidence. He had worked with the company for 5 years).
I got out at a good time. The company in question was in the loan industry and it melted down a year later in 2008 and the whole development team was laid off.
I hated this office experience so much, that since the job I had after this, I've only worked remote jobs (and still do) in my home office or office space I personally rent. I don't think I could ever go back.