To help prepare myself in the event I'm told to GTFO, i want to back up some of the files I worked on in order to prepare for interviews. I understand that others have successfully changed file extensions to other file types, such as photos, and dragged/dropped to Goog drive. Any other recommended approaches?
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@ 114618: Yeah, it's humiliating that companies shop price instead of paying top engineering talent what they're really worth. But no one ever sent Jesus a thank-you note, either. There's a difference though, between dancing on the edge of the unethical, and crossing the line into unlawful acts. You go into another company that's doing the same work and slip them information that even remotely looks like something that could be protected intellectual property from another company, the first thing your manager is going to do is run it past legal, who in turn will be looking to see if it resembles any of your previous employer's publicly protected IP and infringes patents. The last thing a company wants is to buy a lawsuit. When a company asks to see code samples, they are generally looking for what used to be referred to as "elegant programming." For examples of code that's so bad it's memorable, see the results from the International Obfuscated C Code Contest.
Talking about being ethical and sht. The ways most American tech companies are replacing domestic talents are humiliating. We don't give a fck.
@ 114834: ...So there really IS a GTFO list of people who will be terminated on 7/22! Thank you for verifying. FYI, anyone who planned on keeping files and documents probably downloaded them last year when the layoffs were first announced in November.
Posters below are right about company confidential information. You can carry out what you memorize--only because QC hasn't figured out a way to "brain suck" you yet upon termination. But you have to be careful about using it to get your next job. If your next dream job is doing cutting edge work, and you walk in with what is obviously company confidential information from your last employer, do you think they will want you working on their stuff? I wouldn't trust you.
Before I left, I simply dropped my linux partition that had all of my development work. I mean literally "sudo dd /dev/null >/dev/sda"... I had no interest in keeping any of my work that I never bothered to check into a central version control system. Then again, I had no interest in any offshore team being able to pick up where I left off too...
Anonymous114473, Buy PUT options is not violating any SEC/Federal laws provided you aren't doing so with inside information. It is perfectly lawful to buy derivatives to hedge whatever holdings you have, subject that do so without knowledge of any insider information. Most of the Q engineers are NOT insiders as defined by the SEC. Whether you want to argue the morality of violating a corporate policy is completely up to you. Then again, I'm sure there's plenty of Q folks that misappropriate company resources and are violating some company policy too. And with all the games that management is playing wrto their stock and employees offshoring and hiring H1-B's, and skirting US domestic employment laws, it's not like Q is really in a position to be preaching "ethics". That buck stopped when management decided to start playing these game...I'm simply protecting my assets. BTW: at $62/share right now, buying a PUT option would not be a good hedging strategy. Also, it's waytoo close to earnings announcement, so would be a terrible time to do it in case you are right, that might raise eyebrows with the SEC. The best time to do it is right after an earnings announcement, in the void of no material information that the company is pending to disclose, and obviously when you have no material information, like right after last quarter. Public information is out there, and all the bad news was already out there, just hedging against further bad news, in case it happens. If you recall, that hedge was worthless for some period of time when we announced buyback, and now it's worthful because we're still in decline. There's no way anyone could have predicted which way it could have gone.. And obviously, if you are a director or above, you can't do this because obviously you are much more likely to possess insider information (though a lot of directors have no reports and have the title only, so I'm not sure what exact information they would have. they are pretty useless).. If you can't tell the difference between company policy and what is unlawful, don't do it and STFU. Stealing company documents isn't just against company policy, it's UNLAWFUL. And it's stupid, because there's no benefit to you to do it.
Anonymous114409, why would a company want somebody who can't follow an insider trading policy any more than somebody who can't follow an IP policy? Both can get you fired, both can open the company up to trouble, and the former can also get you into legal trouble (as everything appears shadier in the hindsight mirror). So how many puts you got going this time?
I would ghost-clone the entire harddrive after a reset/reboot. Clone everything to an external usb thumbdrive. USB3.0 thumbdrives are cheap nowadays (128GB+). It should probably take less than 15 minutes cloning through USB3.0. Then, examine that cloned image at home or elsewhere. This way it only takes 15 minutes or less instead of selecting what files to save which takes much longer. I doubt that the entire harddrive is encrypted.
Anonymous114431, If you attach a USB drive while still in windows, that will get logged. When you do file operations to the usb drive, that will be monitored....If you boot into linux from a CD, and then attach a USB drive, that won't be monitored. At a previous employer, they PGP encrypted the entire drive, so it wasn't possible to see the drive(s) outside of the host O/S that had all the PGP software. I'm assuming most people aren't knowledgeable enough at the Q to know how to even boot into linux..
In any case, if you're ripping of Q documents, you are breaking so many rules and the law, that even if you could get away with it, I wouldn't. Especially since the heat has been turned up on corporate espionage, why would you want to expose yourself to that sort of risk over some documents that you really don't need even for an interview?
Sneaker net your PC to trunk of car when they lay you off, problem solved.
How will IT know if a person is backing up/saving his files that are on his PC/workstation/laptop to a USB storage device? After unplugging all ethernet cables and disabling wifi access (just in case), he/she could just boot from his/her favorite live-cd/usb linux flavor and access the targeted host PC's harddrive (perhaps after mounting it as a storage device). Windows does have registry services that keep track of plug-n-play devices and what go in/out of the system. However, Windows isn't even alive/running in this case. How the hell would IT know?
@Anonymous114384, so the layoff rumors are confirmed on the 22nd if you're not from fake HR. If you are, you violated the company's policies by spilling the beans. Fake!!!
I'm the one that usually talks about PUT options. But this is completely different. It depends on what files you are are backing up. If you're talking about work you actually did at Q. Don't do it. That's IP theft. If you take it with you and get caught, not only will you get in trouble at the Q, with the law (corporate espionage and theft), and any respectable company would fire you too, since they don't want to deal with the liability. And there really isn't any reason why should need to take anything belonging to the Q, to prepare you for the next opportunity. No other company is ever going to need you to disclose anything in great detail as part of offers ing you employment, unless it happens to be a company that intentionally wants to steal IP, which if it's a company in the U.S. I would find that hard to believe.
If it's things like personal files, letters of promotion, salary changes, reviews, personal emails, bring a CD and burn them onto a disk.. One thing you wan to do is if you were one of those people that ended up putting your personal data onto a company laptop or desktop, I'd take the steps now to remove your personal data files. I wouldn't trust anyone's IT dept in safeguarding your personal information..For example, any sort of forms that has your SSN on it...Or if you happen to use a browser that caches your username/passwords to bankaccounts, etc, now would be a good time to clear those caches/passwords/etc.
IT has every record of what files, where and how. Don't do stupid mistakes that will ruin your carrier!
Trusting IT to keep secrets is the first mistake. All it takes is one beer...
@114384: Wonder what your colleagues @ cheerleading division do @ the GTFO day?
I am from HR (not the cheerleading division) and can tell you that IT already has the list of people who will be told to GTFO on 7/22, and they are paying much closer attention to your activities on your PC and in the intranet. Don't do anything stupid because you'll feel even worse if the come after you
thou should not steal
I guess if it's your own work product and you are just keeping for your reference then it would be OK but you can not share company information with third parties...
illegal like put options?