Goldman Forces Employees To Poke On Their Own Time

Posted by Bess Levin, Aug 22, 2008, 12:06pm

siren.gifThe hits just keep on coming out of 85 Broad and its satellite campuses these days. First, the hideous news that employees have been banned from commenting on Dealbreaker.com. Now we receive word that Facebook has been blocked. I'm sure the lot of you are going to argue that the vast majority of financial firms have long blocked access to the social networking site, but Goldman's supposed to be above such pedestrian measures. See, Blanks and Co. used to be of the mind that as long as you're kicking ass (by lying about level three assets), who cares what websites you visit during jack off time? It's a slippery slope from telling your employees they can't get on a site devoted exclusively to sex videos featuring Mark Haines to becoming a takeover target.

Earlier: Goldman Sachs Silences Employees

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Tags: Facebook, Goldman Sachs

Comments

1

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 12:19PM

Facebook's been blocked for a while. Err, well least I hope so...either that or my friend at GS put me on limited a month ago. Damn her!

2

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 12:19PM

The internet is driving all IB senior management nuts.

3

Posted by AJ, Aug 22, 2008 1:08PM

What are the rules with this? People will find workarounds for every single thing they try. How much is their culpability reduced by them saying "we tried"?

4

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 1:12PM

Nothing says Facebook IPO friendly like a firewall.

5

Posted by Anal_yst, Aug 22, 2008 1:23PM

@4

What facebook IPO? Insiders have been liquidating the sh!t outa their shares for a while. Besides, they'd prolly do something quirky (stupid) like let H&Q run the dutch auction

6

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 2:03PM

fb has been blocked for a while. They access it through bb's and iphones.

7

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 2:03PM

fb has been blocked for a while. They access it through bb's and iphones.

8

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 2:39PM

For as smart as they say they are why don't they use proxies to access facebook, and for that matter, the majority of their browsing?

All ur internetz belong to uz

9

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 2:49PM

aww, now I'll walk over to the other analysts cubicle to poke him.

10

Posted by hedgehog, Aug 22, 2008 3:14PM

@5 How have facebook insiders been liquidating their shares?? Do you have some insider tip on a VC/PE firm buying up the employees' stakes??

11

Posted by AJ, Aug 22, 2008 3:30PM

@10... yes Anal_yst has all sorts of insider connections like VentureBeat (http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/05/confirmed-facebook-to-let-employees-sell-some-stock/) and Silicon Alley Insider (http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/is-facebook-letting-employees-cash-out-)

As well as probably the NYT and WSJ

12

Posted by guest, Aug 22, 2008 5:13PM

facebook has been blocked at credit suisse for over a year now. or maybe i was just too afraid to go on?

13

Posted by guest, Aug 23, 2008 5:57AM

Bah - it's not like you have to access Facebook from your desktop machine, you can always use your personal PDA, or any number of other outside resources to instantly access any site you want while on the job. It's just good policy for IB places to block access on their servers where the info is logged and part of public record.

14

Posted by guest, Aug 23, 2008 9:36AM

Get an IPhone and you won't care. Internet with no blockage all the time.

You can't use your employer's computers or systems to access sites that are not work related. Is that so hard?

Get an IPhone. Really.

15

Posted by guest, Aug 25, 2008 1:40PM

mmm, it was blocked at my bank since last year, we'd access it through Bloomberg...

16

Posted by guest, Aug 25, 2008 10:42PM

I work at Goldman and it was not blocked until Friday the 22nd. I know because I was using it on Thursday and so were several other people on the floor. You could hear the complaints all over the place.

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