For those who work in IT

Discussion in 'Silicon (v)Alley' started by KushBurner420, Jul 4, 2012.

  1. Did you get drug tested? How often? How big is your company?
     
  2. I have worked for mid-sized companies and large companies and they've all drug tested me. The mid-sized Mormon-owned company I worked for tested randomly every 3 months. They would send a list of their employees to the drug testing company, would randomly select a percentage for testing. I got called for a random once.

    Now I work for a very large company, and I was drug tested when I was hired full-time but when I worked as a temp they didn't bother.
     
  3. Have done it at colleges, no testing.
     
  4. creative industries for the most part don't test. e.g music,mag publishing,advertising
     
  5. #5 MzO, Jul 7, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2012
    I had to take one for the job I just got. The reason for it is because of working with education/gov't databases. Previous jobs I didn't though but they were at smaller companies.

    edit: Also wanted to add, if you have are applying for a certain company you can try looking them up on www.glassdoor.com. People post reviews about working at a company as well as interview experiences where they generally tell the entire hiring process (ie. drug test, background check, interview type, etc).
     
  6. I work for one of the biggest banks in the country and they don't DT for some reason...soooo I guess it just depends.
     
  7. I should be getting a decent job at a big oil company and i'm wondering if they do? Ill check out that glass door website.
     
  8. This is also for the guys that work in IT for a company. Do you know which sites employees go to on their comps and do bosses ask for this information. Just wondering for people who would be visting Grasscity while at work (not that i would)
     
  9. Yes absolutely. They can see everything.

    Realistically IT does not have time to monitor what everyone's doing. But there are software/appliances that they can set up for web filtering, and they can receive notifications when someone tries to view a website in a blocked category (drugs or porn, for example)

    And yes, bosses ask all the time for IT to check into employee's computer history to see what they've been doing. Normally you don't even know IT was checking until you get fired by your boss.
     
  10. Yup, have been DT before, usually at the start of employment, but not really thereafter.

    I think it depends on not the IT work itself, but who you are doing the work for. Federal/Government contracts may require more strict rules around subcontractors and such, so it can be tough to generalize for a field like this.

    EDIT: And as others have pointed out, do NOT attempt to surf websites that you would have a problem answering to your boss. Yes, IT usually can see and log everything when it comes to internet activity (unless you know what you're doing to bypass it)
     
  11. Great advice. Thanks!
     
  12. Absolutely not, and I'd refuse to work for someone who did. Programming is the sort of thing that if you need to be drug testing your employees, that's a sure-fire sign you don't trust them enough to let them do their job properly. There are better ways to ensure that code doesn't go bad--and I code better stoned. If employees goofing off is your concern, fire the ones who goof off. Drug testing is a non-solution to a non-problem in a field where you generally need a pretty heavy duty skillset. This isn't McDonalds, although I've seen far too many coders who can't code to save their life... often outsourced, sadly, but also often people out of college. You need on the job experience in this field, because only a very few people actually do the fun stuff you think about in college all the time. Most of the time you're slogging through menial details.

    If you do have something where a drug addiction might compromise the company seriously, that's another story. But most companies don't work at that level of sensitivity anyway.
     

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