The company I work for integrated with Equifax. I ended up in a meeting with their work number folks where I had to explain that there was no reason for us to share (e.g.) SSNs with them. Suffice it to say if your personal data is in any platform that tracks employment or income information that you are directly vulnerable in the event of a data breach.
Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
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Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you believe the article, they were able to tell whether someone was producing adequate value since they claim the investigation was into people that were not performing as expected. The data in question was one piece of the information.
I don't believe them. If they had low performers, Equifax could have let them go without the non-consentual financial rectal exam on the way out. The number of jobs is irrelevant, only performance should matter. This is a political / marketing move, as they could have also done the inspection without publicizing it.
I was in car sales. Top performers were caught borrowing used cars for nights out, secretly loaning cars to favorite customers for long period of time, buying tradeins secretly off the books, crashing cars while basically driving recklessly while transporting company cars to customers or off-site facilities, and not fired.
Low performers were fired because they answered incoming calls poorly twice in a week.
So it IS possible top performers were allowed to have side gigs and not fired at Equifax.
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#53Do you want shitty publicity? Because this is how you get shitty publicity.
Equifax doesn’t care about that lol.
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the UK there's a set of criteria (IR35) that attempt to codify the distinction. The hiring business has to make the assessment. One of criteria is right to subcontract and freedom to work with multiple clients. If they get it wrong, they're liable for taxes, not the Contractor. HMRC, the UK tax body is responsible for this, and therefore it is an utter mess in practice and has had chilling effects on the UK IT con…
The US tax authority (IRS) has a similar set of rules; if you can set your hours and working conditions and have your own equipment or tools it justifies not being an employee. There are of course important corner conditions like hiring a contractor who operates some machine you own. In general, though some people prefer to be contractors, these rules are in place because some employers try to classify de facto emplo…
> if you can set your hours and working conditions and have your own equipment or tools it justifies not being an employee. There are of course important corner conditions like hiring a contractor who operates some machine you own.
Note that security guards can be structured as contractors despite obviously not being able to choose where or when they work. There's a big list of things that "weigh in favor" of one status or the other. There aren't definitive answers unless you've recently won a lawsuit against the government (which always wants employee status for everyone).
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#55"Equifax flagged 283 contractors for potential 'dual employment,' documents show." Would this not be a big flag to reclassify these contractors as employees? Being able to have multiple clients is one of the factors to determine if you're a contractor...
Good to know. I’m a contractor and am just starting my own business separate from my main contracting role. Was curious what precedent there is for this dynamic Edit: I was under the impression being a contractor would give one flexibility to do whatever they want when they’re not billing hours, depends on the contract wording of course
In fact, I've seen contractors (who want to be contractors) who limit the hours they work for any single client so there's no question as to whether they're an employee or not.
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#56> CEO Mark Begor this week informed employees that some of their "teammates" were fired for having "a second full-time job while maintaining their full-time role at EFX," which is the ticker symbol for Equifax. Don't punish people for being entrepreneurial, it's completely un-American. If you can't tell whether someone is producing adequate value or not without interrogating their finances, that's on you. What a conn…
> Don't punish people for being entrepreneurial, it's completely un-American
America has a long history of owners doing everything in their power to control, literally or by proxy, their workers.
It also has a long history of making sure "those people"/workers/etc know their place and stay in it.
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#57> Executives, especially in the tech industry, have said they're worried that some remote employees are distracted. “Distracted” like the time that Equifax leaked hundreds of millions of pieces of personal data. Maybe instead of blaming the workforce they should worry about making the company a place that people want to work exclusively. Equifax does not matter at all as an organization.
Indeed. In an alternate universe, the Chief Information Security Officer of Equifax is giving interviews about the dangers of work from home for cyber security roles, informed by her masters in music composition and 0.0 years of IC experience as deep expertise.
I'm still astounded no one ended up in jail over that. Software Engineering really does need some professionalization.
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#58First thoughts after reading this: 1. Is this legal in all jurisdictions an employee could conceivably be based in? 2. When will Equifax monetize this as a service to other companies (because you know they will).
>1. Is this legal in all jurisdictions an employee could conceivably be based in?
I don't see why not. To my knowledge employment information isn't protected by law, and presumably whoever provided equifax that information turned it in willingly.
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#59"Equifax flagged 283 contractors for potential 'dual employment,' documents show." Would this not be a big flag to reclassify these contractors as employees? Being able to have multiple clients is one of the factors to determine if you're a contractor...
The article says that they don’t know if any contractors were terminated; they only know about employees. They could terminate them if they could show that the contractors were faking the hours.
To what extent can you demand hours from a contractor?
Re: Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs
#60Garbage company that collects data about people who are definitively not their customers or users in any way, shape, or form and then loses that data because of the aforementioned garbage qualities.
It should have been liquidated and the proceeds split amongst the victims after that happened.