Today, I just got news that our company is mandating that everyone installs spy software on their computers. As I am not going to install such software on my computer, it has been said to me that if we don't find some solution, I will get fired.
To be honest, I was thinking about changing jobs anyway, so I don't mind that much, but I am not sure what to do now.
I work in IT, so I have quite a lot of job opportunities, but most of them are something that is mostly harmful to society.
So I am considering two options:
Try to find some meaningful job in IT (which is likely to be very hard).
Find some nice good paying job where I can work, ideally part-time, and focus on working on open source software in my free time.
Not really sure what to do, does anyone have any experience with similar situation?
Are you entitled to severance? Depending on how much bullshit and confrontation you can tolerate, you can attempt to get fired in a way in which you would get severance pay/benefits if that's an option. Examples include feigning incompetence on the corpo spyware, dragging your feet for a long time, i.e., attempted compliance.
Also could you install the spyware on a vm? You could then do that and basically bunk off of work until someone notices, which gives you paid time to shop for jobs.
I have not personally had a ton of success finding actualization via employment. What has worked for me is taking a very low stress job and working on other parts of my life.
Unfortunately, I am not entitled to severance. I could probably install it on VM but from what I've read about the spyware it works on kernel level, so there is pretty good chance they would notice. Also, I work in a pretty dynamic environment, so my boss would notice me not doing anything really quick. Fortunately I have some money saved up and in my city demand for IT people is really big, so I am not really worried.
The one part about my job that I enjoy is that I have some freedom to tinker around with new things. But yeah, other than that, I am starting to feel a bit burnt out. Maybe some low stress job, or just part-time, is the way to go.
I wonder: if you installed it on a VM, and they noticed, what problem would they really have with that? It's to observe you while you're working, right? It seems like the best solution for both parties, as the company gets to do its spying, but you get to conserve your actual privacy.
To me, it almost seems worth it to go forward with installing it on a VM, just to see if that creates further conflict. An employer insisting to be able to spy, specifically, on your private device, even when a better solution is available, seems like it could go favorably for you with whatever workplace rights institution is available in your area.
The issue is that they are not rational about it. The reason they came up with this is, that two days ago our company was attacked by cyberattack. It cost us a lot of money, so they are making all these sweeping changes. These changes didn't even come from experts or anyone qualified but mainly from my boss. So basically anything that isn't full compliance is unacceptable to them.