Did the Pandemic Normalize Employee-Monitoring Software?

Posted by EditorDavid

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  The current market is too good for labor.

  Don't stay if they won't pay.

  Don't stay if they demand too much for what they pay.

  I saw this before with home inspectors iny city. They used to be low pay but had a lot of freedom to work casually, go home for lunch, etc. The only metric was inspecting a certain number of houses per week. Then the city put GPS on them and set new standards an banned going home for lunch. The one who inspected my house said he would be taking early retirement at 58 instead of wo

  • Re: Don't stay if they won't pay.

    This is why micromanagement is a very dirty word, and the micromanagers need to realize we are not a bunch of goddamn machines

      I see "going postal" is going to be a retro trend, and one people do not want but will have to fear.

    • Re:

      Here's the problem - if you're not in the office, you can't even flip out on your manager. And your manager doesn't see you as human (having never met you), so there isn't a self-regulatory mechanism to keep him/her/it from asking unreasonable things.

      • Here's the problem - if you're not in the office, you can't even flip out on your manager. And your manager doesn't see you as human (having never met you), so there isn't a self-regulatory mechanism to keep him/her/it from asking unreasonable things.

        Pretty much this.

        I am adamantly against employee monitoring software. I think it is an unacceptable invasion of privacy whether as a remote or in-office worker. There are exceptions for automated security functions -they are sometimes necessary and can be implemented with minimal privacy impact.

        That being said, if you are working remotely, the only metric to measure you by is productivity. If you have a problem, it is your problem. If you are doing your best, but someone else is doing better... you look bad by comparison. Without regular personal interaction there is no motivation to see you as anything other than a unit of production. There is no reason to work with you to help you become better when it is so easy to swap you for a more productive unit.

        I see this as the biggest problem with the trend to remote work -impersonalization of business relationships.

        • Re:

          Do videocalls not exist in your part of the world? Or do you believe that the person on the other end isn't human because they are 2D?

          (actually don't answer that second one or they'll shove the Metaverse down our throats even harder)

      • Re:

        lol, I don't know what kind of shit show you work in but:

        a) I don't need to flip out on my manager because he's competent and decent

        b) My manager is able to treat people as humans regardless of whether they've met him physically or not.

        You must work in a real shit tip if you have to flip out on your manager regularly and your manager is incapable of treating people as humans if they're not physically in front of them.

        It also means your business is going to be a dead end business that can't ever expand, b

        • Re:

          (a) You're lucky. Good for you.

          (b) See (a).

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    • Re:

      We're not machines, but our replacements will be.

• It only exposed the sheeple. People who care stood up and voted with their feet. I believe there was never a greater work force shifting employers...?
  • Find some place that will allow you to use company resources for inappropriate tasks. This has always been an issue. Making personal calls on company landlines. Using your work computer to run your own business. Surfing porn on the company network. This is not a matter of having nothing to hide so why be afraid. This is a matter of there is no expectation of privacy at work.

    I think most understand the at work thing, and that it is expected that at work communication and the like is monitored. There are even places you have to swipe in and out of the bathroom. We understand that using our personal phone on company network has privacy implications. But the implications of being at work in a location you may fund, your house, a remote desk, is legitimately up for discussion. And it may not be best just to cry and take your toys and leave.

    Exactly what is reasonable to supervise remote work is evolving. Some are going to do too much, others too little. There is less friction in the job market right now so if there a job that is a better fit, go for it.

    • Re:

      I've always wondered about the places that make you clock in at the shitter. "Sorry Mr Smith, you've been eating at Taco Bell too much, and it's affecting your productivity.

      Now as for monitoring your computer use, one of the simple ways to defeat monitoring of personal network use is to have more than one computer. If you work at home, you definitely should. My work computer is used for nothing but work. Considering the cost of computing devices these days, it's not a big deal to have a work computer and

      • Re:

        I use work computers at work. I like to keep my personal devices at work on my cellular network. I donâ(TM)t like to take work computers home.

        • Re:

          There should be a hard line, IMO. But I do need to take my work computer home. It doesn't have anything on it but work stuff. But I definitely have my own for my own stuff. It just makes things easier in the end.

    • Re:

      That place is called Europe.

  • Re:

    Also nope, but from a completely different angle.
    
    I do outsourced corporate IT for dozens of customers in a variety of fields. Many, many of them adopted work-from-home for users. Exactly zero of them even asked about monitoring software, let alone started using any.
    
    ABC found a mouse-jiggler maker, a YouTube video, and a monitoring software company on whom to base the conclusion this is epidemic. Two of the three get free advertising out of the story. So, questionable.
    
    Is there more monitoring going

  • Re:

    No idea. But currently everybody competent can easily chose were they want to work at this time. No need to put up with crap like this.

    • Re:

      I do half at home, half at my location. That's how it has to be. So I probably won't have a "I refuse to leave my house to work" person taking my job anytime soon. 8^)

      Before this new thang, the work just couldn't be done from home.

      I think that things are going to settle into a new paradigm soon. Careers that by their nature, require human intereaction, travel, or any location work will still have people will do that in person. Those who have jobs where they can work at home - non-management, 100 perce

• "We have to collectively reject the engine of endless growth, and the aspiration for infinite productivity, before it breaks us all."

  Most workers are just trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head, and hopefully have a bit left over so life does not 100% suck.

    The ones who want all of this "endless(impossible) growth" are the money hoarders that want to live in absolute luxury and they don't care how many backs of other people they need to break to aquire their crap.

  • Re:

    Do we? It seems that people like having stuff, and things that would have been luxuries a few decades ago are considered essential now. A baseline reasonable standard of living in many countries includes internet and cell phones, a car, television, toys for their children, a wide variety of foods etc. along with basic shelter, and sustenance and medical care Yes there are many people who don't have these things (and that is a huge problem), but I think if you will find that these are included in what
• With an office, not stuck behind a stanking screen and fucking camera at home. I'm not worried about COVID. But being on camera at home, being on call more than 8 hours a day, fuck that noise. If I'm employed, the employer can pay for the real estate I'm working from. I like my boundaries.
  • 2 hidden comments

  • Re:

    Become a consultant. Plenty of buzzword potential, and the rules are your own. Good money I hear, and the plebes in the trenches will curse your success.

    • Re:

      Been there. Done that. Got sick of the constant chasing of money. Prefer a regular paycheck twice a month.

  • • Re:

      (1) Nah, I don't work "8-6", I work whenever my presence is needed in person. But I have space outside my rather small apartment whenever I need to work in person, and that's nice.

      (2) My commute is on foot or by bike. I also live in a real city (not a morass of sprawl), so I have access to public transit when I need it. I don't own a stinking (and they do stink) car.

      (3) I work in an industry where it would actually be illegal to have cameras monitoring the spaces in which I work.

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      • • Re:

          I know how to drive. I don't WANT to own a fucking foul car. It's inefficient and a crime against GaÃa to push around a two ton steel box to transport a 100-200 lb person.

          You shouldn't needs to move around in a steel isolation box with an air filter just to avoid breathing the emissions of other stink-boxes.

          I'm not on call permanently. I have very specific working hours which just don't coincide with normal rush hours. LOL.

          • Re:

            Something tells me that your employer finds your not being in the building with the rest of the employees a big plus.

            • Re:

              Something tells me that you should GFY.

        • Re:

          It's the contrary. The Orwellian scenario is to have cameras everywhere and be watched at random. It's very clear in the book. It's fine to have a manager to pass by occasionally and chat a bit. It's not fine to be constantly under a camera and not knowing if you are being actively watched or not.

          FYI workplaces cameras are prohibited in EU except for a camera pointing at the cash register, and watching the entrances.

  • Re:

    I suspect it might be an aspect of technical people that I didn't get the gene for, but I kinda like going to work, interacting with people. And I'm not even an extrovert. As noted, half of my present work is at home, the other half is in person. The in person work is a lot of fun.

    Seems like many here want to avoid interaction with others when at all possible. That's not really a good thing.

  • Re:

    So you do your work at a watercooler, or socialise? How do you somehow get away from doing your computer related task at work? Also what's with your poor time management skills? Why were you on call "more than 8 hours a day"? Did your PC not have an off button? WFH existed long before COVID did, it's not the reason people don't want to be stuck in offices. It sounds like you just couldn't make it work.

    I personally prefer my employer pay for my internet bill, give me several hundred EUR in "personal stationa

• Let's admit it if it was your money wouldn't you be pissed if you paid someone who ends up napping and wacking off to porn instead of doing his or her own job you paid them to?

  Not everyone is disciplined or doesn't have ADHD and can stay focused. Many abuse the work at home system even if you tell yourself you're fine and have a right to check up. This is why Google wants people back in the office.

  I know this post won't be popular but an employer has every right since productivity statistics show is the low

  • Productivity fell in Q1 because a lot of workers were stuck at home with Omicron. 7-10 days of lost work will have an effect. Also, productivity FELL the most since 1948, but it's not lower than in 1948, since it's risen a lot since then.

    This being said, instead of spying on your employees' homes, look at whether they're completing the tasks that you're giving them in a timely manner. Results matter less than method.

    • Re:

      Unless whacking off is part of the job, and the results are measured by the drachm.

    • Re:

      So where, i your proposed system, is there any allowance for people to fail to produce results in a timely manner because the time estimates themselves were unrealistic?

      The only obvious way for management to know where the discrepancy actually lies is to know what the person was doing the entire time they were working on the task to discover why the estimates were so far off.

      Not that I advocate employee monitoring like this, I'm just saying I can see a practical reason for it that has nothing to do wit

    • Re:

      Quite the opposite. Productivity raised during pandemic, you buffoon. I don't know where did you get that ridiculous data from, but it is incorrect. Stop spreading misleading "information", you microcontrolling freak!

      • Re:

        Productivity fell from Q4 2021 to Q1 2022. Not talking about pre vs post pandemic data.

  • So, what you're really saying, is that

    people may actually start getting paid more fairly for their work?

    Wages have been stagnant a fuck of a long time while corporate profits continue setting records.

  • Re:

    Probably why so many here don't want to go back to work. Napping is one thing, but someone walking into their cubical at work when they are stroking the old meat whistle could be embarrassing!

    It won't be popular because it is a dose of truth. But seriously, the way to keep your employer from that stash of step sister pR0n is to have it on a different computer. It will keep the keys on the work computer from getting sticky as well.

• Make sure you've got your GitHub commit numbers, Jira burndown velocity, Microsoft Viva Insights engagement, SonarQube code smells, and on-call incident response time ducks-in-a-row, kids!

• Glad I work at a company that has strong corporate values that include respect for and trust in their employees, and have the additional benefit of a Linux laptop and a Windows VM that the IT department does not administer.

  • Re:

    Same here without the Windows VM, yay!:)

  • Re:

    Also monitoring that isn't strictly required and limited in scope is illegal in many countries, so not that common in general.

• Ooh boy.

  The short answer to just about anything that starts that way is, "Yes, but only among the already-abnormal; the rest of us played along while it served an obvious purpose but stopped once it no longer did and very studiously stopped short of turning it into our new religion."

• Without unions to form bargaining blocks and give workers leverage employers can do pretty much anything to us. You can try starting your own business but they'll just undercut you and run you out of business and we don't enforce antitrust law because they used some of the cash they made to lobby Congress to prevent it. You could also try going to work with somebody else but there's basically seven companies left standing after all the mega mergers and they set working conditions that any other surviving companies are going to follow.
  
  Without bargaining power you're just going to have to suck it down because you don't have anything you can negotiate with. You might think you're an irreplaceable employee and maybe you're right you are, but your employer noticed that and they spent the last 20 years breaking down the processes at their place of business so that you were no longer in irreplaceable employee. They called it devops and you weren't paying attention so you didn't even notice it was happening until it was too late.

  • Unions suck for newcomers

    Unions lock up jobs for people whose uncles were in the Union. Good luck getting a Union job if you are an immigrant. US was built on the hard work of immigrants. Unions stop that dynamic. Sure Unions do a lot of good but the same can be achieved through worker protection laws without shutting out newcomers.
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• Things would have to shift back a long way in the employerâ(TM)s favour before I would consider working for a company that did this for any amount of money.
• What happened to the more mature method of reviewing output on results alone?! Those who get their work done in half the time shouldn't have to suffer due to others being slow or not as focused. These managers really have no idea.
• If an employer can afford employee monitoring software, they could have paid the employees the amount it cost instead.
  
  That's one way you can earn disloyalty.

• Came across a reference to some kind of device... forget the name exactly, but it would simulate mouse movement. It was basically just a little vibrating pad that would turn on every so often.

  In all seriousness though, I just don't get this unless it's feeding some sick voyeur fantasy of middle managers, maybe hoping to catch the attractive female in their department undressing in front of the web cam thinking it's off. It seems pretty simple to me, at least for most white collar workers. The basic contract

  • Re:

    I'm the maker of one of the devices in the story, which goes by "AFKfix." You can find one on eBay or Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/product... [tindie.com] https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/31... [ebay.com.au]

    As the article in the summary says, it's a bit of an arms race. The advantage of a purely mechanical solution is that there's no electronic logs. Some of the software or USB based mouse jigglers are based on the Digispark/Micronucleus bootloader. This is fine, it's great open-source solution, but if your IT department is very advers

• for the next level of virtualization. Not just a virtual processor and virtual hard drive, but a virtual operator as well. The thing is, the best defeat for three letter agencies spying on you was to have a fake online life as a decoy, but that was always too much effort. Now that a fake online life will become common software for coping with your employer mandating spying on you, it'll be so much easier to fake away everyone else who spies as well.
• This should be ILLEGAL. Just because your employer has TRUST ISSUES and cannot judge work effects by itself, doesn't mean that he should be allowed to just SPY on people! this is insane. What is the reason for this? how would this prevent anything bad from happening? this is wrong on so many levels. If you are micromanager and you cannot judge work by the actual effects and profits, then maybe you should not employ anyone and do everything yourself, you dumb boomer!