Live data from Hacker News

How Employers Track Their Workers

theatlantic.com

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#41
post #3

Pretty disgusting stuff. There are plenty of places in the world where a video camera provides relief and safety, but work is rarely one. The engineers building this tech should be ashamed, they grew up to be the bad guys.

That being said, engineers also built jira. It lets people measure ticket closure rate and time taken. It also lets you compare people on your team.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#42
post #27

as someone who works a blue collar job in an auto repair shop, these articles always make me pause for a moment and ask if i really want to keep learning python in the hopes of pursuing an office job. The entire environment just sounds like high school all over again. Why does anyone in an office put up with it?? is this somehow different than time keeping? do you have a punch card? If you asked my boss where i was,…

As someone who has worked both, I’d encourage you to reconsider what you’re really seeking in an office job. I did aircraft maintenance in the Air Force, paperwork and management in the AF, got out and hopped around with AAA as a roadside assistance tech, and am finally at a remote job doing pentesting. I’ve been in then out then back in again. Let me tell you, I can’t wait to turn wrenches again. If you can tolerate the pay cut and live a simpler life, I’d hazard to say that nothing beats the satisfaction that a hands on job provides.

On the whole, id say that there is something to be said about how the tech revolution is just an iteration of the industrial revolution. People are more removed from the art of what they do. They are deprived of the fruit of their labor and instead forced to work a piece wise process instead of seeing something done start to finish. There’s no tangible result to all the toil.

Non derogatory caveat: some are content to say that the SDLC is an answer. I reject that notion, and realize that I’m the shrinking minority.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#43
post #3

Pretty disgusting stuff. There are plenty of places in the world where a video camera provides relief and safety, but work is rarely one. The engineers building this tech should be ashamed, they grew up to be the bad guys.

The engineers building this tech should be ashamed, they grew up to be the bad guys

Make no mistake, if Google could get away with selling a live stream of your web activity to your HR dept they would do it in a second. After all that’s basically what Dragonfly is.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#44

When our company first began implementing employee tracking the goal was to help our staff understand their own performance, co-educate and to attempt to support a culture of experimenting with every aspect of our work. Our initial systems ended up being decent at keeping people "moving fast" but in our first few feedback sessions we found it stressed people out, encouraged competition instead of co-education and loc…

I'm curious; in the first version, where was the data stored and who had access to it?

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#45
post #27

as someone who works a blue collar job in an auto repair shop, these articles always make me pause for a moment and ask if i really want to keep learning python in the hopes of pursuing an office job. The entire environment just sounds like high school all over again. Why does anyone in an office put up with it?? is this somehow different than time keeping? do you have a punch card? If you asked my boss where i was,…

> * Why does anyone in an office put up with it??*

The "prestige" of not being, ahem, blue collar.

But to be fair, there are some things in life from which you and/or one's offspring will/would be locked out if one's money comes from the wrong place(s). That said, this doesn't apply to most people. So, see my initial sentence.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#46
post #27

as someone who works a blue collar job in an auto repair shop, these articles always make me pause for a moment and ask if i really want to keep learning python in the hopes of pursuing an office job. The entire environment just sounds like high school all over again. Why does anyone in an office put up with it?? is this somehow different than time keeping? do you have a punch card? If you asked my boss where i was,…

No one in an office job knows if anyone else is doing anything useful. Or even if they're doing anything useful.

Au contrair. mon ami. Office workers are busy keeping themselves in the office, which means that the vacation spots, and such are riffraff-free for their betters until the next major holiday break. That's quite useful.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#47
post #11

I've never seen an employee monitoring system that's built to the benefit of the employee. But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee. HR isn't there to help employees, HR is primarily a risk mitigation and compliance department. Who would assume employee monitoring systems are any different? "They try to never speak up, never stick out, do nothing that might get noticed by management. This leads to…

How about training? Training is beneficial to an employee. Employment itself should count, I’d argue, because the law of comparative advantage means both parties could (and probably do) benefit but even setting that aside, training should count.

Still agree with the monitoring, though.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#48
post #11

I've never seen an employee monitoring system that's built to the benefit of the employee. But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee. HR isn't there to help employees, HR is primarily a risk mitigation and compliance department. Who would assume employee monitoring systems are any different? "They try to never speak up, never stick out, do nothing that might get noticed by management. This leads to…

I'm in a fight with HR right now.

It is a mess right now. To say the least...

I get more and more the feeling that HR do not understand how laws work and think they (the firm) are always right...

For a company claims to hate lawyers and don't want to work with lawyers. They sure as hell make sure that soon or later you will involve lawyers (did that already)

But, it is a live lesson. Like all those people claiming they hate gays (while they are gay) or say they are not drama queens (they are) I will now listen carefully when someone says they are not xxxx..

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#49

The bank I was working at tried installing monitoring software on programmers' computers one day with no monitoring. I sent my MD an email saying I wouldn't be working that day because of it, and left. The software disappeared the next day.

Most companies I've worked for (including a bank) you'd be gone the next day. Monitoring is so rampant right now. It's disgusting.
Post reply on HN