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How Employers Track Their Workers

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#71

Post by sonnyblarney »

joewee wrote: post #69
sonnyblarney wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee" Paying them 10's of thousands a year is definitely 'to the benefit of the employee'. The TSA situation is a really bad analogy because it's a high security environment wherein monitoring is basically a given. It's just that with that open window, management can't help but be idiots about it and monitor 'chewing gum'. The second problem is that it's a high…

Traders have all finances monitored. In some hedge funds monitoring is a lot more invasive. So I don’t agree, but my point is, monitoring isn’t done to protect employees, it’s done to protect the company.

Trading is a very specialized activity, huge sums of money are actively changing hands and there are tons of regulations in place on this stuff - of course that will be monitored - just as bank tellers are.

But most jobs in banking are definitely not.

And there's zero chance that traders managers are monitoring for 'bathroom breaks' or 'chewing gum' or anything like that.

But yes, monitoring is generally done to protect the company. But even in the case you described - trading - it definitely protects traders from being wrongfully accused of such and such (i.e. insider trading).

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#72

Post by thfuran »

L_Rahman wrote: post #33
nimbius wrote: 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,…

Office jobs are not trustworthy. The model you should have for an office job is that it's basically a social game within which some actual work takes place. Most of the time people spend is maneuvering within the game. I say this as someone with an office job.

You work at an utterly dysfunctional office. I say this as someone with an office job that not at all resembles what you describe.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#73

Post by magduf »

nimbius wrote: 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,…

There's no job that's perfect in every way. Some office jobs are better than others. I do some Python work, and I don't have this kind of surveillance going on AFAICT. There's some things I don't like about this job, but overall it's a pretty good deal. There's some places that are horror shows; at place that tried to recruit me, I read reviews on Glassdoor.com about how HR monitored the parking lot and the bathrooms to make sure people were coming in on time and not spending too much time on the toilet! I turned down the interview.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#74

Post by rifung »

krapp wrote: post #61
rifung wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True, their are companies that have founding principles that are employee friendly, but once you have an official HR role, their job is the complete opposite. I really don't like or agree with this characterization at all. Sure part of their job is to prevent the company from being sued but part of their job is (usually) also keeping employees happy.

>but part of their job is (usually) also keeping employees happy. Because happy employees are less likely to be a legal liability, and happy employees are more productive and more compliant with company policy.

> happy employees are more productive and more compliant with company policy

And also less likely to leave but why is that a problem?

In the end all employees are only there to make the company money. I really don't see why HR is any better or worse than the engineering department. Everyone is just trying to make a living so I don't see any point in looking down on them for it.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#75

Post by zamber »

magduf wrote: post #73
nimbius wrote: 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,…

There's no job that's perfect in every way. Some office jobs are better than others. I do some Python work, and I don't have this kind of surveillance going on AFAICT. There's some things I don't like about this job, but overall it's a pretty good deal. There's some places that are horror shows; at place that tried to recruit me, I read reviews on Glassdoor.com about how HR monitored the parking lot and the bathrooms…

Monitoring can be done on multiple levels. Consider: DNS hits, traffic intensity per domain and LDAP logins. All of this can be done transparently if you work from an office or use a VPN to access intra or client stuff.

If your company is sufficiently motivated they may have theft-prevention stuff on company-owned hardware that will be more than happy to send a live audio-video stream without your knowledge.

Managers may even not know about the more insane stuff because they're being monitored as well...

Monitoring measures deployed by HR are usually laughable and just a smoke screen meant to show how "backwards" they are.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#76

Post by haloux »

icebraining wrote: post #52
haloux wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A repair job seems like a much closer analogy to a typical software development job than a factory process. My work is mostly identifying and fixing problems and installing custom-designed modules onto machines made by others. If you prefer working more end-to-end, that's also not hard to find in the consulting area.

YEMV, but I am a consultant. Putting a bow on an engagement report is really not comparable to seeing your building occupied or watching your plane take off.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#77

Post by krapp »

rifung wrote: post #74
krapp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but part of their job is (usually) also keeping employees happy. Because happy employees are less likely to be a legal liability, and happy employees are more productive and more compliant with company policy.

> happy employees are more productive and more compliant with company policy And also less likely to leave but why is that a problem? In the end all employees are only there to make the company money. I really don't see why HR is any better or worse than the engineering department. Everyone is just trying to make a living so I don't see any point in looking down on them for it.

People shouldn't look down on HR, however they often present themselves as the friendly, impartial intermediaries between employees and the company when they aren't. You should approach talking to them the way you would talking to the police: don't if you can avoid it, but otherwise, assume anything you say can and will be used against you if it's in the company's best interests to do so.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#78

Post by neuralRiot »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #68
toomanybeersies wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But nothing a company does it to the benefit of the employee This isn't a feature intrinsic to companies, but rather a relatively recent social norm. There are still a few companies that do look after their employees, and do things to the benefit of their employees. They aren't very common though, usually it's smaller (often family run) businesses, and often a physical trade rather than an office job.

" but rather a relatively recent social norm." Ask your great-grandfather working in factory, or a mine, or as a tenant farmer (basically 99% of all work) - how he was treated by 'today's standards'. Where I did my undergrad, the main office building was built by a logger baron who literally had strikers shot . It's almost universally better today. " usually it's smaller (often family run) businesses" - are usually l…

>Any entity that provides fairly steady, predictable work and guaranteed pay is doing a good thing for the most part.

I'm not really sure about that, any big busines wouldn't hesitate to fire you and as many people needed to close the numbers or to cut your hours-wages for the same reason let's not talk about benefits, there's not "safe job" anymore.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#79

Post by jsoc815 »

jsoc815 wrote: post #46
danharaj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see some people lack a sense of humor and/or that a 'truth' perhaps cuts too close to the bone.

Re: How Employers Track Their Workers

#80

Post by sonnyblarney »

neuralRiot wrote: post #78
sonnyblarney wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" but rather a relatively recent social norm." Ask your great-grandfather working in factory, or a mine, or as a tenant farmer (basically 99% of all work) - how he was treated by 'today's standards'. Where I did my undergrad, the main office building was built by a logger baron who literally had strikers shot . It's almost universally better today. " usually it's smaller (often family run) businesses" - are usually l…

>Any entity that provides fairly steady, predictable work and guaranteed pay is doing a good thing for the most part. I'm not really sure about that, any big busines wouldn't hesitate to fire you and as many people needed to close the numbers or to cut your hours-wages for the same reason let's not talk about benefits, there's not "safe job" anymore.

" there's not "safe job" anymore."

Most jobs are safe actually.

First - government, which is a massive employer.

Second - healthcare - generally low turnover, and a huge portion of the economy.

Energy - parts are up and down, but anything closer to the core is very safe.

Core jobs at any classic company. They are generally safe.

Large layoffs are not common, and this idea that companies will drop huge numbers of people 'just to save a buck' is simply not true: most layoffs only happen during economic calamity, when the company is starting to face trouble. In decent times, firings is rare.

Now factory wok, hourly workers, retail workers - that's a whole other thing.

Remember that companies make money by expanding and hiring, not by laying off. CEO's are 100x more likely to want to 'grow' than 'shrink' and there's a lot of political cost with layoffs.

Rubin's startup is flailing, that's why he's laying off, that's to be expected.

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