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Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

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Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#81

Post by trhway »

spamizbad wrote: post #12
mc32 wrote: post #5

Two things: Productivity is going to plunge no matter what, with the possible exception of singles who don’t have roommates. There is no way that during an ad hoc and unorganized push to work remote (though necessary in this circumstance) can result in good productivity, monitoring or not. Under the best of circumstances it would take months for a mass of people to adjust and be productive. The apex for open office d…

I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate. I loved mine at my first job. Oodles of desk space. Locking drawers and cabinets. There was a chair in the corner so a guest could sit. Made it easy to have 2 meetings without disturbing people. less aesthetically pleasing in office photographs, but overall a much better work environment than any open plan I've experienced.

>I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate.

cubicles were a step down from individual offices, and was the manifestation of commoditization of the software engineering. The transition from cubicles to open offices was the part of that process going even further. Basically blue collar workers of 196x on a large factory floor.

One would think that we've reached the peak of bad offices ... Well, i think some form of vertically stacked option is coming in the mid-term. In the short-term i think the next thing is the "cloud" style approach where no office desk is assigned permanently and coming into office you'd have to [find and]schedule a desk for yourself. That would allow to cut office space even more.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#82

Post by surfsvammel »

numlock86 wrote: post #40
gambiting wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? What kind of crime would it fall under, and where is that?

This is illegal pretty much at least everywhere within the EU.

It’s not illegal under EU law, but illegal in some countries. EU law has lots of restrictions however, the employer needs to be crystal clear and transparent about the monitoring. The situation OP describes, would not be legal.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#83

Post by sneak »

state_less wrote: post #49

No, just no. If a boss can't communicate deliverables and verify that these are getting finished, they are too incompetent to manage their domain. They shouldn't be scraping personal information off screencaps, video or audio feeds. This doesn't even seem like it ought to be legal. Workers are there to do a job, not have every personal detail monitored and tracked. Should the show password feature be turned off in UI…

> They shouldn't be scraping personal information off screencaps

I agree, but so should the employee not be accessing any personal information on company screens.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#84

Post by daveFNbuck »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #36
prostheticvamp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think less than 5% of comments on open-office design, that I have ever seen, were positive. Who are the people you are describing as being “sold”?

> I think less than 5% of comments on open-office design, that I have ever seen, were positive. It's basically taboo to say anything positive about open office spaces online. There are many, many legitimately terrible open office workspaces in the world. Suggesting that open offices aren't always bad feels like an attack on those who are miserable in their open office. So it's safer to just never bring it up. In the…

I actually enjoy open office plans despite not liking group work/study.

I prefer being alone. I don't really see people other than my wife outside of work. Work is my only chance to socialize, which makes an open office plan ideal for me. It's very easy to start conversations with the people near me and have them turn into fun group discussions.

Once you give up on the idea of having long unbroken periods of productivity, the open office plan can be a lot of fun.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#85

Post by TallGuyShort »

lmilcin wrote: post #65
cortesoft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think bosses who freak out about people not being productive while working from home underestimate how much people can avoid being productive while physically at work.

Exactly. Wrong mental model. Your best bet is to hire/make/keep people interested in being productive. When this is lost there isn't going much you can do to improve productivity. Keeping employee chained to their desks will not magically make things get done. This is so naive. I wonder how humanity landed in the situation where half of all managers don't get the first thing about managing people.

Given the panic-buy, I'm sure you're right about most people thinking this will keep people productive.

I've wanted something like this before, though, when I got some bad people on my team who weren't worth what they were getting paid and were sometimes a net negative on the team. We couldn't fire them because everything was at least somewhat subjective and HR and my own boss wanted a solid case. Oh they didn't get anything done? That's subjective - maybe the assigned tasks were harder than we thought. We need more evidence. Oh they were on Facebook most of the time when I walked into their office? Maybe it was a coincidence. We need more evidence.

I feel like, "look - here are screenshots from every 30 seconds and they really spent 90% of their day farting around on dumb websites", would have ended that far more efficiently than how we eventually got rid of them. It's less about prevention, and more about a way to fix the problem when people already aren't productive.

This is ripe for abuse by bosses - but at least part of that is because of bad employees too.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#86

Post by manthideaal »

gambiting wrote: post #62
heisenbit wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR Europe

GDRP what? If the machine is owned by the employer, why would GDPR apply here? Which specific part of GDPR applies here?

IANAL, but if the purpose of taking screenshot every 30 minutes is to control the work of the employee you must know that in the EU you have the right to be informed about any measure taken to control you.

If you can convince the judge that taking the screenshot has other purpose then GDPR doesn't apply.

From (2): The WP29 outlines that a DPIA is likely to be required if «a company systematically monitor(s) its employees’ activities, including the monitoring of the employees’ work station, internet activity» since it implies a «systematic monitoring and data concerning vulnerable data subjects» (23), form GDPR and Personal Data Protection in the Employment Context CLAUDIA OGRISEG

In (1) at point 8: the employeer has to inform the employee about: (i) whether and when monitoring is applied. (ii) the purpose of data processing, (iii) the means used for data processing.

https://legalict.com/factsheets/privacy-monitoring-work-gdpr...

Point 2) What king of personal data does an employer process, includes: Remote management of all mobile devices, such as phones and laptops;

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#87

Post by OrangeMango »

lmilcin wrote: post #11

Two sides of the story. One: people that are doing this are likely to have already been bad bosses. I don't think this changes anything. Two: I work for a large bank. My director, on a town hall, told us they do understand that not everybody will be able to focus on the job as before and that they expect us to spend less time actually working and be unavailable more often. Then he URGED us to actually do so. To take…

That sounds like a good work environment.

My company decided that we would likely have to go remote-only about 6 weeks ago and asked people to start planning out how to make it happen. One of the things was to redo all deadlines with the expectation that family would need to come first.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#88

Post by mjasinski5 »

I wrote an article regarding this topic few days ago: https://medium.com/@mjasinski5/how-companies-failed-a-trust-...

The same its happening in Poland and probably all over the world. Companies do not trust their employees.. and it doesnt end on buying spy software.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#89

Post by Nasrudith »

wayoutthere wrote: post #13
mc32 wrote: post #5

Two things: Productivity is going to plunge no matter what, with the possible exception of singles who don’t have roommates. There is no way that during an ad hoc and unorganized push to work remote (though necessary in this circumstance) can result in good productivity, monitoring or not. Under the best of circumstances it would take months for a mass of people to adjust and be productive. The apex for open office d…

Single person with no roommates, I can confirm that my mental health is slipping and it's really hard to maintain a positive attitude at work. Productivity will slip and employers just need to adjust their expectations.

I think mental health and productivity is slipping for everyone for reasons unrelated to remote work as well. Namely there is a global pandemic, a good chunk of the economy is shut down, and the flaw of "many out of work and many working overtime" has been exacerbated. Not to mention the denial of many closed non-essential outlets.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#90

Post by gambiting »

lodovic wrote: post #71
gambiting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"privacy" is not a crime, you need to be more specific. I would maybe understand if the employer was taking pictures of the employee with a webcam, but they were taking screenshots of the machine owned by the company - how is there any expectation of privacy if you're using company equipment?

The toilet is company equipment, too.

There is an expectation of privacy when using the bathroom though. There isn't when using a company issued computer, your employeer controls all the software on it, controls the network traffic - why would anyone have an expectation that what they use it for remains private? It's like there's no expectation of privacy when using an industrial lathe - it's meant for a specific purpose, if you use it for private purposes while at work, you shouldn't be expecting that to remain hidden from your employeer.
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