Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #125

moosey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm married with two children and I can assure you that not only has my mental state slipped because of the stresses of home life, but I also lost an enormous amount of social activity that I intentionally maintained in order to keep my brain and health at optimal levels. I am OK, but my productivity is toast.

Not trying to one-up you here as having a family brings different forms of stress I can't speak to, but it's really hard to go for a week without interacting with another human being. Social connection is core to who we are as humans; cutting that off is like removing a limb.

Both of you are correct; this sucks for everyone.

It may be worth keeping in mind that this, too, will pass.

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

#202

Post by gambiting » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:02 PM UTC

lima wrote: post #181

lawl wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Switzerland. If there is a specific reason for surveillance the employee must also be informed of upcoming surveillance and the consequences if something were to be found.

Same in Germany, and it's not specific to IT equipment. You also cannot monitor employees using cameras.

Wait, so is CCTV in the office not allowed??

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

#203

Post by gruez » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #164

commandlinefan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure?

Because every place I've worked (including corporations) I've had local admin on my box and could see the entire process tree. Usually you have to be running all the antivirus and monitoring stuff to connect to the employee network/VPN, but when you're off VPN you can kill those processes off.

>Because every place I've worked (including corporations) I've had local admin on my box and could see the entire process tree.

That's assuming that the spyware isn't some sort of rootkit that tries to hide its presence. If you're on windows, it's also very easy to hide behind some generic looking executables like svchost.exe

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

#204

Post by opo » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #44

spamizbad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think it depends on the nature of your job. If you regularly need to interact verbally with colleagues, cubes are kind of a pain. I forget where I saw this but there was a company that had set up what were basically "team offices" so teams that worked closely together each had their own closed room where they worked, so they could collaborate in their own manner. Quiet when they needed it, loud when they needed it,…

Having worked in one of these, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is pretty small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question or to just see what they are working on becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are hesitant to do it.

In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin any informal inter-team collaboration and communication.

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

#205

Post by oneplane » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

californical wrote: post #23

ianai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be standard practice everywhere in corporate America.

It's standard practice if you agree to it in your employment contract.

Except that no contract can override the law, at last not where I live.

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

#206

Post by pnw_hazor » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

ctor21 wrote: post #179

pnw_hazor wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - at one consulting/project shop place I worked, a manager questioned the veracity of my buddy's time-sheet entries. We both quit that evening with zero notice and started our own company.

How'd that company turn out?

It was just your basic job shop, we had 8 C/C++ developers.

Everything was okay for a few years until we hired a "professional" sales guy who wrecked our project pipeline.

We handed sales over to him. He lied about prospects for eight weeks then quit to go somewhere else. We were doing okay before him, but we naively thought hiring a pro would help us grow.

We were bootstrapped so when profit/revenue looked like it was going dry up we shut down rather than go into deep debt and went back to real jobs.

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

#207

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

wilsonsilva80 wrote: post #198

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. I don't do it on purpose but there are too many unnecessary meetings while at work. I'm being at least twice as productive at home.

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by teddyh » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #128

state_less wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees do access personal information on company screens. If I check my healthcare plan or retirement plan, use the show password feature, look for another job outside my managers group, etc... This is to say nothing of a normal employer who doesn't mind breaks if you're getting work done. I'd sooner try my luck living in the forest with the other animals than work under such surveillance. I feel sorry for those w…

> Employees do access personal information on company screens. I think that this was more of an issue back when every person on staff didn't have their own personal wireless touchscreen computer on them at all times. Now it's just a training issue: company hardware for company tasks, personal hardware for personal tasks.

But what if they use company electricity to charge their personal devices?

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

#209

Post by _b3dj » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

Paywalled

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

#210

Post by readme » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #143

readme wrote: post #30

PSA for businesses: how about instead of spying on the deadweight you fire them and reward the productive employees. There are tons of work from home employees (who normally work from home) who are 10x more productive than the in-office ones, because they realize the value of what they have. It's too bad most people will only work when you're looking over their shoulder, but lets not keep that on life-support with sp…

I think deciding which human being to label as "dead weight" and overfocus on that question is on the same path to paranoia as thinking you need to monitor them all closely. How many times have you seen contributing employees who are not understood by their bosses mislabelled as "dead weight"? I think it happens pretty often, especially in performance-review-obsessed cultures.

>contributing employees who are not understood by their bosses

Indeed, this is a problem too. In that case I'd point the finger at the boss who can't recognize what is and isn't a valuable contribution.

None of this is 100% exact science, but have you worked with someone who did nothing but somehow kept their job, no problem, not even an eyebrow raised? I have, and these types of people won't last if the performance metric changes from time in seat to work produced.