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

#341

Post by gambiting » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 8:22 AM UTC

novok wrote: post #223

gambiting wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume they were informed upfront - there's nothing illegal about it then, is there?

What kind of informed? Buried in hundreds of pages of policy documents, that they make you 'acknowledge'? A separate network use agreement when employed giving cart blanche? Or something specific and upfront?

I don't know, the company I work for(in the EU) you get an email on your first day saying that the company has a private certificate installed on every machine, so they are intercepting and inspecting all of your network traffic including encrypted websites. So while allowed, please refrain from browsing your own email, bank accounts etc, as the company software can and will see the contents of those.

Like, it's pretty explicit. I don't know how different that is from just sending an email saying "hey your screen is being monitored every 30 seconds".

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

#342

Post by gambiting » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 8:23 AM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #315

gambiting wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the EU and I cannot think of a single law where the employeer cannot take screenshots of the machines they own. I'll be happily proven wrong though.

You are wrong.

I'm wrong about not being able to think of a single law that applies here? How can you be wrong in that sense?

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

#343

Post by gambiting » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 8:24 AM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #336

gambiting wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 purpos…

> expectation of privacy US law is irrelevant outside the US

Who mentioned US law?

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

#344

Post by mcv » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:12 AM UTC

downerending wrote: post #219

jlarocco wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but related to this... I had, what I felt, was the best seat in the office at my previous job. We had an open office with short cubicles and standing desks, and the cubicles were arranged so that two people shared a small area with two desks/cabinets/etc. For a while, it was wonderful. My "cube-mate" worked from home 4 days a week and only came in for meetings, and we had a window on one side and an empty…

Looking back over my career, there's an obvious inverse correlation between being watched and being productive. Well, except that I'm able to look productive while being watched, and arguably that counts as "productivity". Just not the kind the company probably had in mind. Works the other way as well. I don't want to be able to see what others are working on--open offices are also distracting for this reason.

I've always been terrible at looking busy. At my very first job, I'd written a bunch of macros and scripts to generate my code directly from the functional design, so half the time I would be leaning back watching all my scripts do their thing. My boss hated it.

Over time, I think I've gotten better at looking busy while reading HN. I don't think there's a very strong correlation between looking busy and being productive.

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

#345

Post by mcv » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

nepthar wrote: post #274

jlarocco wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but related to this... I had, what I felt, was the best seat in the office at my previous job. We had an open office with short cubicles and standing desks, and the cubicles were arranged so that two people shared a small area with two desks/cabinets/etc. For a while, it was wonderful. My "cube-mate" worked from home 4 days a week and only came in for meetings, and we had a window on one side and an empty…

You know, I've always wondered why there are so many stories about these middle management types who seem to pay so close attention to things that are _not_ employee productivity. I guess on first glance, it may appear that "looking busy" corrates to "getting stuff done", but why not cut out the middle man and pay attention to what the employee actually does?

I notice a lot of people here feel uncomfortable when other people can see their screen. I completely recognise that feeling, though over time I learned to ignore it, and these days I just don't care anymore.

That said, there has been one situation where it was actually an advantage that everybody could see our screen. We had the most terrible working spot you could imagine: next to an intersection of two corridors, in a room that was open on one side, had a glass wall on another, was shared with another team, and had only a single window. A co-worker was sitting with his back to the intersection so everybody could see his screen. At the time, we were playing around with Neo4j, which has a nice graphical browser interface, and everybody seeing that, got us into contact with a couple of other teams we didn't know before that were also using Neo4j.

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

#346

Post by mcv » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

My workplace has been very reasonable about this. They were early to move to working from home, and simply accepted that it would hurt productivity. And yet the first remote-working sprint from my team has been incredibly productive. Less distraction from meetings and big lunches together, perhaps. I do miss the direct contact with my team mates, and we can't have the spontaneous brainstorming/whiteboard sessions we used to have, so we do need to figure out how to do those remotely.

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

#347

Post by mcv » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:01 AM UTC

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…

Interestingly, my workplace that has also been very reasonable about this and expects a drop in productivity, is also a bank. Have banks turned into reasonable and humane companies all of a sudden?

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

#348

Post by tvararu » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #6

This happened to me years ago. I was put in an empty office at the opposite end from my boss, and because he couldn't walk up behind me to see me working, he secretly installed a program on my computer that took a screenshot every 30 seconds (or so?). I quickly noticed that my computer was hitching regularly (when the screenshot was taken - this was in the late 90s BTW), and so investigated my computer on a day when…

One of the many reasons why I prefer working as a contractor where I have to provide my own gear. Everything I run is by my own choice.

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

#349

Post by Nebasuke » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #273

dylan604 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are greatly ignoring employees with children. It is hard for a 4 year old to understand that when mom & dad are home that it is not a work day. They just want to spend time with mom & dad. In addition, the only thing they know of computers is playing games, so it is hard to see mom & dad on a computer doing "work". Think of the most annoying co-worker you've dealt with constantly coming up to you and aski…

> Because I have a kid... > I think you are greatly ignoring employees with children. I think you missed something.

The parent comment could have phrased it better, but still made a good point. The grandparent comment dismissed any tricky situation with children, blaming lack of motivation to the person rather than the situation, so I think the sentiment of the parent still stands.

The grandparent is happy working from home with their 1-year old. However, they don't consider that other people's situation might be very different. For example, the 4 year old can actively try to find you.

Plus not all house layouts are the same. I've got a secluded space on a higher floor, however there are no doors and the floors/walls are paper thin, so I still hear everything that happens in the house unless I permanently use noise-cancelling headphones+music (which doesn't work that well for me).

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

#350

Post by duxup » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

ApolloRising wrote: post #340

duxup wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran into this once: Another team (team A) needed a lot of help and my team (Team B) was 'similar'. So we were brought on to help despite Team A's objections that we surely couldn't do the job. So we went to work and were out performing them from day 1. Team A's management was not happy and was sure we were somehow 'gaming the system'. They had all sorts of ways and theories on how Team B must be doing it and convin…

What happened at the end to team A?

The company was acquired and they managed to convince the powers that be (they always had more traction with them because of history) that they were worth keeping on and they could handle the workload.

So team B was laid off after the acquisition.

Last I heard team A was scrambling for warm bodies to keep up with the workload and didn't want to be seen as not being able to do the work of A + B so they were pretty much working to the bone. Also some of their management were cut as they had grown their management team under the theory that "well we've got to keep an eye on team A".

Granted there were good folks on team A who had nothing to do with the politics that I'd be happy to work with in a heartbeat, but after the layoff I decided to change professions and so I've largely lost contact with them.

I did actually apply to join team A again after some good folks asked me to apply and I did so out of curiosity, but having actually done the job for years apparently wasn't enough to make it through their resume filter and I was rejected and didn't bother to follow up ;)