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Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

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Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#12
It’s old-fashion management. If you don’t understand your employees workload and don’t trust them then either you resign or fire the employees. Simple as that.

I don’t see how this makes any employee productive. This adds more stress imo. An employee gives you 8 of their 12 hour day. Now, you tell me if that works only for you - the management. They’re people just like you. They have a life just like you. They have responsibilities similar to you. They might have a family similar to you. There’s no fucking way they can manage all this, giving you a focused 8 hour. They might need a few mins to pay a bill, lookup a medication, place a personal Online order. And many other activities that come with “living”, being alive.

I am certain most managers that implement this are antisocial fucks. It’s poor management. Uneducated decision making.

Now, it does has its place. For example in highly secured environments or when dealing with highly sensitive documents. But for a small or regular office, no!

HR/Payroll companies such as ADP and Insperity need to start setting ground rules. I know that they’re in favor of the employer, however, it would make good on them.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#15
I own a small business, and all of us, my employees and me work from home. We've been doing this from well before the COVID-19 epidemic. My team is mostly programmers with a one marketing person. This sort of intrusive monitoring is utter garbage. My team would quit if I used it and in any case, I don't want to know what they are upto by the minute. I don't even encourage realtime slack unless we've mutually agreed to a specific time. Email, slack and the zoom calls (and lunches when COVID-19 was not a thing) are more than enough (Indeed too much.) What idiot managment even thinks this a good idea?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#17

just watch this video when you think you're being surveiled >> https://youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY

Let me make a wild guess: your paycheck ultimately depends on collecting other people's private data.

no, I just think it is worth remembering a time when it was understood even in pop culture to be freaked out by people watching you

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#18
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or regulate. Consider that your same argument was applies to e.g. the 40-hour workweek, and workplace safety standards in the US. We quite rightly decided not to leave such things to the market because in practice the labor market is FAR from perfect.

Regulation is the opposite of exercising freedom you already have

I downvoted you, because I think this is not true in general. Regulation can actually increase the freedom. It is a concept in philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

And it's also not true in particular, you might happen to be in a group which benefits from given regulation. Hopefully, in a democratic society, the group that is negatively affected (if any) is as small as possible.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#19
> And with few legal barriers, employers who turn to this software during the pandemic may choose to keep using it even after work-from-home orders are lifted, he said.

Unsurprising - why give up power once you've accumulated it. Regulation is the only way to reverse that. The companies building these tools are a special breed.

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