If you want an example of what workplace surveillance software can monitor and capture, watch the following video. It's simply horrible that employees have to put up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA_fJh4lzqQ
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Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
61–70 of 312 posts
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#62MS Teams has a "green check" next to your name if you've touched your keyboard or mouse in the last five minutes and automatically sets your status to "away" if you haven't done so. I've had people at work use this to try and figure out if I'm working or not. It is a violating feeling, but also very similar to the "is your butt in the chair" way of management when not working from home, and I can see why managers like the feature.
For any of those suffering under this problem, have a look at caffeine[1], it simulates a keystroke on your laptop every 59 seconds.
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#63Working for a highly regulated company at least company owned desktop monitoring is BAU. I assume anything I do with company equipment is monitored at all times. And if I forget they remind me every time I log in.
When I discovered the company needed to protect their data by pushing on a policy that let them wipe my personal device remotely I respected that and bought a personal device dedicated to the task of reading email and running their apps. But not everyone has that luxury. I'm fortunate to be able to buy an iPad and dedicate it to blackberry and the company app store.
It's an interesting conundrum because am I really obligated to install this to every personal device or just the one I'm using for work-related tasks? I think a reasonable person would assume the latter.
And am I under obligation to use a personal device compatible with their spyware? What if it only works under IOS and I'm an Android user? What if tsheets only works on Windows and I'm a MacOS guy, or heck I just run a remote desktop viewer from a raspberry pi? Lol.
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#64Earlier 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
One person's rights/freedoms are another person's responsibility. There can be no freedom without responsibility. Regulation is legally enforced responsibility.
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#65"If you're idle for a few minutes, if you go to the bathroom or whatever, a pop-up will come up and it'll say, 'You have 60 seconds to start working again or we're going to pause your time,' " the woman said. Solution to that using appliances available in every home: Dangle the mouse from you desk and put a fan next to it so that it hits the mouse from time to time. But also quit your job - managers who use such tact…
It's probably not difficult to work around these checks but nobody should be suffering this indignity in the first place. People can't even go to the bathroom without getting called out by managers over lost productivity. How dehumanizing.
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#66Sounds like a business opportunity.
How hard would it be to get your phone to transmit gps coordinates you choose, not where you actually are?
How hard would it be to override what tattleware sends your boss with what you want it to send?
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#67Question: Is it legal for a company to provide you with a laptop that you use at home and then monitor video/audio from it? What happens if I am using it in a space with my family present? Is it legal for my employer to spy on them? What if my two year old runs naked through the room? Can they monitor during "non-working hours?" What if I have to be on 5am video conferences and am answering emails at 12am?
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Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#68"If you're idle for a few minutes, if you go to the bathroom or whatever, a pop-up will come up and it'll say, 'You have 60 seconds to start working again or we're going to pause your time,' " the woman said. Solution to that using appliances available in every home: Dangle the mouse from you desk and put a fan next to it so that it hits the mouse from time to time. But also quit your job - managers who use such tact…
Or get a USB mouse jiggler! https://www.amazon.ca/Cru-Dataport-Wiebetech-30200-0100-0011...
Just buy a digispark for $4 and reflash it to be a rubber ducky.
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#69It’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 r…
> poor management. Uneducated decision making There is no "poor management". What are these uneducated decision makers even doing at your place of work? There's always a boss. The boss is paying for the behavior they want to see. Now if you argue the ultimate boss is clueless, then, what are you even doing there? You might want to tell yourself that your immediate boss who calls you every 30 minutes you are away from…
> You might want to tell yourself that your immediate boss who calls you every 30 minutes you are away from work is just ineffective, but if he was not delivering on what his boss wanted from him, he would be gone.
Except in cases where:
- That boss's boss is related to the CEO and is coasting / not at the wheel
- That boss's boss is already looking for ways to let go of them
- That boss's boss needs that boss in place for a while longer, due to other factors, but is still annoyed by the micromanagement
- That boss's boss is intimidated by their underling and feels something bad might happen if they take action against the unwanted behavior
I've seen all of the above and consulted management on a few of those as well. There are a million little ways in which the "system" (dynamic between a group of people at work) has achieved a form of control which is out of the grasp of the individual and in contravention of the ultimate boss's way of doing business.
Specific interventions can completely change the dynamic, but the tendency is to blame the problem on individuals rather than emergent effects, which IMO makes individuals feel even more helpless. Usually something can be done.
Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance
#70> "If you're idle for a few minutes, if you go to the bathroom or whatever, a pop-up will come up and it'll say, 'You have 60 seconds to start working again or we're going to pause your time,' " the woman said. This is the exact type of sociopathic behavior that creates unions.
There's too many techbros and 'rockstars' that think they're 10x better than anyone else. Surprise - they're more average than others tell them.
But I've seen it again and again, IT people don't seem to gravitate towards unions.