Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 312 posts

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

#221

Post by RankingMember »

_curious_ wrote: post #124
vanilla-almond wrote: post #14

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

No one has to put up with anything, everyone gets to decide, and they even get to review that decision on a daily basis! Don't like what a job is asking you do to? Don't like a policy? Don't like spyware? Peace out.

Easy to say, less easy to do in real life where job opportunities and life situations don't always lend themselves to such a simple outlook.

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

#222

Post by Fargren »

_curious_ wrote: post #120

It's up to individuals as employees to decide if they want to subject themselves to this (agreed repulsive) treatment...what's with all these comments and sentiment in this thread acting like they have a gun to their head? JUST QUIT already if uncomfortable with whatever a given job entails should that include perceived invasive measures ie - surveillance.

"JUST QUIT" makes it sound like quitting is an easy thing to do. "like they have a gun to their head" makes it sound like direct physical threat is the only mechanism of coercion that exists. These things are just not true.

For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the moment they quit, but by quitting they are endangering themselves and those that depend on them. Their relationship with employment is inherently coercive.

This is especially true during a pandemic that's causing more people to be unemployed.

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

#223

Post by _curious_ »

Avicebron wrote: post #215
_curious_ wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for giving me the benefit of doubt...I don't know what "virtue signal some sort of privilege" means? Does that make me dumb? Ignorant? Privileged? It could! "Vulnerable populations can have their employment opportunities gamed by powerful groups where they are essentially enslaved by their reliance on their paycheck to support their family, food, housing, etc. I don't understand why this doesn't register wi…

"virtue signal some sort of privilege" - I'm referring to a particular "let them eat cake" sentiment I'm detecting by your posts. An apt analogy because it was a signal of her misunderstanding of the lower classes food situation. "vulnerable populations" - people who are unable to quickly and efficiently move either laterally or vertically, in whatever industry they are in, such that they run real risk of losing food…

"virtue signal some sort of privilege" - I'm referring to a particular "let them eat cake" sentiment I'm detecting by your posts. An apt analogy because it was a signal of her misunderstanding of the lower classes food situation.

Still confused…what does "virtue signal some sort of privilege" actually mean? Do you have some sort of privileged information on the matter?

"vulnerable populations" - people who are unable to quickly and efficiently move either laterally or vertically, in whatever industry they are in, such that they run real risk of losing food or shelter.

Under your definition here, what constitutes “quickly and efficiently”?

Who are you to judge and label someone as being vulnerable - or not - based on that answer?

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

#224

Post by Gibbon1 »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #219
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally it's just an outdated style of doing business. The same people who tell you not to do personal web browsing at work will not respond to an email that arrives in the evening until they clock in the next morning. Whereas sure, I don't spend an eight hour solid block of time working each day, but I'll respond to a help ticket at 11pm because someone had a quick need and my computer is handy. My employer is…

>My employer is still getting my eight hours, possibly more, just diffused through the whole day. Even that sticks in my craw... we need to make this 8 hour bar die. Some days I'm just not productive. Other days I might be heads-down on a problem for 15+ hours straight. So long as I'm accountable to my work and it is producing the results we've mutually agreed upon, this hour nonsense (for workers not billing by the…

My favorite is trying to figure out a bug and nothing I can think of provides any clue. So I do some other work for a bit and go home. And the next morning sit down down and fix the problem in 2 minutes. Obviously _something_ got done between last night and this morning. But how would you bill for THAT.

Or an old example from a mentor. Get in the shower, start thinking about what you're going to work on today. Realize you've been in the shower for half an hour. How you going to bill for that?

I've come to the idea that you pay an engineer for his attention to your problems. Engineers I dislike working with are ones that don't. Their other interests have crowded out what they are being paid to mind. And some of those guys definitely do spend 8 hours in the chair going through the motions. They do work but there is a disunity to the whole thing.

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

#225

Post by _curious_ »

Fargren wrote: post #222
_curious_ wrote: post #120

It's up to individuals as employees to decide if they want to subject themselves to this (agreed repulsive) treatment...what's with all these comments and sentiment in this thread acting like they have a gun to their head? JUST QUIT already if uncomfortable with whatever a given job entails should that include perceived invasive measures ie - surveillance.

"JUST QUIT" makes it sound like quitting is an easy thing to do. "like they have a gun to their head" makes it sound like direct physical threat is the only mechanism of coercion that exists. These things are just not true. For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the…

"For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the moment they quit, but by quitting they are endangering themselves and those that depend on them. Their relationship with employment is inherently coercive."

With all of that said: whose responsibility is it to avoid this type of situation? Is it anyone (or anything) but the individual them-self?

And should one unfortunately find themselves in this situation described above, whose responsibility is it to figure out a solution? Is it their friends and family who is responsible? Their neighbors? The government? Are you responsible?

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

#226

Post by gfxgirl »

cosmodisk wrote: post #4

It's being done by the same clowns who can't live without time clock cards, all sorts of monitoring,and tracking.These are the people who have no clue how to manage people,how to measure their work and act upon results.These are the same crappy companies who would rather ask their staff to email endless Excel spreadsheets to each other instead of investing some money in database or some crm system. In a nutshell,thes…

I'm curious how much of this comes from working with unskilled labor (hope that's the right term).

I once worked in fast food right out of high school. 80-90% of the employees were one or more of untrustworthy, unreliable, whiny, always making excuses or trying get out of work. My point being if you start there you might just assume that that's the way it always is for all employees no matter what type of job and therefore feel like you need to surveil.

Most of my tech jobs didn't have this issue AFAIK (though one did) but just as one stat from a random search

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/workplace-crime-costs-us-bus...

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

#227

Post by _curious_ »

RankingMember wrote: post #221
_curious_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has to put up with anything, everyone gets to decide, and they even get to review that decision on a daily basis! Don't like what a job is asking you do to? Don't like a policy? Don't like spyware? Peace out.

Easy to say, less easy to do in real life where job opportunities and life situations don't always lend themselves to such a simple outlook.

Never said it was easy, I've been there myself, one of the hardest things ever actually...but I did get to decide and we all do!

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

#228

Post by [deleted] »

malux85 wrote: post #38
iask wrote: post #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 r…

Couldn't have said it better. One of the reasons I'm a supporter of universal basic income is so that the employees can have a better negotiating position. I suspect many bullshit rules will go out the window when the alternative to employment isn't destitution. For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer.

[deleted]

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

#229

Post by _curious_ »

wolco wrote: post #209
_curious_ wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point to a single person who cannot quit their job right now?

The one supporting a family. The one who has bills. Someone who likes to eat. Do you live at home still?

Spoiler: they can all quit if they decide to!

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

#230

Post by curryst »

_curious_ wrote: post #225
Fargren wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"JUST QUIT" makes it sound like quitting is an easy thing to do. "like they have a gun to their head" makes it sound like direct physical threat is the only mechanism of coercion that exists. These things are just not true. For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the…

"For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the moment they quit, but by quitting they are endangering themselves and those that depend on them. Their relationship with employment is inherently coercive." With all of that said: whose responsibility is it to avoid this ty…

I would argue it is the government's job to not allow businesses to impose dehumanizing conditions on workers due to the extreme imbalance of power.

It's probably not a risk for most of the HN users. Most of us are in high demand jobs, and we would simply refuse to work for a company that uses this kind of spyware. A lot of people don't have that option, because there isn't as much demand for their jobs.

Should we really be given that extra privilege simply because what we chose or wanted or had the ability to do is in higher demand? I would say no, it should be a fundamental right of workers in general. It's not as if there is some drastic harm that not installing spyware would impose. If your best means of measuring worker productivity is this junk, you're not going to last as a business anyways.

Post reply on HN