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“I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

bbc.co.uk

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Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#41

Post by kovek »

nip wrote: post #36
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

Also, dispatch, and there is no guarantee that the locksmith has orders frequently.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#42

Post by wodenokoto »

zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

I'm working at a consultancy, and fixed priced projects are the worst.

Clients get greedy and want every little detail they come up with implemented. When things turn out more complex than expected, you have to deliver shoddy work instead of decreasing scope and at the end of the project you ended up adding a feature they asked for halfway through and now they are complaining that the feature it superseeded wasn't in the final delivery.

In hourly projects, the clients are so much easier to talk to. If something turns out more difficult than expected, they are willing to reprioritise. If they ask for an extra feature hafway through, they are willing to pay for it, or let something else go.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#43

Post by b3lvedere »

nip wrote: post #36
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

I fully agree with this, but it can't hurt to try and learn some of those tricks yourself. Some locks are surprisingly easy to open.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#44

Post by AdhesiveWombat »

SpeckOfDust wrote: post #18

I wonder if its actually even worth it to do this kind of shit. Forget the ethical concerns for a minute, think about the kind of company you've built and the people you've hired to even warrant this kind of scrutiny in the first place.

Not every work is interesting enough to keep your employees motivated. For example, in the article they mention a company that resells beauty products. IMHO I can understand people not being incredibly motivated by this.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#45

Post by viraptor »

wodenokoto wrote: post #42
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

I'm working at a consultancy, and fixed priced projects are the worst. Clients get greedy and want every little detail they come up with implemented. When things turn out more complex than expected, you have to deliver shoddy work instead of decreasing scope and at the end of the project you ended up adding a feature they asked for halfway through and now they are complaining that the feature it superseeded wasn't in…

That's a different extreme though. In the middle, you can do a "phase N paid X will include Y" contact and if they want to add features halfway, you can both update the plan and payment details.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#46

Post by zem »

mrweasel wrote: post #21

I worked for a company with a UK department, the UK boss would routinely use similar software to check that people where actually working and doing things correctly. The Scandinavian bosses opted to just trust everyone to do the right thing and people always would. Interestingly enough if was always the British employees who would do things like steal customer contact lists when they left or do deals on the side, so…

you took a different lesson away from that than I did - I was fully expecting you to say "and little wonder, seeing as how the company had set up an adversarial relationship with the British employees from the get go" rather than "I suppose they had a reason not to trust people"

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#47

Post by nine_k »

Work has negative utility. This is why people demand compensation for doing it.

What matters is the result. The less work you have spent to achieve the result, the better.

Some employers monitor and time the work of their engineers. Of course reasonably experienced and self-motivated engineers find such monitoring useless and offending. When employers try to improve productivity of less motivated workers by monitoring, it does not work all that well either, doubly so in the case of engineers. It could maybe improve manual labor outcomes, but you can't screenshot manual labor.

I suppose the employers have other reasons than productivity tracking.

Some employers sell the time of their engineers, and bill clients by the hour. Then screenshots are there to prove that the engineer has been actually working, and the client is not billed arbitrarily, in a case of a dispute. Of course the incentives here are skewed from the start.

Some employers use screenshots as a CYA policy to "prove" that their employees are not doing something inappropriate at the workplace, or at least something to show as an illustration of "making a reasonable effort" to prevent it. They would usually monitor and restrict network traffic, etc. IDK if it's actuslly helpful anywhere but when working on highly classified stuff.

OTOH I treat the computers my employers supply me with as explicitly not-mine devices. I tend to do anything private on a separate device (my own phone, my own PC), because I signed agreements stating that the employer is entitled to see every bit of information on the work machine, and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in this regard. For that reason, I'm fine with my employers making screenshots of my work machines any time. (Using such screenshots to measure my short-term performance would still be silly, of course.)

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#48

Post by [deleted] »

mrweasel wrote: post #21

I worked for a company with a UK department, the UK boss would routinely use similar software to check that people where actually working and doing things correctly. The Scandinavian bosses opted to just trust everyone to do the right thing and people always would. Interestingly enough if was always the British employees who would do things like steal customer contact lists when they left or do deals on the side, so…

[deleted]

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#49

Post by grugagag »

nip wrote: post #36
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

Speaking of which there are some croocked locksmiths out there who pretend they cant lockpick the lock, try a few different methods to fail and add to labor and eventually drill through the core, damage the lock, charge you more than 500 and additional few hundred to replace the lock. It happened to my friend’s mom. Sometimes it’s experience but sometimes it’s just overcharging. If it’s higher than market price it may overcharging or better quality

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#50

Post by tmikaeld »

renewiltord wrote: post #7
kjakm wrote: post #4

I've experienced this kind of software working on an hourly contract via UpWork. It would take screenshots at random points in 10 minute intervals, and would track number of mouse clicks/key presses. I think everything was logged officially at the end of the day so if you happened to be on a personal site during the screenshot you could delete it and you'd lose those 10 minutes from the total number of hours you had…

I never do that on Upwork (always allow manual tracking) but I also liberally end contracts if things don't go fast. Might as well eat the loss. Don't have time to go looking through screenshots. But I wonder sometimes if its worth it to force auto-tracking just maybe for the upworker's sake (like it keeps them on a task they'd want to do but are having trouble sticking to). But that's low-end stuff. For mid-end stuf…

Be aware that hires can see a log and reviews of previous hires. Which makes it hard to get new professional hires when the grades are too bad, I almost have a perfect score since I pay above average, but even the single disgruntled hire have been mentioned (I cancelled the work since no results was shown).
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