This is illegal in most western countries
yeah another reason some people love outsourcing
“I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
51–60 of 236 posts
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#52I 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…
>You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute.
On the flip side, this was used at one of the first jobs I worked as a teenager selling scummy informational CDs. It isn't that you're paying 6 payments of $29.99 for some CDs, you're paying for John Doe's expert, secret knowledge. We were instructed to use this rebuttal if a customer balked at the price for some CDs.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
For your specific examples it is much more easier to monitor the amount of work done.
Yes, but with bad employers that can often result in 'wage deflation' where the amount of buttons sewn or marketing calls made required gets larger and larger - which can often result in overworked and very stressed workers - there's been quite a few cases in call centers in the last few years. When workers are paid per piece directly it can sometimes mean they will be paid less than the minimum wage.
I doubt workers in call centers are stressed because there isn't enough surveillance of their work.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#54I 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…
A couple of years ago, was here an AskHN question. As far I remember, the guy worked from home, had just fill some excel sheets from other excel sheets. After a while he made some scripts and one week work was done in 20 minutes. He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work.
The question was then, if he should tell, he work just 20 minutes and not one week. But he also said he need the income and if he told, also the control guy would lose some working hours.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#55I 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 thought this was going to end something like "so the locksmith comes back the next day and locks you out of your home for two hours. '150€ please. Happy now?'"
:)
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#56I 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…
I have a follow-up question about chickens and eggs...
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#57I 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…
A couple of years ago, was here an AskHN question. As far I remember, the guy worked from home, had just fill some excel sheets from other excel sheets. After a while he made some scripts and one week work was done in 20 minutes. He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work. The question was then, if he should tell, he work just 20 minutes and not one week. But he also said he nee…
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#58I 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…
> Pay for work not time spent on the computer This is the right solution, but of course is harder for some occupations - call center, sewing buttons, and more mundane work. Where 'bad' employers can push up the amount of work expected.
Also known as piece work. It has a history of abuse as you say. Such as the origin of the phrase 'sweatshop'.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#59I 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…
A couple of years ago, was here an AskHN question. As far I remember, the guy worked from home, had just fill some excel sheets from other excel sheets. After a while he made some scripts and one week work was done in 20 minutes. He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work. The question was then, if he should tell, he work just 20 minutes and not one week. But he also said he nee…
I had something similar (but opposite) happen.
We hired a remote engineer to write a program to export to excel. He claimed it was done and the Excel "output" arrived every morning.
We asked him to submit his code for review, and after stalling, he produced some extremely obfuscated C++ code that turned out to do absolutely nothing.
He was staying up all night entering data manually into Excel to generate the final reports.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#60I 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…
> ... so I suppose they had a reason to not trust people.
When you teach people that they aren't trustworthy, they tend to end up not being trustworthy.
Perhaps if the UK bosses had given their employees a bit of trust, they would have lived up to it.
And, on the flip side, perhaps if your Scandinavian bosses had implemented the same draconian monitoring measures, there would have been more people from your office doing shady things.