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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”

#191

Post by rvnx »

LocalH wrote: post #187
rvnx wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should knowledge or experience be charged ? Isn't it in the interest of the whole humanity to be able to charge only for materials ?

Why should you be entitled to the mental labor of others? What good is it to spend years studying and doing work in a field if one can’t charge more specifically for that knowledge and experience?

I answered in a comment below with potentiel food for thoughts. Let's be serious, it's a utopia, but the philosophical path is interesting to walk through.

Your concerns are valid, yes, but only if you value money over self-accomplishment.

I learn skills for myself, not for others. It's about investing in yourself, the output is not necessarily money. You can learn dance classes, it'll never pay-off, but you'll feel more accomplished.

Furthermore, from my perspective, money is unfair and is not a reflection of social value.

Because not the most deserving people are earning the most (the farmer who feeds others, vs, someone sharing pictures on OnlyFans).

I often speak with people who are smarter than me, and they share their knowledge with me for free. One example is for machine learning. In return I do share my other discoveries in fields I know better.

In the short-term, it looks better to keep the knowledge secret. But in the long-run everybody benefits.

The others still have their knowledge, I have new knowledge, and together we can build something better.

I'm very grateful to people who share what they know without charging me every minute like if I'm on a phone sex-line.

And the best lessons are actually free (YCombinator, Bill Gates, Physics classes, etc).

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

#192

Post by mindslight »

webmaven wrote: post #177
debtitor wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also told as “$5 for the hammer, $4,995 for knowing where to hit it”.

> Also told as “$5 for the hammer, $4,995 for knowing where to hit it”. Is that the one about the carpenter fixing the squeaky floorboard?

More like an MCSE fixing a server.

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

#193

Post by Silhouette »

mrweasel wrote: post #61
zem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I actually had a similar conclusion originally, but then I also saw the level of fraud by our UK customers. They where maybe 5 - 10% of our total sales, but 90+% of fraud cases. My take away is simply that there's less trust in the British society as a whole and it's not necessarily a fault or problem isolated to a single company.

Something I learned very quickly the first time I started a business doing online sales to a global market is that while it might be very un-PC to talk about entire nations or cultures with stereotypes, there certainly are patterns in how people from different countries behave, and there certainly are some places where it may be economically justified to decline all sales because the risk of fraud or other abuse is so high.

The UK has never been a particular problem for us in that respect. Maybe that's because it's our home country and we are somehow more appealing in how we present ourselves. Maybe it's the market we're in. Maybe our pricing model makes it less worthwhile to try to rip us off if you have a typical UK income. Unfortunately there isn't any truly reliable way to determine why people from some places are so much higher risk than others. But the numbers don't lie.

FWIW, I think the Germans are probably the best customers we've had. IME, they're invariably courteous and very rarely cause trouble. And even on the rare occasion when a German breaks our rules (probably unintentionally due to a language barrier or the like) the response to a polite message informing them of such and asking them to stop is usually a polite apology and immediately correcting whatever inappropriate behaviour was happening. So there are definitely cultural outliers in positive directions as well as negative ones.

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

#194

Post by ilaksh »

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 why fixed price projects should not exist. Really. It's one of the worst business practices out there.

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

#195

Post by webmaven »

roel_v wrote: post #80
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Does that make them bad employers? I would expect it to be quite logical that employers want to hire the best workers, where the 'best' is those who can process the most items. I used to work in a brush factory when I was a teenager (during school holidays). It was basically 8 hours of grabbing a metal clip and s row of brush hairs, slide the latter into the former, put the assembly under a press, put the result in a…

> Does that make them bad employers? I would expect it to be quite logical that employers want to hire the best workers, where the 'best' is those who can process the most items.

Sure, if by "most items" you really meant "most items at a sustainable rate that won't cause long-term injury, for enough hours to qualify for benefits such as health insurance at a pay-scale sufficient to live on, on a schedule that allows taking care of non-work obligations, etc. "

Instead, businesses are optimized to hire those who can do the most for the least pay, are desperate enough to not complain about the working conditions, and burn them out without much concern over any externalities.

Particularly galling to me are the "35 hours a week is a part-time job that doesn't qualify for health benefits" (which makes it very difficult to get and keep a second job), and the "we pay in 15m increments rounded down just to make sure you aren't a full time employee" dodges.

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

#196

Post by ilaksh »

charlieda wrote: post #79
stiray wrote: post #34

I would just simply leave the company that trusts me so little that it needs to monitor what I am doing. In another words if company is so worried to squeeze the last drop of money out of employee to actually use such methods there is something wrong with it. I know one in our country that pays really good but employs such tactics. Developers are leaving on quarterly basis - not due to tactics but due to rotten relat…

And we should consider ourselves lucky as engineers that we work in an industry where we are so in demand that are able to do that. Workers in other industries (the article talks about a firm that re-sells beauty products) might not be so lucky.

Actually many many thousands of good engineers are being forced to accept monitoring software on sites like UpWork.

And no, they don't have a good choice, because the pay and opportunities in many countries just doesn't compete well with those sites.

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

#197

Post by ilaksh »

AdhesiveWombat wrote: post #44
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.

Take a look at UpWork. Software engineers are subjected to this also. On a massive scale.

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

#198

Post by Balgair »

ImaCake wrote: post #106
shakna wrote: post #9

> For the last year and a half he has used Hubstaff software to track his workers' hours, keystrokes, mouse movements and websites visited. So much more than just screenshots. Whilst the CEO in this case seems to be fairly flexible, and says he doesn't mind if people are taking a break here and there, this kind of... Someone staring over your shoulder, albeit electronically, probably wouldn't work for me, and by infe…

I work as a research assistant in a wetlab (i.e. I physically do experiments). In a previous job the lab manager was suspicious of me appearing to not be doing any work sometimes. Once I figured out I was being watched I went to extra effort to appear busy. I couldn't actually be more busy because I already did the most I could do in a day. But I could waste some time appearing busy. It was a constant drain and I was…

I had a similar situation as a grad student in a wet lab. I was in classes most of the day and was forced to work in the lab during the morning and evening. As the PI was in from ~10am to ~4pm, they never saw me at work, and assumed that I was doing no work. Despite that PI lecturing in some of my classes. Fortunately, I was in a rotation for that PI and was able to leave the lab easily.

I still cannot for the life of me understand what they were thinking. How can you be so smart to get the position and not think past your own nose?

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

#199

Post by SubuSS »

rvnx wrote: post #190
dspillett wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My job does not require materials as such. Should I work for free for the good of mankind? How would I be able to obtain sustenance and shelter?

I was taking a globalist approach, of course it's not realistic. This view was inspired by a documentary (called Zeitgeist if I'm right), where machines provide subsistance to humans, so humans can focus on creative and artistic tasks without having to focus (including science). It's a far-fetched view, but in the long-term, I believe (and again, it's just a personal belief) that sharing is caring and that caring is…

How'd you incentivize someone to keep these machines up and running for eternity? Or is there another jump here that the machines will be eternal?

There is going to be new threats that show up (covid is a great example / alien attack is on the other end of the spectrum) - how do you plan to protect against these? Are you willing to leave these to volunteer willpower?

If you also notice the set of folks for whom subsistence is guaranteed (countries with good social nets / folks who have made enough money) keep working and trying to climb up the ladder. Do you think there is a baser instinct here (peacocking / self reliance / pessimism about future ...) at work?

At some point, you have to move away from the 'spherical chicken in a vacuum' arguments to have a reasonable discussion :)

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

#200

Post by Balgair »

Darthy wrote: post #169
johnchristopher wrote: post #120

The other day, while looking for cheap sensors/cameras/networking solutions for a hobbyist project, I stumbled upon this: https://partners.sigfox.com/products/simplepack-office-chair Identified needs – why to focus on office chair monitoring? Data-driven managers love to monitor home officing, track work hours, save space and costs incurred by unoccupied desks when employees work away from an office or on flexible sc…

You’ve got to be kidding.

Add a heater to it and a house cat will have no problem defeating it's purpose.
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