Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would people get envelopes with money if a turbine was delivered?
They went on a go slow - company paid under the table to hit a delivery date.
Ah! Thanks. I missed that implication :)
“I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
221–230 of 236 posts
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#222Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
file.sort() Amazing how much experience, sweat and tears you get for free behind a single function call. Any other industry would charge you a ton. Open source!
Yes, open source is very powerful. But it is also the exception and if you want a piece of bespoke software you're likely going to have to pay someone for it. It's pretty rare that someone would say 'I need some software to do 'x'' and then magically a team of talented individuals jumps forward to say 'we will provide it for free' and will maintain it for free to boot for the rest of its service life. Software has ve…
> But it is also the exception and if you want a piece of bespoke software you're likely going to have to pay someone for it.
The reality is that you will find many implementations of software of varying degrees of quality already for whatever you have in mind with an online search. Yes much of it was originally paid for or done for self serving purposes but once it is open source the outcome is that anyone can get the benefits for free.
> It's pretty rare that someone would say 'I need some software to do 'x'' and then magically a team of talented individuals jumps forward to say 'we will provide it for free' and will maintain it for free to boot for the rest of its service life.
You missed the point entirely. Sure you won't get a team of individuals to do that on demand, but the point is that team of talented individuals already created/published the software and actively maintain it.
Love how your fanboys downvoted me after your reply!
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a very large file with lots of 1s and 0s in it, you can have them for free. If you want them ordered and that ordering takes me a year or so then I expect to be paid. Knowledge and experience are the result of an investment in time and effort on account of the person with the knowledge. They usually expect some kind of return on that investment unless it was done for hobby purposes. Whether 'regular' labor and…
file.sort() Amazing how much experience, sweat and tears you get for free behind a single function call. Any other industry would charge you a ton. Open source!
Let’s sort all those ones after all those zeros. Then let’s uniq all those zeros and all those ones.
We’re done!
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> waste some time appearing busy What did that mean, in your particular case?
Mostly just making sure I looked like I was doing something whenever I knew I was within view of the lab manager. I also avoided my desk between tasks since it was close to said manager. Although I did useful things when at my desk I got the impression it looked like I wasn't occupied, so I just hid elsewhere to check my calculations and do other computer work I could get done on a phone instead.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#226I 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 do…
Here in Norway I think that the kind of surveillance described would be of debatable legality. And would be regarded by pretty much everyone as a breach of trust and etiquette.
In particular such arrangements must be discussed between the employer and the representatives of the employees and the employer must choose the least invasive alternative.
Here is a document giving guidance on the subject, sorry it's only available in Norwegian: https://www.arbeidstilsynet.no/contentassets/04ec2eb566d4494...
Also this one on camera surveillance which is analogous to screenshots: https://www.datatilsynet.no/personvern-pa-ulike-omrader/over...
"For at en arbeidsgiver skal kunne kameraovervåke en arbeidsplass, krever loven at det må foreligge et særskilt behov dersom man skal overvåke områder der bare de ansatte ferdes."
in English (my translation): "In order for an employer to use video surveillance of a workplace, the law requires that there be a specific need if one is to monitor areas where only the employees go."
I imagine that the Datatilsyn (Data Protection Authority) would regard regular screenshotting as similar.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Matches the data shown here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attit...
China is kinda funny. Either the question was misunderstood, or they've answered what they know should be the right answer. Everyone I know who as been trained in dealing with Chinese suppliers or business partners is telling me that you can only trust the Chinese as long as their financial interests are aligned with yours.
Chinese colleagues have told me that trust in others is very low in China, that family matters much more than society in general. It can make doing business more expensive and slower in China compared to say Scandinavia where levels of trust are generally very high.
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might find our Polish workplaces a refreshing change. Employees are often treated like feudal peasants . Poland never really had bourgeoisie/townsfolk class. Jews were the closest, in part because they were forbidden by law to own land. It was almost entirely peasants and gentry(20% at most), with clergy also playing a big role but the last two would pretty often overlap. The time when social changes happened in…
>Employees are often treated like feudal peasants. Could you elaborate on what you mean by this, please?
When you browse articles about Polish workplaces, the word "folwark" comes up pretty regularly. Typically in a phrase like "employer treats the company like his folwark".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folwark
https://biznes.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/801950,kapitalizm-po...
This article would be titled "Polish Capitalism: folwark is holding up well.". The opening paragraph: "His will, whim, mood determines what happens to the company and its workers. Pan (sir, master) says what to do and how to do it. If he's in good mood - he will praise you. If he's mad - will reprimand you, yell at you, fire you. Will put you into pillory."
The article goes on to bring up the uniquely polish Pan/Cham* dichotomy (Sir vs rube/redneck/yahoo/hillbilly), books that describe the relationship, areas of society where it thrives (one person rules, the rest timidly obeys).
It's poignant that many corporations operating in Poland have a toxic mix of Western corporate culture and Polish feudal relations.
Some extra aspects that I personally encountered: recruitment is done by HR and/or boss. Potential future coworkers, their representatives are frequently left out. Bosses like to micromanage rather than delegate tasks, unless to push something unpleasant down and away. This is also visible in government. I vaguely remember an interview describing a foreign statesman minister. He arrived and had a lecture of sorts about (modern) management strategies. He got a question along the lines "how do you assure things are done the way you want", to which he replied that he mostly doesn't care, that's the responsibility of his subordinates. Which provoked some smirks and snickering. In Poland, such manager is often perceived as weak. Also, bosses rarely ask subordinates for advice.
My comment: naturally, in Poland people love to insinuate they come from aristocratic lineage, and calling someone a villager is offensive, with varying degrees depending on the word used. Poland and Germany are the last 2 European countries where it's polite to address someone per "Pan" or "Sie" - a remnant of feudal relations. But in a society that was about 80% made of peasants it's just not possible that everyone has blue blood. Especially that the bulk of wars was fought by upper class, and this tradition lived on to WW1 and WW2. Peasants were reluctant to fight, it didn't matter to them who ruled because they would end up in forced labor anyway. Sure, there was mass mobilization / forced draft called
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pospolite_ruszenie
but does it make sense to kill your livestock like that? So anyway, on top of gentry forming up no more than 20% of the society, a large part of them died in the two World Wars, and plenty were even explicitly exterminated (for example mass graves in Katyń).
Another article in an openly leftist portal: https://krytykapolityczna.pl/felietony/kaja-puto/praca-polsk...
it touches on the unsurprising fact that immigrant workers are treated worse in every country, and Polish employers have a particular superiority complex in respect to migrants from the East. Historical reasons.
There were numerous cases where illegal immigrants from the East had work accidents and employer would stop people from calling an ambulance, or in one case even she dropped him in a forest and he died. Poles are quite stingy when it comes to tipping waiters (because Poland was a poor country), and if you're a waiter with an Eastern accent you're playing Hard Mode.
I read few right-winged portals or articles, but I think they don't care, for them hierarchy is natural and they blame everyone around (Liberals, leftists, Germans, Jews, France&Britain for not sending military help at start of WW2, Ukrainians for driving poorly/stealing/assaulting people/stealing jobs, the list goes on and on)
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Reminds of an exchange, potentially misattributed ([1]) to Picasso: A woman approaches Picasso in a restaurant, asks him to scribble something on a napkin and says she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, "That will be $10,000." "But you did that in thirty seconds," the astonished woman replied. "No," Picasso said. "It has taken me forty years to do that." [1]: https://…
This reminds me of the story my Dad told me a lot when I was younger.
A factory manager calls a repairman to fix a malfunctioning piece of equipment. The repairman shows up, looks at the machine and taps it once with a hammer. The machine works great again! Then he hands the manager an invoice for $4000. The manager is indignant, "That's ridiculous! I want an itemized invoice!"
On the invoice is the following:
* Hit machine with hammer: $1
* Knowing where to hit: $3999
Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
#230Crossover.com has been doing this for YEEAARS