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Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

economist.com

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Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Japanese companies have really fucked up ways of measuring "work". They work hard to make these AI and tech-based things to measure some dumb stats that have nothing to do with getting actual work done. I've heard of a company measuring how "well" a meeting went based on some AI analysis of people smiling. So much time here is wasted on managing workers and talking about how to work, instead of just getting shit…

There is an urban legend that being asleep at work would be seen as being productive since you obviously work so hard. This would be my chance to become employee of the month.

Depends on when you are asleep and how you act when you wake up to help your colleagues.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to place cameras in your apartment in the first place? Maybe one camera for the entrance, if you have reasons to be paranoid (I was thinking about it for myself, because of weird landlord with second keys), but why more cameras? edit: one further reason for myself I remembered, watching the small kids from the smartphone, while going out for some minutes. But in the end I never set it up

Catching acts of domestic violence would be a reason. To prevent he said/she said instances. NB: I don't agree with the increasing paranoia, it's just devil's advocate.

Ok, if you have to worry about that, than the solution is probably rather to get a divorce. (are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence?)

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catching acts of domestic violence would be a reason. To prevent he said/she said instances. NB: I don't agree with the increasing paranoia, it's just devil's advocate.

Ok, if you have to worry about that, than the solution is probably rather to get a divorce. (are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence?)

Divorce alone barely ever works, it's not as simple as that. I'd rather not stir the hornet's nest any further as the topic itself is far more delicate than that. It's just an example of why an increasingly distrustful populace might opt to secure themselves through home surveillance.

>are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence?

Depends entirely on the context and where you live. There are no universal surveillance laws. There are also social aspects outside the realm of court why one would opt to do so.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#38

I'm convinced that keeping track if your employee is visibly working or not is so fundamentally wrong. Especially in an office setting. Just look at the output. Nothing more. Does the employee provide value at the end of the day or not. That's important. Not hours or anything else.

Especially in an office setting.

Why especially then?

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#39

I'm convinced that keeping track if your employee is visibly working or not is so fundamentally wrong. Especially in an office setting. Just look at the output. Nothing more. Does the employee provide value at the end of the day or not. That's important. Not hours or anything else.

Especially in an office setting. Why especially then?

>Why especially then?

Because some office workers think they are special in regards to their output being more creative and cognitive rather than physical and therefore should not be measured in the same fashion as the number of widgets per hour made by a factory worker or tiles per hour laid by a handyman for example, even though ironically, modern SW tools like Jira and processes like Agile & Scrum attempt to do just that, turn cognitive work into factory style repetitive assembling/plumbing work. Which most of it is :) B.R.B, gotta wrap up those story points for the end of the sprint. /s, but only barely

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#40

Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too? >Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression. Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll…

Many Japanese companies have really fucked up ways of measuring "work". They work hard to make these AI and tech-based things to measure some dumb stats that have nothing to do with getting actual work done. I've heard of a company measuring how "well" a meeting went based on some AI analysis of people smiling. So much time here is wasted on managing workers and talking about how to work, instead of just getting shit…

The moment a measure becomes a KPI it is not longer a useful KPI.
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