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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

#41

Post by bregma »

aoms wrote: post #11
emptyparadise wrote: post #4

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…

Alternatively you could just treat your employees well and they will want to perform for you.

How to you put that in a pivot table you add to your slide deck? If it can't be measured it has no value.

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

#42

Post by jka »

davidkuennen wrote: post #2

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.

As a manager, would you worry about the stability of your own job role if you didn't have insight into the productivity of your reports?

Would you worry what would happen to you and the company if one of your reports introduced a serious bug or security flaw into the software?

(note: I think these concerns can -- and should -- be addressed in other ways that don't require intrusion into employees' day-to-day activities, but I raise them because I think they're part of the reason (along with compliance, perhaps in some cases?) why these systems are introduced in the first place)

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

#43

Post by BlargMcLarg »

jka wrote: post #42
davidkuennen wrote: post #2

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.

As a manager, would you worry about the stability of your own job role if you didn't have insight into the productivity of your reports? Would you worry what would happen to you and the company if one of your reports introduced a serious bug or security flaw into the software? (note: I think these concerns can -- and should -- be addressed in other ways that don't require intrusion into employees' day-to-day activiti…

>but I raise them because I think they're part of the reason (along with compliance, perhaps in some cases?) why these systems are introduced in the first place

Problem is, they are still proxies. Proxies are great at satisfying feelings, but proxies are by no means a guarantee they will reflect what they try to capture. There are no end of examples of perverse incentives showcasing how a metric can "feel" great, but end up being a big bag of nothing if not detrimental.

Other than that, even thinking along the terms of "well they must have a reason" is a great way of introducing slippery slopes all the way to extremism. I'd have a hard time arguing any answer would justify becoming more and more extremist and trying to deny people privacy and autonomy to such a degree.

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

#44

Post by osigurdson »

davidkuennen wrote: post #2

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.

Actual output is often hard to measure so we instead gravitate toward various easy-to-measure metrics - hoping that these are proxies for the real thing. The quantitative appearance of such metrics is intoxicating, particularly when it allows us to avoid thinking deeply about what would actually make a business better.

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

#46

Post by imranq »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #30
coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. If bosses could have slaves working for them, a vast majority of them would use slaves in an instant, without thinking about it. At best, they'd use a contractor or two removed from them, to mitigate the ethical accusations (same way they justify the use of sweatshops, child labor in mines, violently threatening an…

^This a thousand times over. The workers' benefits we enjoy today in Europe like 8 hour workdays, minimum 20 days vacation, paid sick leave, free healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc. were due to the communist movements sweeping Europe after WW2 which governments and industrialists fought hard to suppress so they had to give concessions to the workers in order to keep their business afloat and prevent the…

Is getting a job so competitive? Last I heard there was a labor shortage

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

#48

Post by bigDinosaur »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #23
hutzlibu wrote: post #18

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.

The most common reasons I've encountered:

- people put rooms up on Airbnb and are (perhaps understandably) paranoid about things being stolen. It goes too far if there are cameras in bedrooms though.

- people want to monitor their kids

- general monitoring to catch anyone who breaks in while they are out etc.

Have personally never heard of putting cameras inside for catching domestic violence: I suspect that abusers may be 'smart' in the sense that they'll catch on to this pretty quickly and prevent someone from doing it or manipulate the situation.

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

#49

Post by nixpulvis »

Security cameras at work are debatably legal under many states eavesdropping laws as I interpret the text. Of course INAL, and many places have better reason to have cameras, e.g. to curb shoplifting, but a corporate office really isn't one of those places. What am I going to do, steal some paperclips?

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

#50

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

imranq wrote: post #46
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^This a thousand times over. The workers' benefits we enjoy today in Europe like 8 hour workdays, minimum 20 days vacation, paid sick leave, free healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc. were due to the communist movements sweeping Europe after WW2 which governments and industrialists fought hard to suppress so they had to give concessions to the workers in order to keep their business afloat and prevent the…

Is getting a job so competitive? Last I heard there was a labor shortage

If there really was a shortage, employers would offer concessions, better working conditions, WFH, more vacation days, etc. Just look at truck drivers or hospitality for example. Just because employers say it's a shortage doesn't always make it true or it doesn't mean it's not their fault for the shortage for refusing to offer better conditions.

Depends on the field of course, but from my experience interviewing in tech, the market is very competitive now in my area in Europe for those without a lot of experience, and employers are not willing to offer any concessions besides the minimums mandated by law. Asking for full WFH is also out of the questions most of the time. This signals to me that there is no shortage, otherwise employers would be more accommodating for this.

In my country there is also a perpetual shortage of doctors and nursing staff in the public sector despite an abundance of them in the private sector. So the shortage is purely because the government is not offering the right financial incentives and working conditions for them to stay in the public sector.

My point is that "shortage" is always relative and we should look at the full story and the complete context to understand where it comes from and why it's happening, because without context I'm also having a perpetual shortage of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, though the full story is that my budget is $5000 and not a cent more, yet that information kind of changes and explains everything.

So, in conclusion, most of the times, "shortage of workers" just means people unwilling to work for the poor conditions and compensation being offered by employers, not that there's a shortage of people capable of doing said work or capable of learning to do it if offered the chance/training.

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