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Workplace surveillance is coming for you

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Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#31

Post by mistrial9 »

skyfaller wrote: post #22

On workplace surveillance / "bossware": > Mazzoli seems to have either not used his product, or, if he did, did so under conditions where he was in charge of it – using it the way an athlete might use a stopwatch to time their own sprints, and not the way a boss might: to decide whether to dock your pay or fire you. > This inability to understand the difference between using a technology and having the same technolog…

semi-randomly, I was reading about the colonial Spanish mining city of Potosi in the South American Andes today, before opening YNews. The Spanish Viceroy (administrator for the King) oversaw the conscription (slavery) of 1 in 7 adult males each year, over a vast area, to service the poisonous and intensely profitable silver mines. Stories of courage and death predictably follow, while the administrators, unconnected to the daily life in the mines in that region, made record profits, among the largest wealth in Europe at the time (late 1500s). Comments on the social structures that supported that, left as an exercise to the reader.

Consider history; Do you think for one minute, that a Viceroy somewhere, and legions of new administrators, won't inflict endless and strictly enforced conditions on anyone they can find, using software?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/1776_Pot...

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#33

Post by GekkePrutser »

rightbyte wrote: post #27

I like the term "bossware". I think I will use it the next time I wiggle the mouse to make my Teams status green again.

In fact Microsoft built these features straight into Microsoft 365 under the name "Insights" (I think now being rebranded again to viva something)

They say it's all anonymized but it's really easy to correlate back to users by playing with settings.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#34

Post by mattnewton »

I’ve recently watched Brazil, and the film has one of the most chilling dystopian views I’ve ever seen because it’s easy to see yourself as part of the machine doing your best just trying to get by.

Similarly, I can see how the people working in this software slipped into this- they identified a need in the market with WFH, tried prototypes that were well received on the market, and keep iterating. Many of them legitimately are interested in time tracking and optimization, but of course the market for personal tools like that is very small and lots of employers want to pay you for this because they want more productive employees. Meanwhile the people buying them don’t really know what they are buying, they want to believe they have found a solution to the problem they are terrified of, employees pretending to work and milking them. And the employees exposed to it aren’t in a position of power to change it. And next thing you know we have a dystopian monster with enough funding to be responsible for people’s jobs itself, where no one individual has incentives to buck the curve or much ability to fight back.

What’s the solution then? Doctorow mentions unions, and I’d agree that could work. I think there must be another faction to join that doesn’t ruin you, something to compete with the monolith in case the monolith gets sick in this way. Being able to quit and find somewhere else only works if that somewhere else is mostly differentiated by the fact that it doesn’t do these programs you disagree with- many people will put up with this and worse if there is a large pay differential between it and the next option, or if they would have to move and uproot themselves. And if a government gets sick in this way it might not let you quit the country. You have to be able to form collective groups that can bargain with the behemoth, like a union, or political party, or other action that relies on people for it’s power and not capital. That’s one reason why money in politics is so worrying to me, because the way I see it, it messes with this crucial release valve of political action.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#35

Post by SilverBirch »

>The bossware problem is a boss problem, in other words.

I think this is basically the core. Bossware, like all technology is essentially about increasing efficiency. If your boss is shit, this technology is going to make them far more effective at being shit.

They aren't just going to do all the traditional things that make them shit - unclear goals, over-rewarding presenteeism, being sexist, racist or misogynist. Now they're going to do all those things but a lot more effectively.

Maybe in general this is a good thing, it's going to increase the gap between good bosses and bad bosses and that will in the end cause the good bosses to outperform the bad bossess and the bad bosses' will be identified, or at the least the companies that have bad bosses will be outperformed.

I would say the problem of this bossware is actually worse in schools and prisons - because those environments lack the same feedback paths that regulate this.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#36

Post by gitfan86 »

thenerdhead wrote: post #28

I feel like life finds a way even if it went down this path. People will create bots that randomize opening up a list of programs you use and make various gestures to throw off any tracking tool. I’m less worried about the Orwellian bossware and more about the Huxleyian warning of an abundance of so much information that bosses can hardly decipher what work is even being done.

Yes. And boses don't want to admit that they have no idea how to measure employee productivity, because that would mean that their own productivity is bad. Now maybe there is hope that the boses boss could detect lack of work of those teams, but he may also be afraid of saying the truth.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#37

Post by WilTimSon »

skyfaller wrote: post #22

On workplace surveillance / "bossware": > Mazzoli seems to have either not used his product, or, if he did, did so under conditions where he was in charge of it – using it the way an athlete might use a stopwatch to time their own sprints, and not the way a boss might: to decide whether to dock your pay or fire you. > This inability to understand the difference between using a technology and having the same technolog…

Yeah, if tech is developed with the explicit purpose of surveillance on workers, it's definitely not some dubious case where "well maybe it's done with good intentions". Nothing good comes from putting extra mental strain on your workers, showing you don't trust them and being an invasive boss overall.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#38

Post by GekkePrutser »

bloak wrote: post #10
emptyparadise wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what "white collar" means?

I normally hyphenate such expressions when they function as adjectives: "white-collar workers". Obviously I'm a bit "old-fashioned" in that respect. (I may also be old.)

And its opposite is blue-collar so nothing to do with racism. Unless smurfs feel discriminated against :)

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#39

Post by nixpulvis »

I believe in many states it's illegal for you to be recorded at work. I'm not sure how so many places are getting around this. If the claim is that it's audio vs video, then I say that's a bunk argument. A) we can reconstruct some audio from video (lip reading software), and B) a lot of what would have been "verbal" conversations now happen in text chats, recorded by cameras perfectly in the clear.

Not to mention that I'm always a bit nervous typing passwords into a computer under the eyes of recording machines.

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