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Workplace surveillance is coming for you
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Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#92On 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…
>I think this is a key failure of understanding for the "tech is neither good nor bad!" camp:
I like the addendum, "...but nor is it neutral"
Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What kind of employer nickle-and-dimes a worker’s bathroom breaks? I had a teacher in high school who would respond the same way (more or less) whenever someone would ask to use the restroom: > If you ever have a job that needs you to ask to use the restroom, find a better job.
There are some strict time-keeping requirements for bathroom use when it comes to certain contracts, like government ones. It wasn't too bad, but I forget the specifics. It was like it had to be less than 5 minutes, or you use your 15 minute breaks or lunch for anything longer.
It's all an overresponse to the problem that a handful of people would spend half their days in the bathroom if there were no rules.
The right answer is always to deal with the individuals who are the problem, but somehow it always becomes rules that make life worse for everyone.
Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#94Damn, I had some fairly old opinion of Doctorow where I disliked him for some reason or other, but I am definitely revising that. I thought this was a great article. I am certain “bossware” will accelerate the downfall of already shitty workplaces. Very happy to hear Amazon is doing away with it. Strongly hope their workers unionize anyway. What kind of employer nickle-and-dimes a worker’s bathroom breaks? Not a good…
"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop on company time"
Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#95Quit reading at “large stage capitalism”. Such a bs term. This is not capitalism, this is techno corporate fascism. That is what is failing and causing misery. And the more we gaslight capitalism, the further down the totalitarian path we are going to go.
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Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#96Here's an interesting pattern. You eat a banana. It's delicious and nutritious. Cool. You read about a fellow who ate a banana. Ah, such a fond reference. You read about your banana-research employees. Taste, nutrition and fond references are furthest from your mind. You only care about your sales numbers. Abstraction=progressive numbness.
There's no value in thinking all day about how bananas are delicious. Before you can eat the banana, it has to be produced and shipped. That process does not even involve thinking that bananas are delicious, so that kind of thinking isn't abstracted in the production process, it's simply irrelevant.
Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#97On 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…
Once upon a time, I worked for a shop that did auto insurance. This involves handling a lot of fairly sensitive data about people and datasets about a lot of people, for reasons that boil down to it being incredibly useful data for actuarial purposes.
Bossware, or working machine monitoring software, endpoint monitoring, or whatever turned out to be a key part of making it possible for our data scientists to function. At all. It was the only way we could both protect the incredibly sensitive information about lots of people while allowing analysis work to proceed.
Aside: anyone who wants to talk about doing data analysis without access to the underlying data is cordially invited to explain how to do this to statisticians who only understand R and local Jupyter notebooks.
"But wait!" you protest, "Can't the business work just as well without that sensitive information?". That's a good question! The short answer is no. No, it cannot, and unfortunately there's a great deal of actuarial history behind this.
"But wait!" cry you, "Could you have not simply trusted them?". That's also an excellent question! To which the uncomfortable response runs roughly: how comfortable do you feel with "we trust them" as the primary security controls when some company has your data? Especially when that trust means you might not even know about a breach? How do you think a regulator concerned with privacy would look at "we trust them" as a security and privacy approach?
Unfortunately, I think some forms of bossware serve a purpose. Sometimes it's one of the few options available that enables trust beyond the directly interpersonal.
Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the unintended consequence of anti discrimination laws (and other laws, like those protecting unions, that defeat at-will employment). Easiest way to fire shitty employees is to document a bunch of technical rule violations. That will create a rock solid paper trail that will stand up in court. Otherwise, they will claim some kind of discrimination and it’s your word about their performance against theirs cal…
This is complete nonsense. The easiest way to fire shitty employees is to fire them for being shitty, which you should have documented to begin with. This has absolutely nothing to do with anti discrimination law.
Ok, now prove that they are shitty so you can fire them.
Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#99Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you
#100Does anyone else not like the design of this website or is it just me? I find the articles fascinating, but the design I don't jive with...
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