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Workplace surveillance is coming for you

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Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#141

Post by skyfaller »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #81
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…

This stuff is worse than the Death Star. At least that thing made no pretence about helping its targets. I cannot fathom how much my mood has dropped on reading about Bossware. I'd do pretty much anything in my career to avoid it.

I was referring to some material from the no-longer canon Star Wars Extended Universe, where it was referred to during development as the "Imperial Planetary Ore Extractor", and some characters working on its design genuinely believed (due to brainwashing) that the Death Star "was developed to break up dead, lifeless planets to extract the valuable ores and elements within". https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Qwi_Xux

Of course, if programmers are raised from a young age and brainwashed into believing that workplace surveillance is innocent / good, that's a different problem than adults who should know better when it comes to the real world results of using the tech they are building.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#142

Post by kastagg »

jorts wrote: post #113
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100% - At my last company we had an unlimited sick policy. Wonderful for everyone - don't even question staying home if you're remotely ill. Well, it was wonderful until one employee was sick every Friday and Monday and some. We ended up having to adjust the company policy for two weeks sick time and beyond that required a doctors note. The employee continued their pattern and once they hit their two weeks of sick ti…

You didn't have an unlimited sick policy. You had an undocumented limit. Documenting it lets people know where they stand and protects them in the event they need to take sick time but the boss wants to punish them for it anyway. It also means there's one standard for everyone, rather than people being treated in a discriminatory fashion (you get three weeks, but Samantha gets one).

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#143

Post by mbostleman »

Spooky23 wrote: post #128
avg_dev wrote: post #23

Damn, 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…

Doctorow is a professional activist. He makes good points and has a clear set of beliefs that he applies consistently, especially on topics like this, but gets a little overbearing if you follow closely.

Yea, I suffer from serious oppression and inequity narrative fatigue. I couldn't really get past the first few paragraphs. Sure there is inequity between workers and their management. But first off, it's not always tilted towards management. There are many indexes on which we can measure how one party fares over another. But anyone who is moved to write about inequity only assumes a single index and that management is always oppressive and employees are always helpless and oppressed.

Secondly, the longer I have been a participant of society and markets, I've come to realize that power imbalances are as affected by how much the participants stand up for themselves in the face of power grabs as it is how much other participants grab. But again, when inequity is described, those that grab are universally criticized for grabbing and those that allow it are never offered advice or encouragement on how to either resist or walk away. I believe the latter would be much healthier for society and markets.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#144

Post by IWillForgetThis »

padolsey wrote: post #65
bheadmaster wrote: post #52

I'm currently reading "The Tyranny of Metrics" which provides a decent analysis of how over-measuring things that don't have anything to do with the real goal often serves as a deterrent to real progress. What managers want to know is how much do their workers contribute to the success of the company . What they measure is how much time do workers spend doing X . They're completely glossing over the middle step of ho…

> Over-measurement is often worse than not measuring anything at all. Yes. Not only is "time spent" or "code written" or "features implemented" or even "user engagement" a lossy metric in the best of cases but it can literally end up doing the exact opposite of what you intended. Campbell's & Goodhart's laws are often cited. The trap I see in software companies is a hyperfocus on quantifiable short term wins, entirel…

The universe X example has some merit too. The developer got a raise, the business was excited enough to get this feature done ahead of schedule that someone actually put in the effort to push through a raise, and the total cost for this was one man-week of extra work a year later - basically a drop in the bucket, budget-wise.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#145

Post by kastagg »

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #84

Quit 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.

Capitalism is what it is in reality, not just in our fondest hopes.

The problem with the phrase is the assumption that any day now, something else will inevitably come along to replace it and make everything better. That "replacement" has unfortunately proved at least as problematic as the history of capitalism.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#146

Post by silksowed »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #117
patientplatypus wrote: post #29

I find it so weird. Aren't there any bosses that say "Yeah, fuck you we're not doing that." That's the point of a boss. If I were in charge of a bunch of programmers and a mandate came down from on high to rate programmers based on commits or keystrokes, my first response would be "Eat shit." and my second response would be "No, really, I'm not treating my people like dogs. Eat shit."

...and they'd pip you out in a few months, and you'd leave without a good reference. In reality, you'd realize it was horrible, but orders are orders, so most people would do it. If they found it particularly objectionable, they'd just look for another job in the meantime, but most folks who are not financially independent wouldn't take a stand for it.

people over leveraged in their personally lives don't seem to be able to take risks at work for the greater good. all it takes is 6 months of runway cash and i think more people would say "eat shit" instead of blindly following orders to help protect themselves

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#149

Post by biotinker »

Kalium wrote: post #97
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…

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…

I worked as a bioinformatician at a medical device company. We did genetic testing on cancer patients, and had huge amounts of private, personal information on the patients we were testing, because it was necessary to provide the correct clinical determination.

We also didn't have bossware. There were access controls on the data itself, audit trails on who accessed the data, but no software running locally on my personal dev machine looking at what I did at any particular moment.

HIPAA governs the storage, transport, and use of that health information, and we all knew we were criminally liable if the information got out.

Bossware in a HIPAA environment (or other environment where not having leaks in important) can be more of a liability than a boon, because it becomes yet another vector for attack or data leakage. You are in effect sharing all data a machine can access, with the maker of the bossware.

Something with the teeth of HIPAA but for other pieces of personal information could go a long way. It's amazing how differently executives behave when the consequences of data leaks change from "customers could be unhappy if they found out" to "I could personally go to prison".

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#150

Post by [deleted] »

padolsey wrote: post #65
bheadmaster wrote: post #52

I'm currently reading "The Tyranny of Metrics" which provides a decent analysis of how over-measuring things that don't have anything to do with the real goal often serves as a deterrent to real progress. What managers want to know is how much do their workers contribute to the success of the company . What they measure is how much time do workers spend doing X . They're completely glossing over the middle step of ho…

> Over-measurement is often worse than not measuring anything at all. Yes. Not only is "time spent" or "code written" or "features implemented" or even "user engagement" a lossy metric in the best of cases but it can literally end up doing the exact opposite of what you intended. Campbell's & Goodhart's laws are often cited. The trap I see in software companies is a hyperfocus on quantifiable short term wins, entirel…

[deleted]
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