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WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

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Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#41

Post by wmf »

hmmSceptical wrote: post #37
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #20

Nearly 20 years ago we used to install monitoring software to tell if a user's mouse or keyboard hadn't been used in a while. More and more places use traffic inspection "for security". Desks now use sensors to tell when warm bodies are near. Doesn't matter whether you're working from office or in the home, surveillance is here to stay. Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. Bad businesses…

> Bad businesses will continue to use draconian methods to try to squeeze productivity rather than foster it What about jobs that aren't creative like coding or graphic design? Some jobs are simply "sit in your chair and do work". The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable. You may argue "these are jobs for AI" - but realistically alot of jobs are a way off from this. Why shouldn't the "product…

The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable.

So measure the output, not the mouse, not the keyboard, not the chair, etc.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#42

Post by Silhouette »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #24
Silhouette wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. A lot of these management tools don't even measure outputs, only inputs, and then only partially and with doubtful predictive value.

I guess I tend to consider inputs and outputs the same in the context of most of these metrics. From the viewpoint of outcomes, everything beyond outputs is simply too obscured to make sense of.

From the viewpoint of outcomes, everything beyond outputs is simply too obscured to make sense of.

I don't think that's always true but you definitely have a valid point in a lot of cases. For inputs I was thinking about stuff like measuring time spent on specific activities without reference to whether the employee had been set up to make good use of that time or whether those activities were themselves worthwhile. That would contrast with outputs like measuring a software developer's productivity by the classic lines of code metric or some modern version like number of commits per day. A developer working 80 hours/week and producing 1000 lines in 20 commits in that time will look great by those metrics but I'd rather hire the developer who would write only the 100 useful lines that would survive into production in 20 hours and 5 commits because they thought before they wrote.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#43

Post by BlargMcLarg »

hmmSceptical wrote: post #37
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #20

Nearly 20 years ago we used to install monitoring software to tell if a user's mouse or keyboard hadn't been used in a while. More and more places use traffic inspection "for security". Desks now use sensors to tell when warm bodies are near. Doesn't matter whether you're working from office or in the home, surveillance is here to stay. Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. Bad businesses…

> Bad businesses will continue to use draconian methods to try to squeeze productivity rather than foster it What about jobs that aren't creative like coding or graphic design? Some jobs are simply "sit in your chair and do work". The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable. You may argue "these are jobs for AI" - but realistically alot of jobs are a way off from this. Why shouldn't the "product…

>Why shouldn't the "productivity" of these staff be measured? Because you don't like it?

No one is arguing against this. Stop creating strawmen.

People are against draconian practices aimed at micromanaging people when data is already available, individuals are meeting targets or the targets aren't met due to something out of their control.

In the case of programming, if you have any decent system, you can query commit dates, opened bugs/features, closed bugs/features, time in meetings put on the public agenda, and more. None of this requires surveillance during the development process, only measuring inputs and outputs.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#44

Post by hmmSceptical »

wmf wrote: post #41
hmmSceptical wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad businesses will continue to use draconian methods to try to squeeze productivity rather than foster it What about jobs that aren't creative like coding or graphic design? Some jobs are simply "sit in your chair and do work". The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable. You may argue "these are jobs for AI" - but realistically alot of jobs are a way off from this. Why shouldn't the "product…

The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable. So measure the output, not the mouse, not the keyboard, not the chair, etc.

"output" only matters if your company is paid by "results" and isn't based on billable hours, otherwise ... "output" doesn't matter.

Law firms would love every case to be solved in 2 hours if they still got the same $ value from a case that dragged on for 6 months.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#45

Post by tyingq »

Tyr42 wrote: post #36
heavyset_go wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run it on a separate VLAN or on separate network hardware, as well.

So like, how does that work. I've got a pair of Asus routers with one acting as an access point (AI mesh). Would I need to buy new routers? Do I daisy chain the routers or can I reuse the wifi ap? Or put Merlin on my existing ones? I'm in tech but these network suggestions are all quite opaque to me.

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1049415/

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#46

Post by willcipriano »

kmatthews812 wrote: post #7

Full disclosure. I just built this for Google Workspace (www.gofasterhq.com). I built it because it's a tool I wish I had when managing teams in the past. These articles are very one sided and there is a productive middle ground to be established using productivity management tools. As a manager, it can be difficult to know what your team is working on and who is actually productive, especially in a remote environmen…

> As an employee, these tools can benefit you by weeding out teammates who present themselves confidently

How do I benefit from this? In my experience the salary of a fired employee is kept by the company not distributed to the remaining employees.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#47

Post by 2devnull »

gchamonlive wrote: post #25
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #20

Nearly 20 years ago we used to install monitoring software to tell if a user's mouse or keyboard hadn't been used in a while. More and more places use traffic inspection "for security". Desks now use sensors to tell when warm bodies are near. Doesn't matter whether you're working from office or in the home, surveillance is here to stay. Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. Bad businesses…

> Quit the bad ones, join the good ones. This is why universal income is extremely important, so that people can pursue better jobs without risking being vulnerable.

Some people don’t want to work. They’ve told me so. I think UBI would destroy these people, like easy wealth does to the newly rich.

A better solution is to focus on worker’s rights and labor regulations. Of course that opens the internationalism question, but so too would ubi.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#48

Post by wmf »

hmmSceptical wrote: post #44
wmf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable. So measure the output, not the mouse, not the keyboard, not the chair, etc.

"output" only matters if your company is paid by "results" and isn't based on billable hours, otherwise ... "output" doesn't matter. Law firms would love every case to be solved in 2 hours if they still got the same $ value from a case that dragged on for 6 months.

Keep moving those goalposts.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#49

Post by trw_phy »

gchamonlive wrote: post #25
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #20

Nearly 20 years ago we used to install monitoring software to tell if a user's mouse or keyboard hadn't been used in a while. More and more places use traffic inspection "for security". Desks now use sensors to tell when warm bodies are near. Doesn't matter whether you're working from office or in the home, surveillance is here to stay. Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. Bad businesses…

> Quit the bad ones, join the good ones. This is why universal income is extremely important, so that people can pursue better jobs without risking being vulnerable.

You'd think people would learn after the covid money printer that giving people paper with funny pictures doesn't actually do anything.

UBI, like Roko's basilisk, is the magical thinking of our age. We need a working government to meet people's needs because the market sure as hell can't. That's a lot harder than just brrrr.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#50

Post by oneplane »

geek_at wrote: post #33
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #20

Nearly 20 years ago we used to install monitoring software to tell if a user's mouse or keyboard hadn't been used in a while. More and more places use traffic inspection "for security". Desks now use sensors to tell when warm bodies are near. Doesn't matter whether you're working from office or in the home, surveillance is here to stay. Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. Bad businesses…

> surveillance is here to stay in the United States. Europe has very strict rules about surveiling employees. Example: In Austria we are not allowed to use some of the functions that Azure-AD joined computers would be capable of because employers _might_ push remote control software the user hasn't agreed to

Same here. Employers can't even look inside user's mailboxes because there is no guarantee that it doesn't contain anything personal. Even if the company has a rule that you're not allowed to use it for personal things, the law supersedes that and you still can't do it willy nilly.
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