Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

privacyinternational.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 367 posts

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

#71

Post by lannisterstark »

2devnull wrote: post #47
gchamonlive wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Some people don’t want to work. They’ve told me so

...and? That's fine. there will always be some people who do not want to work. a UBI guarantees somewhat basic level of living conditions at least.

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

#72

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

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

As a foreign developer living in Austria I'd like to offer a counter perspective: that might be why Austria, even in the tech scene has some of the lowest and least flexibly WFH possibilities I've ever seen in any EU job market: so the bosses can keep a close eye on you at the office, because they can't via SW.

Every job I applied to, even the most liberal ones mandates at least 2 day per week at the office in the best case, with some SW companies having max 1 day per week WFH because "we're more efficient at the office" lol. Every time I ask at an interview if they let me work 100% from home, so I don't waste 2h/day commuting, they look at me like I asked them to let me f*ck their mom.

Also, many Austrian companies keep rigid track of your time and breaks at the office via electronic card punch in/out systems which are a government mandated legalized forms of workplace surveillance, meaning I have to spend 8h per day at the office regardless of my work being done in 5 and unable to do anything remotely productive for the remaining 3 because my brain is fried, while some companies even make you punch out for coffee breaks so you're not taking a break on your employer's dime, meaning you need to spend even more time at the office what's beyond your legal allowed 30 min lunch break which is also not included in your 8h closely-recorded workday.

So IMHO, it's not all as progresive as you make it sound. It feels like an archaic system designed to keep unionized factory workers strictly in line to their mandated 30 min lunch breaks and making sure no overtime occurs on their shift, but is severely out of place in the world of digital knowledge work where it's used in some companies to keep employees at the office glued for 8 hours to their chairs.

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

#73

Post by aledalgrande »

cebert wrote: post #5

I don’t have an issue being monitored if it means I can work from home more frequently. I think the data would help highlight that I’m more productive working from home than in the office due to less distractions and wasted commute time. It would be helpful if firms monitoring productivity mentioned what they consider productivity to be. However, in doing this, it would also make it easy for individuals to game any p…

> my daily standup is at 9:30AM. I typically join the standup on my phone, and make coffee and have a snack. Our standup runs 30-45mins due to how it’s managed and doesn’t provide much value to me

Ugh, I feel you on that. (tho I don't agree with the monitoring part, there's no need for it)

I just realized that I haven't had these silly daily standups for nearly a year now, since changing companies. And guess what? My team is the most productive team I ever worked in. I provide a weekly written update on the project I'm on for leadership to read. We had a weekly 15mins standup for a while when we needed a very tight loop between people on the project as one of the releases was coming up, then scrapped it when things went back to normal.

I don't miss the daily standups and scrummasters at all.

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

#74

Post by lannisterstark »

trw_phy wrote: post #49
gchamonlive wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

UBI isn't covid money printer though. You're misrepresenting it either intentionally or by mistake to discredit it.

UBI would, and should, replace current welfare schemes. We already have those in place.

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

#75

Post by jupp0r »

mantas wrote: post #63
gchamonlive wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Universal income covering the very basic would still keep people making beyond minimum wage vulnerable. Paying meaningful money would be too expensive at scale. Then few jobs could pay meaningfully more than the universal income. Why work if you get +/- not working?

Your understanding of universal income is broken. Everybody receives a monthly income, regardless of them working or not. The incentive to earn more by working is always there.

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

#76

Post by wizofaus »

mantas wrote: post #67
oneplane wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leads you to believe that people who do not want to work are desirable to have in the workplace? UBI also doesn't give you wealth, it gives you basics, and overal that's much cheaper than dragging down an entire team or department. At the same time, we currently have plenty of people who do not want to work and do indeed not work, that will not change regardless of what you implement. I also think that happy and…

They ain't desirable. But who wants to pay them do nothing? Many people ain't happy to cover existing welfare. Increase welfare and even more people would feel it's unfair.

You can accuse UBI of many things but unfair it is clearly not, hence the "universal". Everyone gets the same amount - but the assumption is most will then choose to work and earn extra income on top of that.

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

#77

Post by tigrezno »

2devnull wrote: post #47
gchamonlive wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So if you have the opportunity to stop working and keep being paid, wouldn't you take it? I'm sure the mayority of people don't want to work. It's not a natural thing to do.

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

#78

Post by BlargMcLarg »

hmmSceptical wrote: post #54
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 comm…

> In the case of programming... A percentage > 90% of the world isn't programmers... There simply isn't the same workflow to monitor "word" / "pdf" documents without an insane amount of effort / document control that most SMB's dont have. The only option available to them, without hiring programmers, is often only the metrics that get offered built into these types of products. I dont think that's a strawman argument…

Pretty sure the burden is on you to prove it is not just a method, but also the only method.

Most trivial things can be measured outside time. Many jobs measured on time, we already know why they are measured on time (low activity, presence-based jobs). Anything else, measuring based on behavior/time spent is management being lazy and not doing what they should be doing: comparing inputs and outputs, and measuring the impact of changes to them to improve productivity.

If a manager can't do something that basic, they shouldn't be looking for more bad proxies to hound people with. They should be doing the company a favor and quit.

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

#79

Post by netrus »

jupp0r wrote: post #70
geek_at wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Germany famously just passed legislation that forces employers to record working hours for all employees.

The employer must not under-record the time worked - no one forces them to track the duration of breaks.

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

#80

Post by MicrosoftShill »

All enterprise productivity products are capable of spying on their users. It is up to the sysadmins, legal/ethics teams, and company culture to not allow for that surveillance to be used. And to be fair, most of the data that is being discussed isn't new and has been available to employers for ~10 years in one form or another. Not that that makes it better.

I run an O365 instance for my company. We have thousands of users. The only time the data that is referenced here is being used is for some rare troubleshooting or litigation reasons.

Post reply on HN