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

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141–150 of 367 posts

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

#141

Post by qwytw »

kmatthews812 wrote: post #22
JoBrad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager, I feel that using metrics from productivity tools to measure productivity is lazy and counter productive. If your team is so large that you can’t measure productivity without using these cheats, then your team is too large for you to manage. But you’re also ignoring the fact that people work in different ways, and may be just as productive without generating the metrics you’re looking for. And before yo…

"As a manager, I feel that using metrics from productivity tools to measure productivity is lazy and counter productive." I agree, if that is the only way you measure productivity. These tools create a more holistic view of what a person does at work and should not be the sole measure of performance. In reality, what they make visible are the people who do little to nothing for 3+ days. Graphs that shows no work for…

So an 'employee' who attending 4 meetings every day and edited 20 documents but didn't actually accomplish anything useful is better than the one who did nothing for 3 days but managed to produce a lot of actual value for the company in the other two?

> In reality

IMHO the tool would be most useful in dysfunctional companies where managers don't really know what their subordinates are supposed to be doing or are trying achieve besides "working".

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

#142

Post by josefx »

oneplane wrote: post #50
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

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.

> 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.

Companies are not homogeneous blocks of matter and there is always information some people at the company may need to know that others have no business dealing with. Tax, banking and health related information are some of the things that I can think of that would be shared on a need to know basis with people at work and have no business to be seen by people outside of the intended audience.

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

#143

Post by xlii »

notbeuller wrote: post #109

During covid when WFH, I received a legitimate looking SMS message with a link, so rather than clicking it, I curl --verbose'd it (and one subsequent redirect) before seeing it was an obvious phishing / troll. The next day, my VPN & SSO was disabled with instructions to contact corporate security. My use of curl had been detected and while they didn't accuse me of anything, they claimed that they wanted to make sure…

I sympathize - it must’ve been stressful to go through this.

Yet I just can’t stop to imagine the other side’s perspective and it’s making me laugh:

I’m sitting in front of the monitoring dashboard, chewing a sandwich, and then a spike of intranet activity shows on one of the charts. I look at the dashboard and immediately notice that it’s effect of some SMS broadcast. Nothing to see here: lazy Tuesday.

Then on the dashboard with user agents new column shows. 1 request. Curl’s user agent sticks out like a sore thumb.

“Oh, someone probably just copy & pasted contents of the text message to check it out through curl in order to be safe” wouldn’t take place in Top 10 thoughts that’d I have after seeing that.

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

#144

Post by SoftTalker »

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.

UBI in the ideal world replaces welfare, food stamps, and rental assistance. It's supposed to be enough for a person to live a basic, decent but pretty no-frills life. I personally don't think it would work, as it ignores economics and human nature. But that is how I understand it.

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

#145

Post by lnsru »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #72
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

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 be…

Interviewing around Munich and big players have policies between 3 days in the office on the strict end and “please, show sometimes in the office” on easy going end. C’mon, it’s big step forward already from 5 years ago when people had occasionally Fridays home office. However I am stuck in the company with toxic culture from 1995, they really exist! Full back to the office!

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

#146

Post by prmoustache »

dudul wrote: post #125
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, that would be a clear sign to me of a... culture fit... problem at work. And I'd immediately begin looking elsewhere.

Agreed. Where do you guys work to be monitored like that? I dick around all day at work, I watched YouTube video in the background, I still use paper notes so my cursor can be still for an hour sometimes, etc and I never received anything like that. That's over 4 employers since I went full time remote. Not saying they're not "watching" me, but they don't seem to care. Is there a typical profile for companies that go…

Besides paper notes and brainstorming with my own self on my whiteboard, I sometimes disconnect from the vpn and put myself offline in MSTeams for several hours, telling my manager and direct teammates that they can use pagerduty to ping me if urgency calls for my immediate availability, when wanting to focus on a specific task/piece of code/resesrch/document/architecture decision.

Context switches can really kill productivity. So much that sometimes I do much more work in a 2h window between 7am and 9am than the next 6-7 hours.

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

#147

Post by treprinum »

warmwaffles wrote: post #127
treprinum wrote: post #52

So we need to create mechanical robots typing text generated by LLMs on a keyboard to look like we are working at the 100% utilization all the time (probably costing <$100 these days based on robotic hand prices). Then some solution for facial recognition if a webcam is needed.

You don't need a mechanical robot for that. Just need a device masquerading as a keyboard just sending that stuff in.

Good point, though the price will be similar. I unleashed my robotic dreams for no good reason.

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

#148

Post by MagicMoonlight »

notbeuller wrote: post #109

During covid when WFH, I received a legitimate looking SMS message with a link, so rather than clicking it, I curl --verbose'd it (and one subsequent redirect) before seeing it was an obvious phishing / troll. The next day, my VPN & SSO was disabled with instructions to contact corporate security. My use of curl had been detected and while they didn't accuse me of anything, they claimed that they wanted to make sure…

That seems pretty reasonable. Out of nowhere a user started running commands targeting malicious links. Could be control signals for an attack.

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

#149

Post by SoftTalker »

tigrezno wrote: post #77
2devnull wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not unnatural. Humans have always had to hunt or harvest their food, and find or construct shelters to live in.

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

#150

Post by shostack »

threatofrain wrote: post #2

Always request a separate laptop and phone for work, and always create a separate set of accounts.

Honestly it's so much better for work life balance and mental health to not have your work device present after the work day ends or on weekends.

I won't go back as long as I'm able.

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