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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)

#201

Post by bombolo »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #133
lannisterstark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

[deleted] I failed to consider the audience.

What is your actual contribution to society? I'm going to assume you work at some useless startup (like most of us) that will be gone in a few years, having left nothing useful to society.

Is your work really helping society?

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

#202

Post by gerdesj »

Swizec wrote: post #131
notyourwork wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a concept equivalent to US, salary employee? If so what are they expected to work?

(I’m from Europe, have lived in US the past 8 years) > Is there a concept equivalent to US, salary employee? Yes. It’s called full-time employee. This encompasses anyone and everyone who does not work as an independent contractor. > If so what are they expected to work? 40 hours per week. With mandated minimum lunch time and breaks, paid minimum vacation, paid medical leave, paid maternity/paternity, govt mandated lu…

> If you work more than 40 hours per week, you can request overtime pay

Or you can request TOIL - Time Off In Lieu. That is a system designed to allow flexibility. Some jobs can't simply clock off when doing certain tasks. Provided it is agreed upon at contract negotiation time (ie the hiring process) then TOIL/overtime rates can work well for everyone.

Our (UK for me/EU) Employment Tribunals have a lot of power and a lot of law that generally favours the employee but also strives towards equitability. For the last 20+ years I hire but I still recall what being hired is like. I have found time and time again that being fair and open pays back in absolute spades. A pissed off employee is simply a burden and a cost. You can't please everyone all of the time but if you are known for fairness, that goes a long way.

I won't give you a shitload of money until you earn it for me 8) I too buy my own lunch and all other meals as required to live. I sometimes (always) need to be forced (cough reminded) to claim when we are contracting on a job that has allowances built in.

Some top tips for employees (EU/UK - perhaps others too): Do make sure you get things ironed out at the hiring stage. At the very least some things defined, written down and signed: Get place of work defined eg town/city - in the event of TUPE you may be required to move but if you have a defined place of work then you have all the aces! Get rates defined and a formal process for review. Hours of work. Responsibilities. Industry specifics. Read up on HR and how it works: you will be sat across the table with an expert in the law and how to err get the best out of you for the company which may not match up with your ideas. Do read up on all your govt provided advice - the GOV.UK stuff is pretty decent.

Basically: you have a duty to yourself to do your own due diligence, so please do it! You can expect to be treated reasonably fairly but you may not like the outcome so get the pack stacked fairly or at least not against you.

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

#203

Post by eropple »

bombolo wrote: post #197
eropple wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those with the most to lose benefit the most from having a just and civil society, but that realization never seems to percolate through.

uh? the rich don't want a just society, they just want to remain rich…

Only a--reasonably and relatively; no society is perfect--just and civil society provides (over a sufficiently long time horizon) the kind of stability and structure that allows the rich to stay rich. Which doesn't mean that you can't get rich in other societies, of course. But, broadly and historically speaking, having to expend those riches directly on men who will harm and kill for you has something of an expiration date, usually around when they realize they can just take more than you'd be paying them.

That's to say that functional courts and a state that acts as the only legitimate applicator of force tends to be a lot better for the rich, and those too fall (or themselves turn on the rich, too) when they stray too far from the line.

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

#204

Post by pbhjpbhj »

shostack wrote: post #150
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.

Can you expand on this at all? Is it consciously better, or was the presence of work devices subconsciously affecting you? Did you notice particular improvements, or ...

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

#205

Post by selestify »

SoftTalker wrote: post #144
mantas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which parts of it ignore economics and human nature?

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

#206

Post by mysterydip »

lliamander wrote: post #174
suddenclarity wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. This always comes across as people wanting to have the cake and eat it. Employers should only care that the work is getting done, but if the work isn't done, then the employee should still be able to go home after 8 hours and get full salary?

> but if the work isn't done, then the employee should still be able to go home after 8 hours and get full salary? Of course not. If the work isn't getting done, then the employee should be fired. And that's the case even with the surveillance.

That being said, there's also a difference between progress and meeting goals. Employees can put in 100% for a full 8 hours and still miss a deadline (poor scheduling, issues/roadblocks that arise, or maybe they're not good at the job). I think a lot of the tension between management and workers is because much modern work isn't assembly-line-deterministic x widgets-per-hour.

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

#207

Post by pbhjpbhj »

transpute wrote: post #84
LightBug1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the stress building up in me as I read that part of the book ...

TikTok's user profiling algorithm pays close attention to time spent on microcontent. Twitter may be going down a similar path.

I occasionally complain about Facebook adverts. That means I pay them more attention. That means Facebook show me the same/similar adverts more ...

FB still get paid for those impressions, but each one reinforces my desire never to let that company have a cent of my money.

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

#208

Post by selestify »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #196
heyoni wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s there to do? If the work is getting done then enjoy the morale boost.

Which business are in you that doesn't benefit from more work / more efficient work?

Why is the business entitled to more work if the work you're already getting done suffices to make the bosses happy?

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

#209

Post by AHOHA »

In my previous job in a small company, the CEO (also the admin of 365, yeah I know!!) didn’t know what to do with some issue, so I offered to help him out, he gave me the full admin access to the 365 and after some digging I found what’s listed on the article and even more data logged of the usage, etc., took screenshots on a hope when I get time to write something up, but glad the article went on depth too, funny later I left the job because he wanted “more productivity” by returning to the office..

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

#210

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bequanna wrote: post #87
LightBug1 wrote: post #59

I run a couple essential apps in a Virtualbox on my work laptop. Mainly due to compatability but more and more so due to privacy and articles like this. Am I right in thinking that anything that goes on inside that Virtualbox is 'relatively' private? I don't believe our IT department have the capacity to go beyond something like Office 365 Admin, but who knows. Thanks,

I’ve always thought it was a good rule that if you don’t want your employer to know about it, don’t do it on a company machine. Assume they can see everything.

If you use Microsoft Windows, and your employer is a client of theirs, then it seems a reasonable expectation that MS would like to "enhance" their reports on you with information they harvest from your OS. Can you trust any machine using software from companies that your employer pays a lot of money to [in part] in order to track you?
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