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Bossware is a big legal risk

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Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#151

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

Dalewyn wrote: post #118
paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

>install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones 1. WTF is anyone doing using their personal belongings for their work? Cleanly and clearly demarcating personal and professional is CYA 101, for both employee and employer. 2. WTF is the employer doing if they don't provide all necessary tooling for the job prescribed? 3. WTF are you doing working for above employer? I…

1 and 2 is how all the gig companies like Uber, door dash, amazon delivery etc work. The line between personal and professional has been blurred intentionally by the big employers. This helps them CYA as you phrase it.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#152

Post by giraffe_lady »

exabrial wrote: post #14
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because workers arent slaves or robots, and being on the job doesnt make them such. Your mentality is actually staggering to me.

Can you answer this question directly: What is it that you don't want seen by a company representative, on a company computer, while being paid by the company?

The short prayer I say & religious gesture I make before beginning each new task.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#153

Post by underlipton »

paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

Well-positioned workers have little recognition of what lower-paid or lower-prestige labor has to deal with, even a few years out of such work. And when they know, they rarely understand. Seemingly small or innocuous things can make a massive difference in your experience at an employer. It was surprisingly frustrating having to throw my phone into a locker at my $16/hr warehouse job like I was entering a SCIF when, really, they just wanted to cut down on people taking photos of OSHA violations. The joke is that it was easy to use their disposition system to sneak photos to my email. Which is to say, this class of policy/tech just encourages people to find undocumented (read: insecure) ways to retain their at-work QoL.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#154

Post by Etheryte »

saagarjha wrote: post #149
whoitwas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I alias a script to run caffeinate. They aren't going to mess with your terminal processes. https://ss64.com/mac/caffeinate.html

pkill -9 caffeinate seems pretty reasonable for them to start doing

I mean, you can just make a copy and name it whatever? You can even have it generate a new name every time you run it if you'd like. Imo this is a rather pointless cat and mouse game with developers, because either they can't do their work properly or there will be ways to work around stuff like this.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#156

Post by dalyons »

kbrkbr wrote: post #138
mistrial9 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then someone else shows up someone else shows up ? what is the denominator

We've seen that also. You interview someone online, help file the paperwork to get into the country and work visum, and then someone else, a technically much weaker guy, shows up on the first day. We had that twice in the last two years

wild. So the paperwork and the visa etc was all actually filled out with the details of the weaker guy? Including the photo and suchlike? crazy that gets past the companies immigration lawyers Also, doesnt he just get fired straight away and lose his visa? Seems like very high effort and low chance of success, I must be missing something

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#157

Post by next_xibalba »

paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

I can't find a single source for your claim that warehouse workers are being made to wear ankle bracelets. The closest I see is an Amazon patent from 2018. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful to conversations like this.

I've worked in factories and seen the degree to which productivity is an issue. I actually lobbied for us to use the time tracking that was already available to us via our ERP, and management declined. Humans are lazy by default. We seek the highest return on our effort. Building great things (i.e. making life better) requires us to fight this instinct.

Additionally, I have seen absurd abuse of WFH/remote since COVID among co-workers. There have been instances where I truly cannot wrap my head around someone seeing it as anything but theft. I don't particularly like being monitored either, but I definitely understand the motivation for monitoring or RTO initiatives.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#158

Post by BeetleB »

Dalewyn wrote: post #118
paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

>install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones 1. WTF is anyone doing using their personal belongings for their work? Cleanly and clearly demarcating personal and professional is CYA 101, for both employee and employer. 2. WTF is the employer doing if they don't provide all necessary tooling for the job prescribed? 3. WTF are you doing working for above employer? I…

Regarding 1: Not everyone wants to buy a burner phone to do 2 factor authentication. And many (most?) employers won't provide one just for this.

The real evil are companies that require you to use a phone for 2 factor authentication and assert that they have the right to examine your phone because you use it for work purposes.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#159

Post by tracker1 »

quectophoton wrote: post #115
paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

Last year when I started looking for jobs I landed a job in a company that did consulting services. All looked fine on the outside, but when I joined I found out they are doing software for this kind of stalking, and even use AI to classify employees as "productive", "not productive", and other criteria based on their computer's activity. I noped the hell out of there without even having spent a week working for them…

I worked through a couple onboarding/marketing projects for a large financial institution several years ago... I finished up my 6 month contract, but felt icky and didn't want to continue beyond that.

I also outright refused to work on a project for the RIAA at one time as well.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#160

Post by tracker1 »

quectophoton wrote: post #122
sanitycheck wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have done the same, and have done before when I've found myself on client projects related to online gambling (the business model is to milk addicts for everything they have and more, don't listen to anyone who says otherwise). I know if I don't do it someone else will so it doesn't really make a difference - but at least I can retain some sense that I'm not the kind of person who does bad things, and that's wort…

> With web tracking you can at least be 'careless' in your implementation and 'accidentally' make it not work very well because most of the time nobody will ever test it properly. And users can normally install tracking blockers, either in browser or DNS-based (in your home's router), to at least prevent some thirdparty stuff from loading, so that's some defense against it. Of course it's not always possible. But the…

PIhole + Brave + uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger ... I'll deal with the occasional web app not working. More app/site developers should really test to make sure their app works with the ads blocked. When I've worked on public sites, I always tried to make the app degrade gracefully (depending on hidden/reserved element spaces).
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