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Bossware is a big legal risk

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Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#171

Post by brianmcc »

resource_waste wrote: post #139
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'm happy the government is finally stepping in. As a small player, I'm always afraid of this. Two of my companies died because of legal stuff that was outside the economics I could front.

if "don't aggressively spy on your employees" puts you out of business what on earth's your business model?

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#172

Post by ryandrake »

aljgz wrote: post #103
ryandrake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the former might strongly imply the latter. If a company can't think of a single way to ensure the person who interviews is actually the person who comes to work the first day (hint, there was a time when webcams did not exist), then that company is probably also inclined to inflict lazy, intrusive surveillance-based schemes on employees after they're hired.

Genuinely interested to know what are some ways you suggest. The times webcams did not exist, coding interviews were done in-person.

That's what I was getting at. If you want to be sure that the human body who will be present in the office is the one doing the work, then you need to have at least one on-site interview.

If the work is fully remote, then does it really even matter? If you hire Person A to provide certain business results, but he actually contracts it out to Person B who does all the work, yet the expected business results are provided, then do you actually care?

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#173

Post by brianmcc »

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…

Plus workers in tech are absolutely not immune to this stuff and nobody should be complacent.

"They can't monitor me because I spent my morning mentor Alan the Junior at his desk" - that may be so but it won't stop them from trying, and the lag from deploying bad business intiatives to realising they're bad can be months or years in the making.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#174

Post by hirvi74 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #96
beefnugs wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you expect to be doing take home assignments, you need to know how to use virtual machines, restrictive outgoing white list only firewalls (or at least open snitch) and wipe everything except the source code you create. Between companies / every single use

Anti cheating software can detect virtual machines.

If a prospective employer refused to conduct my interview because their anti-cheating software could detect I was using a virtual machine, then I would tell them to go fuck themselves.

I would rather clean toilets with dignity than be bitch-whipped into programming for such psychopathic entities.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#175

Post by sanitycheck »

tracker1 wrote: post #170
sanitycheck wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also block this stuff, personally - but I'm not sure I completely buy the argument that it's OK to work on something because technically competent people can circumvent it. For example I wouldn't work on China's Great Firewall (not that they'd ask me to) - even though those with sufficient skill and bravery can penetrate it.

I didn't suggest, or mean to suggest as much... I mean that when I worked on a public site with ads, I made sure that the site continued to look right and operate when analytics and ads were blocked. Unless you're asserting that every website with ads or any kind of analytics/tracking is evil?

Oh, absolutely - sorry if I implied that, I sensed the suggestion of it in the parent comment and clumsily followed on from your response to that part.

I completely agree with making sure things work as much as possible and look OK when stuff like that is blocked and even when JS is disabled.

Analytics can be useful and ads are a necessary evil for the prevalent web business model. Tracking is, ugh, I guess in theory acceptable with informed consent - though I've tested a couple of those "consent frameworks" that popped up after GDPR etc and even ignoring the dark UI patterns let's just say they didn't stand up well to scrutiny regarding doing what they say they do.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#176

Post by hirvi74 »

klntsky wrote: post #58
CoastalCoder wrote: post #7

I was surprised (perhaps I shouldn't have been) to encounter bossware-like surveilance in an interview process . About 6 months ago I was interviewing with InterSystems, a company that does healthcare software. Only when I signed in for the online coding interview did I learn that they required I have a webcam on myself the whole time. I don't like using coarse language. But it was the first time I struggled to not u…

Unfortunately this is a requirement nowadays. Scammers learned how to generate realistic CVs and they organize people to pass online interviews for them. After getting the job, they do nothing, get their salary for the first billing period, and leave.

> Scammers learned how to generate realistic CVs and they organize people to pass online interviews for them.

Can they help me out? Apparently, those scammers have figured out a way to convince companies they are real applicants, yet somehow I, a real applicant, apparently cannot do the same.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#177

Post by ang_cire »

ryandrake wrote: post #172
aljgz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely interested to know what are some ways you suggest. The times webcams did not exist, coding interviews were done in-person.

That's what I was getting at. If you want to be sure that the human body who will be present in the office is the one doing the work, then you need to have at least one on-site interview. If the work is fully remote, then does it really even matter? If you hire Person A to provide certain business results, but he actually contracts it out to Person B who does all the work, yet the expected business results are provid…

The stand-in is just for the interview, not their actual daily work.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#178

Post by lukevp »

next_xibalba wrote: post #157
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 declin…

Your company isn’t using remote workers correctly. If there’s no way to measure work output besides physically seeing someone work, then there are fatal flaws in how you measure work output in the first place.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#179

Post by ang_cire »

kristopolous wrote: post #109
brokenmachine wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's people who are capable enough to actually get jobs like that working for them? They'd need to get more than one job per pay period for that to be more lucrative than just doing one of the jobs they were approved for. Also the money would be split between the scammers. That sounds like more work than actually doing a normal job, but I guess it may be more automatable. I don't know though, interview processe…

Tech interviews? Most are formulaic bullshit. You can coach someone to pass them in a few weeks, that's what the bootcamp phenomena is about.

For bad coding interviews, sure.

Use a short take-home test for coding stuff, and then do a live interview where you do roleplay and situational questions that make it really easy to tell if someone has actually done this stuff as a job, or is just reciting answers they memorized.

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