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Bossware is a big legal risk

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Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#191

Post by aljgz »

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…

1- You don't want an incompetent, non-trustworthy person to work for you. They ruin the culture and affect the entire company. 2- Once they are in, it's not likely that they care as much as the interview time to delegate the job to a person. 3- You might have other non-technical requirements, like a background check, culture fit, personal skills, etc. The person they might delegate the job has not gone through this filter.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#192

Post by christianqchung »

weikju wrote: post #87
exabrial wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please quote the part of my comment above where I said literally anything about a webcam.

> What is it that you don't want seen "seen"

Him not replying to you is the funniest tacit admission of being wrong I've ever seen, unless he angrily replies to me. It's surreal that people defend being recorded in your own house. This is figuratively 1984, y'know.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#193

Post by LorenPechtel »

halfcat wrote: post #44

Having run this kind of thing for customers over the years, my takeaway is that every place that wanted this was a completely toxic and paranoid work environment. Except for one. This place that seemed to have a reasonable use case. They dealt with very sensitive legal cases involving children, and they wanted an audit trail to ensure sensitive media was handled according to their policy.

Yeah, I would not have a problem with intrusive monitoring related to any sensitive data. Just limit the monitoring to dealing with the sensitive data.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#194

Post by next_xibalba »

hammock wrote: post #164
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…

> warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Aha! The true use case for Neuralink - bossware installed in your brain, for knowledge workers.

[flagged]

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#195

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

sanitycheck wrote: post #117
quectophoton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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.

I recently struggled with this. My situation was likely different given the outcome. I was able to prevail on both the sense of decency in the client and their marketing firm by explaining the PII ramifications of what they asked for, and was also able to prevail on how their customers would perceive it.

Not everyone has the luxury of clients and marketing agencies like that. I wasn’t sure whether or not I did until I tried it. I can’t know for sure until it’s needed whether I would have simply refused. I really wrestled with the idea of not doing my level best work as a technical implementer.

I found Kevin Burke’s “Ethics” to be a really great way of working [1]. He based it on an earlier piece by Kyle Kingsbury [2].

[1] https://burke.services/ethics.html

[2] https://jepsen.io/ethics

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#197

Post by advisedwang »

tracker1 wrote: post #155

It's generally a good idea to separate work and personal devices. It reduces convenience and can take up more space, but definitely the way to go more often than not.

You're on work devices ~35% of your waking hours. There's still a need for dignity and privacy within that time. Working doesn't mean you become completely subject to your employer's whims those hours.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#198

Post by dilyevsky »

meepmorp wrote: post #146
tiahura wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like your name or address?

You can change your name and address, you cannot change your irises.

That argument works for fingerprints because it’s possible to replicate them (kind of) but how do you replicate someone’s eyeballs assuming supervised setup ?

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#199

Post by quectophoton »

sanitycheck wrote: post #175
tracker1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I sensed the suggestion of it in the parent comment and clumsily followed on from your response to that part.

Nah it wasn't my intention to give that kind of impression[0]. I was just trying to add to the part I quoted from your comment (also the keywords from my first comment (not the one with the quote) were "barely" and "reluctantly").

It's not that I think it's okay, but I probably should have used the word "tolerate"[1] instead of "accept".

So basically I agree with you. I wouldn't work on something like GFW[2], or ad[3]/gambling/porn/blockchain/dating companies, or "VPN" services (in the diluted sense of the word), or Discord, or smart TVs, or software for IoT, stuff like that.

But I also know that if I want to get a remote job, I'll have to compromise somewhere.

---

[0]: Mic and cam recordings can be trivially circumvented by anyone who knows how to turn on a computer, for example, but even if I have permission/access to them, I won't touch those things unless it's to do something the end user wants to do.

[1]: There's probably a word that better captures the nuance tho. English is not my first language.

[2]: Or anything from countries who don't even try to appear like they follow the GDPR.

[3]: Where the ads are the product/service being sold. Or in other words, if a company uses adsense it's a maybe-work-for-them-but-try-to-find-something-else; if the company is adsense, it's a straight no.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#200

Post by Repulsion9513 »

tracker1 wrote: post #162
steve_rambo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is crazy to read. I live in what you consider a highly authoritarian and non-free society and can't imagine something like this happening here. Lower paid jobs are even more privileged in some ways: for example, in many companies you can just not show up for work for a couple of days if you feel like it, and the worst thing you can expect is a small pay cut at the end of the month.

It will really vary. Most places I've worked, even in lower paid jobs in my later teens, they're pretty lenient and understanding with personal/sick time.

I have found, between the span of $8/hour and $88,000/year, that the amount of tracking (and also the amount of "if you have time to lean you have time to clean"-type busywork) is very close to inversely proportional to income in the US.
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