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Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

bbc.com

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Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#261

Post by phyzix5761 »

everdrive wrote: post #17

I don't work for Meta, but how many more years do I need to work in tech? I'm in my 40s and my kids are young. I've already set up 529s for them, and am paying for some expensive home upgrades. Maybe when that is finished and I've built up a buffer I can switch industries for the last 5-10 years of my working life. Curious if anyone here has any similar plans.

I retired last year at 38. I live off 4% of my investments and I get to travel around to different countries every 6 months.

The key is budgeting and living a not so extravagant lifestyle. Figure out how much you need per year and multiply it by 25. That's your FIRE number, what you need in an investment portfolio with a return of 10% per year on average. Then live off 4% for the rest of your life.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#262

Post by jjulius »

yubblegum wrote: post #256
jjulius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people in these comments who would be happy to be "paid well" to contribute to what's inarguably a huge net negative worldwide is exactly how the company got to this point. It's astonishing how many people value a ton of money over doing something good. Everyone who talks about setting values aside for cash is the problem. Gross.

I have a dear friend who works at Meta. The conclusion that all meta workers are valuing money over "something good" is not reasonable. This fellow, who I know to be a good man of excellent character btw, for example has to support his family (which all together number 6), and be prepared to pay tuition for 4 kids starting in a decade and then one after another for the other 3! Is providing for your family and their…

There are many, many ways to provide for one's family, Meta is but one. And I say this as a father providing for mine.

Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#264

Post by d1sxeyes »

stingraycharles wrote: post #121
caymanjim wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded I don't expect this. I know that some companies install spyware on their devices, but I don't expect it, I don't accept it, and if they did it without disclosing it I'd be furious. I understand they're allowed to do it. I'd never work anywhere that did.

I think the keyword is “can”. It is allowed, contrary to eg the EU, where this is not allowed.

It’s not true that it’s not allowed in the EU. There’s the Barbalescu ruling which is case law that says employers must fulfill a bunch of criteria around informing employees, the necessity of the monitoring, and they are not allowed to impose blanket bans on private use, but it is still legal to monitor employees in the EU.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#265

Post by khriss »

When the market turns (and it will regardless of how loudly AI cheerleaders proclaim otherwise), I just hope engineers as a whole remember this despicable behaviour by Zuckerberg.

The silver lining(If you can call it that) of the latest slump in tech employment is that it has laid bare the reality of the tech oligarchs. Someone should set up a website to catalog this behaviour so that these corporations and leaders can't easily sweep this under the rug in the future.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#266

Post by jkl5xx »

yojo wrote: post #118
yodsanklai wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of good reasons to work for Meta. You can work on interesting projects, build your resume and network, work on interesting engineering problems, learn from other people, and of course, they pay very well. People do need to support their family, secure their retirement and so on... Is it perfect? certainly not. Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? how much are you willing to compromise give…

Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption. If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately. Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix. Amazon has ho…

This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#267

Post by harimau777 »

Bnjoroge wrote: post #108
spicyusername wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dream about it everyday. I love building software, but I can't stand working in the industry. It's such an unholy combination of bad corporate culture and questionable moral principals.

None of that is specific to this industry. It’s far worse in others. Grass always looks greener elsewhere

From what I've observed, the big problem with working in tech is that you have all of the responsibility but none of the authority or autonomy. By comparison, in most service sector jobs you have no authority or autonomy but also little responsibility. In other engineering disciplines you have a lot of responsibility but also much more authority and autonomy.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#268

Post by Balgair »

crispyambulance wrote: post #20

It's always been hard to know the extent of how draconian tracking actually is (IT pros tend to not talk about it much). In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded and used against the employee for any reason. In practice, however, few people worry about reasonable amounts web-surfing, being on hacker-news or doing l…

> We will soon have to brace ourselves for an absolute draconian level of tracking.

Somehow this reminds me of the old adage in finance :"The optimal amount of fraud is not 0"

Meaning that you could of course come up with a system in your accounting or banking or stocks or whatever that is totally 100% fraud proof.

But that system would be so onerous that none would use it. They'd go back to a more fraudulent system that is easier. Like, 15 retinal scans, a blood draw, and a bank approved minder just to buy a taco isn't workable, duh.

I'd say the same here too. You can of course use AIs and LLMs to figure out exactly how much work a person is doing and try to optimize them down to the second. Amazon is currently doing this in their warehouses. Any given month comes up with yet another instance of a worker dying on the floor and people having to continue working around the literal corpse.

And Amazon then has to run through communities, one after another, trying to hire people to work in that system. Their SEC filings note, incredibly, that population exhaustion is a real threat to the workforce.

Thus, the optimal amount of surveillance for an evil megacorp is not 100%.

Draconian, sure. But Amazon is already over the balance point and is trying to squeegee back towards the optimum. So far, it seems to be a lot further back than we thought.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#269

Post by harimau777 »

ap99 wrote: post #150
coldtea wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to the shit imposed to the rest of society, and the shit imposed on office workers, it's worse in this industry.

I'd challenge you to point out specifics that are industry wide, not just one company that happens to abuse its employees.

Agile is used to create a perpetual sense of crunch since you are never more than ~2 weeks away from your deadlines.
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