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Workplace surveillance is coming for you

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Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#111

Post by asdajksah2123 »

> Kraemer discovered that the only way to avoid wage-theft was to do "mindless busywork" that produced the clicks that her bossware demanded, even if it got in the way of her work.

Warning: Potential Severance spoilers ahead.

I finished watching Severance S1, and one of the open questions is what work the innies are actually doing. And reading this article it strikes me that the Severance work is the ideal culmination of the worker tracking + Goodhart's law cycle.

You make # of clicks a metric, so then the best performers are those who optimize for # of clicks, and so an AI trying to improve work efficiency by emulating what the best performers are doing rewards nonsensical clicking over actual work, and that cycle continues until you end up with something like the Severance job, which involves nothing but click and dragging numbers into 1 of a few bins based on how you "feel" about the numbers. At the same time the innies are told that what they are doing is extremely important.

YOu have the perfect combination of mindless work, which is not entirely monotonous (because you have to go by your "feeling", which would not be the case if you just had to repeatedly drag 1 number to the same bin) and at the same time you're motivated because you're convinced you're participating in a great good. This way you maximize the measured busywork output while still preventing your employees from immediately burning out.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#112

Post by detaro »

Kalium wrote: post #97
skyfaller wrote: post #22

On workplace surveillance / "bossware": > Mazzoli seems to have either not used his product, or, if he did, did so under conditions where he was in charge of it – using it the way an athlete might use a stopwatch to time their own sprints, and not the way a boss might: to decide whether to dock your pay or fire you. > This inability to understand the difference between using a technology and having the same technolog…

Once upon a time, I worked for a shop that did auto insurance. This involves handling a lot of fairly sensitive data about people and datasets about a lot of people, for reasons that boil down to it being incredibly useful data for actuarial purposes. Bossware, or working machine monitoring software, endpoint monitoring, or whatever turned out to be a key part of making it possible for our data scientists to function…

I think there is certainly a place for audit trails etc, but it again comes back to how that data is used. An access log is an access log, but it's a difference if you analyze it to find people looking at data they have no reason to look at, or if you analyze it to track who spends how long on their toilet break. And a lot of what's offered by current "bossware" clearly falls in the latter category.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#113

Post by jorts »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #93
giantg2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some strict time-keeping requirements for bathroom use when it comes to certain contracts, like government ones. It wasn't too bad, but I forget the specifics. It was like it had to be less than 5 minutes, or you use your 15 minute breaks or lunch for anything longer.

It's all an overresponse to the problem that a handful of people would spend half their days in the bathroom if there were no rules. The right answer is always to deal with the individuals who are the problem, but somehow it always becomes rules that make life worse for everyone.

100% - At my last company we had an unlimited sick policy. Wonderful for everyone - don't even question staying home if you're remotely ill. Well, it was wonderful until one employee was sick every Friday and Monday and some. We ended up having to adjust the company policy for two weeks sick time and beyond that required a doctors note. The employee continued their pattern and once they hit their two weeks of sick time off they couldn't provide a doctors note for further time off and ended up getting let go after continuing to call in sick. The company had benefits covering if folks needed counseling, substance abuse issues, etc... which were offered to the employee but they never took advantage of it.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#114

Post by fezfight »

giantg2 wrote: post #89
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of employer nickle-and-dimes a worker’s bathroom breaks? I had a teacher in high school who would respond the same way (more or less) whenever someone would ask to use the restroom: > If you ever have a job that needs you to ask to use the restroom, find a better job.

There are some strict time-keeping requirements for bathroom use when it comes to certain contracts, like government ones. It wasn't too bad, but I forget the specifics. It was like it had to be less than 5 minutes, or you use your 15 minute breaks or lunch for anything longer.

I know some people with IBS for who that would amount to discrimination.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#115

Post by kshacker »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #93
giantg2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some strict time-keeping requirements for bathroom use when it comes to certain contracts, like government ones. It wasn't too bad, but I forget the specifics. It was like it had to be less than 5 minutes, or you use your 15 minute breaks or lunch for anything longer.

It's all an overresponse to the problem that a handful of people would spend half their days in the bathroom if there were no rules. The right answer is always to deal with the individuals who are the problem, but somehow it always becomes rules that make life worse for everyone.

It is also a response to handful of people who (rightly) want to get paid for their 3-5 minutes each clock in to open a shop. When you are negotiating 5 minutes this way, then the corporate negotiates 5 minutes that way, and pretty soon it is a legal contract. Of course the corporate should pay for the minutes to open the shop, and some would fix this on the first discussion, but others would pull in the lawyers, because hey that's our culture.

Extrapolating here ... employee wants 5 minutes of bathroom breaks because it was not in contract and the manager abused it, so when the 5 minutes gets written into the contract, then the manager can still abuse it by writing you up for a 6 minute break, or just refuse to help you out today because he did not have a good experience with you or someone else yesterday.

We are losing the human touch due to both-sided legalese in everything.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#117

Post by wing-_-nuts »

patientplatypus wrote: post #29

I find it so weird. Aren't there any bosses that say "Yeah, fuck you we're not doing that." That's the point of a boss. If I were in charge of a bunch of programmers and a mandate came down from on high to rate programmers based on commits or keystrokes, my first response would be "Eat shit." and my second response would be "No, really, I'm not treating my people like dogs. Eat shit."

...and they'd pip you out in a few months, and you'd leave without a good reference.

In reality, you'd realize it was horrible, but orders are orders, so most people would do it. If they found it particularly objectionable, they'd just look for another job in the meantime, but most folks who are not financially independent wouldn't take a stand for it.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#118

Post by mrweasel »

bheadmaster wrote: post #52

I'm currently reading "The Tyranny of Metrics" which provides a decent analysis of how over-measuring things that don't have anything to do with the real goal often serves as a deterrent to real progress. What managers want to know is how much do their workers contribute to the success of the company . What they measure is how much time do workers spend doing X . They're completely glossing over the middle step of ho…

It's not even over-measuring, it's measuring the wrong thing, because the thing you actually want to know isn't (easily) measurable.

The whole thing is down to poor management(-culture). Good managers already know who their top performing team members are. They don't need these tools. Measuring LOC or time spend sitting at the desk is in my view attempting to compensate for lack in management skills. It's like advertising agencies that can't sell ads without AdSense. Boss-ware is an attempt by poor managers to make up for a lack of skills by applying something that looks science from a distance.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#119

Post by fezfight »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #102

> "Office 365 went from being an online version of Microsoft Office to being a bossware delivery-system." I feel like a fool. I watch Microsoft like a hawk, and I didn't even know about this. Every time I think I'm too cynical about a FAANG company -- and Microsoft in particular -- I find that I haven't been nearly cynical enough.

The enabling of not just workplace monitoring, but their ability to associate it with your career data via LinkedIn is next level spooky but no one seems to want to talk about it. What do they provide employers on your behalf?

Forgive me, a small thing but I don't think Microsoft is a FAANG. They're more like IBM 2.0. Every now and then their drones try to jam an M in the acronym in a sad 'how do you do, fellow kids' kinda way.

Re: Workplace surveillance is coming for you

#120

Post by xphos »

giantg2 wrote: post #89
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of employer nickle-and-dimes a worker’s bathroom breaks? I had a teacher in high school who would respond the same way (more or less) whenever someone would ask to use the restroom: > If you ever have a job that needs you to ask to use the restroom, find a better job.

There are some strict time-keeping requirements for bathroom use when it comes to certain contracts, like government ones. It wasn't too bad, but I forget the specifics. It was like it had to be less than 5 minutes, or you use your 15 minute breaks or lunch for anything longer.

Yeah I think that type of policy is mindlessly impossible by Legislative branches under the guise of eliminating "waste" no pun intended. When in reality all those policies do is eat into the mental bandwidth of government works and contractors. There are good regulations and than just dumb ones. And you might ask what law exactly is the Legislative passing but its not laws its appointees to executive positions that run larger organizations with an agenda with actually understanding the organizations mission or purpose
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