Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 236 posts

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#121

Post by dspillett »

_trampeltier wrote: post #54
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

A couple of years ago, was here an AskHN question. As far I remember, the guy worked from home, had just fill some excel sheets from other excel sheets. After a while he made some scripts and one week work was done in 20 minutes. He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work. The question was then, if he should tell, he work just 20 minutes and not one week. But he also said he nee…

> He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work.

That is where the company could get him legally in most jurisdictions. Doing the work in 20 minutes is a grey area and depends on contract wording, but is probably fine in my legally in-expert opinion. Deliberately introducing errors to extract money from the company is a fairly clear cut case of fraud though.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#122

Post by retSava »

bootloop wrote: post #91
nip wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

Ha. In my case it was 700€, took 3 people and 3 hours, a crossbar broke in half and afterwards the security door needed to be replaced anyway (because at the end they cut it open with an angle grinder). All that at 1 o'clock in the morning. Nobody of the neighbors cared or called the police. 0/10, wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone else. I could have done the same for free. Fun fact: The companies boss pause…

Sounds like you got a really good deal! 3 persons in the middle of the night on short notice doing a specialized task for you, with successful results. And you got a good story out of it too!

Too bad about their dinner and your neighbors not caring.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#123

Post by kjakm »

_Gyan_ wrote: post #16
kjakm wrote: post #4

I've experienced this kind of software working on an hourly contract via UpWork. It would take screenshots at random points in 10 minute intervals, and would track number of mouse clicks/key presses. I think everything was logged officially at the end of the day so if you happened to be on a personal site during the screenshot you could delete it and you'd lose those 10 minutes from the total number of hours you had…

I've never installed that tracker and never been asked to, by clients. Never had a dispute or lost payment. It's mostly about choosing clients with care.

It depends what time of job you do. I only ever installed it for one contract which was the only hourly contract I ever did. The requirements of the project were regularly changing and there were no minimum/maximum number of hours (the job went for about 16 months). Given there was no max hours and the hourly rate was high it seemed fair to me.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#124

Post by randycupertino »

snapetom wrote: post #72

My last company, a large regional hospital, spent over a decade trying to create a remote work policy. The app and business management side spent all that time figuring out which productivity monitoring software to buy. People from the network and security teams got sucked in spending endless cycles trying to figure out how to get these platforms working in our complicated network. Legal and compliance also spent God…

Ha! I think we worked at similar hospitals.

As an aside, one of my girlfriends used employee monitoring software to catch her husband having a string of affairs by installing it on their shared laptop. Turned out he was hiring rentboys on the side and it was very helpful in their divorce proceedings.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#125

Post by thinkingemote »

t0mas88 wrote: post #81
mrweasel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a similar conclusion originally, but then I also saw the level of fraud by our UK customers. They where maybe 5 - 10% of our total sales, but 90+% of fraud cases. My take away is simply that there's less trust in the British society as a whole and it's not necessarily a fault or problem isolated to a single company.

It may be a bit of both, but indeed from anecdotal evidence starting a company in the UK and in the Netherlands: A lot of things are set up with less thrust in the UK. As a simple example in the Netherlands if you reclaim VAT as a company tax services just gives you the money and checks later (obviously you need to give it back if it wasn't correct). In the UK you'll need to show invoices, proof etc before HMRC pays…

False about the VAT in the UK at least for small and medium companies. You need to keep but not show records and you have to say how much is owed you, just like in the Netherlands I imagine.

It's not checked later unless you get audited which is uncommon generally.

False also about road tax.

Perhaps your anecdotes were from a couple of decades ago?

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#126

Post by StavrosK »

jacquesm wrote: post #84
aemreunal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds of an exchange, potentially misattributed ([1]) to Picasso: A woman approaches Picasso in a restaurant, asks him to scribble something on a napkin and says she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, "That will be $10,000." "But you did that in thirty seconds," the astonished woman replied. "No," Picasso said. "It has taken me forty years to do that." [1]: https://…

A woman approaches Yves Saint Laurent, "Oh Yves, I must have a unique hat for tonights' gala". The master seats her, grabs a bunch of ribbons and proceeds to drape her hair in what turns out to be an extremely nice and harmonic creation, and all that in the space of 30 minutes. The woman is ecstatic: "Oh Yves, I knew you would come through, how much do I owe you?" "That will be 10,000 Francs" "10,000 Francs? For 30 m…

Surely this would land much better if the lady's reaction were "10,000 francs? For a ribbon?"

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#127

Post by StavrosK »

bootloop wrote: post #91
nip wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

Ha. In my case it was 700€, took 3 people and 3 hours, a crossbar broke in half and afterwards the security door needed to be replaced anyway (because at the end they cut it open with an angle grinder). All that at 1 o'clock in the morning. Nobody of the neighbors cared or called the police. 0/10, wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone else. I could have done the same for free. Fun fact: The companies boss pause…

> I could have done the same for free.

But all your tools were behind that door?

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#129

Post by StavrosK »

brailsafe wrote: post #112
spurdoman77 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pay for work not time spent on the computer. Pay for the results, not for the work or time spent.

Hell no. If someone hires me to do work, it's on them whether or not it was a good idea in the first place. Unless and only unless the risk was explicitly agreed upon. "You owe me $50000" "But I didn't make $50000 from the thing I asked you to build" "Maybe you should have thought about that before you agreed to pay me to build it, based on your idea."

"Results" here are "delivering a thing", not "profiting from the thing".

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#130

Post by herendin2 »

eternalny1 wrote: post #59
_trampeltier wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago, was here an AskHN question. As far I remember, the guy worked from home, had just fill some excel sheets from other excel sheets. After a while he made some scripts and one week work was done in 20 minutes. He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work. The question was then, if he should tell, he work just 20 minutes and not one week. But he also said he nee…

I had something similar (but opposite) happen. We hired a remote engineer to write a program to export to excel. He claimed it was done and the Excel "output" arrived every morning. We asked him to submit his code for review, and after stalling, he produced some extremely obfuscated C++ code that turned out to do absolutely nothing. He was staying up all night entering data manually into Excel to generate the final r…

Or paying someone to do it?
Post reply on HN