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Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

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151–160 of 312 posts

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#151
Using this software is a tacit admission that the manager is unable to measure the output of their own employees, nor are they able to determine what an appropriate level of productivity is.

You don't need cameras to track where the dough goes if you already know how much flour you bought, how many pizzas you sold, and how much flour it should take to make a pie.

This reflects a fundamental inability of the manager to do their job.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#152
post #130
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't have said it better. One of the reasons I'm a supporter of universal basic income is so that the employees can have a better negotiating position. I suspect many bullshit rules will go out the window when the alternative to employment isn't destitution. For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer.

Looming destitution never made good work. The way one engages with a good employer is a sense of co-ownership in some way. I can't tell how my way of taking ownership to an arbitrary project is influenced by a relief of financial stress. It might, but I don't believe it's going to up it any, ever. Which means that with UBI, I might be less inclined to take risks. I'm not an economist enough to tell what that means, b…

Your sense of co-ownership is an illusion. Why should you engage with your boss by pretending?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. They have two choices; quit or be fired. Personally, I would quit, but I've got that type of personality. Others can't just up and quit so they comply.

"Others can't just up and quit so they comply." Who are these others? Are you suggesting they do not have the ability to decide if they want to continue working?

I'm sorry, but do I really have to answer these questions? How is it people still don't understand there's a huge segment of the working population who just can't up and quit a job?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#154
post #37
post #12

It’s old-fashion management. If you don’t understand your employees workload and don’t trust them then either you resign or fire the employees. Simple as that. I don’t see how this makes any employee productive. This adds more stress imo. An employee gives you 8 of their 12 hour day. Now, you tell me if that works only for you - the management. They’re people just like you. They have a life just like you. They have r…

Once upon a time, I worked for a company in Kansas City where upper management genuinely had trouble with the idea that engineers were humans with lives outside the office. I was walking through their section of the office one day, and overheard the President of the company asking in tones of complete bewilderment why engineers were not voluntarily working twelve-hour days. Suffice to say that his confusion was refle…

Reminds me of the Cerner/Patterson email: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...

(Cerner is in the KC area.)

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that, given your last sentence, your comment is about ubi and not unions?

UBI seems less risky than a union because of a long history of anti-union action, hostility towards employees, and lack of mobility once one is bound to a union. UBI provides flexible minimum support and someone could transform their life from one place to another by being sure they could at least maintain a minimum standard of living.

If they won't let you have a union then the ubi they give you won't put you on a stronger footing. Ubi could help create a minimum standard of living, that's what that tool is for, but that's separate from getting negotiating power for workers. For that, they need to negotiate together.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#156
post #39

"If you're idle for a few minutes, if you go to the bathroom or whatever, a pop-up will come up and it'll say, 'You have 60 seconds to start working again or we're going to pause your time,' " the woman said. Solution to that using appliances available in every home: Dangle the mouse from you desk and put a fan next to it so that it hits the mouse from time to time. But also quit your job - managers who use such tact…

I often wonder how managers like this manage employees with kids. Kids are little chaotic machines. It's not uncommon for a parent to need to interfere with their kids activities for 10 minutes here and there.

So the bossman is saying they should be at their desk working on their thing and let 3 year old Johnny ride his bicycle down the stairs?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#157
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poor management. Uneducated decision making There is no "poor management". What are these uneducated decision makers even doing at your place of work? There's always a boss. The boss is paying for the behavior they want to see. Now if you argue the ultimate boss is clueless, then, what are you even doing there? You might want to tell yourself that your immediate boss who calls you every 30 minutes you are away from…

This style of writing where almost every sentence is its own line is weird to me. It's like writing in all caps -- if you emphasize every single point, then you emphasize none of them. Especially when it's a long post that takes up a bunch of space.

On the plus side, it's one-space vs two-space (after sentence ending) compatible.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#158
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't have said it better. One of the reasons I'm a supporter of universal basic income is so that the employees can have a better negotiating position. I suspect many bullshit rules will go out the window when the alternative to employment isn't destitution. For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer.

Why is it that, given your last sentence, your comment is about ubi and not unions?

Unions only protect you in one job. A UBI protects you in all jobs.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#159
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you have to realize that most managers have no idea why they have it so good. When so many children are starving to death worldwide, why do they live in a 4 bedroom house with a pool? Do they have exceptional talent or intelligence? No. So they fundamentally operate from a place of fear. It’s like Twitter holding onto 140 characters forever — they had no idea why they were so successful, so their approach was “d…

That sounds a bit dismissive. What if they realize "I'm not a super star, but I'm above average in these desired skills. Therefore I get a nice house, but no multi-acre villa like some NBA superstar". I think you're adding a bit too much personal animosity towards management.

It's not just management... it's all white collar middle class workers in America. Why aren't they inhaling dust in a coal mine or dying of a preventable disease? None of us really have any idea.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#160
post #128
post #12

It’s old-fashion management. If you don’t understand your employees workload and don’t trust them then either you resign or fire the employees. Simple as that. I don’t see how this makes any employee productive. This adds more stress imo. An employee gives you 8 of their 12 hour day. Now, you tell me if that works only for you - the management. They’re people just like you. They have a life just like you. They have r…

Well you have to realize that most managers have no idea why they have it so good. When so many children are starving to death worldwide, why do they live in a 4 bedroom house with a pool? Do they have exceptional talent or intelligence? No. So they fundamentally operate from a place of fear. It’s like Twitter holding onto 140 characters forever — they had no idea why they were so successful, so their approach was “d…

> If you are a heart surgeon or Lebron James you can understand why you are making so much money — you have exceptional skill at something in high demand.

No need to reach for an analogy here, you could just say “if you are an engineer.”

In my experience what you’re saying is rarely true at the top tech companies, the managers there generally either come from a tech background themselves or they show an unexpectedly strong understanding of technical aspects of the product anyway, and typically have strong organizational and people skills that clearly stand on their own as rare and valuable.

What you’re saying is almost always the case at small- to mid-size tech companies (which is most of them), and I think it’s because they’re perpetually unable to attract and retain top tech talent... so anybody that can code is de facto placed and kept in a role where they’re coding, and ideally only coding.

A side effect of that is the pool of candidates for promotions and managerial positions is reduced to “only people who can’t code.”

It creates this bizarre situation where the company is looking to its least talented people and least impressive outside candidates to fill the management positions, and actively trying not to promote or give any credit to its most impressive and productive people (because then they might realize their value and demand something the company can’t give them).

These are also the companies most likely to be running against deadlines and having people work evenings and weekends, because again, they can’t attract or retain enough talent to comfortably hit those deadlines. They’re always able to create those deadlines though, because as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to sell software than it is to make software.

Then at 5pm on Friday when all the engineers are looking forward to another 4 hours of coding, all the managers get to throw up their hands and go “I’m useless anyway, I guess I get to go home now!”

And they might as well.

(If you’re an engineer and this sounds familiar to you, go apply to 50 tech companies right now because you’re way more valuable than you realize)

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