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Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

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

#241

Post by evilolive »

_curious_ wrote: post #223
Avicebron wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"virtue signal some sort of privilege" - I'm referring to a particular "let them eat cake" sentiment I'm detecting by your posts. An apt analogy because it was a signal of her misunderstanding of the lower classes food situation. "vulnerable populations" - people who are unable to quickly and efficiently move either laterally or vertically, in whatever industry they are in, such that they run real risk of losing food…

"virtue signal some sort of privilege" - I'm referring to a particular "let them eat cake" sentiment I'm detecting by your posts. An apt analogy because it was a signal of her misunderstanding of the lower classes food situation. Still confused…what does "virtue signal some sort of privilege" actually mean? Do you have some sort of privileged information on the matter? "vulnerable populations" - people who are unable…

In a nutshell he says :

- from your tone it sounds that you have never been faced with such hardships and decisions to make.

- "quickly and efficiently" to me would be anything that would allow you to pay the next bills. Esp. since 78% of american workers live paycheck to paycheck with no cushion to absorb downtime looking for new work.

I'm detecting a bit of dishonesty (trolling?) in your answers too.

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

#242

Post by crispyambulance »

jedieaston wrote: post #103
crispyambulance wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course, putting something like that on a personal machine is odious. But how do you tell if that or something like it is on your work machine? Look for "hubstaff.dll"? ... half kidding, but seriously how do you tell if there's corporate fuckery on your work machine (eg screenshotting, logging time on URLs, keylogging, etc etc)?

Easy, just assume that they are doing it. Most probably don't, but you shouldn't do anything on your work machine you don't want them to see. Just keep your personal laptop in your bag (if possible) and use that instead, or do the thing on your phone. I don't know how much of what these pieces of software are capable of on Mac (because of all the privacy stuff in Catalina that requires the user to agree) and Linux (b…

Yeah, that's the safe advice, but it's really unsatisfying.

Sure, the man "could" do it, but it's a separate and more interesting thing to know if it is happening.

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

#243

Post by codemac »

luckylion wrote: post #178
codemac wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think you're giving management too much credit. The vast majority of management does not have goals/behaviors they are measured in. I'm still fascinated that it's largely considered impossible to have a VP count how many 1:1's a manager had or how many times they gave positive vs. negative feedback. Imagine if no one kept any statistics for any sports player, and just say "it's too hard, you have to manually co…

I'm not giving management any credit, but I believe they have a pretty good idea why they are hired and paid well, and if it's just "because I've studied this and that, have those certifications and know how to use KPI in a sentence". I don't believe that managers by and large suffer from impostor syndrome and therefore try to gain control of their situation by adding surveillance because of fear. They may have plent…

They don't trust their employees because they don't know what they're doing.

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

#244

Post by _curious_ »

curryst wrote: post #230
_curious_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the moment they quit, but by quitting they are endangering themselves and those that depend on them. Their relationship with employment is inherently coercive." With all of that said: whose responsibility is it to avoid this ty…

I would argue it is the government's job to not allow businesses to impose dehumanizing conditions on workers due to the extreme imbalance of power. It's probably not a risk for most of the HN users. Most of us are in high demand jobs, and we would simply refuse to work for a company that uses this kind of spyware. A lot of people don't have that option, because there isn't as much demand for their jobs. Should we re…

"Should we really be given that extra privilege simply because what we chose or wanted or had the ability to do is in higher demand?"

So you think you are privileged because you exercised your option to decide and do what's best for you? Or because you have the demonstrable ability to make it happen - ie - learn a thing that is in demand? Is it a privilege of the ability to act in your own self-interest?

Stepping back, maybe it's because you have acquired cognitive skills that others have not that you are privileged? The mere ability to think for yourself, that's a privilege too, then? What about changing your mind, increasing your understanding of, evolving a thought...all privileges, yeah?

Perhaps somewhere along the line you have made a decision that was hard and required risk and sacrifice but that contributed to who you are and where you are today, was that pain and suffering part of the privilege? What about losing someone or something you love, because surely it's a privilege to experience love in the first place, no?

Is anything that makes us different and unique from one-another not a privilege by extension? Has the word privilege been used and abused to the degree that it means absolutely nothing anymore?

What about being alive...is that like, the ultimate privilege? So when all are privileged, are any, really?

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

#245

Post by stronglikedan »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #156
Tade0 wrote: 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?

The bossman is saying the employee should take care of their kid in the exact same was as if they were working from the office - which is to say someone else is usually doing it. The bossman is conveniently ignoring the fact that schools are closed, while the bossman's SO is taking care of their own kids - which is to say that the bossman is intentionally being willfully ignorant of the employee's situation. I would expect nothing less from a bossman that thought this type of surveillance was a good idea in the first place.

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

#246

Post by CydeWeys »

EternalHeadache wrote: post #49
CydeWeys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An employee gives you 8 of their 12 hour day. How much sleep are you getting??

I guess if you take into account commute, cooking, cleaning and other household tasks and errands it seems possible to only have 4 hours of true free time.

You have to take into account weekends and days off too.

Anyway, using the DOL's standard of 2,087 work hours in a work year, we can do the following calculation: 2,087 / (365.24 * 24) = 23.8% of your total time spent at work.

Let's use a generous figure of 8 hours of sleep per night: 2,087 / (365.24 * 16) = 35.7% of your waking hours spent at work. The rest is your time, to spend however you choose to spend it, whether that's commuting, cooking, chores, errands, hobbies, whatever.

And we haven't even factored in vacation and sick days -- the 2,087 work hours figure only includes federal holidays.

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

#247

Post by stronglikedan »

_curious_ wrote: post #169
bo1024 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. There are certain human rights that it is immoral and illegal to contract away. The common example is that selling yourself into slavery is illegal even though people have self-agency. Over time we have decided on others so for example it is illegal to take a job that disallows bathroom breaks or violates certain safety standards. It's also not legal as far as I know to take jobs with certain con…

Thanks for strongly (and respectfully) disagreeing out loud instead of being one who just downvotes without the courage to provide an alternate view/retort!

> just downvotes without the courage to provide an alternate view/retort

It's not about courage. It's usually that someone else has already provided the same alternate view/retort, so there's no sense in starting a new comment branch.

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

#248

Post by _curious_ »

stronglikedan wrote: post #247
_curious_ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for strongly (and respectfully) disagreeing out loud instead of being one who just downvotes without the courage to provide an alternate view/retort!

> just downvotes without the courage to provide an alternate view/retort It's not about courage. It's usually that someone else has already provided the same alternate view/retort, so there's no sense in starting a new comment branch.

you show great courage stronglikedan!

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

#249

Post by Fargren »

_curious_ wrote: post #244
curryst wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it is the government's job to not allow businesses to impose dehumanizing conditions on workers due to the extreme imbalance of power. It's probably not a risk for most of the HN users. Most of us are in high demand jobs, and we would simply refuse to work for a company that uses this kind of spyware. A lot of people don't have that option, because there isn't as much demand for their jobs. Should we re…

"Should we really be given that extra privilege simply because what we chose or wanted or had the ability to do is in higher demand?" So you think you are privileged because you exercised your option to decide and do what's best for you? Or because you have the demonstrable ability to make it happen - ie - learn a thing that is in demand? Is it a privilege of the ability to act in your own self-interest? Stepping bac…

> When all are privileged, are any, really?

That's like saying "when everybody has money, does anyone have money?". People have varying amounts (and kinds) of privilege, but some have more than others.

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