WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

I don't understand your objection. I also run a business. I also pay people to do things for that business. The amount of money that eventually reaches my personal bank account does depend on the performance of the business and that in turn does depend on how much we pay people and how good a job they do for us.

So I care very much about whether they get those jobs done well. But I couldn't care less how much time they spend with their backside in a chair or how many messages they sent last week or whether they took a 1h30 lunch break yesterday because they went out shopping for a birthday present for their kid.

I default to trusting people working for us to be honest and do their job to an acceptable standard. I'm only interested in intervening if that isn't happening. In that case the kind of metrics under discussion here aren't going to help me figure out the real problem and how we can fix it. They aren't even likely to be worth much if as a last resort we do have to lose someone who can't get the job done properly and later we have to defend that decision in some kind of dispute proceeding.

This isn't to say we can't give feedback and provide training to help anyone working for us to perform better. But I don't see what relevance these kinds of metrics have to that either. I've always found talking with people openly about how things are going to be far more effective. YMMV.

Lol I definitely worked less in the Office. I know it looked like I worked more. I kinda miss that sometimes.

With remote work I have to actually have done something.

In the office I just had to show up and sometimes that’s all I want to do.

Don’t get me wrong I much prefer WFH. But I do wish I could just show up and have that be enough some days.

> Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished.

Goodhart's Law (HN might be annoyed at how often I reference this)

Goodhart's Law isn't just about that setting a metric as a target leads to that metric being exploited, but is more about how difficult things are to measure and evaluate. The lesson to be learned here is that measurements should only ever be considered as indicators at best, and usually as weak signals.

Proper evaluation requires significant nuance, exceptions to the rules, and care. It requires being human: messy, a bit chaotic, and inconsistent. There's good reason for our desire for good metrics. It can help make things fair, consistent, reduce bias, and help control for bad actors. There is that appeal to act mechanically, as machines are often highly interpretable and controllable. But over-reliance on metrics end up with the exact same results. Humans will always exploit a metric. Humans aren't machines. Hell, AI always exploits metrics (which creates a big irony that there's so much benchmarkism in the field). For this reason meritocracy can never exist, as unbiased metrics and evaluations can never exist. Doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it, but rather that we need to think slow and with care. Unfortunately, our brain is lazy and wants to think fast and on autopilot. An irony with how often HN references Kahneman's book. The most human thing we can do is actually override our autopilot, as that's what differentiates us from the other animals and machines.

Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. That's hard to measure. But one needs to recognize this rather than chase mechanistic one-size-fits-all metrics. You need to embrace the chaos to navigate it. Set guidelines, not rules. Managers and business owners, take heed.

> surveillance is here to stay

I'm unconvinced. This happens because there is little to no pushback because people are convinced that the hierarchical structures are too powerful. But as I said above to embrace the chaos, this too is how you can attack these structures. I talked about this longer in another thread, but remember that you're <6 steps from any person. Ideas spread like viruses (memes), and the control only exists when we stop talking and communicating. If we self censor (e.g. are afraid to tell others our salaries because we think they'll be mad at us instead of the person that controls the pay) then the hierarchy has too much power. Hierarchies are good, but power gets abused. It isn't good for your business to have that power abused. But it also requires care: to not chase short term gains but think long term and remain fluid (environments change. Adapt or die).

you can already do this with a flipper zero + badusb.

If you can't change your Company, change your company.