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

Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 312 posts

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

#31

Post by mc32 »

bluntfang wrote: post #21
iask wrote: 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…

TBH these managers probably don't have work life balance, spend 12-16 hours a day on work, probably less than 4 are productive, and believe their subordinates and ingrates if they don't share the same "devotion" that they do, regardless of ability to complete the assigned job/task.

And they probably pore over metrics more than anything else and prepare reporting based on a bunch of old queries and automated reports package it and send it off. They might also have chats with subordinates about those metrics and at the end think “what a good boy/girl am I!”

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

#32

Post by sidlls »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #14

If you want an example of what workplace surveillance software can monitor and capture, watch the following video. It's simply horrible that employees have to put up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA_fJh4lzqQ

Does Interguard have a license from NBC to use characters from “The Office” in their marketing and other materials? It would be pretty funny if they got dinged for this and had some revenue extracted for profiting off someone else’s work because they weren’t productive enough to generate their own content.

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

#33

Post by Frost1x »

bpatel576 wrote: post #5

I think this is a situation where employees need to leave the company. We vote with our choices. If we don't deem this to be appropriate, we must respond in kind. It's not simple and not everyone has the choice, but for those that can, should.

While there's some power in voting with your choices, it's not really voting because a true vote with your choice must occur without being under duress or leveraged.

When it comes to employment, unless you're swimming in money and are basically just working for the sole purpose that you enjoy it, you're leveraged into adjusting your vote accordingly to your best option.

When true competition exists and your labor easily transfers, then by all means, select employers with reasonable practices. Relatively few people get to completely pick where they want to work and for what position they work. Most of us who aren't the top say 5% in our field pick a few handfuls and take a shotgun approach to see which opportunity lands. If none of those options land, we move to options we don't like because not working isn't a viable option.

Right now with unemployment rates skyrocketing, you have even less flexibility because labor is even more leveraged and have to cave into more and more policies like this.

The only way to protect labor in these situations, aside from organized labor unions, is creating enforceable regulatory protections for labor.

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

#34

Post by CydeWeys »

iask wrote: 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…

> An employee gives you 8 of their 12 hour day.

How much sleep are you getting??

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

#35

Post by ocdtrekkie »

cosmodisk wrote: post #4

It's being done by the same clowns who can't live without time clock cards, all sorts of monitoring,and tracking.These are the people who have no clue how to manage people,how to measure their work and act upon results.These are the same crappy companies who would rather ask their staff to email endless Excel spreadsheets to each other instead of investing some money in database or some crm system. In a nutshell,thes…

Fundamentally it's just an outdated style of doing business. The same people who tell you not to do personal web browsing at work will not respond to an email that arrives in the evening until they clock in the next morning.

Whereas sure, I don't spend an eight hour solid block of time working each day, but I'll respond to a help ticket at 11pm because someone had a quick need and my computer is handy.

My employer is still getting my eight hours, possibly more, just diffused through the whole day.

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

#37

Post by Kalium »

iask wrote: 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 reflected in how engineers were treated.

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

#38

Post by malux85 »

iask wrote: 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…

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.

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

#39

Post by Tade0 »

"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 tactics are usually very trigger-happy when it comes to firing people, so you're just delaying the inevitable.

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

#40

Post by gilrain »

bluntfang wrote: post #21
iask wrote: 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…

TBH these managers probably don't have work life balance, spend 12-16 hours a day on work, probably less than 4 are productive, and believe their subordinates and ingrates if they don't share the same "devotion" that they do, regardless of ability to complete the assigned job/task.

Maybe. We don't know what they're doing at their desks or away from the office, because they don't get surveiled like the plebs. Any manager who feels the need to peek over the shoulders of their workers should submit to the same.
Post reply on HN