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

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

#51

Post by Nextgrid »

Silhouette wrote: post #4

Every time one of these stories comes out I sigh a little and conclude that it's more showing the failure of modern management practices and the legal environments these companies are required to operate in than anything about employee responsibility. Companies should be judging their people by results. If someone's performance is acceptable then all of these surveillance metrics don't matter. If someone's performanc…

> Companies should be judging their people by results.

You're not accounting for the many companies where a sizeable chunk of the workforce are "bullshit jobs" and are just there to create work for other bullshitters and/or be there for political reasons to pad someone's direct reports list and justify their salary. This is an major epidemic in some countries and cultures especially in Europe, and remote working threw a big wrench into this machinery by giving those workers a lot more power and perks that are usually reserved to elites within the company.

In this case there is no tangible output to measure, the only "output" is the suffering of the employee and the appearance of them working hard. This kind of spyware thus makes sense to force the employees to "work" hard and not become too complacent/comfortable in order to perpetuate the charade.

I don't expect this being used in startups or smaller/more modern enterprises where the org chart isn't (yet?) bloated and productivity is measurable based on output, but to be fair this is also not a vertical that Microsoft is targeting (nor can compete in even if they wanted to). This is targeted at large, bloated companies where they need to keep herds of bullshit jobs under control and make sure they don't get too comfortable - otherwise it would rock the boat if some low-level employee appeared to "have it easy" more than some high-level director/VP/executive, regardless of their actual productive output (if any). The spyware will efficiently detect such occurrences and make sure they are addressed.

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

#52

Post by treprinum »

So we need to create mechanical robots typing text generated by LLMs on a keyboard to look like we are working at the 100% utilization all the time (probably costing <$100 these days based on robotic hand prices). Then some solution for facial recognition if a webcam is needed.

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

#53

Post by aynyc »

Tyr42 wrote: post #36
heavyset_go wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run it on a separate VLAN or on separate network hardware, as well.

So like, how does that work. I've got a pair of Asus routers with one acting as an access point (AI mesh). Would I need to buy new routers? Do I daisy chain the routers or can I reuse the wifi ap? Or put Merlin on my existing ones? I'm in tech but these network suggestions are all quite opaque to me.

Most new routers have guest network, and internal network. Put your work laptop on guest network and that should do the trick.

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

#54

Post by hmmSceptical »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #43
hmmSceptical wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad businesses will continue to use draconian methods to try to squeeze productivity rather than foster it What about jobs that aren't creative like coding or graphic design? Some jobs are simply "sit in your chair and do work". The productivity metrics aren't speculative - they are measurable. You may argue "these are jobs for AI" - but realistically alot of jobs are a way off from this. Why shouldn't the "product…

>Why shouldn't the "productivity" of these staff be measured? Because you don't like it? No one is arguing against this. Stop creating strawmen. People are against draconian practices aimed at micromanaging people when data is already available, individuals are meeting targets or the targets aren't met due to something out of their control. In the case of programming, if you have any decent system, you can query comm…

> In the case of programming...

A percentage > 90% of the world isn't programmers...

There simply isn't the same workflow to monitor "word" / "pdf" documents without an insane amount of effort / document control that most SMB's dont have.

The only option available to them, without hiring programmers, is often only the metrics that get offered built into these types of products.

I dont think that's a strawman argument.

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

#55

Post by userbinator »

threatofrain wrote: post #2

Always request a separate laptop and phone for work, and always create a separate set of accounts.

Why does it even need to be "request"? Are they that cheap these days that they won't pay unless asked (begged)? If the company needs you to use a computer, it needs to provide you one. I am sure not letting my personal and work machines mix, both for this and IP reasons, and on the other side, if I was in control of such things, using personal machines would be an exception.

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

#56

Post by oneplane »

2devnull wrote: post #47
gchamonlive wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quit the bad ones, join the good ones. This is why universal income is extremely important, so that people can pursue better jobs without risking being vulnerable.

Some people don’t want to work. They’ve told me so. I think UBI would destroy these people, like easy wealth does to the newly rich. A better solution is to focus on worker’s rights and labor regulations. Of course that opens the internationalism question, but so too would ubi.

What leads you to believe that people who do not want to work are desirable to have in the workplace? UBI also doesn't give you wealth, it gives you basics, and overal that's much cheaper than dragging down an entire team or department.

At the same time, we currently have plenty of people who do not want to work and do indeed not work, that will not change regardless of what you implement. I also think that happy and healthy non-working people are worth more to humanity than unhappy or unhealthy working people.

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

#58

Post by cma »

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash:

> Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo...

> Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.

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

#59

Post by LightBug1 »

I run a couple essential apps in a Virtualbox on my work laptop. Mainly due to compatability but more and more so due to privacy and articles like this.

Am I right in thinking that anything that goes on inside that Virtualbox is 'relatively' private?

I don't believe our IT department have the capacity to go beyond something like Office 365 Admin, but who knows.

Thanks,

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

#60

Post by MicrosoftShill »

kmatthews812 wrote: post #7

Full disclosure. I just built this for Google Workspace (www.gofasterhq.com). I built it because it's a tool I wish I had when managing teams in the past. These articles are very one sided and there is a productive middle ground to be established using productivity management tools. As a manager, it can be difficult to know what your team is working on and who is actually productive, especially in a remote environmen…

"As a manager, it can be difficult to know what your team is working on and who is actually productive"

Successful managers figure out how to do their jobs without micromanaging or creating a culture of surveillance. Bad managers do what you're saying.

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