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Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

bbc.com

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Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#681

Post by glaslong »

LucidLynx wrote: post #22

I have a serious question to anyone working at Meta and reading this: HOW can you still work at this company!? Why don't you quit this very toxic company, and start working at another place or even on your own? I genuinely don't understand... Let just Meta die!

Well I used to be pretty passionate about the work I was doing, and especially because I was learning from some incredible people.

....but both of those are gone to layoffs and restructuring, so it's basically just money, and I'm hanging on by an actively fraying thread of cowardice and burnout.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#682

Post by Loughla »

999900000999 wrote: post #541
anticorporate wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I'm quite content living a rather simple lifestyle, owning very few new things, doing almost of the maintenance on my belongings myself. The "magic number" was really more about giving myself permission than anything else. The one thing you do have to factor for, though, is what happens if you don't keep your health. The thing that kept me in tech a little longer than I hoped to be there was a parent with lon…

Sorry about your family’s experience with the Healthcare Industrial Complex. It’s really designed to drain every last dime. As bleak as it sounds I made sure to take a long vacation last year at the spur of the moment. Tomorrow isn’t promised and you might save for a retirement that you never see. I hope to do this every time I’m laid off or otherwise with an abundance of free time

Like all things, there's a balance between spending everything now and planning for the future.

I always tell my kids that they won't inherit much cash, but they're having a great time with all of the vacations and fun equipment we have.

We will have enough money to retire and live for 30-35 years at most, frugally, and 15-20 if we really go nuts. I'll be dead waaaaayyyy before that, so it'll be up to my spouse to piss away the cash.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#683

Post by anadem »

everdrive wrote: post #17

I don't work for Meta, but how many more years do I need to work in tech? I'm in my 40s and my kids are young. I've already set up 529s for them, and am paying for some expensive home upgrades. Maybe when that is finished and I've built up a buffer I can switch industries for the last 5-10 years of my working life. Curious if anyone here has any similar plans.

I'm SO happy to have retired a few years back!!

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#685

Post by bluefirebrand »

notnaut wrote: post #575
lovich wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can meet their goals, that just means there is more they can squeeze out of you. The incentive structure for our corporations means there is literally never enough and they will always demand more.

This dynamic might not even been so bad if there was some honesty and graciousness behind it. Some friggin humanity. It’s not so cold to understand and systematize the natural tension between expectation and reality and effort. Once again at the end of the day the problem is more likely the profit motive above all else

These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes

If we leave things up to humans they might be generous instead of ruthless, and generosity doesn't make money

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#686

Post by [deleted] »

onraglanroad wrote: post #586
ruszki wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Travel doesn’t always mean vacation, or work. For me, it’s rarely only one.

Well I guess we all live very different lives :) I only bother with one phone plus an emergency backup because the only work things on my phone are a chat app and some authenticator codes. For laptops, I wouldn't take any on vacation because I'm not working. I'd take the work one for work trips.

[deleted]

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#687

Post by treis »

dguest wrote: post #401
egorfine wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always, throughout a 25+ year career, kept personal business on personal devices and work business on work devices, and never cross the streams. Interestingly, I have a similar career and I have never ever split personal and work businesses on different notebooks/phones. On the other hand I would never even consider working with a company that monitors my screen or has insight into the computer I'm working on.

I'm the same. When people who maintain this separation travel for work, do they just bring both along? My laptop is often the heaviest thing in my bag, I'd hate to bring two. [late edit: I meant work travel]

I used to boot from a USB stick

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#688

Post by ryukoposting »

siren2026 wrote: post #622
ryukoposting wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Groceries cost anywhere between 25% and 100% more depending on the item (200% more if you shop at Safeway). Gas costs ~50% more. Electric is 200% more unless you live in Santa Clara, in which case it's roughly normal. Water costs more. All forms of labor cost more (handyman, mechanic, etc). Fast food costs more, normal restaurants cost more. And that's all before you consider CA sales tax. But yeah flights are the sa…

>> Groceries cost anywhere between 25% and 100% more depending on the item (200% more if you shop at Safeway). Gas costs ~50% more. Electric is 200% more unless you live in Santa Clara, in which case it's roughly normal. Water costs more. This thread is about someone working at Meta or similar FAANG. At those levels you make around 500k$/year as an engineer (a lot of times more). What you are highlighting above is at…

> At those levels you make around 500k$/year as an engineer (a lot of times more).

...no? I've not been acquainted with anyone at any of those companies making more than $330k who isn't a senior manager. Rank-and-file devs (who aren't getting laid off left and right) are high-200s.

And to return to the original point, it's not that you take home more cash elsewhere, obviously that isn't true. it's that what cash you have left goes further than it does in SV. The number you see on a job listing in middle america looks a lot lower than it actually is.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#689

Post by baddie_twoshoes »

LucidLynx wrote: post #22

I have a serious question to anyone working at Meta and reading this: HOW can you still work at this company!? Why don't you quit this very toxic company, and start working at another place or even on your own? I genuinely don't understand... Let just Meta die!

It's because it's a job that is known to pay very well, I don't know what's so difficult to understand about it? Like someone is just going to give up their $300K - $500K job over something like that; the kind of thing they'll put hand over heart and claim they'll do in posts like this one, but in practice people won't actually do, because the money is good.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#690

Post by fc417fc802 »

GS523523 wrote: post #655
grog454 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section No eye tracking in this dystopia I guess.

Was going to reply the same. These authours don't spend enough time thinking their fantasies through.

At the time it was published eye tracking would have come across as rather over the top (IMO) despite being a predictable outcome if you gave it some thought. Plus it would have necessitated adding and explaining cheap AI analysis, all the follow on plot impacts that would have, and would have ruined that scene as written. So I'd say that conveniently omitting it was a wise choice.

Can be easily handwaved away if you assume some toothless anti-surveillance legislation outlaws employers from engaging in eye tracking while failing to ban all the other stuff. That's not even an unexpected real world development at this point.

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