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“I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

bbc.co.uk

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Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#91

Post by bootloop »

nip wrote: post #36
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

Ha. In my case it was 700€, took 3 people and 3 hours, a crossbar broke in half and afterwards the security door needed to be replaced anyway (because at the end they cut it open with an angle grinder). All that at 1 o'clock in the morning. Nobody of the neighbors cared or called the police.

0/10, wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone else. I could have done the same for free.

Fun fact: The companies boss paused his anniversary dinner for this job (after two of his employees couldn't do it). He and his wife showed up super nicely dressed (Highheels and everything). He promised he would make it up to her another time. I found it amusing.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#92

Post by 0xfaded »

nip wrote: post #36
zenincognito wrote: post #5

I once went to court against a client who wouldn't pay his bills. The sum more than 35K. It took over 9 months to get to court ( as the court wouldnt give a date ) and countless docs and hours spent to come up with evidence folder. In Australia, a citizen can argue their case which I did without using any lawyers. Finally, we both argued our case to a point where the client's defence was that there was no time log fo…

One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves. The next day you receive the bill, 150€. Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work? You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. — Recalling it from a discussion with a…

In the case of locksmiths, yes, because it's easy to open most consumer locks. I just can't do it for friends, or even a lock on a home I rent, because I don't own the physical lock. That 150 euro bill is basically regulatory capture.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#93

Post by tpmx »

t0mas88 wrote: post #81
mrweasel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a similar conclusion originally, but then I also saw the level of fraud by our UK customers. They where maybe 5 - 10% of our total sales, but 90+% of fraud cases. My take away is simply that there's less trust in the British society as a whole and it's not necessarily a fault or problem isolated to a single company.

It may be a bit of both, but indeed from anecdotal evidence starting a company in the UK and in the Netherlands: A lot of things are set up with less thrust in the UK. As a simple example in the Netherlands if you reclaim VAT as a company tax services just gives you the money and checks later (obviously you need to give it back if it wasn't correct). In the UK you'll need to show invoices, proof etc before HMRC pays…

Matches the data shown here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attit...

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#95

Post by JetSetWilly »

t0mas88 wrote: post #81
mrweasel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a similar conclusion originally, but then I also saw the level of fraud by our UK customers. They where maybe 5 - 10% of our total sales, but 90+% of fraud cases. My take away is simply that there's less trust in the British society as a whole and it's not necessarily a fault or problem isolated to a single company.

It may be a bit of both, but indeed from anecdotal evidence starting a company in the UK and in the Netherlands: A lot of things are set up with less thrust in the UK. As a simple example in the Netherlands if you reclaim VAT as a company tax services just gives you the money and checks later (obviously you need to give it back if it wasn't correct). In the UK you'll need to show invoices, proof etc before HMRC pays…

> Similar for insurance, car insurance in many European countries is done in 1 minute online just an update to a database. In the UK you need a sticker on your car, people that check the stickers etc.

You don't need any such sticker in the UK? There used to be a sticker for road tax, but that was done away with. And having a road tax sticker on car windscreens is common across Europe - there were worries at the time the UK got rid of the sticker that motorists would be stopped when on the continent because of not having a sticker.

If anything the truth of your example shows the opposite from what you intend.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#96

Post by bb123 »

mrweasel wrote: post #21

I worked for a company with a UK department, the UK boss would routinely use similar software to check that people where actually working and doing things correctly. The Scandinavian bosses opted to just trust everyone to do the right thing and people always would. Interestingly enough if was always the British employees who would do things like steal customer contact lists when they left or do deals on the side, so…

Are we just engaging in lazy cultural generalisations now? This feels in poor taste.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#97

Post by bb123 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #94

My computer from work is an old Dell Latitude laptop. I work from home on my own desktop with double the ram, twice the threads and a triple 1440p monitor setup. The only thing handled on the laptop is mail and Teams.

Is your company ok with you using a personal computer for work? I would love to be able to do that, but the firm I work for would sooner let me work from the moon.

Re: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”

#98

Post by reader_mode »

eternalny1 wrote: post #59
_trampeltier wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago, was here an AskHN question. As far I remember, the guy worked from home, had just fill some excel sheets from other excel sheets. After a while he made some scripts and one week work was done in 20 minutes. He added even some errors, because there was another guy who checked all his work. The question was then, if he should tell, he work just 20 minutes and not one week. But he also said he nee…

I had something similar (but opposite) happen. We hired a remote engineer to write a program to export to excel. He claimed it was done and the Excel "output" arrived every morning. We asked him to submit his code for review, and after stalling, he produced some extremely obfuscated C++ code that turned out to do absolutely nothing. He was staying up all night entering data manually into Excel to generate the final r…

>He was staying up all night entering data manually into Excel to generate the final reports.

He trained a neural network to solve the problem :D

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