
Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/13/854014403/your-boss-is-watching-you-work-from-home-boom-leads-to-more-surveillance
======
sumanthvepa
I own a small business, and all of us, my employees and me work from home.
We've been doing this from well before the COVID-19 epidemic. My team is
mostly programmers with a one marketing person. This sort of intrusive
monitoring is utter garbage. My team would quit if I used it and in any case,
I don't want to know what they are upto by the minute. I don't even encourage
realtime slack unless we've mutually agreed to a specific time. Email, slack
and the zoom calls (and lunches when COVID-19 was not a thing) are more than
enough (Indeed too much.) What idiot managment even thinks this a good idea?

~~~
blaser-waffle
Nothing about your business sounds like it reflects the rest of the white-
collar working world.

~~~
Breza
Most of my direct reports work from home full time, just like most people in
our company. We look at the output from our teams and we frankly don't care if
people are checking Facebook on their phones during business hours. Focusing
on the work that's getting done results in everybody being happier than
micromanaging how people spend their time.

------
cosmodisk
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,these are the bottom feeders of this world.

~~~
gfxgirl
I'm curious how much of this comes from working with unskilled labor (hope
that's the right term).

I once worked in fast food right out of high school. 80-90% of the employees
were one or more of untrustworthy, unreliable, whiny, always making excuses or
trying get out of work. My point being if you start there you might just
assume that that's the way it always is for all employees no matter what type
of job and therefore feel like you need to surveil.

Most of my tech jobs didn't have this issue AFAIK (though one did) but just as
one stat from a random search

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/workplace-crime-costs-us-
bus...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/workplace-crime-costs-us-
businesses-50-billion-a-year.html)

~~~
eschutte2
That's been my observation too. In tech, this kind of paranoid micro-
management is a great (inverse) indicator for whether someone's used to
working with talented people. If I were ever managing again in tech I'd be
trying to find people much smarter than me and then get the heck out of their
way.

~~~
eschutte2
Edit since I just re-read the parent comment and might have misunderstood: I
don't distinguish between tech and other fields in this regard. I think it's
an issue in all fields.

------
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.

~~~
matheusmoreira
It's probably not difficult to work around these checks but nobody should be
suffering this indignity in the first place. People can't even go to the
bathroom without getting called out by managers over lost productivity. How
dehumanizing.

~~~
Tade0
And it's not even effective. There's a quote from one of the more known Total
Quality Management evangelists, which stuck with me(paraphrased):

"Don't engage in games with your employees, because you can't win."

He elaborates further explaining that any scheme or incentive system created
for a specific behavioral outcome is bound to be exploited or otherwise worked
around.

~~~
rconti
It's central planning, seems like. Does "the boss" really think they can
implement a system that one of their 5 or 10 or 50 or 100 employees can't
figure out how to circumvent?

------
iask
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 responsibilities similar to you. They might have a
family similar to you. There’s no fucking way they can manage all this, giving
you a focused 8 hour. They might need a few mins to pay a bill, lookup a
medication, place a personal Online order. And many other activities that come
with “living”, being alive.

I am certain most managers that implement this are antisocial fucks. It’s poor
management. Uneducated decision making.

Now, it does has its place. For example in highly secured environments or when
dealing with highly sensitive documents. But for a small or regular office,
no!

HR/Payroll companies such as ADP and Insperity need to start setting ground
rules. I know that they’re in favor of the employer, however, it would make
good on them.

~~~
malux85
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.

~~~
hangphyr
This is a bit of a tangent, but one should be careful with that path. Not all
employers are 'evil' and have negative intentions for their employees. Think
of an example such as the independently owned restaurant that cannot afford to
pay employees high wages and their owners are not wealthy. Just as not all
employees can be painted as untrustworthy and hostile, not all employers
should be painted as untrustworthy and hostile.

~~~
chepaslaaa
I've been a line cook, restaurant owners are absolutely untrustworthy and
hostile. The food industry is one where exploitation, highly aggressive staff
retention practices (making employees dependent on you for a visa, threatening
to spread lies about you, etc.), crazy unhealthy hours and just a generally
awful culture are standard.

~~~
gbmor
I've worked in the restaurant industry in the US. It's nothing short of
horrifying, and often traumatizing for those involved.

I've seen no overtime pay happen, lies from management to get unemployment
claims denied, management not actually firing people but just giving them zero
or reduced hours to mess with the unemployment claim process, the VISA fuckery
you mentioned, harrassment. Intentional scheduling of conflicting days for
people with multiple jobs. Being made to work 7 days a week for long periods
of time. Being made to repeatedly close late at night / early in the morning
and then open the restaurant the next morning, a few hours later, and work a
double. Being made to work while sick (this happens a _lot_ ).

A gold comment I heard from one manager was "I don't pay overtime because
these motherfuckers already take enough of my money" (referring to the
employees). This same guy was shaving time slips to keep them below 40 hours.

------
HumblyTossed
> After two weeks of working from her Brooklyn apartment, a 25-year-old
> e-commerce worker received a staffwide email from her company: Employees
> were to install software called Hubstaff immediately on their personal
> computers so it could track their mouse movements and keyboard strokes,and
> record the webpages they visited.

I'm 100 percent positive that I would tell this company to get stuffed if they
suggested I put that crap on my personal computer/phone.

This is managerial paranoia. These are probably managers that worked their way
up by stepping on people and bumping others into oncoming buses along the way.

~~~
bo1024
I completely agree, but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such
a principle. I hope we can push to level the power imbalance between companies
and employees so that privilege is available to more people.

~~~
HumblyTossed
> ... but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle.

I absolutely agree that it is.

------
vanilla-almond
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA_fJh4lzqQ)

~~~
sidlls
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.

~~~
tsukurimashou
speaking out of my ass but from experience, it's probably just an intern that
was told to put fake data in there that happened to be fan of 'The office', I
can tell you with 99% of certainty they don't have the rights

------
eli-bryan
There's a researcher, Ethan Bernstein, who has looked into this quite a bit
and has some great stories about the ways close monitoring can (sometimes) go
sideways. He did a fascinating history of it here:
[https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/BernsteinE-M...](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/BernsteinE-
MakingTransparencyTransparent-
AMA2017HBS_1ffde6a8-90b5-4dcb-8014-c2eea12b78bf.pdf)

A representative anecdote re: a factory workfloor: "First the [embedded
researchers] were quietly shown ‘‘better ways’’ of accomplishing tasks by
their peers — a ‘‘ton of little tricks’’ that ‘‘kept production going’’ or
enabled ‘‘faster, easier, and / or safer production.’’ Then they were told,
‘‘Whenever the [customers / managers / leaders] come around, don’t do that,
because they’ll get mad.’’ Instead, when under observation, embeds were
trained in the art of appearing to perform the task the way it was ‘‘meant’’
to be done according to the codified process rules posted for each task.
Because many of these performances were not as productive as the ‘‘little
tricks,’’ I observed line performance actually dropping when lines were
actively supervised." From "The Transparency Paradox":
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000183921245302...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0001839212453028)

I've also interviewed a few engineers about this recently and there are plenty
of horror stories. My favorite 2 quotes (from the same person) about
screenshot monitoring freelancers: _" It almost uniformly led to worse
work..."_ and _"... but my boss loved it."_
[https://medium.com/@elibryan/employee-performance-
tracking-d...](https://medium.com/@elibryan/employee-performance-tracking-
doesnt-have-to-be-
toxic-b8538aa39376?source=friends_link&sk=aceafa8cd097a280568e95f37868508b)

------
greendave
> And with few legal barriers, employers who turn to this software during the
> pandemic may choose to keep using it even after work-from-home orders are
> lifted, he said.

Unsurprising - why give up power once you've accumulated it. Regulation is the
only way to reverse that. The companies building these tools are a special
breed.

~~~
runawaybottle
Your last sentence is an interesting point. Like, man, I really don’t want to
be apart of that if I can avoid it.

------
technofiend
Working for a highly regulated company at least company owned desktop
monitoring is BAU. I assume anything I do with company equipment is monitored
at all times. And if I forget they remind me every time I log in.

When I discovered the company needed to protect their data by pushing on a
policy that let them wipe my personal device remotely I respected that and
bought a personal device dedicated to the task of reading email and running
their apps. But not everyone has that luxury. I'm fortunate to be able to buy
an iPad and dedicate it to blackberry and the company app store.

It's an interesting conundrum because am I really obligated to install this to
_every_ personal device or just the one I'm using for work-related tasks? I
think a reasonable person would assume the latter.

And am I under obligation to use a personal device compatible with their
spyware? What if it only works under IOS and I'm an Android user? What if
tsheets only works on Windows and I'm a MacOS guy, or heck I just run a remote
desktop viewer from a raspberry pi? Lol.

~~~
driverdan
Why would you install anything from an employer on a personal device? If they
want you to install their spyware they should buy the hardware.

~~~
lonelappde
Or they can decline to let you connect to the corp net when you are out of
office.

~~~
technofiend
Which isn't really an option now that we have mandatory work from home. I'm
not going to quit my job because they don't wish to supply me with a laptop.

~~~
sleepychu
Right, but now the situation is give and take. You want me to do work on my
personal device? Maybe I'm willing to bring that to the table. You want me to
install your spyware on it... not so much.

------
uses
Vox Reset covered worker surveillance software in their most recent two
episodes: [https://www.vox.com/reset](https://www.vox.com/reset) "The future
of work pt 1 & 2"

One nice thing about being in a union is that if my upper management ever got
a twinkle in their eye about this kind of thing (they wouldn't, because
they're cool), I'm 100% sure I could flat out tell them no, AND keep my job.

If I wasn't in a union, I'd like to think I'm personally in a position where I
could still tell them no and deal with the consequences. But I know a lot of
people won't be in that position.

------
wickerman
I think it's time to start naming and shaming these companies. This doesn't
increase productivity. It's disgusting. You don't own people's lives for 8
hours a day; you pay them to help you achieve goals for the company.

It baffles me how the US has trouble not understanding that paying for
someone's time does not make them your slave.

~~~
samizdis
It's not just the US. We've had episodes of this sort of thing in the UK,
albeit with clumsier tech, for years. Here's a tale from 2016 [1] about motion
sensors under journalists' desks (management later did a reverse ferret, aka
volte-face [Edited to add the aka]):

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/11/daily-
telegrap...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/11/daily-telegraph-to-
withdraw-devices-monitoring-time-at-desk-after-criticism)

BTW - "Reverse ferret" is a British media thing:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_ferret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_ferret)

------
Element_
Employers asking to install this junk on personal devices seems like an over
reach.

Maybe some bored software developer could create the "uBlock of employee
trackers". A program that would feed fake data into these trackers to make
them unreliable for employers.

~~~
paulryanrogers
BYOD must not require spyware, period. Companies that do it are too cheap to
provide corporate equipment and too insecure to trust their own employees
observable output.

An open video stream to employees workstation could be reasonable if there is
suspicion of fraud, like outsourcing their work to untrusted 3rd parties. It's
not too unlike having an employee in the office. Though even in office
employees have some expectations of privacy, like not exposing their home life
or bathroom routines. Of course a company device would still need to be
provided.

------
raztogt21
Earlier in my career looking for my first remote job, I got an offer for
20$-30$ per hour. This is 2.5x the average salary where I live, and almost 2x
of what I was making at the time.

"Are you okay with installing surveillance software installed on your computer
to track everything you do?"

Laughed at their faces. I will take ANY job (roof repairing, garbage man,
security guard) before doing that.

------
wintermutestwin
Question: Is it legal for a company to provide you with a laptop that you use
at home and then monitor video/audio from it? What happens if I am using it in
a space with my family present? Is it legal for my employer to spy on them?
What if my two year old runs naked through the room? Can they monitor during
"non-working hours?" What if I have to be on 5am video conferences and am
answering emails at 12am?

~~~
SamuelAdams
Why don't you just shut the laptop off unless you are actively working, ie
8-5?

------
bpatel576
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.

~~~
javajosh
Or regulate. Consider that your same argument was applies to e.g. the 40-hour
workweek, and workplace safety standards in the US. We quite rightly decided
not to leave such things to the market because in practice the labor market is
FAR from perfect.

~~~
loa_in_
Regulation is the opposite of exercising freedom you already have

~~~
js8
I downvoted you, because I think this is not true in general. Regulation can
actually increase the freedom. It is a concept in philosophy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

And it's also not true in particular, you might happen to be in a group which
benefits from given regulation. Hopefully, in a democratic society, the group
that is negatively affected (if any) is as small as possible.

~~~
subhobroto
.. and I downvoted you, because it absolutely true by definition.

Regulation, by definition, _decreases_ freedom.

That's the whole point of regulation - to threaten with violence, acts that
people have agreed are not a good idea.

If software engineers were regulated under IEEE, the freedoms of software
engineers would _decrease_ not increase.

I quote from the article you linked:

"In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of
intolerance."

Regulation, by _definition_ , is _intolerance_.

For example - the minimum wage regulation. You have now removed the freedom of
an untrained, unemployed person to sell their labor at a lower floor which was
their only way to gain employment when there's a trained but unemployed person
willing to also work for minimum wage!

~~~
tkfu
You've got a pretty simplistic view of freedom there, bud. Regulations often
increase freedom for some while decreasing it for others. Constitutions are
just regulations for government--does preventing the government from
infringing on the right to free speech, for example, increase or decrease
freedom?

Employers have immense power over their workers, and regulation is one of the
tools societies can use to make sure that power isn't abused.

~~~
subhobroto
Regulation, by _definition_ , decreases freedom.

The word _regulate_ , in _regulation_ literally means "decrease freedom".

In physics, a regulator is used to decrease freedom. That's why regulators are
used in the first place.

> Regulations often increase freedom for some while decreasing it for others

Again, regulations can only decrease freedom.

It does not make sense to "increase" something that already exists.

The freedom to live does not make you more alive than what you already are.

> Constitutions are just regulations for government--does preventing the
> government from infringing on the right to free speech, for example,
> increase or decrease freedom?

The concept of free speech is innate and available everywhere, including
countries that does not _recognize_ free speech.

Free speech is an inalienable right that every person is born with. It does
not require someone else to grant or validate it.

All that the first amendment to the Constitution does is _recognize_ ( _not_
increase) your freedom to speak against the "government".

That is it.

The "government" still can jail you or even kill you.

All that a country that _recognizes_ free speech promises is that _after_ the
deed is done, it will bring that misdeed to justice and hopefully right that
wrong.

If that was not the case, the courts would be way less crowded than it already
is.

Also, first amendment to the Constitution does _not_ apply to private
citizens.

If you suddenly started to yell at your neighbor's lawn, not matter how well
placed and logical your arguments are, you will still get booted with no legal
recourse.

The only thing that is left is if this was the government that booted you out,
you can take them to court and expect to win _if_ you have a valid case.

There can be no such expectation in a country that does not recognize free
speech.

------
matheusmoreira
> "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.

This is the exact type of sociopathic behavior that creates unions.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
There's too many techbros and 'rockstars' that think they're 10x better than
anyone else. Surprise - they're more average than others tell them.

But I've seen it again and again, IT people don't seem to gravitate towards
unions.

------
mylons
The lack of ethics in the companies, and people that work at them, that create
this software is sad and borderline demoralizing.

~~~
pixxel
Lack of ethics for sure. Sadly the tech industry is filled with people lacking
ethics, which allows privacy breaching companies like Facebook, Google etc. to
thrive.

------
dbattaglia
> But in the office, it is much easier to figure out if someone is doing a job
> well.

I found this odd. The only measure of doing a job well is the output, isn’t
it? How is this easier in an office? Plenty of people can spend all day
cranking away in Excel or an IDE, with no Facebook or YouTube in sight,
producing complete garbage.

------
GuiA
_" Are they generally active on programs and websites that I would consider
productive like Excel, PowerPoint, Word, email, as opposed to YouTube or
Facebook?"_

The CEO talking about his product in terms of first person value judgements
tells you all you need to know about the degrees of sliminess involved.

------
amaajemyfren
My question would be ... does it work?

Say there are people who are not being tracked using these tools ... does the
act of tracking them make them more productive?

𝗔𝗻 𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 There is the old joke paper given to the British Medical
Journal
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/)).
The "problem" it tries to figure out is do parachutes work? There is anecdotal
evidence that they work - bit there have been cases where people have fallen
from great height without a parachute and not died and there are cases where
someone has jumped from low altitude with a parachute and died.

What they then do is suggest a proper double blind analysis to confirm that a
parachute actually works. But it is a joke so they do not go far.

The point they make applies here also. On the part of the boss it does feel
like you are in control and I am sure HR would love it because they now have
time sheets that they can use to process payroll etc.

But for the end user ... does it actually increase productivity?

Actually ... does it actually matter whether it does or not? Maybe their goal
is to make the bosses happy. My suspicion though is that it may actually be
reducing productivity as they mess up morale. But that has not been tested
either. (Not sure if it can be tested).

------
munificent
Using this software is a tacit admission that the manager is unable to measure
the output of their own employees, nor are they able to determine what an
appropriate level of productivity is.

You don't need cameras to track where the dough goes if you already know how
much flour you bought, how many pizzas you sold, and how much flour it should
take to make a pie.

This reflects a fundamental inability of the manager to do their job.

------
djhaskin987
MS Teams has a "green check" next to your name if you've touched your keyboard
or mouse in the last five minutes and automatically sets your status to "away"
if you haven't done so. I've had people at work use this to try and figure out
if I'm working or not. It is a violating feeling, but also very similar to the
"is your butt in the chair" way of management when not working from home, and
I can see why managers like the feature.

For any of those suffering under this problem, have a look at caffeine[1], it
simulates a keystroke on your laptop every 59 seconds.

1:
[https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/](https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/)

~~~
brianjlogan
I prefer Mouse Move. Windows Store so it seems to get around the corporate
blockers. [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/move-
mouse/9nq4ql59xlbf?ac...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/move-
mouse/9nq4ql59xlbf?activetab=pivot:overviewtab)

------
sjperez
Is anyone aware of any actual research on this issue? If so, what does it say?
Do remote workers actually work less? Do intrusive monitoring apps improve
productivity or decrease productivity?

I've always had the sense that people who work remote are perfectly capable of
being productive without monitoring. In some ways, depending on your personal
situation, being at home can be less distracting than being at the office. On
any given day, I would bet that most people in an office only put in 3-4 hours
of good work (or less). Much of the rest of the time is spent being distracted
by office gossip, meetings, coffee breaks, etc. Why should we expect people
working from home to put in 8 solid hours of good focused work when we don't
demand the same of people in the office?

It would be nice to see some actual data on this problem. I have an instinct
that this is a major overreaction by managers and that it will ultimately
drive productivity and retention down. However, I'm open to being proved wrong
if this is an issue that has been studied in a rigorous fashion.

------
fmakunbound
I feel like if you're involved with the development of tools like Time Doctor,
you should go fuck yourself. edit: Also deploying such tools.

------
r0m4n0
I think a lot of this comes back to laziness and/or lack of critical thought
toward measuring efficiency of completing work. It’s perfectly normal to want
to determine who is most efficient and who is not. Those who are working
harder than others should be rewarded and the inverse for those that need to
improve. I think the big question is how do you measure output? The wrong way
is measuring how often your mouse is moving or tracking how much time you
spend on Facebook. Ultimately management should have some way of measuring job
efficiency, in a way that is difficult to influence in any other way.
Surveillance software is going to give you terrible metrics probably unrelated
to output (amongst tons of other bad side effects)

------
nunya8149
MS Teams has a "green check" next to your name if you've touched your keyboard
or mouse in the last five minutes and automatically sets your status to "away"
if you haven't done so. I've had people at work use this to try and figure out
if I'm working or not. It is a violating feeling, but also very similar to the
"is your butt in the chair" way of management when not working from home, and
I can see why managers like the feature.

For any of those suffering under this problem, have a look at caffeine[1], it
simulates a keystroke on your laptop every 59 seconds.

1:
[https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/](https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/)

------
sevenf0ur
Would you be okay with tracking software if it was installed on a work
provided computer?

~~~
matheusmoreira
Why would mandatory malware ever be okay under any circumstance?

~~~
mikeg8
Tracking software is not malware. I totally oppose the use of tracking
software, but they are not the same.

~~~
matheusmoreira
The only difference is a clause in the contract saying the employee agrees to
use the software.

~~~
mikeg8
Definition of malware: software that is specifically designed to disrupt,
damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system.

You could argue that tracking software is "disruptive" but more so to the
user, not the system itself. you're conflating your dislike for both tracking
software and malware as the same. Again, I'm not defending tracking software,
just disagreeing with your false equivalency.

------
und3rth3iP
If you need to rely on this sort of technology to feel confident your team is
being productive and meeting their goals, you're not doing a very good job
managing your team and/or you're simply not a great manager. Full stop.

------
edw519
Sounds like a business opportunity.

How hard would it be to get your phone to transmit gps coordinates you choose,
not where you actually are?

How hard would it be to override what tattleware sends your boss with what you
want it to send?

------
dan_can_code
This is a surefire way of making everyone employed at these businesses
miserable. No one likes someone looking over their shoulder, especially for
the entire working week. These companies are going to lose interest from their
talent most likely. I feel for anyone working in these circumstances. I expect
it will be extremely demotivating also.

------
runawaybottle
There’s no way decent companies are doing this. Any company that does this
probably also has skeleton budgets with underpaid staff.

I just can’t fathom it.

~~~
capdeck
I don't think decency has anything to do with it. Profits are king that
everyone bows to. I can see a management meeting where inevitably someone
throws the idea of webcam surveillance into the rink. After all it is simple
to understand, it "makes sense", (micro)managers will really enjoy it. So it
will pass with flying colors.

And as they say, the rest is history. Good workers will eventually leave. Some
will adapt. Software and hacks will appear that can trick key presses and
mouse clicks. Eveyone will become 9 to 5 no matter what.

I see some examples brought up where developers are not putting up with it -
that is correct. For developers, typing <> productivity, so that will not
stick. But there are other occupations around - admin work, marketing, data
entry, HR, etc... Productivity in those occupations will dip, some people will
leave, but in larger scope work will continue. Companies will compensate by
hiring more people, it won't be visible on a balance sheet as "survelliance
tax" because no one is tracking. And the world will go on. Worse off than
before, unfortunately.

------
edw519
activity != accomplishment

We always knew that's bad bosses never understood this.

It's just sad to see that now there's a market for it.

------
caseymarquis
It sure would be fun to write software which pretends to be working and boosts
people's 'productivity scores'.

Some days I think I missed out by not taking a job I could have gotten a
computer to automate, and spending all my time doing interesting coding
projects.

------
justchilly
Counterpoint: Is it really fair to say this is "more surveillance"? Requiring
employees to be on site where there is a manager present is a form of
intrusive surveillance. Wouldn't this kind of monitoring simply be an effort
to retain existing dynamics.

------
0x262d
can I figure out if my company is doing this? will Interguard show up in Task
Manager somehow?

------
jb775
Work surveillance leads to employees who feel disrespected. Employees who feel
disrespected don't go that extra mile when it really counts.

A better approach would be to trust the employees (hand-picked by the
company), and set measurable performance expectations.

------
FpUser
I wish the employees of that fucked up company would band together and tell
the management to sod off. If everyone done that the company could do nothing
short of committing business suicide. Unfortunately this is extremely unlikely
to happen.

------
lamby
Another concrete example against our "tech will solve everything" tendencies.

------
bergstromm466
It doesn’t lead to it, the capabilities to do so were already there, it’s just
being activated more.

------
jordache
i'm a manager of individual contributors. If I'm not aware of this being used
at my company, is it likely a good indication that it's not?

Are there examples of this surveillance only being conusmed at higher levels
in the management structure

------
Chris2048
Are the employees using their personal computers/phones for work stuff?

------
UweSchmidt
Doubts about the efficiency of such ideas, calling managers incompetent and
general handwringing will not work. The data, the tech is here. The only thing
that will prevent your most horrific workplace dystopia is regulation.

------
itronitron
just watch this video when you think you're being surveiled >>
[https://youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY](https://youtu.be/7YvAYIJSSZY)

------
_curious_
That's a dramatic exaggeration...companies you describe exist everywhere and
it's up to the individuals to change if they don't like it.

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
Victim blaming like this breeds radicalization. Need I say more?

~~~
_curious_
Depends, could you elaborate on what you did say because I don't follow.
Thanks!

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
As avicebron said, when a person has had enough of being stomped on they will
snap. Most won't drive a truck through a crowd of people, or blow up
buildings, but a few will weld themselves into bulldozers* and level
buildings, or shoot up schools, or rob banks, or drive through crowds of
people. The action doesn't really matter. Destroy every gun in existence?
We'll see more knifings and vehicular homicides.

Unless everyone is locked into a cage like a rat in a straight jacket people
will find ways to maliciously hurt themselves and others when they've been
pushed too far. Many self deluded and extremely privileged people decline
responsibility for these extreme behaviors, yet, in reality, we are all
culpable in the actions of the worst of us. It is everyone's responsibility to
arrest the decline of someone nearing the breaking point. Once a person is
closeto snapping they are no longer capable of rational thought, let alone
digging themselves out of a hole that they are not fully responsible for
digging. If we are to dismiss responsibility for these people that have been
pushed too far then we only create a habitat for more of these desperate and
sad souls to develop in.

* [https://youtu.be/qlZh9-NQEyI](https://youtu.be/qlZh9-NQEyI)

~~~
_curious_
Do you feel personally responsible for the actions of other people who have
"snapped"?

------
_curious_
Counterthought: anyone who would knowingly and willingly install spyware on
their personal computer deserves to lose their privacy.

~~~
HumblyTossed
No they don't. They have two choices; quit or be fired. Personally, I would
quit, but I've got that type of personality. Others can't just up and quit so
they comply.

~~~
_curious_
"Others can't just up and quit so they comply."

Who are these others? Are you suggesting they do not have the ability to
decide if they want to continue working?

~~~
HumblyTossed
I'm sorry, but do I really have to answer these questions? How is it people
still don't understand there's a huge segment of the working population who
just can't up and quit a job?

------
_curious_
Everyone has a choice: yes or no.

Consequences may vary, but then again, no-one is owed anything legally,
morally, or otherwise so to act as though every individual does not have or
exercise their own self-agency is disingenuous.

~~~
bo1024
I strongly disagree. There are certain human rights that it is immoral and
illegal to contract away. The common example is that selling yourself into
slavery is illegal even though people have self-agency. Over time we have
decided on others so for example it is illegal to take a job that disallows
bathroom breaks or violates certain safety standards. It's also not legal as
far as I know to take jobs with certain consequences for quitting, like "we
break into your house and kill your family". Although, "we will ensure your
family starves" may be an unwritten one.

Also, it is disingenuous at least to say every has their own "self-agency",
but "Consequences may vary." I would agree it's a sliding scale because
people's chioces imply different levels of consequences for losing one's job
(for example if you bought an expensive mortgage versus not). But morally, and
legally as well, we certainly owe people the ability to make actually free
choices without metaphorical guns to their heads.

~~~
_curious_
Thanks for strongly (and respectfully) disagreeing out loud instead of being
one who just downvotes without the courage to provide an alternate
view/retort!

~~~
stronglikedan
> just downvotes without the courage to provide an alternate view/retort

It's not about courage. It's usually that someone else has already provided
the same alternate view/retort, so there's no sense in starting a new comment
branch.

~~~
_curious_
you show great courage stronglikedan!

------
xf1cf
As a prelude to what i'll type below I hate these things. They are not useful
and I believe they are detrimental to employee productivity through the
"panopticon" idea of management.

There's no need in my eyes for regulating this or getting in quarrel over
workers rights. You, the employee, sign a contract with the employer to
perform some work for some compensation. If the employer wishes to run this
type of strategy on their own hardware I do not see a problem with this. You
can, and should, find a job that respects you as a worker. What we are seeing
here is the MBA-style spreadsheet management turned into software.

This "panopticon" management increases turnover rate and decreases
productivity. I have personally seen it. I worked IT in a company that had
this software (I was a low level sysadmin and had no control). People would
spend an inordinate amount of time finding ways to hide their activity instead
of just quickly doing what they had to do and moving on. The solution isn't to
complain, or call for regulation, but rather just leave your job. If the
software isn't being installed on your computer then the company is completely
okay to do this, no matter how damaging it is to their bottom line through
subsequent lost activity.

~~~
downerending
There's a lot to say for this. One management proposes something as ridiculous
as this, there's really know way to restore the relationship. If I have to
live on beans and rice instead, I will.

------
underdeserver
But my lord, is that _legal?_

------
option
If a company can have most, if not all, of its software engineering workforce
WFH, why would they hire in US or Europe for those/similar roles?

~~~
taborj
Timing, for one thing. For example, we have two sites in India; one of them
works on Eastern time, the other on Indian time. The one that works Eastern
time is a lot easier to deal with, as they are active when the rest of the US-
based company is active. However, that means the Indian-based team is working
nights, which makes it harder to retain good engineers.

The team that works on Indian time has good engineers, but with little overlap
to the US-based management structure (and US-based engineers), there are
sometimes significant delays in getting everyone on the same page.

That's one example, but there are others, such as cultural (i.e. expectations
for US-based management may not be the same as non-US-based engineers) and
"optics" (US-based customers like it better when US-based companies use US-
based employees)

------
thrower123
My mother-in-law is trying to teach driver's ed over Zoom. It's a horrible
clusterfuck, because they are trying to force everyone to keep their webcam on
at all times as a means of tracking attendance. The first session was 75% her
shrieking at kids because their internet connections were dropping out or Zoom
was glitching and the video feeds froze. Not to mention that Zoom can only
show a 5x5 grid at a time, and some of the classes had 27 or 30-something kids
in it.

It's not easy for normies to deal with video-conferencing... Take your normal
enterprise conference call bingo card, and put it on turbo.

~~~
OldHand2018
Yesterday, one of my kids was in group class on Zoom. The instructor kept
yelling about the kids being quiet. So my wife reached over and muted the
microphone. The instructor unmuted it and proceeded to continue yelling about
being quiet.

~~~
downerending
That's great (and would make a good YouTube video).

------
_curious_
It's up to individuals as employees to decide if they want to subject
themselves to this (agreed repulsive) treatment...what's with all these
comments and sentiment in this thread acting like they have a gun to their
head?

JUST QUIT already if uncomfortable with whatever a given job entails should
that include perceived invasive measures ie - surveillance.

~~~
Fargren
"JUST QUIT" makes it sound like quitting is an easy thing to do. "like they
have a gun to their head" makes it sound like direct physical threat is the
only mechanism of coercion that exists. These things are just not true.

For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in highly
demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a metaphorical gun
to their heads. They might not die the moment they quit, but by quitting they
are endangering themselves and those that depend on them. Their relationship
with employment is inherently coercive.

This is especially true during a pandemic that's causing more people to be
unemployed.

~~~
_curious_
"For a lot of people, who have more expenses than savings and are not in
highly demanded jobs, quitting puts them at great risk. They have a
metaphorical gun to their heads. They might not die the moment they quit, but
by quitting they are endangering themselves and those that depend on them.
Their relationship with employment is inherently coercive."

With all of that said: whose responsibility is it to avoid this type of
situation? Is it anyone (or anything) but the individual them-self?

And should one unfortunately find themselves in this situation described
above, whose responsibility is it to figure out a solution? Is it their
friends and family who is responsible? Their neighbors? The government? Are
you responsible?

~~~
curryst
I would argue it is the government's job to not allow businesses to impose
dehumanizing conditions on workers due to the extreme imbalance of power.

It's probably not a risk for most of the HN users. Most of us are in high
demand jobs, and we would simply refuse to work for a company that uses this
kind of spyware. A lot of people don't have that option, because there isn't
as much demand for their jobs.

Should we really be given that extra privilege simply because what we chose or
wanted or had the ability to do is in higher demand? I would say no, it should
be a fundamental right of workers in general. It's not as if there is some
drastic harm that not installing spyware would impose. If your best means of
measuring worker productivity is this junk, you're not going to last as a
business anyways.

~~~
_curious_
"Should we really be given that extra privilege simply because what we chose
or wanted or had the ability to do is in higher demand?"

So you think you are privileged because you exercised your option to decide
and do what's best for you? Or because you have the demonstrable ability to
make it happen - ie - learn a thing that is in demand? Is it a privilege of
the ability to act in your own self-interest?

Stepping back, maybe it's because you have acquired cognitive skills that
others have not that you are privileged? The mere ability to think for
yourself, that's a privilege too, then? What about changing your mind,
increasing your understanding of, evolving a thought...all privileges, yeah?

Perhaps somewhere along the line you have made a decision that was hard and
required risk and sacrifice but that contributed to who you are and where you
are today, was that pain and suffering part of the privilege? What about
losing someone or something you love, because surely it's a privilege to
experience love in the first place, no?

Is anything that makes us different and unique from one-another _not_ a
privilege by extension? Has the word privilege been used and abused to the
degree that it means absolutely nothing anymore?

What about being alive...is that like, the ultimate privilege? So when all are
privileged, are any, really?

~~~
Fargren
> When all are privileged, are any, really?

That's like saying "when everybody has money, does anyone have money?". People
have varying amounts (and kinds) of privilege, but some have more than others.

~~~
_curious_
...and who has the privilege of judging others privilege?

~~~
evilolive
And you really think this is an honest argumentation?

