
Facebook forcing moderators to log every second of day - rahuldottech
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3beea/facebook-moderators-lawsuit-ptsd-trauma-tracking-bathroom-breaks
======
tenebrisalietum
I worked in a pretty rough Tier-1 call center environment for IT for about
half a year.

\- We had to be in Avail status at the exact start of our shift or be counted
late. For example, if I was scheduled to be in at 10am, I had to be in Avail
at 10am. Meaning I had to take care of booting up computer, etc. before then.

\- We had to check in with a workload manager via Teams and get approval
before moving to Break or Lunch aux. Often during a call.

\- We could move to an aux to take restroom breaks, and were encouraged to do
so only when no calls were waiting, but the total time taken couldn't be more
than 10 minutes a day.

\- We also had to notify the WLM if we were going into callback aux, for
example, if the line dropped. We were questioned and sometimes moved to Avail
automatically if we were too long in callback.

\- When I started, we had 30 seconds ACW but then they moved to zero ACW. We
could move to ACW aux for a max of one minute unless cleared with WLM. You had
to be quick if you had things to do on your ticket after the call otherwise
often you'd get thrown into another call immediately. WLM would move you to
Avail automatically if you went over and they were paying attention.

\- Getting a "Roll Over No Answer" was really bad.

Definitely a rough environment, but it wasn't as bad as it sounded, and I was
able to work from home for a month before I found a much better job. It was
interesting to see if I could survive under that level of discipline but I'm
glad I left when I did.

~~~
vr46
I have read so much about this kind of controlling behaviour and at times
experienced it during summer jobs. But I have a question.

Why do they do this?

~~~
dvtrn
When it comes to the worst elements of "bottom-line obsessed thinking", I
can't think of better examples than large national call centers; and their
leaders will use all sorts of borderline _abusive_ management tactics to
justify it.

I started my career in one for a popular multi-national consumer electronics
brand whose devices might be in your pocket right now, also as a T-1 IT person
for about four years.

It's soul draining. One thing I'll never forget were the amount of EMS visits
we got due to people having heart-attacks. Young people too.

~~~
jjeaff
That's what just doesn't make any sense. A single on-site heart attack has got
to undo months of trying to shave off seconds here and there and abusing
people to get just a few more minutes of output per day. Not to mention the
huge loss when it comes to turn over.

~~~
mythrwy
There may have been other factors. Like being yelled at by unhappy customers
all day.

------
TaylorGood
Anti-Autonomy. My two years working for a large company I felt micro-managed.
Even as a Creative Director. My last straw was being chastised for leaving
five minutes before 5pm and how it's bad "optics" – anyway, I believe the #1
thing in life is to control your schedule. From there everything else flows;
health, family, social, true travel etc.

This doesn't necessary mean being an entrepreneur, but having a certain level
of autonomy. Once you taste it, it's nearly impossible to go back to such
controlled, desk-equated productivity environments.

~~~
cryoshon
>Once you taste it, it's nearly impossible to go back to such controlled,
desk-equated productivity environments.

yes, i've found this as well. the reason is that employer-based constraints on
your schedule are always arbitrary, rarely compensated for in full, never
equitable across power structures, and only tenuously negotiable in your
favor.

in other words: your life becomes theirs to control in spirit, if not entirely
in practice. it doesn't matter if they expect you to be at work from 9 to 5 or
whatever else. if your employment is contingent on holding their schedule,
they effectively hold control over the rest of your life's schedule.

and they excercise that control to the detriment of your life as a matter of
course, routinely, ruthlessly, without hesitation, and without consideration,
in nearly 100% of cases -- yes, even in the "cool startup" you're working for.

remember, you need to ask them to take time off to care for your sick
relatives. you need to ask them for permission to not be at work to spend time
for yourself on vacation. you are explicitly their property for however many
hours per day, but they also own enough of you to implicitly dictate where
you're allowed to be and when, and for what reasons.

i guess some people find it a good bargain to trade their autonomy for a wage.
it's very hard to respect that kind of thinking a lot of the time, but i've
learned to do it simply because most people accept the bargain and it'd be too
isolating to behave otherwise. for me, it's an intolerable situation to bear,
even for a moment.

~~~
TruffleMuffin
Are you currently employed? What job is offering you unrestricted control of
your schedule? No requirement to work with others? No requirements to attend
meetings at fixed times? etc. From what you said, I can't picture a workplace
that is functional like that.

~~~
lmilcin
I have worked in couple of places, mainly largest banks, as a contractor Java
dev.

Your freedom is directly proportional to the trust your manager has in your
good judgment. If you can build the trust and convince the manager
(indirectly) that they don't need to handhold you and it's better to use their
time to focus on other things you can be doing mostly the stuff you decide
needs to be done.

From my experience, in case of FB moderators, these things happen because of
some kind of corporate scarring. I guess somebody or a group of people
seriously exploited their freedom and the management instead of trying to
actually understand and solve the problem used shotgun/lazy management to just
outright squash the problem along with every team member's freedom.

------
learnstats2
I once worked in a school where my line manager said he had observed me going
to the toilet between lessons and that it was unacceptable for me not to be
available to work during that time.

I quit almost immediately afterward, obviously. This is not an appropriate
level of oversight.

There are parallels with school uniform rules - you enforce the rules on
people you don't like.

It's a license to discriminate. I suggest it's highly likely to constitute
illegal disability discrimination within the EU.

~~~
asdff
I thought school uniforms were about being more equitable. If everyone wore
the same thing, poor kids would be less likely to be chastised for their
clothes.

~~~
learnstats2
I find it weird to claim this benefits poor families.

Almost all poor parents will tell you they are stressed by needing to buy
extra sets of clothing for school, sold at inflated prices (these parents will
also tell you who is benefiting from the uniform suppliers' deals).

------
IHLayman
I didn't realize Snow Crash's chapter on Fedland
([https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-
fedland.html](https://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/memo-from-fedland.html))
would be taken as a manual. Ugh. I guess you can't say we weren't warned.

------
smabie
While having this kind of monitoring sucks (I had to do a similar thing at my
last job and it’s awful and demoralizing), what exactly is unsafe about the
work environment. What is illegal about it (in Europe)? It seems to me that
the shitty environment is mostly due to the nature of the job itself: viewing
unpleasant content all day long.

While watching this garbage might constitute as “unsafe” I suppose, until AI
can fully take over, there’s not much you can do about it. Is it illegal to
have a time monitoring system in Europe?

Vice is a pretty terrible news site and never actually answers the real
questions. Instead we get a clickbait title with very little actual facts. Not
that I’m particularly surprised, though.

~~~
itake
To add to this, I really want to know why they felt they need to do this? My
guess is someone was abusing the existing system and they needed to set
tighter controls?

~~~
Seenso
> To add to this, I really want to know why they felt they need to do this? My
> guess is someone was abusing the existing system and they needed to set
> tighter controls?

My guess is some manager got it in his head to gather some bullshit metrics
and evaluate people on them, and the affected employees are so low-status that
they don't have the political power to push back.

There's also probably a pretty but useless graph on a powerpoint involved.

------
gexla
Maybe the real story here is that Facebook is barely functional at most things
but managed to get their crap enough together to focus on being a #1 social
network. Like if you went out all night, got drunk, woke up with a severe
hangover and still managed to get to work and skate through the day? That's X
company doing anything other than that one thing they exist to do.

The manager responsible for this moderation then can only hold it enough
together to focus on X metrics, and happiness isn't one of them. Add one more
metric and this person would probably fall apart and get thrown onto the
pavement.

Engineers don't get treated like this because there's actual competition in
hiring the best talent.

The workers need to organize to present their own metrics. Or figure out a way
to make employee happiness a metric to focus on. Or somehow find the super
person who can figure this all out (but then this person would get elevated to
a more important part of the business.) Maybe it would be best to outsource
this part of the business and then have the contractors compete on creating
and delivering on these metrics. Or maybe create competing teams internally
which can do the same, but rewarded with better pay?

~~~
discreteevent
Agreed on the barely functional. What I've noticed is that the more time and
schedule obsessed a development manager is, the more likely they are
incompetent. Time is the easiest thing to manage. A single variable. No
complexity.

------
drummer
> “The happiest people are the people who are away from Facebook. The more
> unhappy you are in life, the more you are going to spend on Facebook,”

Quoted for truth.

------
Havoc
Timesheets are the bane of my existence. I've completed them for all of my
working life. (It's common in my industry...all the way to top).

Anything <15 mins is a complete waste of everyone's time.

~~~
RugnirViking
why stop it at 15 minuites? I can't imagine a single scenario where splitting
time reported into anything less than hours would matter all that much, and
the best possible systems would be more freeform in approach, allowing the
worker to specify the _actual time_ they started and stopped, rather than only
being able to start and cease work in specific intervals. It would allow for
greater resolution naturally where the worker is switching tasks more often.

As for people saying such a system would be misused or completed lazily, those
arguments apply equally well to filling out timesheets at all. I don't imagine
anyone ever recorded themselves slacking off intentionally on a timesheet.

~~~
patmcguire
It's think it's pretty common when billing for time when the base rate is
high. Lots of big law firms bill in six minute increments.

~~~
RugnirViking
but why not just record when you started and stopped each task, rather than
dividing the day into chunks needlessly?

~~~
maximente
you need to convert into billable units at some point, which is what the
fractional system gives you, so it's just a matter of whether or not the UI
accepts clock based input or not.

i'm not a UI expert but timekeeping doesn't seem particularly innovative.
there are probably all sorts of esoteric certifications and approvals one
might need for e.g. DoD compliance, so i'm guessing there are few people
thinking about this and fewer willing to get it done and certified for the
sake of the users.

~~~
codinger
:Cough: selenium :cough: scheduled cronjob

------
throwanem
If you're still using Facebook in 2020, you're complicit. You've had the
better part of a decade, knowing that Facebook is a problem, to do something
about it, or at least about your complicity in it. If you still haven't,
that's on you. No more excuses.

~~~
martin8412
What exactly do you expect people to do? Sure, I know that Facebook is a
horrible company. But at the same time I don't really have much choice if I
want to use it or not.

I use it to keep touch with friends and it's used to plan gatherings. I'm not
about to try and be some advocate for people to use a better service, because
I know that's a hopeless endeavour when I'm the only person doing it.

~~~
Brain_Thief
I see this sentiment expressed a lot and, frankly, I just don't buy it. I
dropped my FaceBook account years ago and have never had any trouble staying
in touch with people or being invited to things. Are your friends / family so
insistent on using FaceBook for all communications that they would cease
including you in events or talking to you if you needed to be contacted via,
e.g., text message or email? If that's the case then I suggest you seriously
consider the kind of relationships you have with these people and whether or
not they are worth maintaining.

------
Wingman4l7
Echoes of Marshall Brain's "Manna":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_\(novel\))

He posits a future with micro-management of service workers via headset, down
to the minute, from an automated system.

------
slumdev
Sounds an awful lot like Crossover for Work--those $300k+ remote VP postings
that get spammed on LinkedIn constantly.

~~~
msh
Whats the story on those?

~~~
slumdev
All of the positions are hourly, not salaried. They require per-minute
accounting of your work. Most people who "succeed" in those positions wind up
working overtime that is consistent and excessive, just to hit their 40.

------
misiti3780
It cant be that easy to get one of these jobs (facebook doesnt just hire
anyone), so assuming they are educated and qualified, why dont they just go
work somewhere where else?

~~~
smabie
Because there’s a surplus of college educated people. Unless you went to a top
school, the expected value of many degrees is deep in the red.

~~~
dlivingston
I would like to see a source on this. This is not completely accurate, in my
estimation. And even if it were accurate, that still doesn't discount parent's
point.

------
jdkee
If only these employees would unionize so they have a say in humane working
conditions.

------
at_a_remove
I had a boss who wanted everything I did logged out into five minute
increments. Even lawyers only go down to quarter-hours in granularity, last I
heard.

This pattern of relentless squeezing by management, ratcheting ever-tighter,
seems to lead to collapse each time I have encountered it. I have yet to come
up with a decent metaphor for the phenomenon, but it seems to be born of the
idea that efficiency can always increase in increments that themselves do not
decrease. The easy answer would be to wave the disparaging "capitalism" wand
over it, yet history has reliable notes of this happening in governments
opposed to capitalism. Perhaps it is just the thought that one can get _more_
... forever.

~~~
rckoepke
Many lawyers are 0.25 hour (15 minute), but many lawyers are also 0.1 hour (6
minute).

------
jxramos
I've always wanted to have this on occasion for myself from time to time to
sample my individual time spend. I wonder what kind of apps they use to
achieve this and what the UI looks like. You'd need some sort of instant
stopwatch buttons for frequently recurring activities and also allowing for
custom stopwatches.

I guess something like a set of Amazon Dash buttons could be useful or some
kind of badge readers distributed about an environment to tag on and tag off
keyed to some activity for that location.

~~~
mikelyons
How much time spend do you estimate you'd log logging the time spend of
logging your time spend?

~~~
jxramos
whew, stack overflow. Haha. If the UI is right it would hopefully be within 5s
- 30s. But realistically I probably wouldn't count it, maybe have the app
count it for me through some proxy with events or something or other. Good
stuff.

------
is0tope
The new workhouses of the digital age.

------
motohagiography
If you need an employee to produce a continuous task log, they aren't
producing value, and as a manager, you don't understand your business well
enough anyway. You may benefit from doing some personal work on yourself as
well.

The value in a relationship seems proportional to the smallest increment of
time someone in it is accountable for. If someone asks you what you have done
for them an hour ago, vs. this morning, vs. yesterday, vs. last week, vs.
quarterly, vs. how's it all going and what they can do for you - this is a
good measure of whether it's something worth keeping.

No trust means no value. Those employees should find somewhere else to work.

~~~
dfxm12
_Those employees should find somewhere else to work._

Or negotiate better working conditions.

According to the article, one guy is suing for poor working conditions leading
to PTSD and _dozens if not hundreds of moderators are expected to file similar
lawsuits_ related to poor working conditions. I can't imagine FB would find it
beneficial to continue to deal with so many individual lawsuits...

~~~
whyexpose
Unfortunately, whenever these kind of lawsuits happen, a lot of people defend
employers and say if worker could not have handled the work, they should have
quit/looked for another job. Even if an employee doesn't file a lawsuit but
refuse to be abused, other employees complain about the person standing up for
themselves.

Years ago when I was naive and passive, we were ordered by management to work
on Saturday to meet certain deadline. One guy simply said he cannot work on
Saturday. The manager with dumb look asked why, the guy replied I got plans.
Manager asked about other weekends, and this guy simply replied I got plans.
Manager didn't know how to respond he left. Afaik, the guy never got in
trouble. But rest of the team that worked Saturday complained about this guy
being not a team player and how he should not be software developer if he
cannot do a little bit of crunch time. I didn't know better I thought I was
hero for putting in extra work. Of course, a few years later we were laid off.
I learned my lessons.

Sometimes, I wonder if there is some sort of conspiracy by big businesses to
spread narrative that anyone can find a better job if they don't like their
job. Crunch time is normal, abusive policies are normal, etc

------
tareqak
Maybe Facebook should buy Squatty Potties and dietary fibre for their
employees [0]? I have a Squatty Potty and I recommend it to everyone. At the
very least, I find their infomercial-style ads entertaining.

[0] [https://www.squattypotty.com/](https://www.squattypotty.com/)

Afterthought:

What is the dollar value benefit that these moderators offer Facebook such
that their time has to be measured so precisely?

I would assume that a CEO’s time is even more valuable both in terms of cost
and expected benefit/impact. Why doesn’t Facebook’s board get Mark Zuckerburg
to account for every millisecond of his time right down to how much time he
spends in the bathroom? If all this time adds up for these moderators, then
why not for a CEO?

~~~
na85
>If all this time adds up for these moderators, then why not for a CEO?

There are different sets of rules for members of different castes.

~~~
dlivingston
I've never heard of the caste system as applied to economic standing, but
that's an interesting idea and perhaps worth exploring.

------
michaelmcdonald
"Bathroom break. Pooped. Extended delay due to girth of feces. Required
additional straining and pressure to successfully pass."

~~~
pssflops
Welp. Time to flush the logs.

~~~
the_snooze
When rotating the logs, do they go down clockwise, or counterclockwise?

~~~
gherkinnn
Depending on what side of the planet you’re on.

