'I Monitor My Staff With Software That Takes Screenshots' (bbc.com) 151
AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Shibu Philip admits he knows what it's like to "maybe waste a bit of time at work." Shibu is the founder of Transcend -- a small London-based firm that buys beauty products wholesale and re-sells them online. For the last year and a half he has used Hubstaff software to track his workers' hours, keystrokes, mouse movements and websites visited. With seven employees based in India, he says the software ensures "there is some level of accountability" and helps plug the time difference. "I know myself. [You can] take an extra 10-minute break here or there. It's good to have an automatic way of monitoring what [my employees] are up to," says Shibu. "By looking at screenshots and how much time everyone is taking on certain tasks, I know if they're following procedures. "And, if they're doing better than I expected, I also study the photos and ask them to share that knowledge with the rest of the team so we can all improve," he says.
US-based Hubstaff says its number of UK customers is up four times year-on-year since February. Another company called Sneek offers technology that takes photos of workers through their laptop and uploads them for colleagues to see. Photos can be taken as often as every minute, although it describes itself as a communication platform. Its co-founder, Del Currie, told the BBC that it had seen a five-fold increase in its number of users during lockdown, taking the firm to almost 20,000 in total.
US-based Hubstaff says its number of UK customers is up four times year-on-year since February. Another company called Sneek offers technology that takes photos of workers through their laptop and uploads them for colleagues to see. Photos can be taken as often as every minute, although it describes itself as a communication platform. Its co-founder, Del Currie, told the BBC that it had seen a five-fold increase in its number of users during lockdown, taking the firm to almost 20,000 in total.
Huh? (Score:3)
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The "sales going well for some company" is the software monitoring company used to monitor employees. It seems pretty clear to me.
Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
I'm assuming everyone that posts on Slashdot during working hours will not be in favour of this kind of monitoring!
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Tip: If you don't wear clothes, they won't monitor your webcam.
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Tip: If you don't wear clothes, they won't monitor your webcam.
First time they see me masturbating, they'll stop monitoring my webcam.
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That one might not work out in quite the same way as you expect.
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Be careful, they could claim sexual harassment on you. If they notify you that they will be using video camera on you, and you while working from home should maintain a professional business standard. Going to work undressed would still be like flashing yourself in the office.
While at work, I dress the same way I do at the Office, I don't have my company spying on me, but it is a way for me to help separate my mind from work, vs being at home a place I suppose to relax in.
Now granted while I am at home, I
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While at work, I dress the same way I do at the Office
Me too. T-shirt and cargo pants/shorts, whether I'm in the office or at home, working or not working. I dress the same when I go to meet with partners or clients, or give talks at conferences, or participate in standards committees, whatever. I do make sure my t-shirt and pants don't have any holes in them. Well, no big holes. Usually. Okay, okay, sometimes I don't notice when half a butt cheek is hanging out, so sue me.
Isn't not having to care about what you wear the reason people get into software?
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Yeah, this.
It only works if you pretend you're a nudist and that you're completely unoffended by being nude or being seen while nude.
Otherwise, it would be like flashing the security camera in the break room; if you want to do that, you have to act casual and just change clothes in front of it, if you look at the camera while you swing it around and do a dance, you might end up having to find out what your lawyer thinks of all this.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
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My boss is great. My boss is wonderful. He is the smartest boss I've ever had. My boss is awesome.
Stephen Miller? ... is that you?
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There is a difference from taking a quick break, (especially with many working from home, who no longer can have water cooler chats). While some bosses would use this to try to make sure they are working all the time. Others would be less worried about posting on Slashdot or catching up on a Facebook feed. For 15 minutes. Especially if they are able to keep their numbers up. What they would like to know, is if I see someone stuck on the same line of code, or on one module, where they may need help.
Howev
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Well monitoring you like that is extremely intrusive...
What they really need to do, is judge your results - are you completing your projects by their due dates? Are you completing them to a high enough standard?
That's what matters, not the number of hours you're sat at your desk...
The more capable staff will do their work more quickly and have more time for breaks, the less capable staff are likely to be working constantly to achieve the same level of results as the more capable staff. This situation is also self perpetuating, as without regular breaks our ability to concentrate suffers greatly so we end up delivering inferior and less efficient work etc.
At the end of the day you hired these staff to do a particular job, so long as they are doing this job to the standard required then you should let them get on with it and not interfere.
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I have to wonder if there is monitoring software for cell phones. Not to crack the encryption to your provider, but to identify phones used and their location, to see if people are using a cell phone a ton.
Any relation to Mr Jeremy Bentham, Mr Philip? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those aren't new ideas, you know. Thankfully, though, they're prohibited by law at least in some more civilised countries than your United Kingdom.
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Yeah, this is rather creepy software and should be illegal
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Or at a minimum employees notified.
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Yeah I wonder about that. Would probably be illegal in the UK, but his staff are in India. Being UK based I'm not sure what the rules are exactly.
Re:Any relation to Mr Jeremy Bentham, Mr Philip? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah I wonder about that. Would probably be illegal in the UK, but his staff are in India. Being UK based I'm not sure what the rules are exactly.
I am not sure about the UK either. In some other European countries, this is completely illegal even with employee consent.
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So here's my question. On a company computer, while you are on paid time, why should it be prohibited ? I mean, its just company work on the computer that you are working on...and the company can keep records right of their own work.
If an engineer/foreman at a factory supervised how workers were doing on their assembly machine by strolling through the factory floor, no one would be up in arms. I mean, it's considered the duty of the foreman to do so.
So why can't an office manager monitor a subordinate emplo
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That is obviously a spurious argument. The factory floor analogy to hidden software on an office computer would be posting a sign at the entrance of the building saying the premises are monitored by camera and then planting hidden cameras in someone's work area to have a constant feed viewing them from every angle and talking to them about it later whenever they fail to act like the paradigm example of someone at work. For office workers, the foreman walking around the factory floor inspecting the work is
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"At best, it would be like the foreman coming to your work area and watching you all day long heckling your performance. That is clearly harassment. Now whether we pass laws prohibiting it or we just wait for the jackass that is doing that to get fired and/or the company that hires foremen like that to go out of business is another matter. (I favor the latter -- just because something is wrong doesn't mean the best way to handle it is to make it illegal.)"
Make it is illegal. If the company was successful ra
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If the foreman was hovering over your shoulder 8 hours a day it would probably be an issue too.
Re:Any relation to Mr Jeremy Bentham, Mr Philip? (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed.
Ultimately the problem is that management doesn't know how to manage most of the time. Their proxy for management is observation, with the theory being "I know what work looks like when I see it."
When I'm stuck on coding bits, most of the time what I need to do is to go do something else. My brain does great work when I stop thinking about a problem and distract it for a bit. I solved a rather tricky problem the other morning by realizing I was scruffy and going and shaving. Sitting at my computer for 10 minutes instead wouldn't have solved the problem, most likely.
With remote work, the inability of management to focus on what's important is really obvious. We started with daily work logging, and are now shifting to twice daily work logging after 6 months. There's no discussion on productivity, on assessing the results of work, or anything of meaning. It's just bureaucratic non-work so that managers have their proxy for looking at people working. Nobody is going to say that they got nothing accomplished for a day.
Everyone is going to increase the level of detail on less productive days to fill space, they're going to shift the reporting of more productive days into less productive days, and they're going to under-report productive days to make sure that's not an expectation they're setting for every day. Anyone with a functioning brain can see this.
Managers need to stop thinking that seeing people doing things is the equivalent to seeing work getting done. That works in manufacturing, but not in any job that requires thinking.
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For one you aren't going to see my nude wife or self on a cam at the office. Moreover this is of questionable benefit to employers who can simply look at work output and is highly invasive of privacy. What is odd is people suggesting this is new.
Highly insecure micromanagers have been stalking employees to feel empowered for at least 15 years now.
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For the same reason work washroom have doors. Things you do at work on a work computer could be private. Just like you use work facility to poop, nothing wrong with it, yet requires privacy, that computer is nothing more than a facility to enable work.
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As usual with this sort of thing, we have a nebulous threshold of acceptability that hasn't really been thought about simply because the limitations were based on simple practicality.
This isn't one foreman who looks over the line, this is a foreman stationed half a meter behind each worker for the whole shift. This is the difference between a couple security cameras at the entrance and the panopticon.
Symmetry is another factor. This software has the foreman wrapped in a cloak of invisibility. Frankly, that'
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No.
The article in question doesn't say anything about photos thru webcams. It talks about screenshots, keystroke monitoring, mouse movements, and websites visited.
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Another company called Sneek offers technology that takes photos of workers through their laptop and uploads them for colleagues to see.
Re:Any relation to Mr Jeremy Bentham, Mr Philip? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every single work environment I've seen allows for reasonable personal use of company computers (e.g. quickly opening your bank account and seeing if your paycheck was deposited, or checking lab results of your doctor visit, is "reasonable"; as stupid as that may sound, everyone has done something similar to that on a company computer). You don't expect privacy on the device, but there's a reasonable assumption that nobody else is viewing your bank or health record details.
Once they start taking screenshots that humans look at, they're violating those assumptions (and I'd imagine there are regulations regarding actively viewing someone's bank or health records without their explicit consent).
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"and I'd imagine there are regulations regarding actively viewing someone's bank or health records without their explicit consent"
Actually in the US your employer already has access to your health records. Why do you think your insurance is a group policy?
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"You don't expect privacy on the device, but there's a reasonable assumption that nobody else is viewing your bank or health record details."
GTFO...If you do this stuff with company resources you are a fucking idiot. We all have our own devices in our pocket and at home, why would you use one you dont own?
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regulations regarding actively viewing someone's bank or health records without their explicit consent
So you work at a corporation with the The Internet and think that the little lock symbol in your browser URL ACTUALLY means that the company proxy can't read what you're sending back and forth? REALLY? And you're posting on slashdot? Eternal September.
If it's actually private you shouldn't be doing it on work equipment. Reasonable things should be allowed (calling your kids doctor, calling a friend for after-hours get-together, etc) but then thinking those aren't potentially monitored? That's a usef
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Normally that difference is rather quickly fixed with some paperwork used to accept employment and/or the ability to work from home.
There is often stipulations on that you will need a private, secure location, that you are to follow the companies policies for appropriate decorum. Where you job may require the use of video at any time, so you should be prepared and presentable.
A long time ago, I use to work as a Consultant work paid me $500 a month on top of my normal salary for Automobile upkeep, as I woul
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Banned in the UK - his staff are in India
Some people should not be bosses (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who does this to their employees either doesn't trust their own hiring abilities or doesn't trust anyone because they're a sociopath, full stop. Either way, this person sounds like the boss from hell and if he keeps this up he'll find he has a revolving door of staff with the attendant consequences to productivity and his companies bottom line.
Re:Some people should not be bosses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some people should not be bosses (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the worst kind of micromanagement - the kind where the manager actually does nothing but watching over the shoulder of his staff. He is the most unproductive person of the whole group and does not even realize it.
He also kills productivity of his workers, because whatever they do, they always as themselves first "what would the boss think". That makes a sizable portion of their mental capability unavailable for their actual work. There are other negative effects, all well documented.
that is the only work that the PHB can do they don (Score:2)
that is the only work that the PHB can do they don't know how to do the real work but do do know how to work the numbers to the get the Manger bonus
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He is the most unproductive person of the whole group and does not even realize it.
Or he does realize it but does it anyway to somehow justify his salary/existance
Re:Some people should not be bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
if he keeps this up he'll...
be found dead in a dumpster.
Actually happened to a manager of a company that was a client of the company I worked for. I'd met the guy six months earlier and I wasn't surprised at all.
Don't treat people like shit.
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if he keeps this up he'll...
be found dead in a dumpster.
At least all his staff will have a great alibi.
Re:Some people should not be bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
I was an IT contractor for a company kind of like this.
They put in a bunch of hidden cameras in the office space and didn't notify the employees, however, the contractor they hired managed to nuke the power to the server rack during the installation process and come Monday it was a fire drill to get things up and running again. In the course of the finger pointing, I just pointed out that the power had been shut off and that a bunch of new camera wiring had been installed to the managers on site. Of course they had no idea about the cameras, but within hours the entire place new that new cameras had been installed, foiling the "hidden" part, and I guess really embarrassing the owner and his hench-woman who had to send a memo out detailing some kind of made-up security concern.
They also had a spyware package they would load on employee computers from time to time -- the basic stuff, screen monitoring, URL tracking, etc. They had me do the installs and they were always real hush hush about it, probably because it had zero to do with "performance" it was all just BS politics and shopping for a way to term people for cause they didn't like.
My take is that companies like this just end up with the worst employees, slightly too good to fire but bad enough they don't have any options to move elsewhere. It's like black hole for marginal workers.
Re:Some people should not be bosses (Score:5, Insightful)
My take is that companies like this just end up with the worst employees, slightly too good to fire but bad enough they don't have any options to move elsewhere. It's like black hole for marginal workers.
Indeed. You have to trust your workers. If you cannot trust them, no amount of surveillance will fix that. If you can trust them, adding surveillance will remove that trust, because they wills top trusting and respecting you. The whole thing only makes sense in the deranged mind of an authoritarian. All the facts say it is stupid, but these people crave control above all else. They can be found in many places. A very early implementation is the idea of an all seeing, all knowing and vengeful "god". There is no better way to get an utterly static society where nobody tries to fix any problem or make any advances.
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He's also bragging about being an ineffective manager.
If you're micromanaging like that you're doing a bad job and working way too hard.
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He's also bragging about being an ineffective manager.
If you're micromanaging like that you're doing a bad job and working way too hard.
Indeed. In some sense, he is an "authoritarian leader". These people are so obsessed with control of their underlings, they get nothing real done anymore. And they basically kill their own life in addition.
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You can govern by fear or by loyalty.
I bet he'd spend less money and get better results treating his employees well, checking in once a day, and going golfing.
And everyone would be happier!
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He is not governing by fear. He is governing by control. That does not work well. Fear is an optimization where you replace control by you by self-control and just need to maintain that fear with considerably less effort.
That said, the two approaches you mention are the two known to work well, I agree on that. And yes, loyalty is the one that works best by far. It is, of course, a two-way street and loyalty needs to be earned and cannot simply be demanded. (Another thing these fuckups do not get. They make
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Additionally when you rule by fear your authority ends whenever your underlings know they're unaccountable and they do have the advantage here because they have all day to discover and exploit weaknesses in your accounting. Also they're more numerous so they'll spread this information to trusted peers.
The manager is placed on a never ending treadmill of playing detective and the employees will refuse to work independently and demand to be micromanaged as anything that's a mistake in the eyes of the manager
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But if you compare to a call center type of mentality, every call is logged for duration, effectiveness, and often temperament for starters. You want to have the metrics to understand who is doing a good job, and yes who is slacking off.
With WFH, we are struggling with some of our junior engineers and their effectiveness. They are missing deadlines, accuracy is dropping, and their
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Sounds like you need to assist the junior engineers with the transition, and leave the senior ones to it.
We had the opposite problem, deadlines would be met by people who were working from home and missed when people were in the office. It all came down to distractions, people in the office were never able to concentrate as they were constantly being distracted.
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Unfortunately there are also many junior staff who are simply not disciplined enough to work completely autonomously. People who will either one day learn to have more responsibility, or never make it anywhere in the industry.
My company has a number of basic roles which would be a waste to focus our more senior staff on, but are perfect for training our next line of apprentices - people at the beginning of their careers & are as yet unproven. Less than half make it much beyond a year. They usually all s
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I will be honest, having some better insight to what is going on would be helpful in figuring out solutions to improve things.
Have you tried asking them and listening to what they say?
If you have and that hasn't worked, there are one of two possibilities:
1) They don't trust you enough to be honest, and there's your problem.
2) You didn't actually listen.
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What a “big brother” tool could potentially help us is to trend their behavior to a point where we can be better at inte
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Modern slavery (Score:2)
...and the worst thing is, this psychopath doesn't even realize it, maybe related to Dominic Cummings?
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He even thinks hes a good boss;
"I know myself. [You can] take an extra 10-minute break here or there.
yup, once a day, you're allowed a ten minute break but not too many or else he'll notice. I wonder how much time he spends monitoring instead of doing his own work?
You spelled Jeremy Corbyn incorrectly though, so bad a manager he used to have shouting argments with his staff. John McDonnell and him stopped speaking to each other after one shouting match over Antisemitism (whether to sack Hodge)
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I can think of a lot of good reasons.
First of it you have a stick no personal use policy. Most which places don't, ie you are allowed to check the news briefly, make sure you deposit cleared etc. (however in advisable for the employee this may actually be).
You run risk your screen shots are going to end up including information that might in fact be subject (speaking for the US here, aware this is a UK article thanks) to things like HIPP, FERPA, etc. Is your system designed to meet those obligations? There
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Huh? Why? On a company computer, while you are on paid time, why should it be prohibited ? I mean, its just company work on the computer that they provide you right?
If an engineer/foreman at a factory supervised how workers were doing on their assembly machine by strolling through the factory floor, no one would be up in arms. I mean, it's considered the duty of the foreman to do so.
So why can't an office manager monitor a subordinate employee working at his tool ?
1. It has a significant negative health effect on the workers due to stress
2. It is also very, very stupid because it _decreases_ employee performance significantly
3. (This argument may be incomprehensible to you:) It is a massive infringement on human dignity
And it's cheaper than a bullwhip (Score:3)
Especially one that reaches to India.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe it's with the fact that a "London-based firm" can have much of its actual workforce in India where the so-called management might have seen so little of them it could barely pick them out in a police lineup.
Well, we've decided as a society that anybody who worries about that is a vile racist, right?
Or does not that not apply, if it's IT, for some reason? I can never figure out the Slashdot zeitgeist on this one.
No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my take, but if as a boss you're not willing to give your employees enough freedom to operate without literally spying on them every 10 minutes, I'm probably not interested in working for you. It just tells me that you don't trust your employees. Even if I'm on the receiving end of praise based upon the screenshots ("I see from the screenshots you have only been on slashdot 13 times in the last month. Well done..."), I think I'd be pretty creeped out.
If screenshots are your metric for success, then I also question the metrics. It seems at best to me to be a very imperfect proxy for productivity, or maybe more of an indicator of "duty cycle". Some workers are extremely productive with a duty cycle of 90% on/10% off, while others are just as productive with a 50% on/50% off duty cycle. A great way to alienate and frustrate a highly productive "50/50" employee is to tell them that they would be more productive if they had less down time and more up time.
I'm lucky that my employer gives me a lot of freedom. This metric wouldn't work so well at our company (except for maybe the receptionist and those in our business office), since most of us are on our feet in the lab most of the day.
Re:No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my take, but if as a boss you're not willing to give your employees enough freedom to operate without literally spying on them every 10 minutes, I'm probably not interested in working for you.
RTFS. He's taking advantage of the disadvantaged. If he were willing to pay people in the first world what they are worth then he wouldn't have to do any of this shit, but because he's dipping into a well of desperate people he's got to look out harder for people trying to game the system and get paid for not actually working. These people are just trying to survive so what they are doing is understandable. What he's doing is unsustainable.
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" If he were willing to pay people in the first world what they are worth then he wouldn't have to do any of this shit, "
Bingo.
Re: No Thanks (Score:2)
I'm not seeing anywhere a discussion of "desperate people". If so, I'm not sure that an employer that takes advantage of desperate people is a particularly good boss in the first place.
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I don't think the 'survival' of those folks depends on them NOT doing the job they were hired to do. It might depend on them accepting a job for 'slave wages' but slacking off is not a requirement for survival.
However you point is largely correct if he could-certainly pay more and get higher quality labor. Its pretty basic stuff employees who feel their compensation isnt consistent with the value they provide less some reasonable premium for the capital risks you are taking to provide them the opportunity t
Work Computers Are For Work (Score:3)
Always assume everything you do on a work device as being monitored and audited.
Re:Work Computers Are For Work (Score:4, Insightful)
No, no, NO.
While it's true that work computers are for work, it's also true that employees are human beings, not robots. As human beings, we NEED distractions from time to time. We NEED to goof off now and then. We NEED to go over to the coffee machine to chat, or check the latest headlines, or whatever it is that makes YOU tick.
Clearly, there should be limits. Making an occasional personal phone call on the clock, no problem. Chatting constantly, that's a problem.
Personally, if I had an employer like this, I'd be spending every spare moment looking for a better job.
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Nothing you've said invalidates the GP's post. They didn't say anything at all about not goofing off, they simply said to not do it on company equipment, because you have to assume that their stuff is always being monitored.
Which, if you ask me, is excellent advice.
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Yes, always assume what you are doing is monitored. With that assumption, it should still be fine to use your work computer to check headlines, or look up a contractor to fix your AC, or whatever. The point isn't so much about the equipment, but about the employer's attitude towards minor personal interruptions. It's hard these days to find an employer that treats people like people, but such companies do exist. THOSE companies will get more productivity out of their people, even if they do check their face
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Always assume everything you do on a work device as being monitored and audited.
Here, that would require a court order. Without it, it may land the people doing it in jail.
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only when your crew is 5000Km away? (Score:2)
Apparently I am the only one here to consider this kind of thing appears indispensable only because the guy is hiring people at the other end of the world, that he never met and whose language he doesn't speak.
Do this, and you may find you need that.
Some day that M. Philip will be remotely hired by Chinese people, that won't even meet him and of course they'll spy on him too.
While in my backyard I'll continue working with, you know, 'indigens'.
Paid indigens, that may then buy Transcend products -because the
Right. (Score:2)
Uh-huh. Sure. That's why you're watching their every move. To catch them exceeding expectations.
Hubstaff may be doing well, but I bet Transcend is heading down the tubes. If you're micromanaging your staff to this degree then you're the one wasting time.
When the boss is too busy running people to run the business then the business isn't
Fuck that shit (Score:2)
There is a cheaper way to check employee's work (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called looking at their results. If an employee is getting their work done in a satisfactory amount of time, then what's the problem? If one of my employees takes an extra half hour at lunch every day but produces great results, I'm not going to get on their case. Happy employees tend to produce better results.
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What you're saying is exactly the way remote working should be managed the problem is that a certain segment of the population is authoritarian and can't bear the thought that someone might be gaming the system even if the people in question are exceptional employees.
It's like the people that obsess over the 0.1% of people gaming welfare while ignoring the fact that 99.9% of the people on it really need it and even with it barely scrape by.
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Outcome Based Performance (Score:5, Insightful)
If you measure your staff by what they produce, you actually measure their "worth" to the company. Tracking things like what they click on, how much time they spend in XYZ application, how many minutes they visit the restroom, etc offers no insight into productivity. As an employee, I have no issue with my employer using data to review my productivity, but this kind of data offers no insight in that regard. Leadership fail.
If an employee can't be trusted to actually do their job, then they probably shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Leadership fail.
Best,
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Indeed. This person has the mind-set of a sadist slave-owner (not the role-playing kind). He does not care about his slaves productivity, he does care that they have no personal time while working and that they are miserable. Completely irrational, because what counts for the company is what people produce, not how many of their lifetime they gave to the company. Hence this person is not even a good capitalist. Good capitalists realize that workers treated better work better. This person is just a compulsiv
Hubstaff is a Pain (Score:3)
My former employer used Hubstaff and it was a disaster. Everyone became so paranoid that they stopped doing good work just to look busy for the metrics. A few folks started bringing in their own computers and using them as a second machine to stay off company radar. Build good systems in place including performance metrics and you will never need this kind of software.
There's two problems with this (Score:3)
1. It's legal.
2. People keep falling for the oft-repeated lie that business can be trusted to set reasonable boundaries, then self-regulate.
A true nightmare (Score:3)
"And, if they're doing better than I expected, I also study the photos and ask them to share that knowledge with the rest of the team so we can all improve," he says.
Even just doing your job while being spied on isn't sufficient to avoid being targeted for further harassment by this guy. If you work hard you will be targeted for extra work. Logically, effective workers should reduce their productivity to stay below the radar.
Framing coworkers (Score:2)
Interesting. I'm different. I wrap guys like you.. (Score:2)
... in barbed wire and shoot them into the sun.
Maybe we should meet sometime and discuss our opinions on how to deal with certain people?
And you are so popular, I bet (Score:2)
Appropriate response? (Score:2)
This type and level of employee monitoring deserves an appropriate response to the person doing it. If local, slashed tyres in the parking lot at the office might be good. If remote, perhaps a surprise load of malware on his personal PC. One sneaky malicious trick merits another in return.
Why would you violate your employees? (Score:2)
What would it tell my boss that I'm reading and commenting on Slashdot, Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon?
The only few metrics that matter are hitting and exceeding your deadlines (when fair) and the quality of the work that's delivered within that
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I keep a journal because some employers are nuts. Having documented what I did every day of the week for years tends to shut down spurious claims of how many trips I make to the bathroom. (yea, WTF)
P.S. I'm on break right now. sipping my coffee while watching my inbox for a reply to my thread. Doing 3 things at once right there.
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Monitoring staff this way suggests some things. (Score:2)
If you can't monitor your employees through *performance metrics*, what are they doing for you in the first place? As long as your workers don't break the law with their surfing habits, why should you care? There are things out there that scan/block the IPs of malware, CP, etc. without being nearly so intrusive.
Also, if you can't trust your employees, why not? Are you underpaying them to the point where they would be tempted to screw you, or are you just paranoid? Maybe you just suck at hiring, and h
Re: Wimp (Score:2)
Apparently nobody complies as there are no staffed real firms left.
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I'm always 1 step ahead (Score:2)
I dress up as a Doberman and shit on the CEO's desk.