This strikes me as an attempt to renege on employment agreements to allow WFH. I'd bet it's either to do soft layoffs, or get people back in the office to justify real estate.
She's got annual positive reviews 8 years running, and has been with the company for over a decade.
The question that really cuts to the chase is: Why does it require a photograph of the employee's face every 3 minutes in order to determine if they're completing their work? Why does that make any sense at all? What exactly is the employee doing that there are no metrics at all. There's nobody monitoring work loads or task completion? Nobody is checking for accuracy? There are no clients or customers or community members complaining about poor service? How were they able to determine positive reviews for almost a decade before? Why is your management so incompetent, and why is the price of that incompetence your employee's privacy?
whstl 2 hours ago [-]
> What exactly is the employee doing that there are no metrics at all
Anything that needs managers to actually go and check.
It's not that they trust the employee to work with zero supervision, it's just that most managers and execs don't want to do any kind of work.
The webcam checks are pure projection.
sssilver 2 hours ago [-]
Aren't the managers subject to the same 3-minute shots themselves?
whstl 1 hours ago [-]
They should be, but it still beats working for a living.
whaleofatw2022 2 hours ago [-]
Not necessarily.
In an odd sort of irony, I know that at least one WITCH in fact gives feedback to the employees about their monitoring directly, versus other 'solutions' where only the manager and/or HR gets access to the system's reporting.
mannanj 2 hours ago [-]
Absolutely not. Tell me a single company where the same executives are subject to the invasive privacy metrics.
Even like Facebook: the AI training stuff was applied to software engineers and staff but definitely not executives.
sssilver 1 hours ago [-]
I’ve never been an executive but I’ve worked as an Engineering Manager and a Senior EM of various levels at big shot software engineering companies and all the same rules always applied to me as literally every other employee I managed, directly or indirectly.
vkou 1 minutes ago [-]
An EM in a software firm is the equivalent of a lead clerk in a grocery.
delfinom 41 minutes ago [-]
Not sure there's much value in training the AI on the executives playing golf. Lol
cowlevel 7 minutes ago [-]
Executive is the job most easily replaced by AI, that's why executives think it can replace all jobs - projection.
Exoristos 45 minutes ago [-]
Many traditional managers manage with their gut. They distrust metrics because they don't understand the work being done and because they suspect every worker is doing as little as possible. When workers are onsite, these managers gauge how to rank them largely based on their affect toward the manager. When workers are offsite, managers of this type are frustrated and suspicious and adopt naive monitoring measures as a grasp at control.
tripleee 2 hours ago [-]
unfortunately keyboard and mouse tracking, screen tracking, "what apps are open" etc. are very common for remote work so I can totally see this being looked at in a similar way
gamblor956 18 minutes ago [-]
It's to confirm the remote employee is behind the computer. It's not always necessary that they be doing work if there's no work at that particular moment for them to do, but in that case they're still being paid for their time and for some reason these companies don't want their employees doing something else, like going to a baseball game. It's basically no different from an onsite working being at their desk even if they have nothing to do.
It's also the logical corporate response to Younger Millenial remote workers bragging about "working" from paradise instead of actually working. As to why management wants it...this is literally something that management has wanted dating back to the rise of civilization. They have power and want to exercise it even if it's not necessary or efficient.
The logical labor response should be to not work for companies that require remote employees to submit to constant visual supervision.
ebbi 2 hours ago [-]
It feels like the Covid lockdown WFH times where managers mandated everyone has their webcams on. Having been in some of these management conversations, it was purely to ensure no one is just chilling on their bed.
Pretty dumb, as at that time not everyone was had a home office set up, and one can work from their bed perfectly fine, especially when someone wants to put their feet up for a bit during a team meeting.
cowlevel 6 minutes ago [-]
The bed thing is about mandatory discomfort, not about how well you can do the work. A lot of office politics is about the need for control.
antonymoose 31 minutes ago [-]
During COVID times I witnessed the most absurd pissing match - our CTO (and founder) was taking calls from his boat at anchor (camera on, palm trees in the back drop) while was working from a coffee shop(!)
The CEO tried publicly dressing down the CTO on a large call because his workspace must be “too distracting to work from.”
hosh 1 hours ago [-]
I have sometimes had to work in bed while running a low fever.
I do that because I believe in the mission and work is assessed by outcome.
The flip side too — I learned well before COVID that the Kanban principle of “make work visible” applies to WFH
firefoxd 3 hours ago [-]
Once I had an issue where I had to request access to a 3rd party vendor URL from my work machine. IT was telling me that I already had access, and that I had accessed the URL several times. Weird, because I was getting a dns resolve error. To prove that he wasn't making it up, the IT guy shared his screen with me.
Ever since I saw his screen and the level of details in my activity log on the work machine, I don't even access example.com on their device anymore.
I'm sure this workers already has invasive tracking software on her work machines. Now the company was just trying to fire her without it counting as a layoff.
flowerlad 3 hours ago [-]
> Ever since I saw his screen and the level of details in my activity log on the work machine
Is that using Zscaler? What level of detail did it have?
firefoxd 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, we use zscaler. It even included the list of AI prompts I've written and in-app activities.
flowerlad 2 hours ago [-]
If you're working remotely, the solution is to have a personal laptop next to your work laptop, and use the personal laptop for AI, email, apps etc., even if it is for work (unless you are using a service that costs money). Your employer should be fine with this arrangement because all they care about is that their data is not exfiltrated.
sippingabonedry 2 hours ago [-]
> even if it is for work
> Your employer should be fine with this
> all they care about is that their data is not exfiltrated.
Your suggestion for dealing with an employer that only cares if data is exfiltrated, is to... exfiltrate their data?
flowerlad 1 hours ago [-]
No. I didn't suggest exfiltration.
cowlevel 5 minutes ago [-]
Yes you did - you suggested passing employer data through a non employer laptop
freeone3000 2 hours ago [-]
That is almost textbook data exfiltration, with company data on a personally-owned device. This is almost certainly forbidden by policy, and if it isn’t, it should be.
Do work stuff on work hardware, do non-work stuff on non-work hardware.
flowerlad 1 hours ago [-]
If you are asking ChatGPT a coding question does it matter if it is done on a work machine or a personal machine?
A company that monitors every keystroke using Zscaler can be presumed to have restrictions on stuff that they care about, such as apps that should only be accessed from the corporate network.
gamblor956 10 minutes ago [-]
Never, ever, ever ever use your personal laptop for work. Never use your personal mobile for work unless you have MDM software.
No employer with a functional legal department would ever be okay with an employee using their personal devices for work (unless they have MDM software on the devices partition the work data).
Using your personal device(s) work for make them fair game for discovery in lawsuits, even after you have left the company. It is also generally a violation of state and federal laws and/or procurement contracts in multiple fields if you work in finance, health, or anything defense-related.
If an employer ever mandates that you use your own device for mandatory work-related functions, find a new job. It's the number one red flag that the company is a shit-show and indicates that there are a lot of other rules/regulations/etc that the company doesn't care about either.
ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago [-]
You may be surprised to discover that many WFH/remote jobs are BYOD!
I held a WFH and BYOD job in various roles for over 4 years. It began less than a month into the pandemic lockdowns. It would not have been WFH if not for COVID-19. In that regard, I was highly blessed.
The recruiting process was notably vague. I was asked if I had a computer that I could run software on. It turned out that they really wanted us to be running Windows (Apple Silicon was incompatible) but I was running Ubuntu and nobody really batted an eye, because I ensured it was interoperable.
We were never required to install MDM or any corporate software. They never spied on us or collected any data from our BYOD. Any metrics were collected server-side at their web apps. I felt highly trusted. But there was indeed no "work laptop" and we could either BYOD, or forget having a job at all.
This was also during a period of rapid, widespread MFA adoption. Our managers were keeping us in the loop whenever MFA was implemented for corporate systems. Late in the game, our 3rd-party payroll implemented MFA very poorly. I informed the management that they were on thin ice, because they had irrevocably encroached onto a device which was reserved for personal use only. I told them, it is unacceptable to require a smartphone for a role that neither provides a smartphone, nor notified us in advance that it's required for keeping our jobs.
I kept scrupulous separation of work-related data and activities. I had separate accounts on each device. For work, I logged out of my personal account and logged into a work-only account. Unix permissions handled the rest. Sometimes, it was darned inconvenient.
I came to understand that if my employer were ever sued or involved in criminal prosecution, my devices could've been subject to subpoena and confiscation. This was the really crazy part. I had often used personal devices, and accounts, and my phone, for volunteering at church. We had no choice there, either. But you can easily imagine church, or a publicly-traded company, to become embroiled in some legal action. And if my devices were deemed evidence, I'd forfeit them, possibly for good! Thankfully, this has not come to pass.
There is probably no guarantee, even if you're 100% using employer-dedicated hardware at home, that your personal devices wouldn't be swept up in a subpoena or search-and-seizure. But you should always consider long and hard, with any BYOD situation, that mingling your personal stuff with your employer's stuff is playing with fire. Don't get burned.
userbinator 2 hours ago [-]
Fortunately all my employment contracts thus far have been "the company shall provide all necessary equipment for work" and prohibition of using personal devices, which I have cited a few times when asked to do otherwise. Few people seem to understand the legal implications or downplay them, but IMHO it's best to keep a strict "firewall" between company and personal.
jen20 32 minutes ago [-]
The timing seems a little off - Apple Silicon was only announced 6 months after the COVID lockdowns started.
Overall the point stands: the separation of personal vs work devices must be absolute.
dannyw 1 hours ago [-]
This is terrible advice. Do all your work activity on work devices. Do all your personal activity on personal devices.
flowerlad 46 minutes ago [-]
Not when a company monitors every keystroke. There need to be a balance between personal privacy and employer's needs to prevent data exfiltration.
MiroslavPokorny 3 hours ago [-]
You should never use a work computer for anything personal from banking to even reading wikipedia. Its just dumb.
teaearlgraycold 3 hours ago [-]
Good advice. But most work computers I’ve used were handed to me fresh from the Apple Store and they requested I wipe them before returning at the end of my employment. Not everyone works in places with an IT department, device management systems, etc.
dantillberg 2 hours ago [-]
While parent may have indeed been provided an ordinary stock Apple device, Apple's "Automated Device Enrollment" program can be used to administer/manage devices even when shipped directly from Apple to employees. I got a laptop replaced at a former company, shipped directly from Apple to me. I expected to have to reach out to IT to get it bootstrapped with their management tools, but the OS install process did this automatically.
wildzzz 1 hours ago [-]
Every work iPhone I've received has been factory sealed but instantly connects to my corporate identity the moment it catches cell service.
mostlysimilar 2 hours ago [-]
Doesn't stop them from legally mandating you give them the device as-is and retain all data on it.
My philosophy: if the hardware doesn't belong to me I'm not doing anything personal on it, no exceptions.
3 hours ago [-]
jacquesm 3 hours ago [-]
That is an insanely bad look for that employer. This kind of invasive employee monitoring is treating people like property rather than as human beings. The problem is that the power dynamic between employers and employees in many countries is such that they can make the most outrageous demands and people will have to comply because there is always another person ready to step into their shoes.
giantg2 3 hours ago [-]
"This kind of invasive employee monitoring is treating people like property rather than as human beings."
Exposing employment for what it is.
quantified 3 hours ago [-]
For that employer, it's going to be normal, and employees won't be looking. In the USA, managment dictates all terms of employment, take it or leave it.
iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago [-]
Omg, covid years brought such unimaginable seethe from management class that as a result I never bought into the conspiracy theories on it. The weird amount of anger on not being able to among other bright ideas 'manage by walking' drove some to the edge of madness. They are still angry and were all too happy when Musk declared that the wfh vacation is over.
pvaldes 2 hours ago [-]
And from that point, many companies sink like a rock as they can not retain the people able to work unsupervised and only keep the meek that need instructions for even going to the bathroom.
If the people fired had years of experience in the job and the new people hired don't, the company lose talent. Is bleeding money in an endless loop of training people just to let them go soon after that, has trained somebody to nurture their competitors, and some of this people could even make new companies out of spite and compete with their former boss.
jacquesm 2 hours ago [-]
I've haven't been properly employed for decades but if an employer tried a move like this I would be laughing at them. Not a chance, such idiocy.
ChrisMarshallNY 1 hours ago [-]
I think times have changed. I spent almost 27 years in a sort of "silo," and, when I came out into the modern tech world, I realized that the world had changed, very much, for the worse.
I guess the saddest thing, is that everyone just accepts this.
Fortunately, I had the means to retire, and I did.
I think it's about to happen again, but a lot faster, this time.
jacquesm 46 minutes ago [-]
It's the normalization of deviance thing all over again. The only reason I notice the deviation is extreme is because I haven't seen all the little steps in between.
markus92 2 hours ago [-]
There's been a lawsuit about this in Europe, couple years back. Employee won, breach of privacy according to Article 8 the European Convention of Human Rights. See https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63203945
hosh 1 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the employer is in violation of ADA laws, and whether exemption from monitoring is “reasonable accommodations”.
Not that I think the broader practice for monitoring remote workers is something I think is a good idea.
userbinator 2 hours ago [-]
I don't know the specifics of what her work involves, but why do companies still think what matters is how long their employees are sitting in front of a screen? I can't think of any jobs where that's directly correlated with productivity.[1] They could easily measure other metrics.
[1] Perhaps with the exception of adult webcam models, but that's an extreme edge-case where the lack of privacy is the job.
macintux 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder how many employer-provided laptops are secretly recording video or audio for WFH staff. You can tape over a webcam, but what do you do about a microphone you don't trust?
jacquesm 3 hours ago [-]
The problem with microphones is that unlike cameras they are absolutely impossible to detect. And then there are all these devices that look and act like another thing but they're also microphones. Microphony is so pervasive that it is harder to make something that does not record soundwaves than it is to make something that does.
mcsniff 2 hours ago [-]
Shut your work devices off at the end of the work day.
Your work-specific WiFi network can also be shut off at the same time.
Devices go in a sleeve or drawer in your desk, which is usually in a separate room.
You can also close the door.
If you need more work and personal life separation than this, you might need a new job.
wildzzz 1 hours ago [-]
Probably not many. I would not want to be recording the off-the-cuff conversations of my employees should those recordings be part of discovery in a lawsuit.
wafflemaker 2 hours ago [-]
In Silo people would run tap water to avoid being listened to.
Wonder if that helps.
harvey9 1 hours ago [-]
Any kind of competing noise can help but if I thought my work laptop was doing that then I would store it away from my home.
2 hours ago [-]
tamimio 2 hours ago [-]
It’s why I used to wipe out the whole OS and install linux plus the bootloader too, and justify it with my own set of toolset and custom settings for my work.
tough 3 hours ago [-]
white noise?
wg0 2 hours ago [-]
This should be illegal by law. Judge the performance by the outcome.
what 2 hours ago [-]
Companies usually pay you for your time and have an expectation that your butt is in a seat for a certain number of hours. Completing your work early generally does not mean that you can fuck off for the rest of the day or week.
etblg 2 minutes ago [-]
Ok but that's still stupid as shit so what's your point?
code_duck 48 minutes ago [-]
That's a problem with how companies see employment, rather than a description of how it should work. This leads to employees basically pretending to work, like in school how a teacher would assign us useless task sheets and call it "busy work".
SR2Z 54 minutes ago [-]
No. Your employment is most likely at-will, and if you are a salaried employee it's because you're evaluated on your output and not the time you spend in your seat.
This is a constructive dismissal. If she was hourly, sure, being on camera makes sense. But if you are salaried and some clown in HR decides that they want to make sure you're working 40 hours but WON'T pay you any overtime or judge you on your output, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
The outrage is justified. If it mattered for her job then no AI monitoring would be needed.
what 32 minutes ago [-]
At will has nothing to do with it.
Obviously there is no minimum number of hours you must work when salaried, but it’s obviously the expectation. You likely know this which is why you are against them tracking how much time you actually spend working. If they knew the work only took you 10 hours, would they still want to pay such an inflated salary?
cowlevel 3 minutes ago [-]
If it took 80 hours would they pay you more? Turnabout is fair play.
astura 35 minutes ago [-]
> if you are a salaried employee it's because you're evaluated on your output and not the time you spend in your seat
This is just patiently false, it's common for salaried employees to have required hours.
This is gross. It says a lot about a company that they feel like they have to spy on people. Also, I’d be ashamed to work for a company that creates spyware like this in the e first place.
mannanj 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah. and when I worked at capital one last year, the auto navigator division - my manager after not liking me tried to also fire me with a PIP and it started by asking me to come into the office in a specific work window.
after that, it changed to talking and speaking in a particular way in MRs and PRs (and "not" pushing back so much in them and being more agreeable). of course later the manager turned everything into "appease me" because whenever I would do my work and check off the boxes on the PIP he would say he couldn't see it because he didn't receive notice of it in the way he liked. Of course sharing in the pip review meetings weekly did not meet his needs to confirm "I did the things".
Employers will do anything to discriminate against you, legally or illegally, if it meets their leadership agendas. I especially have felt indian-pakistani hate and abuse during this process and was just so exhausted I never bothered to lawyer up.
j45 2 hours ago [-]
There’s a possibility that enough people ruin this for all the people doing it honestly. If it’s the case, there’s probably no fault of the employee.
It can be hard to remember, but companies are usually giving money in exchange for a time that they measure by outcomes and results and feeling that, they might wonder what’s going on.
iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago [-]
<< they might wonder what’s going on.
What I am going to write next is written with absolutely zero attempt to overstate anything. Not one person knows what is going on; very few consider wondering; most barely know how to put pants on the right way. Again, zero exaggeration based on real life experience in corporate america.
Just few hours ago I commented about how some companies pretend to have remote work while they technically are not, and personally, I remember a couple years ago one company was demanding (in the contract) to have a continuous non interrupted camera access for at least six hours a day, and that was before AI tools so I imagine this company is far worse and I feel sorry for whoever is working there now, I obviously rejected it and they got even more offended how dare I reject it! Crazy stuff
astura 49 minutes ago [-]
>some companies pretend to have remote work while they technically are not
What does this mean?
iberator 2 hours ago [-]
Lazy people and slackers ruined WFH.
That's EXACTLY why companies wanna see such photos.
This is not different from seeing you at the office from a CCTV camera. If you are an honest worker - you should not worry.
my 2c
eutropia 58 minutes ago [-]
No this is more like having someone standing over your cubicle, and every other person's cubicle, taking notes of every time you go to the bathroom or get a drink of water or stretch.
Watching you.
All day.
every day.
knollimar 44 minutes ago [-]
Yeah if it were like being in office then the request to make it less frequent would have been the same and been granted
alasdair_ 2 hours ago [-]
Taking pictures inside people’s privately owned homes is very different from a wide shot cctv camera in a company-owned building.
Dylan16807 2 hours ago [-]
What, like you can't be lazy in person?
Also there shouldn't be a monitoring program hooked into office CCTV either.
paulryanrogers 50 minutes ago [-]
The steel man argument is that WFO means a manager can screen glance as they are walking the floor. That can catch the worst slacking or possible contract violations like outsourcing the work.
If slacking risks randomly getting caught and fired or takes too much work to hide, then folks are more likely to just do the work or quit.
Dylan16807 24 minutes ago [-]
Seeing the screen, or even an activity log, is far less invasive than nearly constant monitoring of the worker's face. That steelman is built for a different debate.
thomasjeff1 2 hours ago [-]
Bring it on, as a programmer im savvy enough to fight it by blocking their IP addresses.
BigTTYGothGF 2 hours ago [-]
Not savvy enough to realize that's also gonna get you fired.
mcv 2 hours ago [-]
Feed it fake images, then.
soganess 1 hours ago [-]
I agree! I'm going to spend a buttload of personal time to write software that generates fake images of me and fake KB/M data and fake system traffic just so I keep my job at $BAD_EMPLOYER, which I love like a family.
I know finding work can be hellish now at days, but seem like it would still be easier to get another job.
Rendered at 00:28:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
She's got annual positive reviews 8 years running, and has been with the company for over a decade.
The question that really cuts to the chase is: Why does it require a photograph of the employee's face every 3 minutes in order to determine if they're completing their work? Why does that make any sense at all? What exactly is the employee doing that there are no metrics at all. There's nobody monitoring work loads or task completion? Nobody is checking for accuracy? There are no clients or customers or community members complaining about poor service? How were they able to determine positive reviews for almost a decade before? Why is your management so incompetent, and why is the price of that incompetence your employee's privacy?
Anything that needs managers to actually go and check.
It's not that they trust the employee to work with zero supervision, it's just that most managers and execs don't want to do any kind of work.
The webcam checks are pure projection.
In an odd sort of irony, I know that at least one WITCH in fact gives feedback to the employees about their monitoring directly, versus other 'solutions' where only the manager and/or HR gets access to the system's reporting.
Even like Facebook: the AI training stuff was applied to software engineers and staff but definitely not executives.
It's also the logical corporate response to Younger Millenial remote workers bragging about "working" from paradise instead of actually working. As to why management wants it...this is literally something that management has wanted dating back to the rise of civilization. They have power and want to exercise it even if it's not necessary or efficient.
The logical labor response should be to not work for companies that require remote employees to submit to constant visual supervision.
Pretty dumb, as at that time not everyone was had a home office set up, and one can work from their bed perfectly fine, especially when someone wants to put their feet up for a bit during a team meeting.
The CEO tried publicly dressing down the CTO on a large call because his workspace must be “too distracting to work from.”
I do that because I believe in the mission and work is assessed by outcome.
The flip side too — I learned well before COVID that the Kanban principle of “make work visible” applies to WFH
Ever since I saw his screen and the level of details in my activity log on the work machine, I don't even access example.com on their device anymore.
I'm sure this workers already has invasive tracking software on her work machines. Now the company was just trying to fire her without it counting as a layoff.
Is that using Zscaler? What level of detail did it have?
> Your employer should be fine with this
> all they care about is that their data is not exfiltrated.
Your suggestion for dealing with an employer that only cares if data is exfiltrated, is to... exfiltrate their data?
Do work stuff on work hardware, do non-work stuff on non-work hardware.
A company that monitors every keystroke using Zscaler can be presumed to have restrictions on stuff that they care about, such as apps that should only be accessed from the corporate network.
No employer with a functional legal department would ever be okay with an employee using their personal devices for work (unless they have MDM software on the devices partition the work data).
Using your personal device(s) work for make them fair game for discovery in lawsuits, even after you have left the company. It is also generally a violation of state and federal laws and/or procurement contracts in multiple fields if you work in finance, health, or anything defense-related.
If an employer ever mandates that you use your own device for mandatory work-related functions, find a new job. It's the number one red flag that the company is a shit-show and indicates that there are a lot of other rules/regulations/etc that the company doesn't care about either.
I held a WFH and BYOD job in various roles for over 4 years. It began less than a month into the pandemic lockdowns. It would not have been WFH if not for COVID-19. In that regard, I was highly blessed.
The recruiting process was notably vague. I was asked if I had a computer that I could run software on. It turned out that they really wanted us to be running Windows (Apple Silicon was incompatible) but I was running Ubuntu and nobody really batted an eye, because I ensured it was interoperable.
We were never required to install MDM or any corporate software. They never spied on us or collected any data from our BYOD. Any metrics were collected server-side at their web apps. I felt highly trusted. But there was indeed no "work laptop" and we could either BYOD, or forget having a job at all.
This was also during a period of rapid, widespread MFA adoption. Our managers were keeping us in the loop whenever MFA was implemented for corporate systems. Late in the game, our 3rd-party payroll implemented MFA very poorly. I informed the management that they were on thin ice, because they had irrevocably encroached onto a device which was reserved for personal use only. I told them, it is unacceptable to require a smartphone for a role that neither provides a smartphone, nor notified us in advance that it's required for keeping our jobs.
I kept scrupulous separation of work-related data and activities. I had separate accounts on each device. For work, I logged out of my personal account and logged into a work-only account. Unix permissions handled the rest. Sometimes, it was darned inconvenient.
I came to understand that if my employer were ever sued or involved in criminal prosecution, my devices could've been subject to subpoena and confiscation. This was the really crazy part. I had often used personal devices, and accounts, and my phone, for volunteering at church. We had no choice there, either. But you can easily imagine church, or a publicly-traded company, to become embroiled in some legal action. And if my devices were deemed evidence, I'd forfeit them, possibly for good! Thankfully, this has not come to pass.
There is probably no guarantee, even if you're 100% using employer-dedicated hardware at home, that your personal devices wouldn't be swept up in a subpoena or search-and-seizure. But you should always consider long and hard, with any BYOD situation, that mingling your personal stuff with your employer's stuff is playing with fire. Don't get burned.
Overall the point stands: the separation of personal vs work devices must be absolute.
My philosophy: if the hardware doesn't belong to me I'm not doing anything personal on it, no exceptions.
Exposing employment for what it is.
If the people fired had years of experience in the job and the new people hired don't, the company lose talent. Is bleeding money in an endless loop of training people just to let them go soon after that, has trained somebody to nurture their competitors, and some of this people could even make new companies out of spite and compete with their former boss.
I guess the saddest thing, is that everyone just accepts this.
Fortunately, I had the means to retire, and I did.
I think it's about to happen again, but a lot faster, this time.
Not that I think the broader practice for monitoring remote workers is something I think is a good idea.
[1] Perhaps with the exception of adult webcam models, but that's an extreme edge-case where the lack of privacy is the job.
Your work-specific WiFi network can also be shut off at the same time.
Devices go in a sleeve or drawer in your desk, which is usually in a separate room.
You can also close the door.
If you need more work and personal life separation than this, you might need a new job.
Wonder if that helps.
This is a constructive dismissal. If she was hourly, sure, being on camera makes sense. But if you are salaried and some clown in HR decides that they want to make sure you're working 40 hours but WON'T pay you any overtime or judge you on your output, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
The outrage is justified. If it mattered for her job then no AI monitoring would be needed.
Obviously there is no minimum number of hours you must work when salaried, but it’s obviously the expectation. You likely know this which is why you are against them tracking how much time you actually spend working. If they knew the work only took you 10 hours, would they still want to pay such an inflated salary?
This is just patiently false, it's common for salaried employees to have required hours.
https://www.inc.com/alison-green/my-employee-says-i-cant-sto...
after that, it changed to talking and speaking in a particular way in MRs and PRs (and "not" pushing back so much in them and being more agreeable). of course later the manager turned everything into "appease me" because whenever I would do my work and check off the boxes on the PIP he would say he couldn't see it because he didn't receive notice of it in the way he liked. Of course sharing in the pip review meetings weekly did not meet his needs to confirm "I did the things".
Employers will do anything to discriminate against you, legally or illegally, if it meets their leadership agendas. I especially have felt indian-pakistani hate and abuse during this process and was just so exhausted I never bothered to lawyer up.
It can be hard to remember, but companies are usually giving money in exchange for a time that they measure by outcomes and results and feeling that, they might wonder what’s going on.
What I am going to write next is written with absolutely zero attempt to overstate anything. Not one person knows what is going on; very few consider wondering; most barely know how to put pants on the right way. Again, zero exaggeration based on real life experience in corporate america.
What does this mean?
This is not different from seeing you at the office from a CCTV camera. If you are an honest worker - you should not worry.
my 2c
Watching you.
All day.
every day.
Also there shouldn't be a monitoring program hooked into office CCTV either.
If slacking risks randomly getting caught and fired or takes too much work to hide, then folks are more likely to just do the work or quit.
I know finding work can be hellish now at days, but seem like it would still be easier to get another job.