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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
> 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.
Aren't the managers subject to the same 3-minute shots themselves?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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?
Yes, we use zscaler. It even included the list of AI prompts I've written and in-app activities.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
You should never use a work computer for anything personal from banking to even reading wikipedia. Its just dumb.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"This kind of invasive employee monitoring is treating people like property rather than as human beings."
Exposing employment for what it is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
In Silo people would run tap water to avoid being listened to.
Wonder if that helps.
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.
white noise?
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.
This should be illegal by law. Judge the performance by the outcome.
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.
Friendly reminder that Macbooks hardware disable the internal microphone if the lid is shut. https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-microphone...
I'm not sure what this has to do with the article.
sorry was meant to be a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50048084
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.
<< 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
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
Taking pictures inside people’s privately owned homes is very different from a wide shot cctv camera in a company-owned building.
What, like you can't be lazy in person?
Also there shouldn't be a monitoring program hooked into office CCTV either.
Bring it on, as a programmer im savvy enough to fight it by blocking their IP addresses.
Not savvy enough to realize that's also gonna get you fired.
Feed it fake images, then.