Bossware booms as bots determine whether you're doing a good job

The COVID-19 lockdown meant a surge in remote work, and the trend toward remote and hybrid workplaces has persisted long after the pandemic receded. That has changed the nature of workplace management as well. Bosses can't check for butts in seats or look over their employees' shoulders in the office to make sure they're working …

[m4r35n357]

a1 == slavery

Anyone still wanting to share their faint praise of this tech with us?

Merely calling it "AI" counts as praise to me, in case anyone is struggling to understand the "a1" bit.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: a1 == slavery

Slavery is buying and selling human beings as goods. Not quite the same as "AI".

[Helcat]

Re: a1 == slavery

Might be worth investing in a dictionary. Then reading it.

Slavery is forced servitude (From the Latin, it was a bound or chained servant). Chattel slavery allows for the purchase and sale of slaves, but is not in and of itself slavery.

If you have signed a contract, and can end that contract then you're not a slave: You are in an agreement over the work you can do. If you're a prisoner who is forced to work as part of your punishment then you are a slave (it's called Judicial Slavery).

This matter of bossware isn't slavery, although it's very intrusive. Mostly because you're under contract which you can opt to exit. And it's that choice that means you're not a slave.

Hope that helps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: a1 == slavery

Well, unless in addition to the bossware you are in a job that forced you to sign an expansive non-compete agreement. Or unless you are contractually obliged to pay back the inflated mandatory training course costs at the start of employment... then the whole thing is starting to get very close to slavery and definitely falls to "indentured servitude".

Just because these are not in the standard type contract in your field - yet - or they are not legal in your country - again, yet - doesn't mean they are not on the lobbyist plans.

At the moment there is still an exit from these jobs. Just about. But the last piece will be the reintroduction of debtors prisons and workhouses that will absolutely force you to work for the man if you want to leave, if you haven't yet worked for several years to pay off the privilege of getting the job and being monitored 24/7 in a demonic, madhouse, Paranoia RPG-style, techno-Taylorist hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: a1 == slavery

You can't be forced to sign an agreement, you can walk away. If you feel like you have been forced into an agreement, that is coercion and that is illegal.

If you sign a contract because you feel you cannot go elsewhere because you'll earn less money etc...that is not coercion, that's just selling your soul.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Re: a1 == slavery

If you are trapped in a job by financial considerations that prevent you from quitting on the spot, it most definitely is slavery, and it is rampant in the industry. Thank the Universe I'm retired and don't have to put up with the latest crop of workplace insanity - I'd be flipping my manager "The Bird" the first time they told me I "need" to install monitoring tools on my hardware to work a contract. Screw that happy horseshit - I'm a professional, not your wage slave!

[Helcat]

Re: a1 == slavery

While I'd agree it'd feel like slavery, it isn't. As long as: A) You signed that contract of your own free will, B) you can elect to exit the contract and C) what's happening is covered by the terms of the contract you agreed to and signed, then no, it's not slavery.

Oh, sure, I get what you're saying: That you can't just quit a job on the spot. Not unless you've an 'at will' contract, or you negotiate an early release. But that's due to the required notice period you agreed to. It's part of the contract, and you signed to say you'd agree so on you. Fail to give the required notice and yes, the company can come after you for compensation. After all, abuse can go both ways.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: a1 == slavery

Unless you're on the bottom rung, it's definitely not slavery, it's golden handcuffs...everyone has the freedom turn down money to get their dignity and integrity back...except those at the bottom that just spent 10 months just getting a job in the first place.

I'm a contractor, I don't think it's legally possible to force a contractor to install monitoring software on hardware they own...contractor hardware is usually out of scope for a lot of things...especially in cybersecurity audits. I've always used my own kit for this very reason, even when I've been employed directly...I have allowed scans on my own kit before on the proviso that anything I don't comply with is simply logged in a risk register and noted somewhere rather than having some dumb policy forced on me.

A company can choose not to hire you if you don't play ball...but chances are nobody sane would work for them anyway if they tried to pull that shit off...usually places are happy to meet you halfway on this and allow you to boot from an external device with a company specific image on it to protect them, which I'm usually fine with and is why, as a professional, I invest in kit like this: http://iodd.kr/wordpress/product/iodd-mini/, the other advantage of a piece of kit like this is that I can back it up and if my laptop dies, breaks, gets stolen, whatever...I can just grab another laptop, get a copy of the backup (if the IODD is also stolen) and I can crack on as if nothing happened...the IODD has encryption baked in, so I don't have to worry about data leaking off it...

The only BYOD people that cybersecurity guys give a shit about are the ones that turn up with a grotty Dell running Windows that has a Roblox icon on the desktop. Because that is a shared laptop and little Billy could be downloading any shit on it...and if it's a laptop shared with a kid, you're on shaky legal ground when it comes to monitoring software being on it. At that point, the company is better off issuing the employee / contractor a dedicated laptop and a copy of the company security policy to sign that says "don't let your kid play Roblox on it".

[Eric 9001]

Re: a1 == slavery

Such proprietary software and SaaSS is closer to serfdom, although with some differences.

Although you can choose to end the contract (with consequences) and choose a contract with another master, are you ever free if all available employers use the same spyware?

[Headley_Grange]

As long as the methods are legal, ethical and safe then the only measures that the management need to assess performance are results, aren't they?. If someone can idle away their time on fuckbook or filing down the ports of their RD250 while at the same time delivering whatever product they are paid to deliver on time and and on budget then the problem is the boss, not the employee.

And even then, even if you could somehow justify surveillance of this nature, the tools they're using have the actual intellgence and experience of a bright 3-year old. Would you really want to replace management with......... oh! OK, maybe there's something in it after all.

[Doctor Syntax]

When manglers measure inputs instead of outputs it's a sure sign they not only can't measure the outputs but likely wouldn't recognise them if they saw them.

[ecofeco]

Not gonna lie. You had me at first.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

RD250 exhaust ports, I once rebuilt a two channel Farnell bench psu into half the enclosure because one side had expired emphatically, over the course of a multi day teams conference while wfh ...

[Dr Fidget]

Auto-micromanagement

Why are all bosses micromanagers? Have they never heard of the idea of hiring good people, paying them well, treating them well, letting them get on with the job they were hired for and supporting them when needed.

The best manager is conspicuous ONLY in his/her absence.

[simonlb]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

Many years ago when I was doing tech support I had a manager who I didn't really get on with and who started running selective reports from the ticket management system we used to try and show I wasn't pulling my weight. After the first time he did and sat me down "for a quick chat" I pointed out he wasn't looking at all the data but he dismissed this and made reference to potential 'retraining' or possible disciplinary. So I started creating a new spreadsheet for each week and listing every ticket I worked on each day as these covered all the areas which his reports were missing. Every subsequent time he tried to "have a word" about my work rate I just gave him a copy of the spreadsheet for that week and told him to check the ticket numbers listed as they proved the work I had done. He had no answer to this as his reports were incomplete and we both knew this. I also started emailing these to him every week as a 'work report' whilst copying in his manager just to cover my arse. My manager wasn't happy about it but his manager loved it. Fast forward a few months and my manager was extremely keen to support my request to move to a different team that I then worked in for the next nine years.

[Pete 2]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

> Why are all bosses micromanagers

Self preservation.

If they just let people get on with their job, it would quickly become obvious to their bosses that they did nothing useful. Or worse, that their micromanaging was a significant (or only) cause of delays.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

That tends to be a sign of bad management - of them. Their job is to make sure things runs smoothly and are done well. The good manager is one who can take a week off with the confidence the show is still going on (because he/she does what is needed to guarantee that - THAT is the job), the bad manager is afraid to take a day off because they are juggling with too many plates - the inevitable side effect of micro management. The problem is that a director who doesn't recognise will effectively cause this micromanagement, and that permeates downwards.

Or they employ idiots. That happens far more often than desirable :(.

[coredump]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

> it would quickly become obvious to their bosses that they did nothing useful.

It some cases it is _already_ obvious, up and down the management chain.

Thing is, the management class tends to protect its own. Managers at most levels eventually usually discover that the perceived importance of their position is dependent on the size and depth of their org chart. And so, barring political or territorial in-fighting, management tends to not dispose of managers reporting to them, because that would reflect negatively on their own Importance Quotient[tm].

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

Why are all bosses micromanagers?

Well, most of mine haven't been. My current manager essentially lets me do the work assigned to me in the way I want with only the oversight to enable him to let his boss know that there's progress. The organisation I work, that's a tad different. It struggles to measure what it does, and the only cross organisation KPI is office attendance. Which rather shows up that our most senior management are micro-managing arseholes - but that's the upper ranks of the Senior Civil Service for you.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

"our most senior management are micro-managing arseholes"

Interesting phrase. It can be parsed two ways and quite possibly both are correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

They're not all micro-managers but often the ones which are are most likely being micro-managed themselves. I used to work for a US company in the UK as a PM. Our MD had been an emebedded-software engineer in his youth and liked to pretend he still was one instead of being MD of a multi-million pound company. It took no prompting whatsoever to get into "have we not tried a bog-standard washing machine controller chip to manage some of the load ......." sort of discussions. There I'd be, the PM (with an RF engineering background, so I had no idea what he was talking about) with an overspending, overruning project that needed help in terms of additional engineers or test environment or priority in the model shop or time in the EMC chamber, etc., and all I got was a roomful of directors talking about stuff that was barely current 20 years ago and being expected to answer questions about it.

And the net result as seen from the perspective of the SW team? The PM comes round and asks them about washing machine controller chips and wants a couple of paragraphs of Noddy's-guide technical explanation as to why it's not a good idea in time for next week's meeting and it's the most important thing they have to do that week. I don't need much imagination to guess what they thought of me.

[SparkE]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

I feel the same way, it’s so simple.

My philosophy is that a manager is there to make sure their team has all the tools and environment that they need to succeed at their jobs. And not surprisingly, my departments make a profit, have very little turnover and the employees get along.

The other department head, however, is a chronic micro-manager. His 7 person department has turned over about 100 employees in the last 10 years (Including the entire sales staff quit three times in the last 5 years.) and the department has only been in the black 3 months out of the last 13 years. He hires any warm body to fill a position that requires experience and then he doesn’t train them.

Ughh. [insert rolling eye emoji here]

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

I'd have thought that by now your top management would have noticed something.

[coredump]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

> a manager is there to make sure their team has all the tools and environment that they need to succeed at their jobs.

A veteran, experienced (read: cynical) manager told me long ago that one of a manager's most important jobs is to protect their team from other managers.

It didn't take very long before I understood they were correct.

[ecofeco]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

Last of the wisemen.

[Joe W]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

A manager is the person who shovels the sh*t out of th way so their team can do work. A good manager acts as a filter: not everything coming form above needs to be directly passed on to the team. Not everything a team does needs to be passed up unfiltered. My boss does that. I'm glad I work for him. I try to do the same for my team, shovel manure so they can do their work. I'm paid more (than most of the team) because I have to deal with $(stupidproblems). My boss gets paid even more because he has to work with $(bloodystupidproblemscreatedbytossersabove). I do not want his job... none of my team members really want mine, they want to get their work done.

[FIA]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

Why are all bosses micromanagers? Have they never heard of the idea of hiring good people, paying them well, treating them well, letting them get on with the job they were hired for and supporting them when needed.

They're not.

Management is a pretty thankless task. If you're good at it no-one ever really notices.

Most people aren't good at it though, also most managers are there because they got promoted, not because they're good at mangement.

I have had goot managers though, they've been few and far between.

[coredump]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

It's disturbing to me that you could replace "management" with "sysadmin" in your post, and it would still be mostly accurate.

[Mike 137]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

"The best manager is conspicuous ONLY in his/her absence."

Actually, the best manager is one who assists and facilitates your activities so you both get the best possible results. I've had two such in my whole 40-odd year career. My worst had a black Darth Vader high back chair and a stock phrase "bring me solutions, not issues".

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Re: Auto-micromanagement

Good management exists at small companies where the owners are the only management that matters, and they do "crazy" things like set up LAN parties in the evenings, or are more generous with Christmas bonuses and gifts than anyone would expect after reading how shabbily the big corps treat people online. There are nice places to work, and I had the pleasure of working at several of them.

The problems start when the shares go public and the demand for "instant profit" takes precedence over treating people like HUMAN BEINGS.

[Don Bannister]

"For example, he said, one client recently saved $2 million by detecting that no one was using an expensive piece of software their company was paying for"

I would have thought blame for this should land squarely with the manager who decided to make the purchase, whilst clearly being unaware of what the folk who were expected to use it might need to carry out their work ...

[Boothy]

You don't even need AI for this!

Audit what software you have, (i.e. perhaps just the ones that you pay an invoice for each year, especially the expensive stuff), then send out a questionnaire each year. Perhaps with options for 'Never/Occasionally/Regularly'. Please tick one.

It's it's overwhelmingly Never, then let everyone know and don't renew!

If it's Occasionally, but a bit pricey, then get someone to look at alternates.

[Pete 2]

Big fleas have little fleas

> bots determine whether you're doing a good job.

And who/what determines if the bots are doing a good job?

Recurse as necessary

[ecofeco]

Re: Big fleas have little fleas

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[b0llchit]

No Trust, No Loyalty

Bossware users are already betraying the employees.

You cannot expect loyalty when you do not meet people with trust. Using bossware is a plain statement of "we do not trust you".

Therefore, the smart ones will be leaving and your company gets stuck with the underachievers, which they will fire for underachieving and then, well,... your company dies a slow and painful death.

[Doctor Syntax]

“Translation platform monitoring is performed because the client is paying for translation time"

Quantity not quality?

[doublelayer]

Clients of translators may not really get a choice. They're often billed for time and can't easily verify the translations because, if they had fluent speakers, they wouldn't need translators. If quality issues crop up, then mostly they only get the choice of dismissing that translation agency and hiring another one who will hopefully not do the same thing. I've encountered this several times, for example a product I used which defaulted to English and I used it in English, but a user reported that it had a bug that might only affect a language they were using that I also spoke but my colleagues did not. After switching mine to that, I noticed that the bug they reported was user error after all but the translator for that language had included a bunch of grammatical errors and typos, and evidently nobody found that before shipping it. None of it was so incorrect that it would have broken users, but we looked far less professional if you happened to use that one.

[trevorde]

Sleeping on the job

Last job before retiring was doing remote software development. I had been banging my head against a particularly gnarly problem for most of the day but making no progress. By mid-afternoon, I was mentally shattered, so I took a nap. Woke up a few hours later and solved it in 15 mins! Not sure what bossware would've made of that but my boss was delighted.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Sleeping on the job

I have my best ideas the day after I release the schematics for layout.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Sleeping on the job

Focus on one line of thought excludes other approaches. I often found solutions occurring just after I left work, especially when driving. The concentration of driving replaced concentration on the problem letting the subconscious look at the problem more widely.

[GoneFission]

Re: Sleeping on the job

A typical employer would say that you should be replaced with someone who does not need naps to solve problems. Or someone whose attention is laser-focused on work for 8+ hours a day. Or someone with no family, hobbies or personal life that was grown in a vat for the sole purpose of performing free and eternally grateful labor for the genius thought-leadership stewarding the C-levels.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Sleeping on the job

In theory I wouldn't have a problem with that - as long as the boss accepts that I'll start work, stop work and go to lunch at my contracted hours and do absolutely nothing work-related outside those hours.

There's implicit give and take in any sort of professional job around what constitutes work hours. I'm happy to put in a few extra hours when the company really needs it as long as the company's happy for me occasionally to come in late, leave early or do personal stuff on the web. If they force people to work to rule then they shouldn't be surprised if they actually start working to rule and walk out of meetings at 5 PM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sleeping on the job

@Headley_Grange

.. and that is why "work to rule" is an affective weapon for a Trade Union - employers soon realise the majority of the workforce are doing more than their minimally contracted effort. It wouldn't just be working hours per se - e.g. things like code reviews impact your own work schedule (especially when done properly) but you squeeze them in (despite your targets being based on an imaginary working scenario of nothing but work & meetings & they imagine code reviews just magically happen taking zero time & effort).

Code reviews are a great way to bring things grinding to a halt - instead of typing all your concerns straight away, add one, wait for change to be committed, if it is OL, then add your next concern to the review etc. (rinse & repeat) - & just innocently say "oh that just occurred to me when doing re-review" .. and as code review is (should be) a key part of software development then management cannot just mandate addition of unapproved code.

.. and there is always the nuclear code review option of "should that have really been implanted in that way instead of approach x?"

..Just to show development is at ripe for work to rule industrial action disruption as more "shop floor" roles

[StewartWhite]

Re: Sleeping on the job

Whilst working at an MSP, one customer I worked with had a manager who literally started shouting and foaming at the mouth when I said that I was interested in football rather than computer games, only checked my emails when travelling on the train rather than working on some IT project and didn't spend all weekend working on a home computer network.

His view was that literally all my waking hours should have been dedicated to IT and that by not doing so I was being lazy so he got me hauled off that client. He was a tit though so it didn't bother me.

[tiggity]

Re: Sleeping on the job

A fair chunk of development time is spent "thinking" (well, it is in my case) - so periods of no mouse / keyboard action, then a flurry of intense activity, etc. .. Although the general "overview plan" of what you are going to do is planned well ahead, you do, still needs plenty of pauses to think in depth about the detailed implementation each component before you write the tests and then code it.

[Mimsey Borogove]

Re: Sleeping on the job

By mid-afternoon, I was mentally shattered, so I took a nap. Woke up a few hours later and solved it in 15 mins!

This is why I always insist on a lunch HOUR - 60 solid minutes not thinking about work. People who work the whole 8 1/2 or 9 hours they spend in the office (or in front of the computer in their bedroom) may not get the results people who take breaks and/or lunch do. Professional work requires a lot of thought and imagination, which gets harder and harder to access the more desperate you are to get at it. It's vitally important to clear your mind every so often to keep the cruft from building up. Will AI understand this? Probably not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most companies I interviewed with in 2021

Had no idea how remote working had impacted on their profits.

(Don't go looking for them. They aren't there anymore).

All of which would be so much amusing chat if it wasn't for how much the management suck out of the business under the plainly bollocks guise of running the business.

[Dan 55]

When it comes to US tracking, the numbers are conflicting but seem higher than the UK’s

I bet the UK's (and EU's) numbers are pushed up by US companies with offices in the UK (and EU) loading their PCs up with tracking software of dubious legality.

[cookiecutter]

human in the loop

i'm getting tired of all the AI marketing bullshit of "we always insist our customers keep a human in the loop".

since WHEN have employers EVER done that? if there will be a human, it'll be one with zero expertise that'll agree with the AI every single time & can be used as a sacrificial lamb when someone dies or it'll be 1 expert whose now having to triage 100 times more work as the AI flags up hallucinations.

utterly bollocks. make the software manufacturers legally liable for any issues regardless of instructions to the customer.

"oh i'm sorry we call this full self driving & our boss goes on about it being full self driving & we don't order take downs on videos of people letting the car drive with their hands off yer wheel but we have a * on page 14564554 that says it's NOT actually fully self driving & that idemnifies us"

the world is genuinely fucked!!

and then there will be more screams of "staff aren't loyal anymore & we're spending huge amounts to train staff that just leave within 6 months"

[elsergiovolador]

Whip

Bossware is the digital incarnation of the whip.

Them slaves are not working hard enough!

Splash!

I am 100k short for my yacht deposit, why don't you understand that!

Splash!

I don't care about your bills or your rug rats!

Splash!

Write that god damn code as in the ticket now!

Splash!

You spent six hours debugging? Cute. Should have been one.

Splash!

No, you cannot refactor. Ship the mess. Future you can cry about it.

Splash!

Your sprint points are low again. Are you ill or just incompetent?

Splash!

That outage at 3am was your fault because I decided it was.

Splash!

You said the estimate was two weeks. The product manager said one.

Guess whose version becomes the truth.

Splash!

Code review? They skimmed it on their phone in the toilet. Approved.

Splash!

We value work life balance. Which is why yours is none of my business.

Splash!

Also, I promoted the guy who broke production because he 'shows leadership energy'.

Splash!

By the way, we are a family. Families stay late without complaining.

Splash!

Now turn your camera on. I want to see the despair.

[Guido Esperanto]

Let me translate..

I popped this little manglement speech in AI system called "Common sense" and here is the translation.

"...It even flags when employees appear to be burned out or, on the flip side, are working more than the required hours."

[Translation]

We're not gonna put your value maximising employees under the kosh to stop them maximising their value.

"...For example, he said, one client recently saved $2 million by detecting that no one was using an expensive piece of software their company was paying for...."

[Translation]

This didnt happen and it was employees who were cut

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Let me translate..

Reminds me of a company that realised employees spend long time in the toilets.

The fix? Phone/WiFi jammer.

[An_Old_Dog]

"Not" Working == Working

Exspresso may track that a user is browsing the web instead of working

That's a false dichotomy.

How many info-worker jobs can be accomplished without ever using the Web?

How many non-info-worker jobs can be accomplished without ever using the Web?

Boss: "Charley, where are we on that job for General Machine?"

Charley: "The frame is done, and it's in Plating, but for the rest, we're still waiting for a delivery from SteelCo."

Boss: "Find out where that delivery is and get back to me, ASAP."

Charlie (sotto voce): "SteelCo ... SteelCo ..." (flips through Rolodex) ... "Ah! Here it is." (Picks up the phone)

*beep-beep-beep-boop-boop-boop-beep-boop-boop-beeeep*

SCCS: "SteelCo Customer Service. Your call is important to us. Due to heavy calling volume, the average wait time is currently ... twenty-theee minutes. If you need a quicker response, we encourage you to use our self-help Web portal for ordering, order status queries, and billing issues. You can access that portal at www.steelco.com/selfhelp" (Smooth jazz plays)

Charlie hangs up the phone and opens IE6 on the greasy, grimy, VGA CRT, Pentium-4-equipped shop PC ...

Icon for, "Hey, snoopware-using managers: get a clue."

[DS999]

I sure am glad

That I was able to retire at age 51 so I don't have to deal with any of this shit. I feel bad for the younger generations who are going to have always-on micromanager AI software following their every move at work. It won't be just looking at keyboard and mouse movements, they'll require you to have the camera and microphone on your computer always enabled so it can look at and listen to you.

I guess that would fulfill their goal of stamping out work from home, because no one is going to want to have a company spy sitting in their home office or kitchen table or wherever they do their work so everyone will want to come to the office and leave that spy computer behind when they go home.

[Bluck Mutter]

I'd be screwed if I worked today.

Retired in 2019 with my last job being 15 years at a major computer company (in the old sense of the word) that had ~400,000 employees worldwide.

Worked remotely all the time (went to an office once, on my first day to sign paper work).

Standard issue was a laptop running Windows (which was hooked up to a 60" TV) but as all my work products/tools were Unix and LInux based (I had a large population of various Unix and LInux boxen in my home lab) the first thing I did (and kept doing for each 4 yearly laptop refresh) was to install Linux on the laptop (with all needed tools), install Windows inside VM player and then reinstall all needed Windows apps from the companies app portal.

Would fire up Windows at the start of my work day and logon to the company IM app and email then do 99% of my key strokes inside Linux.

Thus if my usage was monitored today, I would be flagged as being asleep at the wheel.

Of course being a hard working and honest Boomer, I blame them Gen X, Y and Z types cause they are all slackers/chancers which has forced hard working managers to need to use snoopng tools to weed out the lazy Gen X,Y and Z types.

Bluck

[DS999]

Re: I'd be screwed if I worked today.

I worked mostly from home as a consultant. After the 2008 recession companies didn't want to pay for weekly travel and I was obviously more than fine with it - building up frequent flyer miles isn't worth the travel hassles! I once worked a two year stint for a major pharma company and never once set foot on their premises. Everywhere else I might fly out once a month or less but primarily worked from home. Every gig I ever got was via someone I had previously worked with, things probably would have been different if I didn't have someone there vouching for me.

I used Linux on my laptop and ran Windows in a VM as well, because I liked a bigger/better display whereas companies would typically issue laptops with smaller lower resolution lower quality displays. One thing I did differently from you was I did a P2V of the laptop they'd send me so I could leave theirs unmodified. Sometimes they'd figure out what I had done (since they had some asset programs that showed it running on "VMware" hardware) but I never got TOO much pushback. At least not to the extent they stopped from doing it - I'd just tell them I'll ship their laptop back since I don't actually need it.

One time I even had a forward looking IT department who was going to replace the laptop they issued me with a new one, running a newer version of Windows. I told them what I'd done and asked for a USB key with a VMware image of their new build instead and they were happy to send it because that meant they could send that shiny new laptop to someone else.

The other benefit of using VMware is I could connect to it from my desktop with a full sized display and keyboard.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: I'd be screwed if I worked today.

Always had a Linux machine on my desk, along with the corporate Windows one. And our IT guys knew about it. We were a small consulting company and the Linux machine solved some problems that the Windows machine couldn't, mostly because I could access open source tools immediately, while the Windows software would have required a PO.

I have had two or three Great bosses, a couple of real losers and the rest okay. But the biggest drag on my attitude, and therefore, my productivity, was corporate overhead. You know, the bullshit that comes when you work for a large corporation: HR make-work, random task redirection, "initiatives", 3% raises (sorry, there's no budget this year), etc.

My last job before retiring was this small consultancy, which, unfortunately, got bought by a megacorp...with predictable results. I'm so glad to be retired.

[Ribfeast]

Our work PCs have "RSIGuard" installed...but it also has a break timer, detects mouse and keyboard activity...and it's the first thing I close when I log in. Apparently it can report it all back to the boss.

[frankyunderwood123]

busy for busies sake…

Most of the time I make my own work to fill in a work day, because direct management are so bloody useless at running concurrent projects.

I end up working on projects that haven’t officially kicked off, else I’d have little else to do.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of work either, just an inability to plan it effectively.

This is a common problem at big corporate entities.

If I didn’t keep myself busy with this type of activity and was being monitored, WTF would I do to look like I’m busy?

As it is, if I churn out 10 hours of productive work a week, that’s a lot. The rest of the time is spent in pointless meetings, mostly with camera off and mic on mute or writing tasks and project documentation that management seem incapable of doing in a timely manner, so I just crack in with it.

Perhaps boss ware could detect the time management waste having meetings about meetings or calling 20 people into a meeting when a simple email or slack discussion would suffice. I suspect it’s often because of one finger typing ability.

Perhaps boss ware could detect it takes my direct manager about 2 minutes to type a sentence. I’ve made coffee and returned to my desk and a reply is still being typed.

perhaps that’s the solution to being monitored, just do everything really really slowly or join every single meeting on offer, which I suspect is what most bosses do to appear as if they actually do something.

Optics, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Management by Spyware

I’d rather trek into the office.

[Nifty]

Re: Management by Spyware

"I’d rather trek into the office"

Where my enterprising colleague had wing mirrors on his monitor.

[kmorwath]

US attempts to bring back slavery are ongoing....

... that's why thier politicians and esecutives are so cosy with countries where human rights are routinely violated, like China, India, and the Middle East. Even Russia, looking at the latest news.

Exporting democracy? It looks the opposite has happened. Authoritariamism has been imported back.

Anyway, glad to live in a country where remote monitoring of workers is forbidden. For now, at least...

[Bebu sa Ware]

"AI is good for is consuming tons of data and presenting meaningful information"

When did that happen ?

AI hallucinating about AI ?

[Joe W]

Ah, because I'm only working when I'm writing...

Really? I mean, sure, if you are working in a factory and you bash bits of metal with other bits of metal you are working when you have the hammer in the hand and are bashing bits of metal. I can be working on a gnarly problem by sitting, having a good think about it, maybe drawing stuff on actual paper (because that's the best medium for this). I do not use a bloody hammer to bash bloody pieces of code until they reach the desired shape. I'd offer fetching on the the lump hammers I have to do some retrophrenology on people who are telling me I'm no longer allowed to think the solution through.

Programming (in the sense of writing the actual code) is relatively easy - once the hard part of the design, the algorithms etc. are done. Deep mad respect for those who just sit down and write brilliant code just like that. I'm a mere mortal.

[StewartWhite]

Re: Ah, because I'm only working when I'm writing...

I had a manager who once scolded me by saying that "I pay you to do, not to think!". I just ignored him but that kind of toxic attitude that you need to measure and target meaningless points such as "How many emails do you send per day" (e.g. Microsoft Viva Insights) because of the ludicrous application of the mantra that "You can't manage what you can't measure" that poisons a lot of workplaces.

If I'm being asked to work on a complex project but am being assessed against how many keystrokes I make or meetings I attend then the latter is a lot easier to meet but often pointless.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Ah, because I'm only working when I'm writing...

"You can't manage what you can't measure""

Many years ago I read a discussion on engine tuning for racing. One view was "If you can't measure it you haven't got it." The reply was "If you have to measure it you haven't got it."

[FIA]

That is why we built Insightful: to restore balance to the employer-employee relationship

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

[coredump]

Likely there are several words in that claim which don't mean what they want us to think.

[jml9904]

“We have all heard about quiet quitting and burnout reaching peak levels for many industries."

Gee. Think maybe the resources wasted in tracking and monitoring might be better invested in figuring out why the employees are so stressed and then fixing those problems? Nah. Cheaper to buy some bogus monitoring crap to justify moving the work to cheaper shoulders and pocket the difference.

[spold]

If ever there was a business case for AI...

.....it would be in deceiving this pile of donkey dung into believing you are in the office doing something that will likely never make any difference to anything while you are actually down the pub...

[Blackjack]

This kind of software makes sense fot students taking an exam, but you will have many employees quit if you over stress them, unless they have no better choices.

[Eric 9001]

Spyware never makes sense, especially when used to attack students taking an exam.

If it's possible to score well on an exam without knowing the topic, then there's something wrong with the exam.

[Doctor Syntax]

Or the topic.