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Microsoft Patent Aims To Curb Obnoxious Employee Behavior
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that a pending Microsoft patent for monitoring workplace behavior would do Dwight Schrute proud. Three Microsoft inventors propose curbing obnoxious workplace habits in an equally obnoxious fashion — using a computer device for monitoring and analyzing workers' interactions over video conferences, telephone, text messages and other forms of digital communication to look for patterns of negative and positive behavior, and assigning behavior scores to employees based on what the system finds. Bad behavior, Microsoft explains, might include wearing dark glasses in a video conference, wearing unacceptable clothing to a business meeting, cutting off others during conversation, prolonged monologues, and even how one nods one's head in agreement, shakes one's head indicating disagreement, and makes hand gestures."
The Borg Gates would have been more apt.
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Sorry Microsoft but your patent has to be denied. I already patented having an annoying boss, if you persist with this you will be hearing from my lawyers.
So M$ is patenting being a dick? Well, they do have Balmer to prove their program theory works...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I usually put black and white paint on my face and put black metal clothing with lots of spines and an axe. I hope that's not included in the blacklist of obnoxious behaviours.
But how can they tell in a videoconference video if I'm not wearing any pants?
On another note, years ago I missed the annual staff meeting when I was out sick. One of the topics was dress code. I was called in to the director's office to hear that part as it was deemed important. When he got into specifics, he said, "no printed t-shirts with inappropriate expressions on them, no open-toed shoes, no thongs." I replied, "No thongs? But how can they tell?!" He thought for a minute, and once it clicked, his face turned white as a sheet as he burst out, "FLIP FLOPS! No Flip flops!"
It's funny to make a PHB turn white as a sheet...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Cue the Big Brother - thoughcrimes comments.
So, really -- what's the point of this? PC enforcement? Social modeling? Productivity improvement? Lawsuit prevention?
If it isn't about productivity, it is probably a drag on the organization.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
that if anyone complains of my obnoxious behavior, I can cite them for violating Microsoft's patent claims. Microsoft, can I please get a license?
My blog
Flipping off the boss as he leaves the room, playing angry birds during the meeting, or putting the phone conference on mute and ignoring it completely while we talk about random crap is ok then? the detector is not flagging those.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've got a hand gesture for you!
"Bad behavior, Microsoft explains, might include wearing dark glasses in a video conference, wearing unacceptable clothing to a business meeting, cutting off others during conversation, prolonged monologues, and even how one nods one's head in agreement, shakes one's head indicating disagreement, and makes hand gestures"
I suspect for many of those they have no clue how to implement it, yet they are already patenting it?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If anyone notices bad behavior, there is no need for additional monitoring. But if noone notices it, there is no harm done. What's the point?
You don't seriously think managers will be monitored, do you?
Like most famous inventions, the exact moment this invention happened has been very accurately recorded. It was exactly on the day a top sidekick of Ballmer decided to quit Microsoft to join Google. The CEO discovered the ballistic properties of office furniture and how effectively they can be projected to affect employee behavior and give feedback to the employees about the management's attitude towards them. But it was not a simple joy ride to the patent office. Much more serious development and testing took place. Tables were too heavy. Paperweights were too ineffectual. After a decade of hard work, the invention has paid off and now Microsoft has obtained a patent "for a tool that can give feedback to the employee about their actions and behavior which can also be sat upon to work when not used in that capacity."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ok, call me old fashioned, but why on earth would you need to have a piece of software to pick up on inappropriate behaviour from employees? Isn't this what a line manager is supposed to be for?
Now, ok, some of the behaviours mentioned in TFS might be considered inappropriate; but even these are situational. In fact, I remember one day last summer, when I was on annual leave and got a call from the office asking me to drop in urgently, because a senior manager needed some advice in a hurry on an issue that only I knew about. I was up in town already when I got the call, so I was able to get into the office in about 15 minutes. I was casually dressed (jeans and a t-shirt - it was a hot day) and when I went into the meeting, I gave a monologue. That was, after all, the whole point of me being there. But was any of that inappropriate in the circumstances? Of course not. In fact, I got credit for going into the office on what should have been a day off. But this little office-spy routine they've got going here would have flagged me up for at least two violations.
I've had to deal with staff conduct issues before. It's never a pleasant experience, but if you want to do it properly, you have to be clear about the impacts that the behaviour has had. So, for example, "You were rude to colleague x in a meeting. I know that she was being difficult, but you didn't handle this well. As a result of this, we haven't agreed any of the actions that we needed to and we've put objectives a, b and c at risk. We'll also need to get somebody round to extract the traffic cone and see if we can lure the weasels back out of the ventilation ducts." Something like that.
I suppose I can see where an IT system like this does come in - as part of the "ass-covering" section of a formal disciplinary process. I can see the attraction for risk-averse employers (particularly in the public sector), where it might be considered useful to have a print-out saying "Employee Y was inappropriately dressed for meetings on the following dates..." during a tribunal process. But that's about bureaucracy and process - you only find yourself in that kind of situation once the relationship between employer and employee has actually broken down. It's not about actually improving conduct within the organisation in any meaningful way.
The Army may like meetings and PowerPoint too much, but at least everyone wore the same damn thing and swearing at each other was considered an art form.
If there is no God then free will is an illusion.
I certainly hope that they use this video to train the software.
Is it just me that thinks that corporate influence has turned everyone into automated drones and actually feels quite relieved when the person on the other end of the line seems human? When you can joke about their products, when they curse the system in front of you, when they basically say "Yeah, but the guy who dealt with you before was an idiot, sorry." even if it's just with a gesture?
My boss regularly rings one of our suppliers for goods and they often chit-chat among themselves - he often works himself out a good discount while he's there, but that's how he operates - and it makes them seem altogether more understanding when you DO have a real problem rather than someone following a flowchart. They're also much more likely to get our custom than some robot who can't be made to smile, budge on price, or anything else that doesn't toe the company line EVEN IF they are more expensive than others.
Security camera footage + Kinect technology + massive computational power and behavioral logic = "JETSON!!!!!"
So it's "bad behaviour" to wear dark glasses during a videoconference. Is it also "bad behaviour" to bring your guide-dog into the v/c, too?
A lot of these attributes seem to be culturally insensitive and would be prohibited in many workplaces as being discriminatory
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"Bad behavior, Microsoft explains, might include wearing dark glasses in a video conference..."
So take that you badly behaved blind person!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Should your own employer use similar methods, then you can take revenge by ratting them out to Microsoft, who can then either sue your employer for patent infringement, or forbid them altogether to use methods infringing on this patent.
1) United States Vs. Microsoft. 2) Gates Deposition Greatest Hits.
No, there's an Easter Egg -- each piece of furniture launched over 5 feet gets you +1000 behavior points.
The FICA commitments when putting attention on the payroll are way too burdensome.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
This is not as simple as this. If we could accept wearing shorts, short sleeve shirts and sandals to business meetings in hot weather we could save a lot of energy on air conditioning, dry-cleaning, ironing, transportation, etc. And by this we would prevent global warming, catastrophic climate change, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
Why only suits and ties, the clothing of 19th century British peasants, is supposed to be acceptable?
1. Bill Gates is on the board of directors.
2. The xbox hardware problems stemmed from decisions he was responsible for as CEO, and "missing the internet" was also on his watch.
3. Microsoft invested in Apple to keep it afloat because of anti-trust concerns. Microsoft argued that Apple did provide competition i an attempt to get out of the anti-trust fiasco. The anti-trust problem was caused by decisions made by Bill Gates, as was the decision to buy Apple shares. Microsoft wouldn't be experiencing Apple Envy if Bill Gates hadn't acted illegally in the first place in preserving and extending Microsofts' monopoly.
Managers have managers. Yes they will.
This is all a big reason I want to retire as early as I can. No one even tells jokes at work anymore lest some thin skinned frightened little bunny gets offended. Performance reviews are increasingly focusing on "behaviors" instead of technical competence and accomplishments. A person can't just show up and do a good, honest job anymore. We have to prove (somehow) we Act With Integrity and Value People and Frolic In The Sunshine or whatever. Everyone just sits there staring at the self-appraisal forms baffled as to what to put in the blanks.
nah. this will be configured to reward standard psychopathic, extroverted, "leadership" behaviours. there's no way that those on top are ever going to use something that tells them they shouldn't be on top.
I think you're missing a critical point.
Managers will be monitored, but they'll be measured against different criteria than peons, just like in every other aspect of corporate life.
The net effect of the different evaluation rules is that PHBs will be come more pointy-haired and sociopathic, not less.
"We've been reviewing your Interaction Monitoring System logs, Bob. We're noticing some unfortunate tendencies in your communications with your subordinates. For instance, here last week, we detected some very clear indicators of human compassion and what appeared to be sincere interest in your team's well-being. We simply can't have that kind of interference with business goals; in particular, we're really worried you might be tempted to put your people ahead of this quarter's numbers. You need to reassure us by using more appropriately goal-based socialization and less touchy-feely 'caring' stuff."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
But who manages the managers' managers?
Let's not forget about the obnoxious deaf person with all of those hand gestures!
Goldman Sachs.
So you got him fired for a personality flaw ... because your personality flaw made it difficult to deal with him? And you don't feel like a douche because of that? It took months for someone else to notice his behavior after multiple complaints?
You can call it playing devils advocate, but your story sounds a little more fishy than that. Sounds more like an excuse to tell us about how you got some guy fired for a personality flaw using your own personality flaws. Seems to me that if he got fired, so should you.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I was going to answer "satan" but in fact I had missed a few recursion steps.
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A system like that would be very quickly discontinued in any corporation that would actually be using it. Because most of the people whose behaviour is obnoxious are those in leadership positions. It usually gets worse the further you get up the chain, until it stops with the top management where the curve often (but not always) takes a dive (i.e. they actual top dogs often don't behave obnoxious).
The reason is that "obnoxious" is a very subjective definition. Much of what we consider obnoxious is displays of power (interrupting people) that are used intentionally or more often subconscious by those who deem themselves more powerful and need to state it without saying it outright. In other words, managers.
The higher you get up the food chain, the thinner the air gets and the more fierce the competition. Until the very top, which usually behaves very differently because they don't have competition anymore. If they're actually the top - the C*Os of a largely independent company behave very differently from the C*Os of a company that's a part of a larger corporation.
Yes, I've dealt with all levels of management. I could witness their behaviour because I was in a special position that put me outside the chain of command (even the CEO couldn't give me orders nor fire me, but neither could I to him or anyone else).
If you are interested at all in psychology and social sciences, watching leadership of various levels interact with each other and those of different levels in the hierarchy is extremely fascinating. And one of the things you learn is that a lot of behaviour is context-dependent - whether or not we consider it acceptable depends a lot on who does it to whom in what setting.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org