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Big Brother In the Home Office
hessian writes with this excerpt from the New York Times' "Bits" column: "Tens of thousands of programmers, writers, accountants and other workers labor at home doing contract work for companies like Google, Hewlett-Packard and NBC. The computers they use contain software that takes snapshots of what they are doing six times an hour. The snooping occurs randomly, making it impossible for the computer user to game the system. It is probably more invasive than what happens to those working in offices, where scooting through Facebook entries, shopping on Cyber Monday, and peeping at N.S.F.W. ('Not Safe for Work') Web sites on corporate computers is both normal and rarely observed by managers."
Use another PC for private stuff!
What about the other (personnal) computer next to the work computer ?
I know at least one freelancing website that also allows employers to require a feed of the contractor's webcam.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Disgusting. Good thing I don't work for any of them, nor would I ever want to.
Because I don't have another computer at home.
And here on my other computer ... anything that I want
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Haha. I only work about 15mins a week in the office.
and all people involved are okay with it, I guess it's okay. But why would they spend resources on this in the first place? They pay for something to be done within a certain timeframe, and if they don't it's just a breach of contract right? Why would they care about the details?
Emotions! In your brain!
This software seems in-effective to me.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You don't even need another computer--just run your work machine as a VM.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I have a friend who works from home. Phone support for a TV satellite provider.
He doesn't take any chances, and does all of his work from inside a VM that he only uses for work related activity.
Its not a company issued machine, but who knows what could be included in the client software he's required to use.
I don't understand why anyone would tolerate this. I've done remote work for decades, since long before the internet made it possible to access client's source repositories or documentation sites as you can now. I've never had my billable hours questioned, and have always delivered quality software in the end.
I'd be so insulted to have a client even suggest such an intrusive back-handed accusation that I'm ripping them off that I would immediately leave the negotiating table with a pair of digits waved on high as I headed out the door.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
In this case, Big Brother is invited. The monitoring software they describe seems perfectly acceptable to me. If I was vying for a freelance position where I work at home and the condition was my work would be periodically checked, I would be fine with it. As long as all the expectations and the ways the data would be collected are presented up front, it seems completely reasonable.
And having different standards in this case makes sense. This isn't monitoring full-time employees that you've rigorously hired and who will be reviewed by HR regularly and that have a real stake in keeping the position. This is for freelance, hourly workers that could be located anywhere in the world.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Isn't the fatal flaw in their product the fact that a home worker might actually have *two* computers? While he moves the mouse around on the work computer and looks like he's reading a technical manual, on his other computer he's surfing porn and building a website for his company's competitor?
Or he could just run the work computer as a virtual machine and surf porn on the host instance.
And there's the security risk - what if someone hacks the ODesk interface, so the screenshots from your home worker entering medical data get published to the web, resulting in a big HIPAA violation fine (or they store those screenshots on an offshore server, and extort you into paying them to not publish them).
Aren't there better ways to measure home worker productivity without introducing a large potential security hole with a product that is easily circumvented? Maybe managers should actually *manage* instead of relying on technology to do it for them?
...you're doing it wrong. Lines of code, keystrokes per hour, etc. are almost universally shitty metrics. Your teleworkers are hired to do a job. Take the time to figure out how to effectively measure that, and then realize that intrusive steps like those in TFA are worse than useless.
Even in the most charitable scenario, in a contract-job situation -- The business can learn if you really need all that time, or whether they can tighten the screws for concessions in the next contract negotiation. Broadly, this is how capitalism has always worked.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I don't know about you, but my management has VERY different attitudes about the web surfing habits of employees vs. contractors. If you're billing us hourly there is an expectation of NO personal business on the clock.
Do these users know that they are being monitored?
Obviously they know that some piece of software is active, they've installed it themselves, but do they realize how intense this monitoring is? I would imagine that they think it's some kind of collaboration tool whilethe details are hidden in the fine print of the contract.
They'd get nothing but a time-lapse of a large blue SorceForge logo surrounded by a few changing stories and articles.
But the employer has a right to know he is not flushing money down the toilet in paying you not to work and stealing his time away.
He owns the equipment and has a right to do whatever he wants with it.
Suck it up or dont work. If you were paying out of pocket your opinion would change drastically. It is no different than a work pc anyway.
http://saveie6.com/
Here is a trick that I used. I received a company issued Dell laptop with Windows. I installed converted it into a VM (Virtual Machine) image with VMware converter tool, and then installed that VM on my Mac.
Whenever I need to do corporate stuff I do it in the VM, and all of the personal stuff I do on my Mac host machine. (This trick works for Linux hosts as well.)
Any spyware on my VM does not obtain any information about my personal activity in the host OS.
What is described is a network that allows employers and contractors to come together at a global (Internet based) exchange, which increases the efficiencies and productivity.
Sure, part of the software described is used to monitor and evaluate the work of the contractor, but as the story states - competitive contractors see their hourly rates increase by a factor of 3-4, so this is good for allocating resources.
This is a good development, not a bad one.
You can't handle the truth.
to randomly do things.. record some basic repeatable tasks that make you appear you are doing something important.
OK, I don't know exactly how old ODesk is, but, basically, it's been doing this forever.
The client gets a view to into the desktop of the sweatoffice worker.
I thought most Slashdotter knew about the top 2-3 outsourcing marketplaces (Elance, ODesk, Rentacoder) just as a matter of general knowledge.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
if you're unwilling to use your private computer, or phone, or tablet or whatever next to your work computer (or just can't afford a second computer), then install your "work"-OS in a virtual machine, for god's sake. or get a real job, where you get paid for what you deliver, not for the time you spend playing solitaire.
That moved blocks of code around, backspaced, retyped the same string or added random strings, etc. in multiple terminals and app windows. Let it run 8 hours a day during normal hours.
Then use another computer for work.
I'd write the script on their time as well.
People tolerate this because they have no choice, they are not in a position to negotiate. People who desperately need a job are easily exploited.
You're looking at this from an employee perspective and not an HR perspective. HR's goal here is NOT to see if you are working but to gather evidence against you to fire you if the company so desires. They could not care one wit if you type away for the entire eight hours of the day, but once they have even a couple screen shots of you goofing off those go into the file. Come layoff time you suddenly find yourself out the door with a pink slip. But don't worry, you will serve as a warning to the other people in your same position.
I think my most productive time is when I'm thinking about and analyzing a problem, not when I'm actually typing it into the computer. This might be a great way to measure productivity for someone paid by the keystroke.
Not necessarily. Our company uses a system that takes snapshots several times a minute. It's never used except when there's already a problem with an employee. It is then used to document the actions of that employee, in order to provide legal cover once they are fired.
Different companies have different notions of how much, and how, to police the work that is done by employees and contractors. Some are better than others, but it's their money to safeguard. This does not seem like a problem to me. Personal equipment not used for work, however, is a different story.
Several commentators have mentioned that you might have a second computer nearby for the non-work stuff. But, what happens when you've programmed that computer to do your job for you? Is it still ethical to charge by the hour, when a computer is doing most of the work?
Taken a step further. A contracting firm is charging a client for 1000 heads, but there's only 100 real heads and 900 virtual people doing the work. As long as the quotas are being filled, is there a problem? (Side question. If you are being paid by the hour, but there is a quota to fill to keep your job, are you really being paid by the piece?)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The spyware can probably check the virtualized machine's "hardware" and report the fact that the environment has been virtualized. This might give rise to suspicions.
--Udo.
It's fine and fair if:
The employer lays out the terms, you accept the job or you don't, and once accepted then you and the employer do what you said you would do. If you bill per hour instead of per project, then every hour you bill has to be productive; that time belongs to the employer. They have a right to know whether they are being told the truth about how those hours they bought are being used, whether the contractor is doing illegal or likely-to-get-the-employer-sued things, and whether the contractor is telling the truth. In case any haven't noticed, there are a lot of people on the Internet who have a serious problem with telling the truth.
What I find amazing is that some commenters seem to think it's okay to surf porn on company time, or claim 8 hours' billing for 5 hours' work. Yeah, yeah, Slashdot on company time etc., but nobody is going to file a harassment suit for seeing yet another poorly-researched article summary painting tech workers as moral perfection on the screen, and once in a great while Slashdot is (vaguely) relevant to tech work. If I were told to stop reading Slashdot at work, I would. But as for people advocating that it's okay to claim more hours than you actually worked... that's fraud. No sympathy at all.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
If you are suppose to be working, you are getting paid to work, why do you spend so much time and effort to find ways around not working.
Let me guess this is also the same group of people who complain when they don't get promoted or are the first to get layoffs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It blows my mind that people get uptight over companies ensuring that their resources are used within their standards. Who bought the computer? Who's paying for maintenance on it? Who owns it at the end of the day?
That's right. Just like you can't strut nude through your office due to company policies, you can't use their equipment (heh heh) in ways they don't want it used. That is perfectly legit.
A more specific example is the abuse of "company cars" in the past. The company -can-, and should, dictate the conditions under which those can be used and penalize people who misuse(d) them.
I am reading this as I watch the movie Mad Max. This is kind of bitterly ironic because it is a sign of bad things to come! I am waiting for the apocalypse believers to come out of the wood work. This website is basically soliciting work at wages so ridiculously low it is sad. The wealthy 1% own everything and have left the remaining the 99% to fight for the scraps. This website is evident of it!
I am surprised this has only been known recently. Cerner (A kansas based healthcare software company) has installed such software on all their employees laptops around 2009. The software was hiding itself from the installed programs list but was listed as a windows service and also appeared as a running process. I just had the service disabled and it stopped running. I can't recall the software name but it seemed to be a noob solution. My immediate manager was happy I discovered it so he could stop browsing porn but his manager was not happy about me warning other engineers about the software. The software was pushed into all company laptops without notifying employees. I left that shit hole two months later.
Is one of respect.
The company is showing you EXACTLY how little respect they have for you, your privacy, your job, the work you do, ect ect ect... its only about the bottom line. getting paid. and nothing more for them.
Now... Remember all that crap when you run into something that you can fix.. But 'isnt your job'. And don't fucking do it. Think like a company. It's not your problem. It won't make you anymore money. So fuckit. Not your problem.
The company will cut you zero slack at all. So return the favor. Put in your 8 hours or whatever and do EXACTLY what you're supposed to. And not one damm bit more.
They don't respect you and have zero loyality or trust in you. So why would you give any of those to the company? That'd be stupid. They wan't to treat you like a good little replaceable robot. So act like one. Do the scripted routine and fuck going above and beyond for the good of the company. If it won't make you one cent. Don't do it if you don't have to.
Companies expect employee loyality and respect. But damm few of them give it back.
This is being done because of incompetent management, plain and simple. They figure gathering a bunch of metrics on an employee is good management. It's not good management.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"Because I use sandboxes for development and testing."
Or maybe, "Of course; if it ever gets infected I can delete the VM and copy in a fresh one to get back up and running straight away."
They not only do it to their contracted workers they also do it to their in house departments. HP's corporate systems do this as well unless you lose your webcam..... then you wait for a replacement that will never arrive.
-anonymous slacker, coward
Ya-Ha-Ha Ho Ho Ho
Shipped your job to Mexico
But we got plans for all of you to re-train
Pit the whole world against each other
For who will work for the lowest wage
The rest of you can die
As epidemics rage
Worked hard all your life
Now you must go on line
And stare all day
At a little plastic screen
Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation
Same old job
Now you're just a temp
Less pay, no benefits
No raise, no vacation
Or sick leave days
Chain the slaves to the oars
Faster, faster, row some more!
In carpel tunnel caverns
Til you break
We monitor you all
Every time you leave your chair
Or talk on the phone
One minute overtime
At the toilet
And you're fired
Electronic plantation
Electronic plantation
Only use we've left for you
Is burn you at both ends
Locked in the research triangle
Shirtwaist fire's flames
Lot's of people need your job
And you can be replaced
Replaced.
Replaced.
Unemployed and overqualified
Set up your home computer with a second monitor and a VM. Use the VM to work remotely. That way your work computer is always squeaky clean and your privacy is assured.
I've worked remotely before and this worked quite well. That being said, having worked remotely for an extended period of time I can safely say that I worked /more/ when I didn't have to go into the office than when I did.
Isn't it funny when employers go paranoid psychotic? As the voices in their head get louder, you would not believe the antisocial intrusive assaults people have to endure. It's just when they do it near police officers in the street later on in the cracking up process that they are forced to resign ... :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Your company is just looking for a reason to fire anyone on their terms.
It is completely fine to play some game that comes pre-installed with the PC, if you are waiting for an important reply, or an action to be taken.
Of course you could instead write some document in the meantime, with a probablity of 10% that anybody but you ever reads it.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
If you're logged into a remote computer where you're doing your work, only that login session will be visible, not the activity or the amount of activity.
Likewise, if you're running an app remotely (or on an app server or in a cloud), only the connection will register.
Or if you have a web browser up, the site you're visiting won't be visible. You could be browsing for work or for play; you couldn't tell
If the monitor software captured an image snapshot of the display, which would certainly acquire more info, then you could easily circumvent it by running your naughty app on a non-primary screen, because the activity monitor won't capture the activity on all three of your display monitors.
No doubt this technology sounds attractive to managers, but I doubt it'll be effective when monitoring developers or power users.
If you're wise, you contract on deliverables, not hours worked. The only time I'd accept such software would be if I were shifting risk to the other party; probably after I tell them "I think that your objectives are impossible. I'll charge you 2*$regular_rate ." If they're crazy enough to accept that, I'm crazy enough to overlook my principles; I'll even buy a new box especially for the job.
This is obviously not a very common scenario. ;-)
Most people that work from home already know or should be smart enough to know that computers used for work will have a high potential of being monitored. There is NO real privacy in computers anyway. On top of that, once you start adding work tools, etc. Obviously, somethings going to get compromised. It's just common sense.
Dual boot or have a work specific computer. End of story.
They trust someone enough to write code for them, or do their financial administration, but not for actually working a certain number of hours ?
That is like fucking a hooker without a condom and demanding clean sheets because of hygiene.
This will all end very suddenly the moment the Managers realize that this means their own jobs can be outsourced, offshored, and their job made 'redundant'.
Why pay a middle manager full US wages when you can have it done half as well for a quarter of the cost?
2. Know when you are being watched.
3. ???
4. Profit!
my first though was "naturally Big Brother is in the Home Office, where else would he be"?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I actually wrote one of these trackers myself for a company I telecommute with. I've actually found it slightly beneficial. As a C developer some things tend to take me a bit longer than my manager might expect. However I still get the time I billed because I can show my work, and that I wasn't slacking off via the snapshots. It also shows that at certain times I was doing research or something of the sort. I find it a lot better than the usual line counting and what not that would probably go on otherwise.
Well, if this is true, and I'm still not fired, guess I don't care.
They can watch me read my weird comics all they like.
I agree that it sucks that people have ten minutes pay docked because they took a dump at the wrong time. But why do you think people tolerate it? Because they are desperate for work.
On the other hand, you do have a good point. The reason these things happen is that people too many people have drank the capitalist Kool-Aid and won't show solidarity with their workers. Remember, people DIED for the forty hour work week. And computer workers today are so spineless and weak that they gave that away for no reason.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Luckily all these odd espionage instruments will soon not be needed anymore, as all social websites, gadgets (smartphones, tabs, webcams) and any electronic devices will already be capturing and logging each and every moment of a daily life instead than at random intervals. The clouds will then house the huge amounts of such information coming in. Distributed scanners will collect, aggregate and elaborate those immense flows of information. Each and every data connection will be engineered to always reserve 40% of its bandwidth for such legitimate "control" goals.
The complex infrastructure of cloud scanners, which will take the name "Skynet", will be based on heuristics and sophisticated AI engines: those will predict with an accuracy of 99.9999% any time an employee is thinking about doing anything else than what he has been ordered to do, like eating or yawning or going too often to the restroom. Both employees and contractors will then receive an electrical shock whenever such an intention or for example a real yawn is detected. But only a tiny little shock, certified to be absolutely 100% not dangerous, like X-Ray scanners. Subliminal messages will be programmed on all devices with an output to properly reeducate the bad apples.
That's why your corporate workstation is in a VM. Who doesn't do this?
I'd like to read the article, too. Link?
With Duct Tape.
Personally, I don't understand your outrage.
I work from home too, and sometimes I'll go work at a coffee shop with a friend just so we can keep each other accountable. Plus, if the person you're meeting at the coffee shop also happens to be working on the same project as you are, it's useful to know how far along their share of the work is going and if one of you is spinning his wheels for any reason, it's also easier for the person not spinning his wheels to actually notice the other person in trouble and offer to help out.
I've never had my billable hours questioned, and have always delivered quality software in the end.
What about the rest of us? Those of us less perfect than you are. Would we be allowed to enter such contracts? It's not like anyone is forcing you to enter into such contracts, as you've told us, you have plenty of clients who hire you without even asking you to do this. But what about us who actually want this?
I know many contract programmers, myself included, that charge less hours than they've actually spent working on a project, and then yes, many times we do deliver quality software, but we don't deliver it on time, or we don't communicate adequately the real pace of the work we're making (as we uncover more and more work to do that was originally unplanned). Now depending on the type of project you're working on, this may not be a problem, but then again, it could be a problem, and personally, I wouldn't mind this kind of screen capture for my own work (as long as it was disclosed to me upfront, which it clearly is, in this case, and as long as my boss/client wasn't a jerk about it, of course, if your boss/client is a jerk, then all bets would be off, and I'd want to have as little as contact with that person as possible).
Id pass on the 'home office'. And I might be looking for a less intrusive/more trusting employer. If it was happening at the office, id pass on that employer totally.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know for sure as I work at most 5 hours a week... I mean I don't take a nap in the morning otherwise I'm bored in the atfernoon!
Both of them work fine, I run Fedora on my work laptop with the original Win7 install running in a VM inside vmplayer. The corporate IT folks can even log in to my Win7 VM to do stuff with no idea that it's a VM.
I'm a telecommuter. Have been for quite a few years. The work machine belongs to my company. I did splurge on a nicer screen and keyboard than they provided though.
If you're worried about it scanning your network, you need a better home router.
He did say that it was a Windows image. Therefore it's fully expected that it will blue screen frequently and become unusably slow over time. A simple snapshot restore is actually saving his employer money by him not messing around with a broken Windows install.
When I hire on Elance the OS used is one of the first interview questions. Because I know it's going to cost more in time if they're using Windows.
I don't really care that they want to snoop. The thing that really ticks me off is that all that crapware slows down the machine, to the point where it really gets in the way of the work. It reminds me of the old Dr. Seuss story "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" where they had a lazy bee who didn't make honey fast enough. So, they hired a bee watcher to make sure the bee was making honey. That didn't work, so they hired a watch-watcher to watch the bee watcher, in hopes that would speed-up the bee. Then they hired a whole line of watch watcher watchers...
Meanwhile, some of these big companies are doing worse than ever, business wise, and paying the CEO more than ever. Is that stupid, or what?
I worked at home for a while and had to use a virtual machine as the dumb cisco VPN client would have routed all my home traffic through work. I found that using a VM to keep my work life separated from my home life was a desirable solution in any case and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.
Impossible to game the system? :D Are you serious?? This would be hacked, hacked and thricely hacked, and rightly so. Any employer that thinks they have a right to inflict this on their employees richly deserves the inevitable morning when they wake up to discover the feds knocking on their door and every single electronic device they own down to the toaster brimming with child pornography.
Why are we still working more than 3 days a week? All this technology we have is being wasted on stupid crap like this... monitoring employees is not progress.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Some people work fast and think about a problem even when "off work", and some people sit in front the computer all day long. This hole project is misguided and I would never give out a contract to somebody who measures his work this way.
Just my $0.02
My Dad works at a company, maintaining their servers. He has his own personal computer that is nothing to do with work, and he is provided with a PGP encrypted Windows XP Dell Latitude, that tunnels everything over a VPN to his work.It probably is monitored, but since it's being provided for free, don't complain. Use a different computer!
Yes, my first thought was:
You don't use a work computer for private things. Period. You don't spend work time browsing for s**t. If you do, you face the consequences.
If you have the time to do both, then use a different pc for that. If you'r employer pays for you network, then use a different parallel connection for personal stuff. Etc. etc.
I have never understood people who browse for porn on WORK TIME. In the office.
how so? i do work both in windows and linux, and i am pretty sure in linux my productivity is lower ... and it is little things that are problem, like Total commander being more efficient than Midnight commander (I am aware its third party but that does not change anything) that Outlook is much more efficient than Thunderbird that Windows 7 multimonitor support is better (when using mouse) than Ubuntu-s that Logitech G13 and logitech G9X buttons are much easier to configure/use on windows machine than Linux, even windows taskbar is better than Ubuntu one from standpoint of time efficiency for common operations, and i can always have Linux in virtual machine in case i need to do something more complex in command line, or simply use one of companies spare Linux servers using SSH
I also run Windows VMs on my Mac for security and other reasons. There are many legitimate reasons to do so-- backup is facilitated, snapshots can help with versions and allow you revert in the case of a whoops, whole-disk encryption is a cinch, you can have multiple VMs running, FireWire and Thunderbolt drives can be used for better productivity, testing on various OSes and releases (including different Windows setups) and configuration scenarios is facilitated, etc etc. And OS X is a solid and secure operating system which takes everything I throw at it, and like many other Unix (and Linux) implementations provides multiple virtual screens-- a huge productivity enhancer.
Anyone who questions my use of VMs should be satisfied with my answers if they have the least technical understanding. Trouble is, that would seem to exclude too many managers and all HR.