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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
And here on my other computer ... anything that I want
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
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!
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?
That is why they also monitor keyboard and mouse activity.
Of course that can be faked / simulated as well. A dedicated programmer will always be able to out-program such systems but at a certain point it becomes work to avoid surveillance than to just do the job at hand.
...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.
They're voluntarily exchanging a cube for a long leash. I don't see it as unreasonable, but rather a fair trade. Flexibility to work where and possibly when they want. In exchange they trade their physically present human supervisor for an automated screen-capture software. This isn't a web cam in the bathroom type intrusion, merely an alternate form of the same supervision they'd receive if they were physically present at the office.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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.
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
You should read the article. For 1/6th the cost of an hourly wage (same rate snapshots are taken at), you can blank out an image. That seems fair to me, since you don't pay for the times when it didn't catch you, so your pay will approach the actual amount of time you spend working.
You get to keep your privacy, and your pay. As long as there's a way to disable the software (and, presumably, not get paid) what's the problem?
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
It's bullshit though, I have solved some of my most difficult programming problems by putting down the mouse and going for a walk.
love is just extroverted narcissism