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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
Because most people are still paid by the hour.
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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.
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