Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Boss Keeps Workers On a Short Leash
Gr8Apes writes "Hitachi has created a 'perfect virtual boss.' The company is manufacturing and selling a device intended to increase efficiency in the workplace called the Hitachi Business Microscope (paywalled). 'The device looks like an employee ID badge that most companies issue. Workers are instructed to wear it in the office. Embedded inside each badge, according to Hitachi, are "infrared sensors, an accelerometer, a microphone sensor and a wireless communication device." Hitachi says that the badges record and transmit to management "who talks to whom, how often, where and how energetically." It tracks everything. If you get up to walk around the office a lot, the badge sends information to management about how often you do it, and where you go. If you stop to talk with people throughout the day, the badge transmits who you're talking to (by reading your co-workers' badges), and for how long. Do you contribute at meetings, or just sit there? Either way, the badge tells your bosses.'"
It just takes micromanagement to an entirely new level. No thanks to these.
Guaranteed to get rid of off your employees who have other options!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
In related news, I am pleased to announce my new "virtual slave" hardware, which intercepts communication from the "Virtual Boss" device to PHBServer and provides an excellent replacement stream of communication indicating you always participate in meetings, visit precisely three fellow employees for ten minutes each day, and never go to the bathroom. ("Virtual Slave eXtreme" will be available soon, with many customization options.)
Or...Take this job and shove it.
Way too intrusive....treat people like adults, and only punish those that cannot act like an adult, but don't punish and track everyone else that is getting their job done.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
.... I quit. I for one, do not welcome our Orwellian overlords.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Japanese companies have tried stuff like this before, but not so that bosses can harass their employees. They genuinely want to know how to make the business better by finding out how people actually work... You know, like a good boss should.
Obviously the potential for abuse is massive, but I think the article author is projecting their own thinking on to this idea. Aside from anything else abusing it would probably be illegal under Japanese law, as it would be in most European countries.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I mean really, most people would take the badge off before sitting down at their desk.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Employees appeared to slowly converge on the toilets throughout the morning, where they remained for a few minutes before departing the building and eventually arriving to the nearest large body of water, where they remained for the rest of the day."
I'd just leave in at my desk in a drawer most likely. If I actually worked for a company that tried to implement that, you can guarantee my resume would be going at either at EOD or lunchtime. If your company is suffering because of lack of productivity, the problem might lie with the workers. It probably lies with their boss. Either way, micromanaging 98% of workers* is counterproductive. Much more effective to hire competent, motivated people in the first place and/or replace the people managing them.
* I can see this being useful in a low-skill job with extremely high turnover, but that's about it
... to kill the bastard who though this was a good idea?
If my use of the wii has taught me anything, its how to game systems with the littlest possible physical work. I will need to start energetically shouting during meetings. Or make a phone app that will shout into the badge for me while its in my pocket.
Fiction becomes reality:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Hitachi has invented the RoboToady. now, the only reason to keep brownnoses around is to fill out the foursome at golf.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"It looks like you're trying to Fire A Subordinate. Would you like me to call Security?"
-kgj
It seems like more people should take a read of Marshall Brain's Manna, a book about this very thing. (Online version).
It goes into what could happen (and given current economics, the rest of us are housed in tiny apartments to keep the away from the owners). And yet, it also details an alternative view where automation is NOT shunned, but instead used to fulfill what people originally dreamed them to do - do all the chores while the humans relax, or speculate, or invent, or do other things.
Quite an informative read if you have a couple of hours.
We don't need this because we trust our employees to be adults who get their work done. That's why we give them the breathing room they need and only burden them with daily standups and mandatory pair programming in our open bull-pen office. With this type of dynamic, collaborative work environment we are able to attract top talent.
I think Hitachi goofed up their translation. "Perfect" is not the correct word.
I can't see these being useful. You get a lot of data from a lot of employees and eventually it's just going to be too much data to be effectively useful, hampering creativity and the ability to solve problems. Then there's the other problem, let's say this works perfectly and only perfect employees are kept, who pays for the employees who can no longer get jobs because they aren't willing to be automatons?
"Perfect Employees" Of course this this definition of perfect is a bit swayed towards people that show up, sit at their desks, do not converse with their coworkers, and spend the minimum amount of time in the restroom or on lunch break.
No mention of if the people are actually getting any work accomplished. Talk about inappropriate selection pressure. At best it finds people that are good at subverting the process.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
They are trying to solve the problem of wanting to fire individuals but needing cause, and an application like this is pretty much an automatic paper trail generator that can be mined to fit pretty much any firing.
Step 1: Bring your friendly dog to work. Step 2: Distribute treats to all coworkers Step 3: Attach badge to dog collar. Step 4: Enjoy bosses' consternation! ...
Step 5: (probable) .... clean out desk & look for other job.
It's just a very good tool to get rid of people you can't get rid of easily any other way. I don't know about your country, but here, if you have been with a company for a long while, it gets increasingly difficult (or expensive) to get rid of you. Being able to "prove" that you're slacking makes it so much easier.
You needn't put everyone under surveillance. You just have to make everyone think that they are.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Never have I been happier to be an independent contractor working at home. I know there are "solutions" to people like me already (like the oDesk spyware crap), but thusfar, I've been able to avoid them.
I work for one of the American Hitachi divisions. God help me if they decide to force them on us.
It will be hailed as the greatest invention since the Blackberry. All those useless drones who aren't working every second of their 40 hours and take more than their "fair" share of the free coffee will finally pay! I can even be used to make sure people get truly "fair" pay, "You were here for 50 hours this week but you only really 'worked' for 39 of them...no overtime for you!"
I can see this not only becoming standard in most workplaces and probably even made mandatory in a few states (with appropriate exceptions for executive level management).
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
No, I don't mean "doing their job". I mean they will start to game the system. People who want to slack off have been very inventive and creative when it comes to slacking, so this will be no different. They will come up with ways to tweak that. Don't want to go to a boring meeting? Let a coworker take your badge along. He'll do it for you next time and everyone's happy.
Of course this does not increase productivity, but rather decrease it for the necessary overhead involved to game the system. But hey, I didn't come up with the idea, management gets what management wants, and if they want me to spend time fucking with their spying system rather than work so my "characteristic figures" look the way they should, I give them what they want.
For reference, see the success of the "how many keystrokes did the programmer make today" for measuring the productivity of programmers creating code. It's not that much different from this junk.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It needs a speaker, too.
"Attention worker #47293, you have exceeded your pooping allotment for the day. Exit the stall and proceed back to your desk. Thank you for your compliance."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
True story: My CEO (US company, California) tasked me to install 3 motion-detection CCTV cameras at all of our remote staff locations (3 part timers, in their homes, in eastern Europe), and then review the footage daily to determine if they 'were at their posts' during working hours (and did not take 'too many' breaks during the day). Of course, the reason for this was to 'make sure we are getting what we paid for.' I'm glad this device was not around last year (or will be very expensive THIS year).
No, I did not install the cameras, I just let the issue die. (still have a job, too).
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
I assume the sensitive accelerometer analyzer can tell the difference between subtle movements while talking (hey, you could probably read body like mouth reading! Haha nobody can patent that now!) and jerking off.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have to agree, this goes against everything that is said about good management. Most good MBA schools would disprove of this.
Why?
1. There is a calculated benefit towards (water cooler chats), this increases overall productivity, by allowing informal collaboration and knowledge exchange.
2. The issue between Introverted and Extroverted employees. An introverted employee in a meeting may seem very quite and engaged, however they are there listening and taking in the information, where they may come up with better solution later on. Extroverted may seem like they are engaged however they are just talking a lot of nonsense, and off topic, because they like talking.
3. Employee intensive is Work Environment + Pay. If they feel like their freedom is being taken away from them, it is equivalent to paying them less. If an employee feels like they are being paid fairly they will perform better then one who feels like they are not.
4. Synergy. How can you have Synergy if people are not working together, and knowing each others strengths and weaknesses?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wow. As a software/hardware product.. that is freaking cool.... No, I wouldn't want to wear one.. But the analytic side of it is fascinating. You could also tie it in with facial recognition, so that if the employee removes the badge, that would be known and reported too. Your slacking off days are numbered!!
It appears to generate completely meaningless metrics that have no real value in evaluating employees or their contributions.
On the other hand, it's the sort of soul crushing nonsense that you would hope that none of your professional (or even just legal) workers would tolerate. It seems more like something for your illegal sub-minimum wage part time menial laborers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How screwed up has our society become when it makes cheesy 80's hair metal seem substantive and poignant?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
How is it supposed to determine that the people who spend half their day socializing aren't doing any productive work?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I guess the Governor of New Jersey could use these things - he has absolutely no idea what goes on in his office.
That's exactly what happens in the first half of the story, actually. The money concentrates at the top, consolidating in the hands of the few, while everybody else is shoved into tiny publicly-funded housing in abject poverty. Mind you, I find the second half too farfetched to be remotely believable, but the first half aligns with your points exactly.
Putting this in a Faraday cage is sure to generate a report "Employee is well shielded from management and employees. Recommend promotion to CEO."
I am sure some DHS/TSA/NSA/Dirty Cop would love to see these fitted in every vehicle, back pack, and on you.
No good deed goes unpunished.
After all, it's the first step of automating management, and replacing all that management types with a bunch of shell scripts.
And who gets to write those shell-scripts in the end? Who? Exactly, we, the techies.
So it may be a slight inconvenience for a time, but in the end we will only have to do what the shell scripts we wrote ourselves are telling us to do. Sounds pretty much like paradise to me.
Although there are several other bingos too./
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
...would have been a whole lot different if Lester Burnham had been wearing one of these.
Lester: "I jack off in the office toilet everyday"
Catbert HR guy: "Yes we know Lester. You're ID badge registered the excessive calories you burned while in the head and it's mic picked up you talking dirty to your imaginary girl friend during your cubicle 'workout'. The company doesn't allow wankers at your pay grade and level, only my level and higher. Your fired."
I'm at a loss for words.
Japanese companies are very different to western ones.
That's an important point here, and often overlooked.
I see that as the side effects of Japan having a sometimes very different culture and social norms/values than in the west hemisphere.
What works well in Japan, may not work here in the USA, but that works both ways.
I foresee severe backlash in the US workforce if this tech is attempted here. On top of all the other stuff causing unrest in this country, something like this could tip the balance for a revolt of some sorts.
(Not singling out Japan, just trying to stay on-topic.)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
...when their virtual boss tokens get hacked by their competitor or APT.
What problem are they trying to solve?
Having employees.
I'm a software architect. I design and write code for tools and infrastructure that other developers use to build applications. Session management, build tools and automation, stuff to build application access control on top of, etc. I am at my most productive when I am sitting quietly, staring into the middle distance. Or sometimes when I have struggled with a design issue, rejecting multiple mediocre solutions. Then I hop in the shower, and *the* solution pops into my head.
Measure that. Go ahead, I dare you to try.
The virtual boss will see - contrary to what the eyes of the real bosses tell them - employees who never get up from their desks, never go to the bathroom, and never hang around in the break room... because those badges are left behind on the desk all the time whenever the employees get up from their desks, go to the bathroom, and hang around the break room.
Because employees will quickly learn to "game" the system, rendering the whole thing useless.
Hell, most of the time those badges aren't even necessary to get into the office, since somebody inevitably will open the door for you. And inevitably the employees are going to discover that their badges are ratting them out.
Not that any of this matters. This is just another way for managers to collect "metrics" on their staff, to prove with the magic of numbers that their staff is working, rather than - oh, I don't know - looking to see if the work is actually getting done. But the latter would actually require the managers to understand what their reports are doing, and that requires knowledge and effort on their part. Better to just rely on computers to create a useless spreadsheet that they can point to during the yearly reviews.
And what about using these proximity detection technologies to do something else than just facilitating harassment?
Oh wait, someone already did it! http://www.sociopatterns.org/
I know this might sound a little crazy, but I don't think it's designed for the whole workforce to wear. It's used during a study in a large environment to see how the workforce performs tasks. You assign it to a number of statistically neutral individuals, and they represent the workforce as a whole. An analyst (or consultant) determines work patterns and can charge the company $10,000 to move the water cooler from one side of the office to the other to promote efficiency in movement, or even relocate a team within a building so they don't have to walk across the building to interact with them.
Sure, it's orwell in a can, but it's not designed for every day use. Can you even imagine the nightmare of tracking those on people that don't want to wear them?
Micro-manage me like one of your Foxconn (girl) employee!
I don't know anyone who would put up with this. Even from a management standpoint, the cost this would require to implement would far outweigh the benefits.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
I am surprised no one has said this so far. The earliest link for this is from 2007 - www.techdigest.tv/2007/06/hitachis_new_bu.html This product seem to be here - www.hitachi.com/design/field/solution/microscope/ It will become obviously illegal in many countries for companies to force your employees to wear this so I dont think what the above CNN article mentions is what this product will be advertised for at all. It is not a bad idea, I just think the scope of privacy abuse is huge. So, I think, one way this product could be used is by making it optional for people and making them aware of all the things it is recording. I mean, either have a turn off button or a way for you to leave it at your desk. I can see that this is a good way to measure which organizations within a company talk to which ones. It wont help in tele-conferences etc, it can add to that data though.
Same as the old boss.
the first discovery request. The recordings and data would be a potential goldmine for attorneys. Not just employment cases but criminal as well. So, Mr. CEO, how do you explain your employees talking about how you were able to fix prices? How about your admin talking about the stock tips you get from friends?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It's called phone support. I worked for a company which, while unnamed here, makes you think of electricity. The phone support we did was for a product which, while unnamed here, makes you think of never leaving the office. At the beginning of the shift, you had to put on the phone headset and sign in to the phone. You couldn't sign in early, and you only had a couple of minutes of grace time if your "watch" was inaccurate by a couple of minutes. Breaks were generated by some computer program and had to be followed exactly. The company which farmed out the phone support function, which while unnamed here, makes you think of something extremely small and cushiony, did not want to pay extra for overtime, so if you didn't sign out of the phone after exactly 8 hours you would get yelled at. If you had to suddenly visit the restroom, you had to track down a shift lead and request to go out of ready, and you were at that person's mercy, depending on call volume or the shift lead's own fear of getting in trouble.
Now tell me if this is a substantial new development.
I cannot imagine a better argument for unionization than such gizmos.
Years ago I worked on early mobile field work software on GPS enabled PDAs. Periodically I'd take an installation and training trip so I could hear the stakeholder concerns. One of the concerns I frequently heard from field workers in private was that the boss would be tracking their movements every moment of the day, and he'd use this to go after workers he didn't like. This was new stuff, and it had a bit of a creepiness factor for people who'd never used a computer in their life.
My response was always this: What would *you* do if you wanted to show someone is goofing off instead of working? You'd go to the site where he claimed to have done the work and see if it actually got done. It's what you'd do, it's what I'd do, and it's what your boss does if he has any common sense. If he doesn't, *he's* the one who's goofing off. Field work is hard; traveling around and keying a few bogus entries is much easier, and would be sufficient to fool the system.
With a few exceptions like security guards, you don't need technology to tell if a worker is doing his job. You need to manage your employees by measuring the things you expect them to accomplish.
We are far from having a technological substitute for intelligent supervision. Anything that falls short of that is just pandering to management laziness.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm grateful for self employment......
Will management be wearing these, and having their performance judged by the exact same criteria?
No, I thought not.
Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.
---- Abraham Lincoln
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
What problem are they trying to solve? They want to recover the cost of managers. They can't get rid of the technical staff - they actually need them - but they can get rid of that expensive middle tier by automating the tracking part of management. Which all they think there is to management.
Before you all say "Woohoo", think of this: The CIO is now your boss. You are no longer a person, you're a resource. The only way he knows you or of you is a set of numbers on a report. You either make whatever metric they use to gauge your performance or you don't. They don't care if you're sick, or if you're taking care of a child, or if you've got a personal problem - you don't make the numbers and you're gone.
You nuts? When a robot breaks down you have to fix it or buy a new one. When a worker burns out, you simply dump them and grab the next one off the street for free.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you have a gig whose output and quality that can be monitored by a device like this, maybe you should look for a different gig.
You're right. And with technologies like Watson being deployed, reduced need for telephone CSR workers. Jobs for English-speaking people with a high school education are being scraped out of our economy through technological efficiencies.
"Plumbers make great money! There will always be work for plumbers," people say when arguing against the value of a college education. That perspective doesn't take into account plumbers don't need to speak English and those jobs can be filled by hard-working Spanish-speaking immigrants, thereby reducing the standard wages to something below the imagined level of "great money." STEM curriculum is going to be essential for protecting the current generations of students from becoming the unemployable middle-class of the future.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
A "perfect" boss does not need to instruct workers to wear a badge, need to know who you talk to, how often, where or how energetically, need to track everything, need to know how often / fast you walk around an office, who (or indeed) how much you stop to talk to.
Because he doesn't hire fecking idiots who he thinks need to be babysat by metrics in order to do their job. And he trusts them as professionals. And only needs bother even investigate if there are specific allegations or failings that he becomes aware of (and he WILL become aware of them if he's any kind of decent boss).
It's shit like that that propagates that entire fake management crap.
If you ever consider any of these things metrics even WORTH bothering to measure, you're a fecking idiot of a boss.
Bad metrics lead to stuff like
People not wanting to do harder / longer tasks vs easier / quick ones
People banking up quick stuff for a slow day other then working on it right away
Hurts teamwork all the way to fighting over who will do the task / take credit for it.
Leads to people who game the system to be able to do little to no work.
Makes people hate the guy who goes out of way to do as much as he can as others don't want to work at that very high volume as it makes them look bad.
Also can lead to safety being pushed to the side to make your numbers.
Waiting for the suppository edition which is shaped like a tiny microscope...
Seriously. Every technology they just mentioned is in every modern smartphone. How many people do not have a smartphone working for a tech company in Japan (if one isn't even issued)?
Make and app and require its usage.
Anyway the privacy issues aside.
I see people taking turns sitting in a room with a box full of badges, doing their best impressions of each other while the rest hit the pub...
Then the left out guy is bitter, and heaves the box off the roof of the building and some manager gets to see his whole department apparently commit suicide.
Tell them the app delivers their company email.
They won't be concerned because they 'do nothing wrong' at work and won't think about the fact that the company will know everything else about them as well. They'll assume it is just internet surfing, long phone calls, and texting that the company wants to track when in reality it is everything, a drag net of employee data.
That said, they'd drown in that much data. More likely they'd turn on such 'features' when they are already wanting to get rid of the employee.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I thought most states had "at will" employment, where an employer could fire an employee for any reason that did not run afoul of human or civil rights, or for no reason at all. Granted, I realize that some employers will have hiring contracts in place that can make it more difficult, or at least considerably more paperwork for the employer to fire anyone they want whenever they want to, but I think those are the exception, and not the rule. That said, I can't see much need for this technology outside of companies that *do* have such employment policies.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Instead of doing your job, your actions will be tailored to suit the device. You will spend most of your energy and brainpower to look to the algorithm, instead of actually doing your work. We have seen this from ultra-competitive workplaces, e.g. Microsoft, where middle-managers and "top" employees were more concerning of how they were doing on their performance reviews, often sabotaging their coworkers work, than actually working.
but one has to remember that there are such things as ethics. Just because a sick idea came to your mind one has to remember that it might be quite unethical to unleash it on the world. Hitatchi being an electronics company did it for business and money sakes hoping to capitalize on various businesses in Japan or for example on outsourced remote employees. But they should have known it is wrong. Thanks, Hitatchi. I used to own a TV from you few years ago, a VCR many years ago, and number of other items. Never again will I ever buy your products.
Even when the state or country has at-will firing, you still have to justify it to other members of the management team. Either horizontally or vertically, there are often political consequences for firing people for personal, arbitrary, or even counterproductive reasons.
That's just plain insane....Period.
End of Line.
The tool is scary and all, but none of your points apply to this tool or why it is bad.
All your points are making assumptions based on the interpretation of the data.
For example, the amount of talking done in a meeting... I would be looking at the extremes as cases to investigate further - both the guy that drones on the entire meeting and has difficulty making his point, and the guy that didn't make a peep (or just said "OK" a couple times). The same could be done by actually sitting in on the meeting, or virtually sitting in (conferenced in), or close to it by reviewing meeting minutes. The data *could* be used in a good way to help identify the meeting groups that do need assistance more than others.
Same goes for talking to others. Some of that is good. Zero is bad (and note, introverts have no problem chatting with others; it is a numbers thing - they'd rather talk to one person at a time than a group). And they guy that does nothing about wander around talking to people all day and hiding in others offices is bad too (most likely)... at the very least, it raises some red flags that would be just as easily seen by directly involved management, and would (theoretically) allow fewer managers to effectively manage more employees - which in my mind, would be a good thing (the fewer managers in the world, the better, so long as things are still running smooth).
With the sheer volume of data these things would create in even a mid-sized office, the data is only going to be good at identifying edge cases. Doesn't seem too bad to me. That said, the risk for abuse is awful. Using data from these as a means to fire someone is very ugly. Managing purely by numbers is awful. But, AFAICT, this tool doesn't force that.
I have a hard time believing someone can be so ignorant of history. Do you think slaves were happy? What about feudal serfs? Or pre-unionized steel workers? Or the children working in textile factories?
He said "happy workers are productive workers". He did NOT say "all productive workers are happy workers". See the difference? What he probably meant was "companies that use policies that keep their workers happy are more likely to have workers that are productive". Sure you can force someone to be productive under miserable conditions but you can get terrific productivity as well by treating your employees nicely.
Capital has never, and will never, care about the happiness of their workers unless those workers force them to care
True and there has been tremendous progress on that front. Working conditions in the US are FAR better in most cases than they were 100 years ago, sometimes to a fault.
Just your boss? Or your bosses boss as well?
I can see first line management get just as paranoid over such a device as the employees. Bad managers lead to unmotivated employees and goofing off. Guess who gets fired.
Have gnu, will travel.
I assume that the plutocrats made a cost-benefit decision and decided that a sedate population living in terrafoam was safer than a rebellious, starving society.
My manager at work has actually had HR completely reverse a firing for someone that didn't come to work for three work days in a row with no notice whatsoever, while calling up at the end of each day and promising to be in the next. Reason? Not enough paperwork on said person.
Of course on the flip side, if you follow the policies at my workplace to the letter, each and every employee should be fired roughly once per week. It's not possible to follow every policy at once.
I can't see these being useful. You get a lot of data from a lot of employees and eventually it's just going to be too much data to be effectively useful, hampering creativity and the ability to solve problems. Then there's the other problem, let's say this works perfectly and only perfect employees are kept, who pays for the employees who can no longer get jobs because they aren't willing to be automatons?
You're holding the data wrong.
This isn't supposed to be used for managing individual employees -- it's meant to be used the same way as the old Xerox Parc badges -- to analyse trends, bottlenecks, causal relationships, etc. The consumer of this data isn't the manager, it's his workflow analysis team's statistical modelling system. Sure, you can drill down to indivisuals, but that's not really the important bit. The important bit is more along the lines of answering questions like "How can we organize our employees to maximize functional effectiveness stemming from social interaction? Yoshida Hiro appears to not contribute in meetings and be less productive when others approach his desk; maybe he should get a corner cubicle where he has more privacy to get his work done..." etc.
Wait. Is this saying there's going to be a growing market for robots who can wear badges and be programmed to do things management wants while the rest of us do actual work? Oh, baby, this could be a goldmine!
Remember, every solution is an opportunity to create a new problem.
Going by the summary of what this tool is supposed to do (and without the benefit of having used it) I can only deduct that it's worthless. Let's take the example of how often people speak up in meetings. The implication is that the more you speak up the more you are contributing. In other words, the extrovert is more valuable than the introvert. Nothing could be further from the truth. Is it more valuable to make one good comment in a meeting or ten useless comments? It's like judging a programmer on how many lines of code per hour they produce. Is it not better to judge the programmer on the quality rather than the quantity of the code?
Tyranny by government dictators: Bad.
Tyranny by corporate dictators: Good.
Any questions?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
That bad.
I don't know whether to thank you, or curse you!
I went to the author's page and read "Manna" just now, and the first half of that book scared me tremendously(more than any other sci-fi work I have ever experienced), then the second half was soul-tearing.
What I mean by soul-tearing, is seeing the possibilities in the Australia Project, and loving the whole concept...at the same time knowing it could probably never happen on this planet.
Too many entrenched entities(gov't. and corp) would see this as a worse cancer than USA saw communism.
In the real world, the Australia Project would only be nuked out of existence before it could get viable.
We have to protect those corp. markets and profits for national security, ya know. (it IS NOT about protecting people or 'democracy')
Which brings up an interesting thought to me:
The last war that the USA was successful at, was WW2. We had a common rally point:we were attacked, and fought back. We were fighting to actually protect our citizens and land...the Axis expansion was coming to our shores.
Since then, all of the wars we have been in have all been about protecting markets and profits[1], and we have universally failed.
I think that troop motivation has a significant factor with that, in that there is now common rally point for the people to get behind. (another part is HOW we have went about war)
Well, in the end, I'm going to count reading 'Manna" as a positive experience, so thanks! :-)
[1] the whole anti-communism thing is rooted in protecting corp. markets and profits, and is also the root of the anti-socialist attitude in the USA
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Only if you don't want either a) morale among the employees to fall so far down that up won't even exist anymore or b) to look like a total douchebag to people who may be a position to make your own life more uncomfortable than it currently is.
If you *are* a douchebag, and you don't have a problem with other people in the company knowing it, and your employees are as interchangeable and replaceable as office pencils, then those two things may not be that big a deal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In a libertarian society, there wouldn't even [i]be[/i] corporations. Corporations are a state-created means of shielding company owners from accountability for the actions of the firms they control.
And you seriously can't tell the difference between switching from buying stuff from one provider to another, and emigrating?
I mean, is this anti-libertarian straw man day, or something? This thread looks like a scarecrow convention!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Back then all employees, including engineers such as myself, had to sign in to a book each morning. At precisely 8:02 one of the office ladies came and picked up the books from each department and placed a little red stamp in place of the signatures of anyone who had not yet signed in. For the first hour or so of the day, most of the guys smoked and drank coffee and talked about last night's activities. I almost always arrived at 8:05 because I refused to board trains where people were being physically stuffed into the cars. I found that by waiting for 1 or 2 trains to go by, I could comfortably and safely just get on the train, but arrive 5 minutes late to work.
Once a month, every month, my kacho would lecture me about being on-time. I was required to write an explanation for each time I was late. I couldn't write one and make copies, I had to write on separate sheets of paper why I was late for each date that I was late, about 20 per month. This would take me the better part of half a day, what with coffee and bathroom breaks. It was absolutely comical.
One day I needed to send a document to the US. I checked the office supply cabinet for a large envelope and there were none, so I asked one of the office ladies where I could get an envelope. She handed me a form and said I should fill it out, then get the kacho's and bucho's signatures on it and take it to the General Affairs dept where they would file it and give me some envelopes. I asked if they were going to give me a pallet full of envelopes and she said, no, they usually give them out 3 or 4 at a time. I foolishly asked why she thinks they do this and she said I guess it's to keep people from taking them home. Then I asked how much do envelopes cost compared to the time required to fill out the form, get two signatures, and file the form. She said she never thought about it like that but that I might have a good point.
Japan has a long history of treating people like either children or machines. This concept doesn't surprise me at all.
Sensible performance metric: Does employee x get the shit done?
Insensible performane metric: how often doe he stand up while getting the shit done.
I know people who would be excellent according to such a device, however nothing beyond powerpoint engineering ever leaves theis desks.
I'm pretty sure it would go against collective agreements currently in place. In many regions, employers are now allowed to have cameras in the work place for the purpose of observing the employees at work.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
It looks like Taylorism, aka time and motion is finally coming to the Office environment. And remember when you go to take a leek, your urine is automatically tested for pharmaceuticals.
. . . definition of boss with that of micromanaging slave driver.
That would be flushed on the first day, as i walk out the door.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's because the words have been applied far too much to be sheeps clothing for wolves. Some of those that most loudly shout that they are Christian are instead merchants in the temple. It makes others wary of anyone that makes similar noises in case they have an extremist or confidence trickster on their hands.
As for "conservative", when people verbally push how conservative they are in politics it's sometimes part of a shell game to get away with doing something radical. I've got one of those in my state that is really 99% fascist and is trying to change or destroy everything he can - so much for "conservative".
So when you fit the original definitions I can see how it's a bit tough that people assume you are a disguised wolf instead as soon as you mention the label. Maybe don't. Democratic Socialists would be laughed out of this place or called Communists as soon as they bring up their label.
Oh well, according to Scott Adams, they were only there so as to do the least amount of possible damage anyway.
luckily for some of us we're salary, so it's OK if we don't work a full 40...
"You were here for 50 hours this week but you only really 'worked' for 39 of them...no overtime for you!"
Sorry, nope, under the FLSA. In the US, for ordinary non-exempt employees: you have to count any rest period as time worked that's 20 minutes or shorter of continuous rest.
Maybe you're from France or something, but in America we don't have anything that even remotely resembles a Left Wing party. There's a few pundits who're left wing on _social_ issues, but I can count the number of economic liberals that show up in public discourse on one hand (Robert Reich, Liz Warren, Rachel Maddow and that old guy who plays her second fiddle).
...
Heck, when Liz Warren suggested reinstating Glass-Seagal to prevent another crash like in 2008 the question wasn't if it was right or wrong, but why she was even bothering having a discussion on something when it's got zero chance of happening
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Everything, and everyone, needs some slack.
You wouldn't engineer machinery with zero tolerance. There has to be some give, or the machinery fails.
Humans deserve no less.
What a smart way of killing productivity! Make work environment a surveillance hell, and top performers will flee as soon as possible.
This device, by monitoring employees, allows bosses to defer their responsibilities to the device. It therefore allows one class of employee to become worse at their job by ensuring another class becomes better at theirs. So the one group of people that needs this technology applied to themselves the most is bosses, those lazy fucks.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
The state I live in has weak labor laws, and the company believes it can do as it pleases. My fellow co-workers and I have been looking for other jobs for a few years now, but the market sucks. (BTW, all of us have at least a bachelors degree, mine is in engineering). There are thousands of jobs around here that pay minimum wage, but almost nothing paying any more than that.
I have an obvious solution for you. MOVE.
That's what I've had to do for years, just to stay employed. My last move was 200 miles. The one before that was 650 miles.
I see my family a week at Thanksgiving and a week at Christmas. Sure that sucks, but it's what I had to do in order to avoid what you're going through.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
..It's how the technology is used
I think this Virtual boss is a GOOD THING, and should be implemented..... but only in prisons.
Strongly recommend reading/buying this from Kindle (for less than a dollar). It's a great and important read.
my salary goes up cause I KNOW I work more than my boss and/or my other colleges at work. But since it gathers data and gives it to the boss, I hardly doubt it will be used this way.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
Wow, I'm an engineering contractor and I specifically want wages. Around here salary means, "If you don't put in at least 60 hours a week and are on call 24/7, you should consider yourself fired!" 9-5 doesn't exist, more like 8-8 and weekends. If you have a conference call with China, forget about sleep that night!
Salary has become a way for companies to abuse unpaid overtime.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
A goverment will issue every married couple a ring that will monitor your marriege as well as well you can be a fit parents often time how do you have sex. Then they review to find a beat way to screw you up and sell the report to marriege canselors, devorce lawyer, child service and inforcement. You know what next
Yep, that totally reverses the meaning I understood from your post. We are on the same page here.
I once worked in an office where headphones were banned because one time one guy failed to answer his phone because he had headphones on. (And the boss was an asshole, but that kind of goes without saying in this case.) The result was everyone putting speakers up and cranking them way up to try to drown out the inane chatter across the too cramped office. Apparently we were children and everyone must be punished because one person made a mistake. This "helicopter bossing" is the same.
Lucky for my immediate coworkers that they are fans of Tool.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
With each passing day, I become increasingly alarmed by the sheer dearth of new tech which purports to increase productivity. With each article I read where companies seek to eak fractional incremental gains out of employees who are already working half again as much as their parents did just to get by, these additional Orwellian intrusions are pushing me to avoid work environments where privacy has lost any meaning. I wonder if managers will use this tool to monitor lunches, toilet breaks as well. It all feels like a return to a time when a company could essentially own an employee. These are the types of situations that lead to revolutions because you cannot quantify morale or spirit. Put a lid on a pot too tightly and it tends to end up poorly.
Or would it track you all the way to the gun store and back?
This is rife for abuse at too many levels.
The most obvious to me is the manager with twenty direct reports.
Clearly he cannot pay micro attention to each so the mgr would then
elect to focus on one or perhaps two and exclude all the others. There
is no way to accurately compress a day into less than a day.
Sexual harassment... oh my.
Some meetings you need to be quiet.
Now let us invert this.
Obama and all the NSA depth search limit contacts
to him and his cabinet as well as the legislative branch.
This information and its meta data would let us know
a lot more about the inner workings.
Perhaps stated differently the manager also needs one
and his employees need access. In specific union representatives
and legal proxies. HR harassment police need these on
all managers in a position of power.
Golly help anyone that shakes a bottled smoothy too often or
too vigorously.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.