Big Brother In the Home Office 298
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."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Use another PC for private stuff!
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Or dual boot???
In my case since I run an older SSD and space is limited, I'd boot my dev partition off a spinning disk.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Best solution is to keep another machine right next to your work one. Leave the work one on, with "work stuff" on the screen, and periodically permute it to give the appearance of actually doing something. Unless they're also monitoring the frequency and volume of keystrokes (and mouse movements) then you should be alright.
I'd also be curious to know how this software handles virtual screens, e.g. "Spaces" in OS X. If it only takes snapshots of the primary "space" then just put all your non-work stuff in a different space.
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They work via the windows print screen command and a timer more or less. They aren't really used for anything else because nobody consents to such software willingly. If your looking to slack off work and do something else while on the clock ya you may need a second computer, since something like a vm wouldn't defeat a screen shot grabber. Otherwise if your just ensuring your employer can't snoop on you in off hours or on lunch breaks, dual booting solves that problem easy.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am assuming that any company so paranoid that they're logging everything the employee is doing would be equally as batshit crazy about unexplained lulls in activity.
I'm very suspicious about the "cannot be gamed" thing... it's software, ffs.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Probably a better way would be "cannot be gamed without substantial risk of getting fired".
I really don’t get the need for this stuff, especially for programmers. I mean maybe in some jobs it makes sense, but as a programmer I know if I start slacking off it’s going to be pretty damn apparent when my stuff isn’t getting done or is of poor quality.
Not to say metrics should be blindly used to gauge productivity, but any manager worth his weight in pepper packets is going to have a rough idea of how long stuff should be taking and is going to be aware of the quality of the work.
If I was in the situation (assuming for some reason I didn’t just quit and find a company that doesn’t treat me like an assembly line worker) I’d probably just have my work PC separate and do any goofing off on a separate (unmonitored) computer as others have suggested. Maybe flip up a document or something that would be reasonable to show no activity for a few minutes.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
The network guys need it because they cant see it on their own.
Last place I worked I turned in a fellow programmer for downloading nasty snuff porn at work. The morons in the NOC could never catch it but little ol me after inserting a 20 year old 10 base T hub in line with our outbound router and then plugging in the bosses second ethernet line into it so I could run etherape and other tools in there was able to deliver proof in 20 minutes. the linux tool that displays images that are being sent around on the network made the Ops manager crap himself right there in his chair.
Yet the experts in the NOC and Network operations told the higher ups that they cant do what I was showing them. A skilled person can easily set up network side tools to discover and log things without resorting to amateur hour apps on the desktop.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me - would you turn in a fellow programmer for, to pick an example at random, making unapproved changes to a production network, such as adding an old hub to a network?
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
Like a lot of things, this probably isn't black-and-white. Maybe "Lumpy" wanted to get rid of the guy because the guy wasn't pulling his weight and it fell back on Lumpy to get things done. Or maybe Lumpy is a female and was highly offended by the porn, who knows. But looking at porn at work at watching TV are totally different things (unless you're watching the Playboy Channel or Spice). If the boss doesn't care, there's not much anyone can say about you watching TV. But if an employee is looking at porn on company property, that opens the employer up to a sexual harassment lawsuit if anyone sees this. So if a co-worker is looking at porn, and you can provide evidence, that's pretty much a sure-fire way of getting him canned. It doesn't matter if the employee was only looking at it for 15 minutes in the afternoon, while the employee next to him spent that same time playing Sudoku and some other guy went outside for a smoke break. Some activities are perfectly fine at work as long as the boss is OK with it, but certain other activities are absolutely not, and porn is one of those.
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they can prove you are not really working.
That is what this is really about. They want to be able to reduce management overhead by having people work from home while still allowing someone to look in on everyone to make sure everyone is working.
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Micromanagement without the management?
Brilliant!
Well... not really.
You are at work... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You are at work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of my job is knowing how to program efficiently and effectively. This involves perusing websites, twitter feeds, wikipedia, personal blogs, news sites and other easily-misinterpreted content. I should not have to justify every single web request I make. I should not have to ask, before each decision to click a link, "Is this good for the Company?".
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The problem is that I am not being "supervised" to the level that I am being checked multiple times per hour. I am fortunate that I work for a company that evaluates me on my results and compares me to others for ranking and frankly doesn't care how I achieve those results as long as it is ethical/legal. This means, that if I want to browse Slashdot all day long and then work at night-- not a problem. This invasive supervision also creates an environment where the smart people will find a job elsewhere and
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Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just about making sure you're doing nothing private, but also to make sure you didn't take a half-hour to have a cup of coffee or take your hand off your keyboard to think about the best way to solve a problem.
Is it finally sinking in that corporations really don't care about your well-being, or even about what's best for the company, only profits are important? And if achieving another .2% of profits this quarter requires you to have a 50% worse quality of life, they're going to throw you under the bus every time.
Problem is, there is absolutely no "free market" solution to this. There is no "free market" solution to your declining real income and your diminishing quality of life. They are thrilled with high unemployment because that means the workers are too scared to do anything but bow their heads and take it.
Today I read an article in Bloomberg about how so many working and middle class people aren't doing quite as badly as we thought because they're taking second jobs for cash and more mothers and kids are working to pick up a little extra cash so they can survive month to month. And the article said that this was all a good thing. No mention of the corrosive social effect of people with two full-time jobs sleeping a lot less, or more kids not having any parents at home until late into the evening. No mention of the fact that the second jobs tend to be at or below the minimum wage. No mention of health care costs increasing because of additional stress.
There was actually a quote about how working 16 hour days for $8 bucks and hour is just as good as working 8 hours a day for $16/hr. They pointed out that the diminishing place of organized labor has made these wonderful "productivity innovations" possible.
Sometimes I have trouble believing how quickly we went from being a nation where people commonly believed that their children would have better lives to a nation where there is certainty that our children will have worse lives. In my lifetime we have gone from a country where the working and middle classes believed that if they just worked hard and took care of their families that they would have a few good years of retirement to enjoy, to a country where everybody knows that the 401k is only going to hold us for a year or two, and then...well then we just don't know (and that's if you could afford to put away money for that 401k). When all those 401k babies start to retire and they realize there's no where near enough money to live there is going to be social displacement like we've never seen.
We have become a feudal oligarchy where it's considered a great thing that a skilled worker - a professional - can be monitored every ten minutes to make sure they don't get up to go to the bathroom or change their toddler's diaper. This is "thinking outside the box". These are "innovative management tools".
By the way, when Hewlett Packard (one of the companies using this 10 minute monitoring system) fired their former CEO Leo Apotheker for not really doing that great of a job, they made sure his transition was eased by $7 million cash and $18 million in stock. This is the CEO that they fired while telling their workers that they all have to tighten their belts. Oh, and they structured the "firing" so that Mr Apotheker could file for unemployment.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet Jesus I feel your pain in this post. I seen a quote yesterday that made me think and laugh at the same time. It went something like this. "In the 80s Capitalism defeated Communism. In the 90s Capitalism defeated Democracy." I chuckled at the truth of it.
You are right, there is no "free market" solution, the rich will only get richer and the poor, poorer until there is only two classes at their extremes. The "slash n burn" system of capitalism has trashed this nation and everyone connected to it. We need to revive industrial capitalism and start playing as Team USA. Multinational interests have too much power in our country that compete with our best interests.
It all rests in Washington and the ability to legally bribe politicians. It is the ONE subject you will not hear any damn one of them talk about with any depth or conviction. It's a big fat trough of money and if you get there, you are setting high on the hog. The little people's interests get crushed under these big wheels.
These dumb fuckers forget that their entire nation is build on the little people. If you choke them down and out, you eventually choke yourself down and out as well. But greed and the nanosecond fast computer age, with lightning fast trades has made Wall Street just another Vegas. Wall Street was for long term investments and long term existence. People made a sturdy, dependable system that was solid and provided well for everyone. But the smart kids learned that the easy money was in financial mathematics. If you think engineering physics formulas are convoluted sometimes, you don't want to dabble in the math of finance.
This is where it gets interesting. Factor this: On an average day with all things being equal; the bad guys can sometimes get one over on Regulators. Now lets tweak this formula. Let's diminish the Regulators and boost the bad guys. What do you think the probable outcome that will result from that will be? Take an educated guess if you will.
I know, it's easy to spot, and it's low hanging fruit if you are solving our problems. There is a more serious problem that we have to deal with. This problem needs solved if magically we solved our corrupted financial system. I am referring to our broken trade policies. Our trade negotiations aren't just weak, they are criminally negligent with an ill bent towards the United States. The world has discovered they can just buy our politicians like the corporations can and we allow ourselves to get BURNED in trade deals.
We need a "Mirror Policy" with the world. If we can't sell it to you, then you can't sell it to us. It's simplistic as hell, and would be damn effective and fair. I wish one side would wake up and capitalize on it. They can have it, they can take credit for it. It's theirs, just do it so that we can get back on track.
Lastly we need fewer politicians and more representatives. We need people who are beyond approach to step up and take the wheel. Are you telling me, these nasty things we have in office are the best we can do? I can throw a rock out my window and hit better people than what's "representing" us in Washington these days.
I wish some slash dot contributors and commentators would run for office. There are some damn intelligent people that frequent these pages, this is why I come here and wade through the retards, is for some great gems, some really bright minds come here. Why the fuck aren't some of you running for office?? Yes you could do it, it's not just a dream. Far, far worse people in life have climbed high in political office. We need damn thinkers, intelligent people capable of dealing with the ever shifting playing field of advancing technology. The world is moving at the speed of light these days and you can't be fucking around or it will run you over.
'nuff said.
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Exactly right! My company-supplied computer is all Microsoft, all legit work; when I take a break for a few minutes (like right now, to check Slashdot) I switch keyboards and switch my monitor to the Linux box next to my desk, and do all my personal work on my personal computer.
Dual-boot wouldn't work so well because it would show me offline every time I take a break, and it would lose several minutes of getting my desktop back every time I reboot. Most of my breaks I take while I'm waiting for some oth
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Nonsense. A bit of tape over the camera does wonders. If my boss spies on me I'm very sure I don't want to work for him anyway.
Humm, not possible to game the system ? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the other (personnal) computer next to the work computer ?
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That was my thought, I have a desktop and a laptop on my desk. Unless of course they come over to the employees house randomly to make sure that there aren't any unapproved of computing devices, in which case I'd be more concerned with that.
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It wouldn't work because of two words after the colon: work progress.
It's not that a worker wouldn't be allowed to get up and grab a snack or defecate, but you'd be able to target your inefficient workers pretty easily with something like this. Now the way to game the system would be to set up voice recognition on the work computer, and text to speech on your personal computer, and then point it at something work related to be typed... :)
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Work progress has nothing to do with what else is on your screen and gets snap-shotted.
The best programmers write less code than the worst, and make the most progress in the least amount
of time.
If I take 5 minutes to check my portfolio, does that entitle them to look over my shoulder at my account, holdings, etc?
If I happen to email my lawyer are they allowed to screen shot this? The potential for abuse is staggering.
Nothing in the article says the computers upon which this is installed belong to the comp
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KISS just use a tablet.
I take my nook color into work, the wifi bypass's the coporate firewall (and everything inside of it). I use it to read news, books, slashdot(posting this on it) . There is no logging as it techically sits outside the network even though it uses the same cable modem. Since we went this route the number of employees browsing NSFW or websites like facebook has dropped drastically.
Webcams too (Score:5, Interesting)
I know at least one freelancing website that also allows employers to require a feed of the contractor's webcam.
Re:Webcams too (Score:5, Funny)
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And you wouldn't get paid, so I guess it would be about even.
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I would. Because I would not be working via that freelancing website. You want a job done, I will do it. You want to watch me do it? rate goes up x10.
I think housing contractors have a similar fee structure.
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For a 10x rate increase I'd let the disturbed employer watch me code their project. It would be pretty boring, but they asked to look at my mug, not be entertained. Their money. Also if I decide to take a break the only difference is that I have to keep a straight face if I read anything funny.
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I'd still get paid chief; if I'm smart enough to be writing code, I'm smart enough to hook into the webcam driver and provide my own feed (boring coder loop for the win!).
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Hah I envision a feed like in the movie Speed. Look! His hand jumped back across the keyboard suddenly!
Re:Webcams too (Score:4, Insightful)
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Point the webcam away when not using it, or unplug it?
I don't see how this kind of monitoring amounts to anything on company-provided equipment used in a work-from-home setting, or honestly, even in user-supplied equipment in a work-from-home setting. As numerous others have said, this can be defeated in the former with using one's own computer for not-work-appropriate activities, and if using one's own computer (and only computer), using virtualization to create a computer-within-computer for the work stu
Re:Webcams too (Score:5, Funny)
It is clearly an invitation to work in the nude.
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that would be funny, if any place I ever contracted for would ask for feed to my webcam. I don't have one, and I would not let them attach one. if they stopped the contract, so be it, but my skills are very rare.
Re:Webcams too (Score:4, Insightful)
Sites like odesk and elance are the quickest way to devalue yourself, your work, and your future.
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Avoid them... or use them to set up a massive confidence game. Oooo that is a book just waiting to be written!
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Sad thing is, I'm willing to be it'll become pretty much standard eventually.
Impossible (Score:2)
Can't be gamed? (Score:4, Informative)
And here on my other computer ... anything that I want
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Ding! What IT professional wouldn't have their own PC sitting right next to it for the occasional mental break, personal email, etc?
As long as it's all consensual (Score:3)
Re:As long as it's all consensual (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most people are still paid by the hour.
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Actually, they're paying by the hour, so they want to make sure that the hour is productive.
Re:As long as it's all consensual (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually when somebody is paying by the hour instead for the work done, you can bet that the hour is not too productive.
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Mcdonalds they sure do and in factories and call centers. Tough work and your getting paid 4x as much so why not? Someone out of work will be happy to if you wont. Thats capitalism
Information & Power Asymmetry (Score:2)
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.
TWO PC's (Score:2)
This software seems in-effective to me.
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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.
Virtualization (Score:2)
Why would anyone tolerate this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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My PHB decided that all underlings are to have MS Office Communicator running at all times. I know damn well there are easy tools to gather metrics on how long you're logged in and how long the screen saver is active. It's a cubicle farm. We don't need IM for any other reason.
Re:Why would anyone tolerate this? (Score:4, Interesting)
If people get their job done and are productive, does it really matter?
I've always hated the idea of micromanaging workers. It should be about getting the job done. If the job isn't done? Discipline/fire the employee. If the job is done, great! Anything else shouldn't matter.
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I had shitty minimum wage jobs where I had to clock in before if your getting paid many times more why cant you? Its not fair to the entry level grunts at your company or client
I think you've identified your problem. Don't bitch about having a minimum wage grunt work job when its something that will probably be replaced fairly quickly with either code or robotics in short order (by those of us who get to chat during the day, hang around the water cooler for 15 min, etc.).
I don't get paid for each productive minute of my day; I get paid for the knowledge and experience I've gained over the last 14 years. This is the difference between entry level/manual labor and educated work.
Note
Re:Why would anyone tolerate this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Human beings are not built to work full tilt for 8 hours a day; if you want that sort of "productivity", buy a machine to do the work. Requiring breaks, time to think, etc are not examples of "being lazy". Employers want to squeeze more and more out of the same or less people, while at the same time real wages have remained stagnent for the last 30-40 years except for those in the top 1-5% of the population.
I'm going long pitchfork futures.
Re:Why would anyone tolerate this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly the above. People with no sense of their work's worth and no self-respect are willing to submit to degradation in order to get jobs that don't pay well, and when they lower their personal value it lowers the businesses' perception of the value of each and every one of us.
This seems perfectly acceptable. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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In every case, Big Brother is invited
Protect us from those dangerous people! Please put in surveillance equipment! Please rig the phone system for panopticon-style wiretapping!
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If you're not doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about!
Two computers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
If you're measuring productivity that way (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. It's also surprisingly easy to measure performance. For instance, I own my own company, we do our own software as well as contracts for outside firms. In both cases we do design, set milestones with expected completion dates, and performance is easy to judge. We're either meeting our milestones or we aren't. If we aren't, we can always pinpoint the exact feature that's holding a milestone up.
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500 lines of error filled code vs 100 clean lines? I'll take the clean lines tyvm.
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There will be other things to measure performance. But one issue with teleworkers is making sure that they've actually worked the hours they say they worked. You don't get to pad the bill or double bill clients, the only thing we've made sure of is that if we paid you for 8 hours we wasted 8 hours of your life. Turns out shirking isn't so much fun if you must constantly babysit your machine to not get caught. And not just in the "wiggle the mouse and type some garbage into notepad" sense, but actually fake
Let's hope they don't have a /. window open... (Score:2)
Not to sound assholish (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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I hire on odesk and never look at the screen captured images.. But if the employee is not producing, I might want to know what's up. It may also curb some on the clock facebooking. All a worker has to do is hit the pause work button and he can surf and watch NSFW content as much as he wants.
The real issue is that wages for all computer users are getting driven down to 3rd-w
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No, the employer doesn't own either the equipment OR the bandwidth being used. This is about those cheap no-frills freelance sites, where you're competing with hourly workers from the 3rd world.
Re:Not to sound assholish (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent point!!!!!
Employees are paid by the hour. Independent contractors are paid by the piecework or by the job.
Here's what the IRS has to say about it [irs.gov]
So, what are these factors? From the same web page ...
These sites, dictating how the job is accomplished, sure look like it.
Paid by the hour sure sounds like it's not "contract work."
Microsoft got into trouble with this with their perma-temps programs. You can't just repeatedly hire the same person "as a contract worker" forever - at one point, in the eyes of the IRS and the courts, they become an employee.
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one of the other fun ones is as a contractor the company can't dictate your work schedule (aka what hours you have to be there).. but they can dictate what hours you have access to a facility.. too many times i see this abused as being the exact same but different terms.. (you are only paid for work conducted on site and only have access 8-6)
Convert OS into VM image, run on different machine (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Slashdot ... 10 years too late (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
More invasive than the office? (Score:2)
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. P
Just looking for a reason to fire anyone .. (Score:2)
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.
Work done by bots? (Score:2)
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
Fair enough if... (Score:2)
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 be
Ironic (Score:2)
Management Incompetence (Score:2)
Electronic Plantation... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Use a vm (Score:3)
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.
But what info will the snapshot actually capture? (Score:3)
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.
How this will end. (Score:3)
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?
whoops, parsed that wrong (Score:4, Funny)
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the company oDesk is doing it to its contractors, apparently their services have been used by the named companies (Google, HP, and NBC).
Different than those companies doing it directly, as likely most of their contractors have no such spy system in place. However, maybe you or others would refuse to work for a company that does any business with oDesk (and can find that out) .
Re:Intolerable! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So long as the when isn't possibly, I agree; however I also acknowledge that my position is not everyones.
If an employer want's me to put in 8 hours of logged activity on a computer they provide at any time during a 24 hour day, perfect.
However the only reason that I prefer to work from home is the flexibility of time; so long as I am not in meetings it makes no difference when I do the work so long as it's done.
I however work for an employer that recognizes that it is the quality and amount of work, not ho
Re: (Score:3)
It's bullshit though, I have solved some of my most difficult programming problems by putting down the mouse and going for a walk.
Re:Intolerable! (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Jesus man... srsly? a five-digit who didn't RTFA....