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."
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.
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?
Re:Intolerable! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Webcams too (Score:3, Interesting)
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!).
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
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.