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I own a small business, and all of us, my employees and me work from home. We've been doing this from well before the COVID-19 epidemic. My team is mostly progr

I own a small business, and all of us, my employees and me work from home. We've been doing this from well before the COVID-19 epidemic. My team is mostly programmers with a one marketing person. This sort of intrusive monitoring is utter garbage. My team would quit if I used it and in any case, I don't want to know what they are upto by the minute. I don't even encourage realtime slack unless we've mutually agreed to a specific time. Email, slack and the zoom calls (and lunches when COVID-19 was not a thing) are more than enough (Indeed too much.) What idiot managment even thinks this a good idea?

blaser-waffle 6y ago
Nothing about your business sounds like it reflects the rest of the white-collar working world.
- sumanthvepa 6y ago
  Not sure what part of the white-collar working world you are in. But my work experience at every one of the companies I worked at prior to starting on my own, were not dissimilar. All of these companies were in the Fortune 500 when I was in their employ, and none as I can recall had surveillence of this nature. They were intense work environments, I grant that, and deadline pressure in tech and Wall street, is strong, but nobody surveilled me in this manner. Cameras in the corridor yes. Strictly controlled access to critical code repositories and databases -- yes. Keystroke monitoring and keeping webcams on -- no. Indeed, at IBM Research, one of the places I worked at, a stroll through the building at around 3pm would probably the quietest thing you ever did. I'd see pople aimlessly playing at table tennis, and the dicussion after the game over tea would turn to the research problem they were working on. Ideas would flow, some would peel away to scribble on a whiteboard. Others would just take a print out of a paper and sit in the lawn reading it. And yes some would be in their rooms typing away... These were some of the most productive computer scientists in the world, many of them now work at Google and other places you'd be familar with. (They did suck at table tennis though :-) Many pure tech startups are not that different, although the pressure levels are much, much higher. You cannot determine a technical person's productivity by the time they spend at the keyboard. It's in the kind and quiality of the software they release, that entirely eliminates the need for whole classes of time-card workers. If you need surveillance in this situation, you've got the wrong person -- folks like this self-selct themselves to work in these places. They are intrinsically motivated by the problem that interests them. No amount surveillence software will improve their output, if they are not interested in the problem -- they'll just quit.
- Breza 6y ago
  Most of my direct reports work from home full time, just like most people in our company. We look at the output from our teams and we frankly don't care if people are checking Facebook on their phones during business hours. Focusing on the work that's getting done results in everybody being happier than micromanaging how people spend their time.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

Nothing about your business sounds like it reflects the rest of the white-collar working world.

sumanthvepa 6y ago
Not sure what part of the white-collar working world you are in. But my work experience at every one of the companies I worked at prior to starting on my own, were not dissimilar. All of these companies were in the Fortune 500 when I was in their employ, and none as I can recall had surveillence of this nature. They were intense work environments, I grant that, and deadline pressure in tech and Wall street, is strong, but nobody surveilled me in this manner. Cameras in the corridor yes. Strictly controlled access to critical code repositories and databases -- yes. Keystroke monitoring and keeping webcams on -- no. Indeed, at IBM Research, one of the places I worked at, a stroll through the building at around 3pm would probably the quietest thing you ever did. I'd see pople aimlessly playing at table tennis, and the dicussion after the game over tea would turn to the research problem they were working on. Ideas would flow, some would peel away to scribble on a whiteboard. Others would just take a print out of a paper and sit in the lawn reading it. And yes some would be in their rooms typing away... These were some of the most productive computer scientists in the world, many of them now work at Google and other places you'd be familar with. (They did suck at table tennis though :-) Many pure tech startups are not that different, although the pressure levels are much, much higher. You cannot determine a technical person's productivity by the time they spend at the keyboard. It's in the kind and quiality of the software they release, that entirely eliminates the need for whole classes of time-card workers. If you need surveillance in this situation, you've got the wrong person -- folks like this self-selct themselves to work in these places. They are intrinsically motivated by the problem that interests them. No amount surveillence software will improve their output, if they are not interested in the problem -- they'll just quit.
Breza 6y ago
Most of my direct reports work from home full time, just like most people in our company. We look at the output from our teams and we frankly don't care if people are checking Facebook on their phones during business hours. Focusing on the work that's getting done results in everybody being happier than micromanaging how people spend their time.