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> After two weeks of working from her Brooklyn apartment, a 25-year-old e-commerce worker received a staffwide email from her company: Employees were to install

> After two weeks of working from her Brooklyn apartment, a 25-year-old e-commerce worker received a staffwide email from her company: Employees were to install software called Hubstaff immediately on their personal computers so it could track their mouse movements and keyboard strokes,and record the webpages they visited. I'm 100 percent positive that I would tell this company to get stuffed if they suggested I put that crap on my personal computer/phone. This is managerial paranoia. These are probably managers that worked their way up by stepping on people and bumping others into oncoming buses along the way.

bo1024 6y ago
I completely agree, but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle. I hope we can push to level the power imbalance between companies and employees so that privilege is available to more people.
- HumblyTossed 6y ago
  > ... but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle. I absolutely agree that it is.
folkhack 6y ago
It's an extension of the "butts in chairs" management style that's all over in America. When the managers are unable to actually measure output due to incompetence + lacking the ability to do the same job as their subordinates this is one of the few levers they get to pull. It's a management style of fear and dissonance where the workers are constantly being judged not based on merit, but on useless metrics and butt kissing... In contrast - I've worked for managers that could care less about "butts in chairs" and are much more concerned with output/quality... this means they have to be actually productive/knowledgeable in my field which typically is an exception - especially for larger corps. I personally find my mental state is so much better and my output is magnitudes greater when working with this management style! The other thing that's great about output based managers is that the bad-to-mediocre talent/work ethic folks get weeded out ASAP because it's apparent who can't cut it vs. higher output workers. "Butts in chairs" workers are good at gaming the optics + politics regardless if it's surveillance software or someone complaining about being in the office for X hours a day/week. All-in-all I agree with your statement.
coffeefirst 6y ago
It's also remarkably stupid. Get everyone to start looking up medical conditions, especially related to pregnancy, and watch how fast the lawyers shut it down.

bo1024 6y ago

I completely agree, but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle. I hope we can push to level the power imbalance between companies and employees so that privilege is available to more people.

HumblyTossed 6y ago
> ... but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle. I absolutely agree that it is.

folkhack 6y ago

It's an extension of the "butts in chairs" management style that's all over in America. When the managers are unable to actually measure output due to incompetence + lacking the ability to do the same job as their subordinates this is one of the few levers they get to pull. It's a management style of fear and dissonance where the workers are constantly being judged not based on merit, but on useless metrics and butt kissing... In contrast - I've worked for managers that could care less about "butts in chairs" and are much more concerned with output/quality... this means they have to be actually productive/knowledgeable in my field which typically is an exception - especially for larger corps. I personally find my mental state is so much better and my output is magnitudes greater when working with this management style! The other thing that's great about output based managers is that the bad-to-mediocre talent/work ethic folks get weeded out ASAP because it's apparent who can't cut it vs. higher output workers. "Butts in chairs" workers are good at gaming the optics + politics regardless if it's surveillance software or someone complaining about being in the office for X hours a day/week. All-in-all I agree with your statement.

coffeefirst 6y ago

It's also remarkably stupid. Get everyone to start looking up medical conditions, especially related to pregnancy, and watch how fast the lawyers shut it down.