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Because the majority of remote work communication will be electronic rather than face to face. It will be monitored, stored and searchable (Slack logs, GSuite e

Because the majority of remote work communication will be electronic rather than face to face. It will be monitored, stored and searchable (Slack logs, GSuite email, etc.) That’s much more difficult to achieve at the proverbial water cooler. Not sure which rock you’re living under, but tech is probably the last bastion of labor power in the US. Sure, they aren’t well organized, but Google employees recently canned a DoD contract [1]. Saying no to Uncle Sam is a huge flex, and you can bet that pissed off some overlords. Blue collar workers in the US have lost almost all of their labor power due to offshore workers or immigration (i.e. scabs). Tech has had it easy for a while now, but it’s the next target; the immigration debate is already shifting from “jobs Americans won’t do” to “merit-based”. Gig economy is another false liberation ploy being used to weaken collective bargaining power. Remote-first is yet another. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01/google-to-drop-pentagon-ai-contract-after-employees-called-it-the-business-of-war/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01...

JSavageOne 6y ago
> Because the majority of remote work communication will be electronic rather than face to face. It will be monitored, stored and searchable (Slack logs, GSuite email, etc.) That’s much more difficult to achieve at the proverbial water cooler. The majority of communication is already electronic. I've worked in offices and remote, there is practically no difference on that front. Most discussion takes place in Slack, Jira, GitHub, and email either way. Most companies already have team members distributed across various offices, remote work isn't new. If you want to avoid monitoring, then spin up a Google Hangouts or Zoom meeting, nobody is monitoring that. The difference is that in an office, 1. your physical presence is also monitored (no joke I worked at a office once where every day an office assistant would secretly record what time everyone showed up to their desks) 2. your internet is also monitored, which is extremely creepy and I'm surprised this doesn't get more attention. When I work remotely, there are no IT managers able to spy on my internet traffic. Sure there may be some dystopian corporations who try to force their remote workers to log into "company VPNs" and install "monitoring software" - I have absolutely no interest in working for any such companies and have never had to deal with that. As a software engineer I've been fighting for the freedom to work remotely for ever since I joined this industry, so having the freedom to live wherever I want, and work whenever I want is a huge win. I've already been working remotely since pre-COVID, so I'm happy that other workers will also be able to enjoy this freedom.
- programmarchy 6y ago
  Good points. Not saying there isn’t an upside to remote work, but there are downsides as well, which in the long run, may overshadow the benefits. It’s much harder to build camaraderie in a Hangout or Zoom than in frequent, random, physical interactions with people. There’s also a biological component to bonding (pheromones, touch, oxytocin, body language, etc.) that simply won’t exist in a virtual environment. I’d also point out, you’re enjoying the luxury of those freedoms (privacy, non-creepy norms) because labor power still exists and you can easily move to a different company or whatever. But fast forward 10 years, everyone is remote, labor pool is much larger, norms of monitoring and policing communication are established, then things start clamping down across the board as standard practice.
- novok 6y ago
  If you work at a corporation beyond a certain size, usually big enough to have an IT department vs one 'IT guy', there is definitely some sort of monitoring software installed on the computers given to you. It just lives in kernel modules or as a OS config and they do not tell you as an employee, and it's done for 'compliance' or 'security' reasons so it's not obvious what it is when you look at a list of processes on your computer in the task manager. Some popular ones in the bay area for macOS at startups are crowdstrike, carbon black, jamf, openvpn, umbrella, crashplan, munki, etc. Not mention the OS management configuration stuff like MDM profiles for macOS and active directory configurations for windows. A lot of brand name corps you might think are 'good guys' use this, like lyft or dropbox. Similarly with companies FANG, where it might custom software.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Yeah, like the one FB open-sourced (and uses internally still, I believe): https://osquery.io/ https://osquery.io/ I think this is a super good tool, except for all the privacy implications.
    - zwass 6y ago
      Osquery core developer, consultant, and technical committee member here... We've always treaded carefully around privacy concerns as a project. This is why you don't see tables that access information such as browser history. If you join our Slack channels you will see open discussion of privacy implications for changes and improvements. There's a balance to be struck between visibility and privacy. If a security team has no visibility into a system, they can't secure that system. This doesn't mean they need to be able to look at your family photos and read your messages. I work with folks who care deeply about privacy and trust with their users. These folks ensure that osquery configurations are available to users, so that they can see what exactly is being monitored. If you are curious what osquery can do, I encourage you to check out https://osquery.io/schema/4.3.0/ https://osquery.io/schema/4.3.0/.

JSavageOne 6y ago

> Because the majority of remote work communication will be electronic rather than face to face. It will be monitored, stored and searchable (Slack logs, GSuite email, etc.) That’s much more difficult to achieve at the proverbial water cooler. The majority of communication is already electronic. I've worked in offices and remote, there is practically no difference on that front. Most discussion takes place in Slack, Jira, GitHub, and email either way. Most companies already have team members distributed across various offices, remote work isn't new. If you want to avoid monitoring, then spin up a Google Hangouts or Zoom meeting, nobody is monitoring that. The difference is that in an office, 1. your physical presence is also monitored (no joke I worked at a office once where every day an office assistant would secretly record what time everyone showed up to their desks) 2. your internet is also monitored, which is extremely creepy and I'm surprised this doesn't get more attention. When I work remotely, there are no IT managers able to spy on my internet traffic. Sure there may be some dystopian corporations who try to force their remote workers to log into "company VPNs" and install "monitoring software" - I have absolutely no interest in working for any such companies and have never had to deal with that. As a software engineer I've been fighting for the freedom to work remotely for ever since I joined this industry, so having the freedom to live wherever I want, and work whenever I want is a huge win. I've already been working remotely since pre-COVID, so I'm happy that other workers will also be able to enjoy this freedom.

programmarchy 6y ago
Good points. Not saying there isn’t an upside to remote work, but there are downsides as well, which in the long run, may overshadow the benefits. It’s much harder to build camaraderie in a Hangout or Zoom than in frequent, random, physical interactions with people. There’s also a biological component to bonding (pheromones, touch, oxytocin, body language, etc.) that simply won’t exist in a virtual environment. I’d also point out, you’re enjoying the luxury of those freedoms (privacy, non-creepy norms) because labor power still exists and you can easily move to a different company or whatever. But fast forward 10 years, everyone is remote, labor pool is much larger, norms of monitoring and policing communication are established, then things start clamping down across the board as standard practice.
novok 6y ago
If you work at a corporation beyond a certain size, usually big enough to have an IT department vs one 'IT guy', there is definitely some sort of monitoring software installed on the computers given to you. It just lives in kernel modules or as a OS config and they do not tell you as an employee, and it's done for 'compliance' or 'security' reasons so it's not obvious what it is when you look at a list of processes on your computer in the task manager. Some popular ones in the bay area for macOS at startups are crowdstrike, carbon black, jamf, openvpn, umbrella, crashplan, munki, etc. Not mention the OS management configuration stuff like MDM profiles for macOS and active directory configurations for windows. A lot of brand name corps you might think are 'good guys' use this, like lyft or dropbox. Similarly with companies FANG, where it might custom software.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Yeah, like the one FB open-sourced (and uses internally still, I believe): https://osquery.io/ https://osquery.io/ I think this is a super good tool, except for all the privacy implications.
  - zwass 6y ago
    Osquery core developer, consultant, and technical committee member here... We've always treaded carefully around privacy concerns as a project. This is why you don't see tables that access information such as browser history. If you join our Slack channels you will see open discussion of privacy implications for changes and improvements. There's a balance to be struck between visibility and privacy. If a security team has no visibility into a system, they can't secure that system. This doesn't mean they need to be able to look at your family photos and read your messages. I work with folks who care deeply about privacy and trust with their users. These folks ensure that osquery configurations are available to users, so that they can see what exactly is being monitored. If you are curious what osquery can do, I encourage you to check out https://osquery.io/schema/4.3.0/ https://osquery.io/schema/4.3.0/.