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If your employer decides that they need such an analytics dashboard, one that is spying on every keystroke, then they will have one. That one doesn't depend on

If your employer decides that they need such an analytics dashboard, one that is spying on every keystroke, then they will have one. That one doesn't depend on you working on a laptop, or in a remote environment - the company owns and is administrating that laptop, and they can install everything they regard as necessary. Therefore the real question is if Codespaces is helping to get your job done; I guess that depends on the complexity and structure of the code, the complexity of the build environment/how you work with the CI environment and how the project is being deployed. I guess that this complex of issues will increasingly dictate how things will get done - if these are too complex, then you are better off with a remote environment.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago
On second thought, the move to remote environments may have an interesting side effect: if people are no longer familiar with setting up their local development environments, then it will be a bit harder to set up their own side projects to tinker and try out new stuff; in a reality where everyone is working on a remote/preset environment, we will have just another small, but very significant inhibition to deal with our own side projects. now there is a bit of an irony - github helped open source, now this development will be very helpful to corporate software developers, but might turn out to be harmful to open source as such.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Upon re-examination: if github/microsoft is owning the analytics data gathered from monitoring the keystrokes, then they are a third party, and could possibly make that data available across time; so that a prospective employer can get a view on past performance of a candidate, or the new employer will have access to analytics data gathered on you while working at a previous company. Now that one has the potential to make the whole thing much more sinister. There might be a big difference between the situation where your current employer has a keylogger on you, as compared to the keylogger sitting in the cloud. Grandparent poster Bogwog has a solid argument here. It all depends if the industry will act this way or not, I still hope that there is some level of desency left somewhere, because being too paranoid about all of it will not get me anyway either. Also the utility of all this analytics data is limited, for example they could possible get the 'number of lines of code' written by someone, but it is impossible to judge how essential all these lines of code were to the business. Also there would be a significant backlash, if they get too invasive on the privacy of developers. (that's the moment for the video where Steve Balmer is flipping out on stage and shouting 'developers' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY )
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Don't underestimate trivial inconveniences[0]. There's a difference between being able to install employee surveillance in principle, and having it handed to you on a golden platter. Some manager may toy with an idea of getting IT to install and manage monitoring software, but ultimately reject it as not worth the cost. But if the company starts to work over something like Codespaces - even if only for purely technical reasons - then suddenly they'll find themselves having a dashboard for free, and for sure they'll start using it. -- [0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-trivial-inconveniences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri...

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

On second thought, the move to remote environments may have an interesting side effect: if people are no longer familiar with setting up their local development environments, then it will be a bit harder to set up their own side projects to tinker and try out new stuff; in a reality where everyone is working on a remote/preset environment, we will have just another small, but very significant inhibition to deal with our own side projects. now there is a bit of an irony - github helped open source, now this development will be very helpful to corporate software developers, but might turn out to be harmful to open source as such.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Upon re-examination: if github/microsoft is owning the analytics data gathered from monitoring the keystrokes, then they are a third party, and could possibly make that data available across time; so that a prospective employer can get a view on past performance of a candidate, or the new employer will have access to analytics data gathered on you while working at a previous company. Now that one has the potential to make the whole thing much more sinister. There might be a big difference between the situation where your current employer has a keylogger on you, as compared to the keylogger sitting in the cloud. Grandparent poster Bogwog has a solid argument here. It all depends if the industry will act this way or not, I still hope that there is some level of desency left somewhere, because being too paranoid about all of it will not get me anyway either. Also the utility of all this analytics data is limited, for example they could possible get the 'number of lines of code' written by someone, but it is impossible to judge how essential all these lines of code were to the business. Also there would be a significant backlash, if they get too invasive on the privacy of developers. (that's the moment for the video where Steve Balmer is flipping out on stage and shouting 'developers' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY )

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Don't underestimate trivial inconveniences[0]. There's a difference between being able to install employee surveillance in principle, and having it handed to you on a golden platter. Some manager may toy with an idea of getting IT to install and manage monitoring software, but ultimately reject it as not worth the cost. But if the company starts to work over something like Codespaces - even if only for purely technical reasons - then suddenly they'll find themselves having a dashboard for free, and for sure they'll start using it. -- [0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-trivial-inconveniences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri...