7 ms·

My previous job used MS Teams with that "productivity dashboard" built in to it. I reported to multiple people within the organization. One of those people was

My previous job used MS Teams with that "productivity dashboard" built in to it. I reported to multiple people within the organization. One of those people was adamant about the team being signed in and available at precisely 9AM PST and he loved his dashboard metrics. And whilst I spoke with this particular manager about this issue, he wouldn't budge on the subject and unfortunately wielded a bit too much political power to be routed around. To sign in to MS Teams at the company you needed to run a 2FA app from your phone to get the code that would let you log in. I wrote a Python script that ran on a Raspberry Pi, that would pull the 2FA code from an Android emulator running on another machine running the 2FA app, and then the script would paste the 2FA code in to MS Teams running on the corporate laptop using a USB keyboard/mouse h/w emulator. Every morning my machine dutifully booted up, logged in, signed in at precisely 9AM and made sure it showed I was available and active throughout the day until it was "time to go home." The company overall was pretty decent, but unfortunately there are toxic managers and little Napoleons everywhere.

travisgriggs 5y ago
Nice. If you can automate the observation, you can automate your observance of the observation. The symmetry is great. It’s even kind of poetic, because the more creative type of person who is less valued as a drone is the type of person to extend the effort to do this, whereas the clock-in-clock-out type with less investment and motivation is less likely. Sort of a “if you’re clever/motivated enough to end run it, your clever enough to not need this anyway.”
- theshrike79 5y ago
  > If you can automate the observation, you can automate your observance of the observation. The symmetry is great. Never measure the productivity of engineers with plain numbers. They will just take it as a challenge on how to optimise for that particular measurement.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Not even engineers; this is true of all business. Any metric defined quickly becomes a goal whether it was intended to or not. Once you attach incentives to the metric, it will be focused on to the exclusion of everything else.
    - nlake906 5y ago
      Easier said than done, but if you can manage to set up the metric to align the business and the employee, life becomes very easy for management. Working on designing and implementing production-based pay systems in warehouses, when it goes right the department runs itself with barebones management as a little profit generating machine that fairly pays workers a very good wage. When it goes wrong though...
      - wayoutthere 5y ago
        Yeah, the problem comes in when the dynamic changes and you’ve overoptimized for the old dynamic and don’t have any ability to flex within the systems without totally overhauling them. Hence the current supply chain problems…
- vladf 5y ago
  What about adding a captcha?
  - jack_pp 5y ago
    there are captcha solving services
  - sigio 5y ago
    Outsource it to amazon mechanical turk, or something equivalent ;) Pay a dollar to have someone else fill it in.
    - justinlloyd 5y ago
      Simple CAPTCHA work pays 3 cents. Ask me how I know.
- throway453sde 5y ago
  > If you can automate the observation, you can automate your observance of the observation. The symmetry is great. Nice quote.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > if you’re clever/motivated enough to end run it, your clever enough to not need this anyway. Except that controlling people changes their motivations.
Animats 5y ago
Every morning my machine dutifully booted up, logged in, signed in at precisely 9AM and made sure it showed I was available and active throughout the day until it was "time to go home." That's how Edison got started.[1] [1] https://www.gjenvick.com/Biography/ThomasAEdison/05-TheBoyTelegraphOperator.html https://www.gjenvick.com/Biography/ThomasAEdison/05-TheBoyTe...
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  Edison was probably using a different version of MS Teams, before Microsoft added all the extra bells and whistles like video meetings.
  - easton_s 5y ago
    /sensible_chuckle
guilhas 5y ago
This, crazy management always backfires At a previous job we had to log all hours of the day, with a comment, in existing tasks. I felt like my work time was spent mostly making stuff up to manage management expectations, instead of development On Teams, I believe now on your account management, setting up the 2fa, you can say you have trouble using their app and download the otp key which you can use in a generic app like FreeOTP, or integration On the desktop I use Caffeine like apps to force the status always online
jmkni 5y ago
> I wrote a Python script that ran on a Raspberry Pi, that would pull the 2FA code from an Android emulator running on another machine running the 2FA app, and then the script would paste the 2FA code in to MS Teams running on the corporate laptop using a USB keyboard/mouse h/w emulator That's fucking hilarious/brilliant!
throwaway75787 5y ago
What Android emulator do you use?
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>I wrote a Python script that ran on a Raspberry Pi, that would pull the 2FA code from an Android emulator running on another machine running the 2FA app, and then the script would paste the 2FA code in to MS Teams running on the corporate laptop using a USB keyboard/mouse h/w emulator That's amazingly brilliant, but Unfortunately it wouldn't work everywhere as in our org, the 2FA app will only be allowed to be installed on our company provided phones bound to our company issued phone numbers/SIM. Also, depending on your company and employment agreement, if your Raspberry PI gets compromised by an attacker and uses your 2FA to gain access to your AWS account for example, and causes damage, then your employer can hang you out to dry in court. I already saw one case where an ex-employee is being sued by his former employer because he decided to be clever and knowingly worked around the company's security policy measures, which he agreed to adhere to in his employment contract. Workaround which lead to an attacker getting his keys and stealing customer data from AWS buckets. Ouch!
- detaro 5y ago
  need to automate the company phone then. Not impossible.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Don't think iPhones are open to invasive automation tasks. At least that's their main sales pitch in regards to security vs Android that's more open to these kinds of things.
    - detaro 5y ago
      You can tape a touch simulator to it (or use a fake mouse, afaik that's nowadays supported) and monitor the screen with a camera. If it requires FaceID or TouchID it's getting trickier, but even that's probably doable in an environment you control.
      - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        Or...you can take all that time and energy you'd invest building this complex Rube Goldberg machine that just proves you're present 9-5, and instead, invest it in finding a job that's not so toxic. Seems more healthy for your mental wellbeing in the long run, as toxic policies in workplaces rarely come alone but tend to come sequentially one after another as time goes on if the terror managers don't change or enough employee don't jump ship simultaneously to trigger a management change.
throway453sde 5y ago
> that would pull the 2FA code from an Android emulator running on another machine running the 2FA app Brilliant. Curious what software do you use to run Android emulator(qemu, bluestack)?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
shultays 5y ago
Every morning my machine dutifully booted up, logged in, signed in at precisely 9AM and made sure it showed I was available and active throughout the day until it was "time to go home." Heh, an old coworker was doing that manually back when we were at office that had a tool tracks how much time we spend at office and shows that on an internal webpage. He was logging a perfect 8:00 average at the end of the month because it was such a stupid system
newshorts 5y ago
As a manager, I can’t even imagine a scenario where I would require someone to be online at a certain time. Maybe it’s the type of work or business requirement that causes this behavior, but I view this as such a violation of autonomy that it would immediately kill team morale. You sound like a very creative/talented developer, if I were you I would not put up with this.
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  It killed morale, and due to other issues, eventually killed the entire project about a month after I left. I have already found a new position.
- spaceisballer 5y ago
  I think it’s really hard for people to shake the old work ways. Once we went fully remote my whole department fully embraced flexibility. And guess what productivity was good and work was getting done. People worked all kinds of work hours to either care for children, sleep in, do whatever who cares. I’m more productive in the afternoon so I log in late morning. I could log on and get nothing done but I’d rather sleep in. There are no expectations to respond to messages in off hours. You get to it when you’re working. You are not expected to work extra. It’s taken a bigger adjustment periods for some of my people but we are getting there.

travisgriggs 5y ago

Nice. If you can automate the observation, you can automate your observance of the observation. The symmetry is great. It’s even kind of poetic, because the more creative type of person who is less valued as a drone is the type of person to extend the effort to do this, whereas the clock-in-clock-out type with less investment and motivation is less likely. Sort of a “if you’re clever/motivated enough to end run it, your clever enough to not need this anyway.”

theshrike79 5y ago
> If you can automate the observation, you can automate your observance of the observation. The symmetry is great. Never measure the productivity of engineers with plain numbers. They will just take it as a challenge on how to optimise for that particular measurement.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Not even engineers; this is true of all business. Any metric defined quickly becomes a goal whether it was intended to or not. Once you attach incentives to the metric, it will be focused on to the exclusion of everything else.
  - nlake906 5y ago
    Easier said than done, but if you can manage to set up the metric to align the business and the employee, life becomes very easy for management. Working on designing and implementing production-based pay systems in warehouses, when it goes right the department runs itself with barebones management as a little profit generating machine that fairly pays workers a very good wage. When it goes wrong though...
    - wayoutthere 5y ago
      Yeah, the problem comes in when the dynamic changes and you’ve overoptimized for the old dynamic and don’t have any ability to flex within the systems without totally overhauling them. Hence the current supply chain problems…
vladf 5y ago
What about adding a captcha?
- jack_pp 5y ago
  there are captcha solving services
- sigio 5y ago
  Outsource it to amazon mechanical turk, or something equivalent ;) Pay a dollar to have someone else fill it in.
  - justinlloyd 5y ago
    Simple CAPTCHA work pays 3 cents. Ask me how I know.
throway453sde 5y ago
> If you can automate the observation, you can automate your observance of the observation. The symmetry is great. Nice quote.
marcosdumay 5y ago
> if you’re clever/motivated enough to end run it, your clever enough to not need this anyway. Except that controlling people changes their motivations.

Animats 5y ago

Every morning my machine dutifully booted up, logged in, signed in at precisely 9AM and made sure it showed I was available and active throughout the day until it was "time to go home." That's how Edison got started.[1] [1] https://www.gjenvick.com/Biography/ThomasAEdison/05-TheBoyTelegraphOperator.html https://www.gjenvick.com/Biography/ThomasAEdison/05-TheBoyTe...

justinlloyd 5y ago
Edison was probably using a different version of MS Teams, before Microsoft added all the extra bells and whistles like video meetings.
- easton_s 5y ago
  /sensible_chuckle

guilhas 5y ago

This, crazy management always backfires At a previous job we had to log all hours of the day, with a comment, in existing tasks. I felt like my work time was spent mostly making stuff up to manage management expectations, instead of development On Teams, I believe now on your account management, setting up the 2fa, you can say you have trouble using their app and download the otp key which you can use in a generic app like FreeOTP, or integration On the desktop I use Caffeine like apps to force the status always online

jmkni 5y ago

throwaway75787 5y ago

What Android emulator do you use?

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>I wrote a Python script that ran on a Raspberry Pi, that would pull the 2FA code from an Android emulator running on another machine running the 2FA app, and then the script would paste the 2FA code in to MS Teams running on the corporate laptop using a USB keyboard/mouse h/w emulator That's amazingly brilliant, but Unfortunately it wouldn't work everywhere as in our org, the 2FA app will only be allowed to be installed on our company provided phones bound to our company issued phone numbers/SIM. Also, depending on your company and employment agreement, if your Raspberry PI gets compromised by an attacker and uses your 2FA to gain access to your AWS account for example, and causes damage, then your employer can hang you out to dry in court. I already saw one case where an ex-employee is being sued by his former employer because he decided to be clever and knowingly worked around the company's security policy measures, which he agreed to adhere to in his employment contract. Workaround which lead to an attacker getting his keys and stealing customer data from AWS buckets. Ouch!

detaro 5y ago
need to automate the company phone then. Not impossible.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Don't think iPhones are open to invasive automation tasks. At least that's their main sales pitch in regards to security vs Android that's more open to these kinds of things.
  - detaro 5y ago
    You can tape a touch simulator to it (or use a fake mouse, afaik that's nowadays supported) and monitor the screen with a camera. If it requires FaceID or TouchID it's getting trickier, but even that's probably doable in an environment you control.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Or...you can take all that time and energy you'd invest building this complex Rube Goldberg machine that just proves you're present 9-5, and instead, invest it in finding a job that's not so toxic. Seems more healthy for your mental wellbeing in the long run, as toxic policies in workplaces rarely come alone but tend to come sequentially one after another as time goes on if the terror managers don't change or enough employee don't jump ship simultaneously to trigger a management change.

throway453sde 5y ago

> that would pull the 2FA code from an Android emulator running on another machine running the 2FA app Brilliant. Curious what software do you use to run Android emulator(qemu, bluestack)?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

shultays 5y ago

Every morning my machine dutifully booted up, logged in, signed in at precisely 9AM and made sure it showed I was available and active throughout the day until it was "time to go home." Heh, an old coworker was doing that manually back when we were at office that had a tool tracks how much time we spend at office and shows that on an internal webpage. He was logging a perfect 8:00 average at the end of the month because it was such a stupid system

newshorts 5y ago

As a manager, I can’t even imagine a scenario where I would require someone to be online at a certain time. Maybe it’s the type of work or business requirement that causes this behavior, but I view this as such a violation of autonomy that it would immediately kill team morale. You sound like a very creative/talented developer, if I were you I would not put up with this.

justinlloyd 5y ago
It killed morale, and due to other issues, eventually killed the entire project about a month after I left. I have already found a new position.
spaceisballer 5y ago
I think it’s really hard for people to shake the old work ways. Once we went fully remote my whole department fully embraced flexibility. And guess what productivity was good and work was getting done. People worked all kinds of work hours to either care for children, sleep in, do whatever who cares. I’m more productive in the afternoon so I log in late morning. I could log on and get nothing done but I’d rather sleep in. There are no expectations to respond to messages in off hours. You get to it when you’re working. You are not expected to work extra. It’s taken a bigger adjustment periods for some of my people but we are getting there.