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Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't d

Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too? >Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression. Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare.

derwiki 4y ago
> Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass. —- Snowcrash
- headsoup 4y ago
  'The “robot” installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked nothing like the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like C-3PO or futuristic like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line robot. Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called “Manna”, version 1.0*.'
  - chazu 4y ago
    That story was truly a horrific vision of the future.
formerkrogemp 4y ago
Nah, in retail, we used to have this software known as "secret shoppers." If they didn't see someone smiling, the store or department would be docked points on its evaluation, and you'd be hearing about it from your boss and boss's boss. Now all of us WFH minions below the lowly programmers will be subject to a smiling rictus as our cameras, microphones, and keyloggers determine productivity scores, work morale, and redundancy scores for the next layoff.
- aoms 4y ago
  Another reason too keep the COVID masks on for longer
- Qem 4y ago
  How long before somebody uses AI to permasmile your face in virtual conferences? The market is ripe for an arms race here.
  - ecolonsmak 4y ago
    you can do that with the snap filters. I use the mac app to overlay all sorts of goofy hats, sunglasses, laser eyes, etc.... onto my face to spice up dull zoom/teams calls.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    Oh man, thats too funny, can you imagine the glitchy smiles snapping off someones face as they slightly turn their head? All the sudden every meeting is filled with barely perceptible uncanny artifacts... So far everywhere I've worked is cameras off except for intimate meetings (and even then its optional/reciprocated), usually a few people will try to keep their cameras on to start a trend or something but I imagine ends up feeling like an idiot with the only camera on.
  - corobo 4y ago
    Create 2 scenes in OBS, one a pure black background, one pure green. Video devices always seem to flicker between black and green when they're broken. Click the "Start Virtual Camera" button and switch to this webcam in your conference software, flick between the two scenes semi-rapidly "ah man, my webcam is playing up" https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/
bschwindHN 4y ago
Many Japanese companies have really fucked up ways of measuring "work". They work hard to make these AI and tech-based things to measure some dumb stats that have nothing to do with getting actual work done. I've heard of a company measuring how "well" a meeting went based on some AI analysis of people smiling. So much time here is wasted on managing workers and talking about how to work, instead of just getting shit done.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  There is an urban legend that being asleep at work would be seen as being productive since you obviously work so hard. This would be my chance to become employee of the month.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Depends on when you are asleep and how you act when you wake up to help your colleagues.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Some jackass dean or administration flunky complained about (sleep deprived) students asleep on the couches in Georgia Tech's Klaus CS building. I guess it didn't look good for donors or something. So they put up a bunch of signs above each couch and bench that said "No sleeping." I've still got a collection of pictures of people sleeping directly under the signs. Fight the power. :-)
- bregma 4y ago
  The moment a measure becomes a KPI it is not longer a useful KPI.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    yep, and people, especially many managers just DO NOT seem to understand that... they look at you like your speaking klingon....
aoms 4y ago
Alternatively you could just treat your employees well and they will want to perform for you.
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  Somehow that's the last thing anyone ever wants to try.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Even better is the hypocrisy. "We value your autonomy! We know studies say happy, autonomous workers perform better!" Proceeds to stifle autonomy by invading your privacy in whatever way is legal or difficult to prove illegal.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      So... Making clear the goal isn't performance.
    - swayvil 4y ago
      Lies are our most inexpensive resource. Use them wherever possible.
- ddingus 4y ago
  Has worked for me. I expect that to continue. Consideration due is consideration given. Put another way: people care exactly as much as they are cared about.
- bregma 4y ago
  How to you put that in a pivot table you add to your slide deck? If it can't be measured it has no value.
- ZaoLahma 4y ago
  ... or treat and think of your employees as human beings who sometimes are more productive than usual and sometimes less productive than usual, but on average perform "well enough". If companies aim for maximum, minimum and average to trace one flat line across diagrams visualizing some kind of performance metrics, then us humans will never ever live up to those expectations.
dspillett 4y ago
> Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work Automating the good old “floggings will continue until staff morale improves”. Though given a choice between that and the utterly cringy gamification¹ that some managers² seem to think doesn't make us want to high-five them in the face with a chair, I know which I'd hate least. [1] which thankfully seems to be going out of fashion, but it'll be back again soon with a slightly different mask [2] or “team togetherness and efficiency encouragers” or other fanciful titles they might have
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  > efficiency encouragers That is quite the title. Imagine if they would just work and you actually had someone to help you. A whole new universe of productivity.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I genuinely shiver when I read language like this despite being very much a corporate child. I count my blessings that, at least until now, even when I was tracked, my boss either cared about results or 'metrics' were good enough or the boss liked me. I am not entirely certain how to prepare a child for this world. Short of running your own company, it will be hard to avoid the beast.
    - lumost 4y ago
      I suspect double speak will be elevated to a new artform. a large corporation has no standard basis by which t judge output. Managers may love your work, but it's hard to objectively quantify whether they have the right calibration. Software that automatically says “you should push how harder”, “john is harming morale”, “jane is overworking”. Will be too tempting for a detached senior leadership to resist. At my firm, laptops seem to have mysteriously gotten slower recently, chrome now regularly crashes on moderately sized documents. I would be surprised if it's not spyware related. I'm moving over to a Linux machine as soon as I can, that way I can benefit from lack of software support.
    - 4y ago
kstenerud 4y ago
> Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare. Ask, and ye shall receive: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/03/china-positive-energy-emotion-surveillance-recognition-tech https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/03/c...
coldtea 4y ago
>Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. If bosses could have slaves working for them, a vast majority of them would use slaves in an instant, without thinking about it. At best, they'd use a contractor or two removed from them, to mitigate the ethical accusations (same way they justify the use of sweatshops, child labor in mines, violently threatening and beating or even murdering workers when they stand up, and so on, in the production/supply chains the most seemingly "progressive" companies). The only reason they don't have everything they want atm, and societies got things like paid leave, the 5-day 8-hour workweek and such, has been pushback (which was reristed fiercely, with many dead in the process). Pushback, plus, when the global communist movement was still a thing, and still shiny to many, the danger of working classes falling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism, which between the 30s and 70s did wonders in securing concessions from capitalist governments. Since pushback has stopped, and the alternative system of production is dead and/or discretided, in any job market that they have the upper hand, they'll reinforce any 19-th century norm they like.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  ^This a thousand times over. The workers' benefits we enjoy today in Europe like 8 hour workdays, minimum 20 days vacation, paid sick leave, free healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc. were due to the communist movements sweeping Europe after WW2 which governments and industrialists fought hard to suppress so they had to give concessions to the workers in order to keep their business afloat and prevent them from rioting/striking. But, the collective labor pushback has stopped since the great offshoring took over in the last 30 years thanks to globalization, and various labor unions lost their power as the great industrialists moved the labor intensive jobs overseas where they could easily enforce their 19-th century norms and environmentally damaging practices and make killer profits, which in term bought them more lobbying power and political influence back home to push for lax immigration and lax trade policies with oppressive regimes, to further water down local wages and working conditions to "increase economic competitiveness" with those oppressive regimes. Now we're slowly moving back to longer working hours and worse working conditions, but not by force like in the past, but by making housing and living so insanely expensive and getting a job so competitive, that the only chance people have is to willingly sacrifice the quality of life to get a head start in the rat race over everyone else, unless they were lucky enough to inherit some generational wealth that has appreciated, like a house. Couple this with economic policies where at every crisis or dip in the economy, the well off, asset holder and big companies get further boosted up and amass even more wealth, while the lesser well off and small business go bust and end up worse off and pushed "further back on the monopoly board".
pmoriarty 4y ago
"Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too?" Are there jobs that don't do surveillance? Seems like every company's jumping in head first.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Are there jobs that don't do surveillance? Try front-line and front-line-adjacent healthcare. Due to federal privacy laws, a lot of ordinary office surveillance tech is not permitted. It's not uncommon for regular offices to have "security" cameras. But when IT tried to put the cameras all over our building, the legal department told them to go stick their heads in a pig. I wasn't part of the discussions that followed, but based on my company's privacy training, I can imagine a couple of problems: - Legal didn't want even the remote possibility that a "security" camera might be able to view a patient's records on someone's screen. - Legal didn't want any record that a particular patient went into a particular office, thus identifying them as having a particular ailment. (It's the same reason all of our promotional flyers sent in the mail have to be in a plain white envelope, and not postcards announcing to the world "You're overdue for your herpes follow-up!") There are still security cameras, but they're only allowed in the employee parking lot. And I think I've seen them in the server rooms. But that's pretty much it.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    They probably also didn't want video evidence when their doctors or nurses screw up, which would make malpractice cases against them stronger. Video evidence could also exonerate them, of course. But they probably erred on the side of opacity and the status quo over more transparency, as ass-covering corporations often do.
vharuck 4y ago
Where's the software letting me surveil my supervisors? They're supposed to be spending some time and effort on me, so I have a legitimate need to make sure that's happening. There should be software that scans their emails and chat for discussions about open positions, projects, or trainings that are a good fit for me. Then it'll let me know if they recommended me, or mentioned my name in a negative context. Of course, we'll need AI for that. Maybe even let me just read the logs, to get a human in the loop. Purely a professional interest, of course. /s
- yencabulator 4y ago
  At an ex-job, shortly after I quit they got a new middle-level manager. The new boss started complaining to everyone about every time he saw them arriving to the office late, so the guys collaborated on a spreadsheet to track the boss's work hours to the minute, every single day.
  - webmaven 4y ago
    And…?
- 4mitkumar 4y ago
  You are looking for Sousveillance ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance). And here's a paper on his it can be attempted at workplaces: https://www.sjjg.uk/pdfs/cecchinato-gould-pitts-2020-self-tracking-and-sousveillance-at-work.pdf https://www.sjjg.uk/pdfs/cecchinato-gould-pitts-2020-self-tr...
pdkl95 4y ago
> based on their facial expression Phrenology is still pseudo=scientific bullshit even when the calipers[1] are replaced with an "AI" black box of software. > Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare. "RSA ANIMATE: Smile or Die"[2] [1] https://images1.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2006-06/16/94302055-1-2.jpg&width=960 https://images1.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2006-06/16... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo
Kon-Peki 4y ago
Just make some friends in the accounting department and plant a few seeds. Our developer systems come with 32/64GB memory, multiple TB of NVMe storage, high-end processors, discrete GPUs to drive 4 4K monitors, etc. But we save $30 via the Dell configurator by skipping bluetooth, wifi, cameras, etc.

derwiki 4y ago

> Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass. —- Snowcrash

headsoup 4y ago
'The “robot” installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked nothing like the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like C-3PO or futuristic like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line robot. Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called “Manna”, version 1.0*.'
- chazu 4y ago
  That story was truly a horrific vision of the future.

formerkrogemp 4y ago

Nah, in retail, we used to have this software known as "secret shoppers." If they didn't see someone smiling, the store or department would be docked points on its evaluation, and you'd be hearing about it from your boss and boss's boss. Now all of us WFH minions below the lowly programmers will be subject to a smiling rictus as our cameras, microphones, and keyloggers determine productivity scores, work morale, and redundancy scores for the next layoff.

aoms 4y ago
Another reason too keep the COVID masks on for longer
Qem 4y ago
How long before somebody uses AI to permasmile your face in virtual conferences? The market is ripe for an arms race here.
- ecolonsmak 4y ago
  you can do that with the snap filters. I use the mac app to overlay all sorts of goofy hats, sunglasses, laser eyes, etc.... onto my face to spice up dull zoom/teams calls.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Oh man, thats too funny, can you imagine the glitchy smiles snapping off someones face as they slightly turn their head? All the sudden every meeting is filled with barely perceptible uncanny artifacts... So far everywhere I've worked is cameras off except for intimate meetings (and even then its optional/reciprocated), usually a few people will try to keep their cameras on to start a trend or something but I imagine ends up feeling like an idiot with the only camera on.
- corobo 4y ago
  Create 2 scenes in OBS, one a pure black background, one pure green. Video devices always seem to flicker between black and green when they're broken. Click the "Start Virtual Camera" button and switch to this webcam in your conference software, flick between the two scenes semi-rapidly "ah man, my webcam is playing up" https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/

bschwindHN 4y ago

Many Japanese companies have really fucked up ways of measuring "work". They work hard to make these AI and tech-based things to measure some dumb stats that have nothing to do with getting actual work done. I've heard of a company measuring how "well" a meeting went based on some AI analysis of people smiling. So much time here is wasted on managing workers and talking about how to work, instead of just getting shit done.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
There is an urban legend that being asleep at work would be seen as being productive since you obviously work so hard. This would be my chance to become employee of the month.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Depends on when you are asleep and how you act when you wake up to help your colleagues.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Some jackass dean or administration flunky complained about (sleep deprived) students asleep on the couches in Georgia Tech's Klaus CS building. I guess it didn't look good for donors or something. So they put up a bunch of signs above each couch and bench that said "No sleeping." I've still got a collection of pictures of people sleeping directly under the signs. Fight the power. :-)
bregma 4y ago
The moment a measure becomes a KPI it is not longer a useful KPI.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  yep, and people, especially many managers just DO NOT seem to understand that... they look at you like your speaking klingon....

aoms 4y ago

Alternatively you could just treat your employees well and they will want to perform for you.

emptyparadise 4y ago
Somehow that's the last thing anyone ever wants to try.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Even better is the hypocrisy. "We value your autonomy! We know studies say happy, autonomous workers perform better!" Proceeds to stifle autonomy by invading your privacy in whatever way is legal or difficult to prove illegal.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    So... Making clear the goal isn't performance.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Lies are our most inexpensive resource. Use them wherever possible.
ddingus 4y ago
Has worked for me. I expect that to continue. Consideration due is consideration given. Put another way: people care exactly as much as they are cared about.
bregma 4y ago
How to you put that in a pivot table you add to your slide deck? If it can't be measured it has no value.
ZaoLahma 4y ago
... or treat and think of your employees as human beings who sometimes are more productive than usual and sometimes less productive than usual, but on average perform "well enough". If companies aim for maximum, minimum and average to trace one flat line across diagrams visualizing some kind of performance metrics, then us humans will never ever live up to those expectations.

dspillett 4y ago

> Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work Automating the good old “floggings will continue until staff morale improves”. Though given a choice between that and the utterly cringy gamification¹ that some managers² seem to think doesn't make us want to high-five them in the face with a chair, I know which I'd hate least. [1] which thankfully seems to be going out of fashion, but it'll be back again soon with a slightly different mask [2] or “team togetherness and efficiency encouragers” or other fanciful titles they might have

raxxorraxor 4y ago
> efficiency encouragers That is quite the title. Imagine if they would just work and you actually had someone to help you. A whole new universe of productivity.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I genuinely shiver when I read language like this despite being very much a corporate child. I count my blessings that, at least until now, even when I was tracked, my boss either cared about results or 'metrics' were good enough or the boss liked me. I am not entirely certain how to prepare a child for this world. Short of running your own company, it will be hard to avoid the beast.
  - lumost 4y ago
    I suspect double speak will be elevated to a new artform. a large corporation has no standard basis by which t judge output. Managers may love your work, but it's hard to objectively quantify whether they have the right calibration. Software that automatically says “you should push how harder”, “john is harming morale”, “jane is overworking”. Will be too tempting for a detached senior leadership to resist. At my firm, laptops seem to have mysteriously gotten slower recently, chrome now regularly crashes on moderately sized documents. I would be surprised if it's not spyware related. I'm moving over to a Linux machine as soon as I can, that way I can benefit from lack of software support.
  - 4y ago

kstenerud 4y ago

> Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare. Ask, and ye shall receive: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/03/china-positive-energy-emotion-surveillance-recognition-tech https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/03/c...

coldtea 4y ago

>Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. If bosses could have slaves working for them, a vast majority of them would use slaves in an instant, without thinking about it. At best, they'd use a contractor or two removed from them, to mitigate the ethical accusations (same way they justify the use of sweatshops, child labor in mines, violently threatening and beating or even murdering workers when they stand up, and so on, in the production/supply chains the most seemingly "progressive" companies). The only reason they don't have everything they want atm, and societies got things like paid leave, the 5-day 8-hour workweek and such, has been pushback (which was reristed fiercely, with many dead in the process). Pushback, plus, when the global communist movement was still a thing, and still shiny to many, the danger of working classes falling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism, which between the 30s and 70s did wonders in securing concessions from capitalist governments. Since pushback has stopped, and the alternative system of production is dead and/or discretided, in any job market that they have the upper hand, they'll reinforce any 19-th century norm they like.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
^This a thousand times over. The workers' benefits we enjoy today in Europe like 8 hour workdays, minimum 20 days vacation, paid sick leave, free healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc. were due to the communist movements sweeping Europe after WW2 which governments and industrialists fought hard to suppress so they had to give concessions to the workers in order to keep their business afloat and prevent them from rioting/striking. But, the collective labor pushback has stopped since the great offshoring took over in the last 30 years thanks to globalization, and various labor unions lost their power as the great industrialists moved the labor intensive jobs overseas where they could easily enforce their 19-th century norms and environmentally damaging practices and make killer profits, which in term bought them more lobbying power and political influence back home to push for lax immigration and lax trade policies with oppressive regimes, to further water down local wages and working conditions to "increase economic competitiveness" with those oppressive regimes. Now we're slowly moving back to longer working hours and worse working conditions, but not by force like in the past, but by making housing and living so insanely expensive and getting a job so competitive, that the only chance people have is to willingly sacrifice the quality of life to get a head start in the rat race over everyone else, unless they were lucky enough to inherit some generational wealth that has appreciated, like a house. Couple this with economic policies where at every crisis or dip in the economy, the well off, asset holder and big companies get further boosted up and amass even more wealth, while the lesser well off and small business go bust and end up worse off and pushed "further back on the monopoly board".

pmoriarty 4y ago

"Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too?" Are there jobs that don't do surveillance? Seems like every company's jumping in head first.

reaperducer 4y ago
Are there jobs that don't do surveillance? Try front-line and front-line-adjacent healthcare. Due to federal privacy laws, a lot of ordinary office surveillance tech is not permitted. It's not uncommon for regular offices to have "security" cameras. But when IT tried to put the cameras all over our building, the legal department told them to go stick their heads in a pig. I wasn't part of the discussions that followed, but based on my company's privacy training, I can imagine a couple of problems: - Legal didn't want even the remote possibility that a "security" camera might be able to view a patient's records on someone's screen. - Legal didn't want any record that a particular patient went into a particular office, thus identifying them as having a particular ailment. (It's the same reason all of our promotional flyers sent in the mail have to be in a plain white envelope, and not postcards announcing to the world "You're overdue for your herpes follow-up!") There are still security cameras, but they're only allowed in the employee parking lot. And I think I've seen them in the server rooms. But that's pretty much it.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  They probably also didn't want video evidence when their doctors or nurses screw up, which would make malpractice cases against them stronger. Video evidence could also exonerate them, of course. But they probably erred on the side of opacity and the status quo over more transparency, as ass-covering corporations often do.

vharuck 4y ago

Where's the software letting me surveil my supervisors? They're supposed to be spending some time and effort on me, so I have a legitimate need to make sure that's happening. There should be software that scans their emails and chat for discussions about open positions, projects, or trainings that are a good fit for me. Then it'll let me know if they recommended me, or mentioned my name in a negative context. Of course, we'll need AI for that. Maybe even let me just read the logs, to get a human in the loop. Purely a professional interest, of course. /s

yencabulator 4y ago
At an ex-job, shortly after I quit they got a new middle-level manager. The new boss started complaining to everyone about every time he saw them arriving to the office late, so the guys collaborated on a spreadsheet to track the boss's work hours to the minute, every single day.
- webmaven 4y ago
  And…?
4mitkumar 4y ago
You are looking for Sousveillance ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance). And here's a paper on his it can be attempted at workplaces: https://www.sjjg.uk/pdfs/cecchinato-gould-pitts-2020-self-tracking-and-sousveillance-at-work.pdf https://www.sjjg.uk/pdfs/cecchinato-gould-pitts-2020-self-tr...

pdkl95 4y ago

> based on their facial expression Phrenology is still pseudo=scientific bullshit even when the calipers[1] are replaced with an "AI" black box of software. > Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare. "RSA ANIMATE: Smile or Die"[2] [1] https://images1.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2006-06/16/94302055-1-2.jpg&width=960 https://images1.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2006-06/16... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

Kon-Peki 4y ago

Just make some friends in the accounting department and plant a few seeds. Our developer systems come with 32/64GB memory, multiple TB of NVMe storage, high-end processors, discrete GPUs to drive 4 4K monitors, etc. But we save $30 via the Dell configurator by skipping bluetooth, wifi, cameras, etc.