8 ms·

Kind of terrifying to see all the comments just believing it as is Line managers, even managers of managers, would have 0 loyalty to the company and could easi

by shmatt 3y ago

Kind of terrifying to see all the comments just believing it as is Line managers, even managers of managers, would have 0 loyalty to the company and could easily prove this is all true. The thousands of employees could prove the webcam flash every laptop login. Things like this would be VP+ (who would have an org of 1000 or more, why would they even look if one of their reports body language is different this morning?) if it even existed under such a secretive blanket. Plus banks are literally known in the tech world as having the absolute oldest and crumbling tech And lastly, as someone who works in the CV world, even having all those cameras up, successfully streaming, uploading, and inferencing as described in that post would be a technological marvel

hardware2win 3y ago
>why would they even look if one of their reports body language is different this morning?) Ineeed
ethbr0 3y ago
This is on r/antiwork... which isn't a particularly objective source when it comes to employers.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  I’m a staunch unionist and whenever I happen across this subreddit it makes my blood boil. I wouldn’t take anything there seriously.
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    [dead]
- aerhardt 3y ago
  I don’t have trouble believing that working conditions in the US are sometimes dire, but I also suspect that r/antiwork and other associated subreddits are heavily influenced by foreign actors. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    I'd assume there are also plenty of non-foreign actors pissed off about their jobs. They wouldn't call it work if it wasn't work.
  - wil421 3y ago
    Not to mention karma farming bots commonly repost popular posts/images on different subreddits or just repost it at later dates.
  - zug_zug 3y ago
    I mean, if foreign actors are motivated to improve US working conditions then I'm not concerned, grateful really. If these allegations are entirely false JPMorgan is welcome to share what information they do collect in a legally binding statement.
    - biofunsf 3y ago
      Foreign actors are motivated to foment discount and internal conflict. This might actually lead to improving working conditions, but that’s not the goal.
      - moffkalast 3y ago
        Or maybe paid shills are insinuating that an international worker's rights movement is some kind of foreign attack on one specific country, in an attempt to discredit it so they can keep exploiting people. Reminds me of what lengths Amazon went to, spending millions on union busting instead of paying people a living wage. I wouldn't put it below them to do a little astroturfing, it probably pays for itself.
        aerhardt 3y ago
        Since this alludes to my comment, as I was the one who said up the tree that that r/antiwork may very well have foreign interests working against the US, I'll say that my account is not anonymous, I'm not American, and I certainly have better uses of my free time than taking a few bucks from Amazon to shill anti-union propaganda.
tyingq 3y ago
It is, though, at least extrapolated from some real things, like non-trivial analysis of badge scans, fairly deep tracking of Citrix, Teams, O365 activity, and so on. Probably embellished to drive more interest, outrage, press coverage, and so on. Some attempt at a bit of bad PR revenge in exchange for being monitored in this way.
EveYoung 3y ago
Are there even similar solutions available commercially? Even at a size of JPM, I highly doubt that they would develop such a complex system in-house. Also, for any high-skill job, I feel such an "activity metric" is utterly useless and not correlated with value contributions.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  Here I can probably weigh in a little. While we can argue day and night over whether tracking this is worthwhile, JPM ( and likely Discover ) has some history ( and manpower to do it ) of building their own systems when reasonable.
ericmay 3y ago
At JPM a VP isn’t going to have an org of 1,000+. That’s going to be managing director level. There are some VPs on the business side that can have numerous employees but that’s about it. In finance you can equate VP to being senior and line manager level at other companies Google, Meta, etc. One you hit executive director things change a bit. Managing director is the real deal. Agreeing with/adding to your post here: With that being said this Reddit post has some fishy elements to me. I wouldn’t doubt the existence of this so called WADU but the capabilities (and laughable suggestions in the Reddit post like “don’t use a corporate laptop” as if JPM issues corporate laptops - most employees use the stupid VDI) seem a little outrageous to me. More likely scenario is they just track badge in and badge out and maybe something like the number of meetings on your calendar and do some super basic reporting up the chain to the HR tech teams who are trying to figure out what to do with the workforce. Now from the article: “Some employees described adopting unusual behaviors to evade the system's detection during breaks or interludes throughout the day.” I don’t know where these so called employees work, but at least in the corporate offices uh nobody pays any mind to any breaks you take unless you have some really anal manager. At the Polaris office in Columbus people bring walking shoes and do laps and things. They have lots of space intended for leaving your desk and grabbing coffee or meeting. The Starbucks in there at the time I was there was supposedly one of the most busy Starbucks locations you could find. I don’t think they’re worried about taking breaks. “Another current employee within the firm's commercial-banking division said she and her colleagues have resorted to discussing some work-related topics on forums like the iMessage app” You mean like just normal work? You don’t text your colleagues? Since when is iMessage a forum? Dumb. The article is really lacking substance and the Reddit post seems kind of conspiratorial. Is JPM tracking things like how long your VDI session is open and your badge in/out? Yea definitely. Is it some big AI conspiracy? No. To what end anyway? Source -> worked in Digital tech for a little over 4 years and have a number of close friends who still work there and numerous colleagues in executive and managing director level roles.
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  As you say iMessage is not really a "web forum". Informally though a "forum" is any place where discussion happens. It's a forum in that sense.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> could easily prove this is all true. Prove to whom? Snowden proved a lot, and what changed? My friend works in JP, he is adamant this is true. Regardless of the veracity lf this particular claim, once we have accepted government survailance, it was only a matter of time untill this happens.
- herval 3y ago
  > Prove to whom? Snowden proved a lot, and what changed? A lot changed - maybe not what some hoped, but still. Fwiw I don't think much changed for the better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_effect#:~:text=According%20to%20TechRepublic%2C%20revelations%20from,the%20safety%20of%20cloud%20technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_effect#:~:text=Accordi....
- tootie 3y ago
  Idk why we dial back to Snowden, when it was James Risen who exposed Stellar Wind years earlier. And his expose lead to the program being shut down. Most of the huge NSA surveillance programs have withered due to lack of valuable intel or due to gradual sunset of the post-9/11 laws.
- Ancalagon 3y ago
  can your friend share a gif via imgur of the camera flashing when he turns on the laptop? preferably multiple times, with timestamps. There shouldn't be any identifying info in the gifs. That would be unequivocal proof to everyone in this thread, in my mind.
  - theonlybutlet 3y ago
    I imagine cameras in the office would be a more likely scenario. Something like Amazon Go. Also these days, just tools such as Microsoft Teams (just look at the crazy insights gained in Viva).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bitL 3y ago
They can be doing limited testing for now. I worked for a company that tracked everything they could get away with and managers routinely enforced minimal threshold of activity so I won't be surprised if some larger bank jumped on the same bandwagon.
grepfru_it 3y ago
Just an FYI, practically anyone is a VP at a bank. You have to go higher
- shmatt 3y ago
  Yeah that makes sense, I meant 3rd-4th level manager. I work at a US BigCorp and am sure they check office swipes, even laptop usage, but as a line manager get absolutely no insight into any of those when it comes to performance/ratings/feedback. My direct reports could be using their laptop 2 hours a day and no one in the company is letting me know that If someone is getting that data, its definitely not me or my manager. Beyond that level who knows really
_fat_santa 3y ago
It sounds dystopian as hell but the software engineer in me has some suspicions about how well the whole system works. Basically I see 3 places where this tech would not work quite like the commenter said: * The base stack - This is JPM, not OpenAI or Google. I would assume what the commenter mentioned is the "ideal" and certainly not how the system functions on a day to day basis. I'm sure there are bugs, and areas where managers are told "don't trust this info, it's most likely wrong". * The integrations - To be able to track you like the commenter mentioned, WADU would have to integrate with all of JPM's existing systems. I don't know how many different systems JPM has but I would assume it's in the hundreds or thousands. I'm gonna say that maybe 75% of those integrations are working at any given time. * The Usage - So assuming the system works, and alerts a manager to an employee having a 'bad day', is the manager going to care? Are they even going to notice? I would assume that the system is not accessed by managers on a daily basis unless you have a manager that is extra anal. Most likely managers only look into an employee if they have been hearing that they are underpreforming. All of this is pure speculation, not associated in any way with JPM.
- brushfoot 3y ago
  > I would assume what the commenter mentioned is the "ideal" and certainly not how the system functions on a day to day basis. It's also possible they're just making it up. There are lots of incentives to do so: revenge, boredom, karma farming, economic destabilization, stock shorting, competition, talent poaching.... It reads to me like embellishment from someone with a bone to pick. They noticed basic tracking and invented dystopian details that would be popular with the outrage sub they posted to. They actually claim that Chase scans employees' homes for "TVs, game consoles, and several other things," which are "all flagged if detected," as if Chase will only employ the Amish. It's just a little too perfectly tailored to Reddit.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
There are numerous stories about this that predate this reddit post by a year: https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/05/jpmorgan-spying-on-employees https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/05/jpmorgan-spyi... https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-describe-fear-mass-workplace-data-surveillance-wadu-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-des...
- djleni 3y ago
  These stories describe wildly less advanced, less technologically complex, and less invasive tracking than the Reddit post. Reddit post is made up. Good fiction writing.
  - Arrath 3y ago
    Reminds me of having to pace the reading of a memo in Snowcrash, so the system didn't flag the employee as either skimming or loafing.
- brushfoot 3y ago
  Stories that describe tracking basic activity, sure. Nothing about Chase scanning your home for "TVs, game consoles, and several other things." The poster expects us to believe that Chase doesn't want their employees having "TVs"? What, are they going to hire an all-Amish workforce? The post is a little too "Reddit" to take seriously.
natural219 3y ago
Bridgewater famously had pretty obscene levels of tracking and monitoring and were open about it, lauding it as part of their company culture. This seems like the same type of thing.
zsombor 3y ago
While some areas of the firm may indeed have what you call old and crumbling tech, this is far from the rule. I expect the electronic trading arm of JPM to be far and beyond what you normally can find at tech firms. The arms race in electronic trading constantly produces innovations out of necessity. The reality is innovate or die, and no inventing yet another sloppy JavaScript framework does not constitute innovation.
joquarky 3y ago
It feels like AI scare propaganda. Everything is just a little too perfectly dystopian. I'd keep aware of updates on the story, but it just feels like exactly the kind of thing I would expect to emerge if there are powerful interests that want to slow down AI advancement.
phire0 3y ago
As an employee, I can confirm I have seen my webcam light up when logging onto Citrix from my desktop, and every time I access it via the web, Chrome asks for permission to use the webcam.

by shmatt 3y ago

hardware2win 3y ago

>why would they even look if one of their reports body language is different this morning?) Ineeed

ethbr0 3y ago

This is on r/antiwork... which isn't a particularly objective source when it comes to employers.

KyeRussell 3y ago
I’m a staunch unionist and whenever I happen across this subreddit it makes my blood boil. I wouldn’t take anything there seriously.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  [dead]
aerhardt 3y ago
I don’t have trouble believing that working conditions in the US are sometimes dire, but I also suspect that r/antiwork and other associated subreddits are heavily influenced by foreign actors. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
- ethbr0 3y ago
  I'd assume there are also plenty of non-foreign actors pissed off about their jobs. They wouldn't call it work if it wasn't work.
- wil421 3y ago
  Not to mention karma farming bots commonly repost popular posts/images on different subreddits or just repost it at later dates.
- zug_zug 3y ago
  I mean, if foreign actors are motivated to improve US working conditions then I'm not concerned, grateful really. If these allegations are entirely false JPMorgan is welcome to share what information they do collect in a legally binding statement.
  - biofunsf 3y ago
    Foreign actors are motivated to foment discount and internal conflict. This might actually lead to improving working conditions, but that’s not the goal.
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      Or maybe paid shills are insinuating that an international worker's rights movement is some kind of foreign attack on one specific country, in an attempt to discredit it so they can keep exploiting people. Reminds me of what lengths Amazon went to, spending millions on union busting instead of paying people a living wage. I wouldn't put it below them to do a little astroturfing, it probably pays for itself.
      - aerhardt 3y ago
        Since this alludes to my comment, as I was the one who said up the tree that that r/antiwork may very well have foreign interests working against the US, I'll say that my account is not anonymous, I'm not American, and I certainly have better uses of my free time than taking a few bucks from Amazon to shill anti-union propaganda.

tyingq 3y ago

It is, though, at least extrapolated from some real things, like non-trivial analysis of badge scans, fairly deep tracking of Citrix, Teams, O365 activity, and so on. Probably embellished to drive more interest, outrage, press coverage, and so on. Some attempt at a bit of bad PR revenge in exchange for being monitored in this way.

EveYoung 3y ago

Are there even similar solutions available commercially? Even at a size of JPM, I highly doubt that they would develop such a complex system in-house. Also, for any high-skill job, I feel such an "activity metric" is utterly useless and not correlated with value contributions.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
Here I can probably weigh in a little. While we can argue day and night over whether tracking this is worthwhile, JPM ( and likely Discover ) has some history ( and manpower to do it ) of building their own systems when reasonable.

ericmay 3y ago

At JPM a VP isn’t going to have an org of 1,000+. That’s going to be managing director level. There are some VPs on the business side that can have numerous employees but that’s about it. In finance you can equate VP to being senior and line manager level at other companies Google, Meta, etc. One you hit executive director things change a bit. Managing director is the real deal. Agreeing with/adding to your post here: With that being said this Reddit post has some fishy elements to me. I wouldn’t doubt the existence of this so called WADU but the capabilities (and laughable suggestions in the Reddit post like “don’t use a corporate laptop” as if JPM issues corporate laptops - most employees use the stupid VDI) seem a little outrageous to me. More likely scenario is they just track badge in and badge out and maybe something like the number of meetings on your calendar and do some super basic reporting up the chain to the HR tech teams who are trying to figure out what to do with the workforce. Now from the article: “Some employees described adopting unusual behaviors to evade the system's detection during breaks or interludes throughout the day.” I don’t know where these so called employees work, but at least in the corporate offices uh nobody pays any mind to any breaks you take unless you have some really anal manager. At the Polaris office in Columbus people bring walking shoes and do laps and things. They have lots of space intended for leaving your desk and grabbing coffee or meeting. The Starbucks in there at the time I was there was supposedly one of the most busy Starbucks locations you could find. I don’t think they’re worried about taking breaks. “Another current employee within the firm's commercial-banking division said she and her colleagues have resorted to discussing some work-related topics on forums like the iMessage app” You mean like just normal work? You don’t text your colleagues? Since when is iMessage a forum? Dumb. The article is really lacking substance and the Reddit post seems kind of conspiratorial. Is JPM tracking things like how long your VDI session is open and your badge in/out? Yea definitely. Is it some big AI conspiracy? No. To what end anyway? Source -> worked in Digital tech for a little over 4 years and have a number of close friends who still work there and numerous colleagues in executive and managing director level roles.

tomjakubowski 3y ago
As you say iMessage is not really a "web forum". Informally though a "forum" is any place where discussion happens. It's a forum in that sense.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> could easily prove this is all true. Prove to whom? Snowden proved a lot, and what changed? My friend works in JP, he is adamant this is true. Regardless of the veracity lf this particular claim, once we have accepted government survailance, it was only a matter of time untill this happens.

herval 3y ago
> Prove to whom? Snowden proved a lot, and what changed? A lot changed - maybe not what some hoped, but still. Fwiw I don't think much changed for the better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_effect#:~:text=According%20to%20TechRepublic%2C%20revelations%20from,the%20safety%20of%20cloud%20technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_effect#:~:text=Accordi....
tootie 3y ago
Idk why we dial back to Snowden, when it was James Risen who exposed Stellar Wind years earlier. And his expose lead to the program being shut down. Most of the huge NSA surveillance programs have withered due to lack of valuable intel or due to gradual sunset of the post-9/11 laws.
Ancalagon 3y ago
can your friend share a gif via imgur of the camera flashing when he turns on the laptop? preferably multiple times, with timestamps. There shouldn't be any identifying info in the gifs. That would be unequivocal proof to everyone in this thread, in my mind.
- theonlybutlet 3y ago
  I imagine cameras in the office would be a more likely scenario. Something like Amazon Go. Also these days, just tools such as Microsoft Teams (just look at the crazy insights gained in Viva).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bitL 3y ago

They can be doing limited testing for now. I worked for a company that tracked everything they could get away with and managers routinely enforced minimal threshold of activity so I won't be surprised if some larger bank jumped on the same bandwagon.

grepfru_it 3y ago

Just an FYI, practically anyone is a VP at a bank. You have to go higher

shmatt 3y ago
Yeah that makes sense, I meant 3rd-4th level manager. I work at a US BigCorp and am sure they check office swipes, even laptop usage, but as a line manager get absolutely no insight into any of those when it comes to performance/ratings/feedback. My direct reports could be using their laptop 2 hours a day and no one in the company is letting me know that If someone is getting that data, its definitely not me or my manager. Beyond that level who knows really

_fat_santa 3y ago

It sounds dystopian as hell but the software engineer in me has some suspicions about how well the whole system works. Basically I see 3 places where this tech would not work quite like the commenter said: * The base stack - This is JPM, not OpenAI or Google. I would assume what the commenter mentioned is the "ideal" and certainly not how the system functions on a day to day basis. I'm sure there are bugs, and areas where managers are told "don't trust this info, it's most likely wrong". * The integrations - To be able to track you like the commenter mentioned, WADU would have to integrate with all of JPM's existing systems. I don't know how many different systems JPM has but I would assume it's in the hundreds or thousands. I'm gonna say that maybe 75% of those integrations are working at any given time. * The Usage - So assuming the system works, and alerts a manager to an employee having a 'bad day', is the manager going to care? Are they even going to notice? I would assume that the system is not accessed by managers on a daily basis unless you have a manager that is extra anal. Most likely managers only look into an employee if they have been hearing that they are underpreforming. All of this is pure speculation, not associated in any way with JPM.

brushfoot 3y ago
> I would assume what the commenter mentioned is the "ideal" and certainly not how the system functions on a day to day basis. It's also possible they're just making it up. There are lots of incentives to do so: revenge, boredom, karma farming, economic destabilization, stock shorting, competition, talent poaching.... It reads to me like embellishment from someone with a bone to pick. They noticed basic tracking and invented dystopian details that would be popular with the outrage sub they posted to. They actually claim that Chase scans employees' homes for "TVs, game consoles, and several other things," which are "all flagged if detected," as if Chase will only employ the Amish. It's just a little too perfectly tailored to Reddit.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

There are numerous stories about this that predate this reddit post by a year: https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/05/jpmorgan-spying-on-employees https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/05/jpmorgan-spyi... https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-describe-fear-mass-workplace-data-surveillance-wadu-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-des...

djleni 3y ago
These stories describe wildly less advanced, less technologically complex, and less invasive tracking than the Reddit post. Reddit post is made up. Good fiction writing.
- Arrath 3y ago
  Reminds me of having to pace the reading of a memo in Snowcrash, so the system didn't flag the employee as either skimming or loafing.
brushfoot 3y ago
Stories that describe tracking basic activity, sure. Nothing about Chase scanning your home for "TVs, game consoles, and several other things." The poster expects us to believe that Chase doesn't want their employees having "TVs"? What, are they going to hire an all-Amish workforce? The post is a little too "Reddit" to take seriously.

natural219 3y ago

Bridgewater famously had pretty obscene levels of tracking and monitoring and were open about it, lauding it as part of their company culture. This seems like the same type of thing.

zsombor 3y ago

While some areas of the firm may indeed have what you call old and crumbling tech, this is far from the rule. I expect the electronic trading arm of JPM to be far and beyond what you normally can find at tech firms. The arms race in electronic trading constantly produces innovations out of necessity. The reality is innovate or die, and no inventing yet another sloppy JavaScript framework does not constitute innovation.

joquarky 3y ago

It feels like AI scare propaganda. Everything is just a little too perfectly dystopian. I'd keep aware of updates on the story, but it just feels like exactly the kind of thing I would expect to emerge if there are powerful interests that want to slow down AI advancement.

phire0 3y ago

As an employee, I can confirm I have seen my webcam light up when logging onto Citrix from my desktop, and every time I access it via the web, Chrome asks for permission to use the webcam.