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I think the most interesting part is > I think everyone expects their employer to track them to some extent. It is pretty standard practice for employers to mo

I think the most interesting part is > I think everyone expects their employer to track them to some extent. It is pretty standard practice for employers to monitor and run analysis on things like building badge swipes and the amount of time spent connected when working from home. It has also become very common place for employers to record audio and video at the office. That sounds dystopian to me already (maybe because I'm not in the US? Or haven't spend much time at BigCorp? But is that really the default minimum these days?) If you asked someone 10-20 years ago if that description sounded dystopian, would you be more likely to get a "yes definitely" than you are today? I'm way more worried by the dystopia society accepts as "normal" than one that is forced on us and that we could potentially fight against.

gamesbrainiac 3y ago
This is dystopian. Something like this would be illegal in the EU.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Any workers council, and union, I onow woupd slap managers backsidesnfrom here to Mars and bavknforbthat. Before, during and after suing said employer to death. With basically a guaranteed win at any labour court. Since everybody knows that, only the most sketchy employers consider something along these lines. Again one ofnthe reasons I am really happy with my job and the country I have it in.
  - brightstep 3y ago
    This is a perfect example (finally) of why even white collar workers need unions. Yes, even you in finance. Yes, even you in software engineering. It’s not just about pay!
    - lucozade 3y ago
      There are perfectly good reasons for having unions in finance. This is definitely not one of them. The heavy monitoring of communications, access etc is mandated by regulators primarily for the protection of customers. There's zero chance a union, or any other body below government, will get them to change that. I doubt they'd even try and nor should they.
      - c0m 3y ago
        Monitoring of workplace comms is fine and legal, ditto for access logs; (taking this post at face value) monitoring of facial expressions, undisclosed webcam and microphone monitoring at home, abusing access to workers’ personal phones, and feeding all this in to a black box for a score that your manager basically pinky swears to not use as part of your review is not okay.
        lucozade 3y ago
        I agree. I wasn't responding to the original post, I was responding to a comment about monitoring. I also don't believe for a second that JPM are doing what the original post is saying they're doing in regard to private devices. It would be astonishingly expensive and illegal in some jurisdictions. And thousands of people would need to know, in detail, for it to be useful so wouldn't just have come out in a subreddit. It would be widely known in the industry (and it isn't).
      - pydry 3y ago
        The point would be to stop them peeking for other reasons.
      - datavirtue 3y ago
        Unions can do whatever they want. The rules are different. Sort of how the FBI meets with leaders of a terrorist militia to negotiate because they are afraid of a shootout (it's called "power"). An individual would just be arrested. Any union of citizens will have power.
- lucozade 3y ago
  The ECB require it for banks in the EU. As does the PRA in the UK and the FRB in the US.
  - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
    What is the actual requirement?
    - lucozade 3y ago
      There are multiple but the main one is that all communication related to the activity of the bank needs to be recorded and be auditable. There are limitations for expediency. For example, only phone calls with customers or peer organisations are usually recorded. Most phone calls aren't as it's very expensive and not massively useful (although AI may change the calculus on usefulness). But all email, IM, BBG chats etc are recorded. And it's as pervasive as it is primarily because of the scandals of the credit crunch. Similar controls existed before then but they were less pervasive and not as strictly enforced.
      - stingraycharles 3y ago
        > There are multiple but the main one is that all communication related to the activity of the bank needs to be recorded and be auditable. That’s very different from constantly recording audio and video of the employee which is what the grandparent described as dystopian. I’d also argue the focus here is on audits / transparency, rather than employee productivity.
      - raverbashing 3y ago
        But that's more on the 'communications' side rather than general monitoring of the worker (if the mouse is moving, etc)
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    Don't let facts get in the way of euro exceptionalism.
- Mizoguchi 3y ago
  As a former employee of some of the largest European corporations I can assure you they usually operate way pass legal boundaries. The absolute worst that can happen to them is to get fined, which is not enough deterrent as usually the fines eat a tiny portion of their profits. No one goes to jail either, a major corruption scandal may send a CEO on early retirement with a full compensation package and/or to work for a competitor. So assuming European companies won't spy on employees just because it is illegal is pretty naive. Always assume you are being monitored by your employer, because more likely than not you are.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Looking at badging data? The FAANGs do this for the EU employees... Why do you think the EU would make it illegal to see who badges into secure buildings?
  - namdnay 3y ago
    It’s illegal for an EU employer to use badge data for HR purposes, it can only be accessed by security, and only if there is an incident
    - beambot 3y ago
      How do hourly employees clock in? Isn't that the same as "badging in" for an HR function?
    - namdnay 3y ago
      sorry i should have clarified that this was for employees who aren't on a strict hourly contract.
fakedang 3y ago
Honestly, I think that most of the dystopian developments happened during Covid. When I left whiteshoe finance back in 2019, it wasn't this bad. Sure, swipe cards and stuff were normal, but nowadays, it even baffles me how much people-to-people things like online interview selections and the like have been automated away. Edit:- I was also in a European office so it's possible that we didn't get to experience some of the more dystopian facets.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I can guarantee your compliance department was monitoring all of your private communications and not telling you about it. This is just what happens in the finance industry, but the data is not used the same way it is in other places. Your manager and his manager (and so on) may not even know that any sort of surveillance happened. This is not the usual type of workplace surveillance, which is management-driven.
  - fakedang 3y ago
    Oh yeah, definitely. We had strict regulations about what we could talk about, where we could talk about it and how we were supposed to. There was always the looming threat of FCA regulation. But tracking and other privacy-breaching forms of surveillance and tracking were definitely not bothered with - in fact, a number of firms would have rather not tracked employee work hours because of all the conversation around junior level fatigue at the time. Most of the tight-lipped tracking of email and other communication came from compliance largely because of regulations against insider trading and the like. Edit:- we all had personal phones that we could use out of work, which compliance did not track. But it was strictly enforced to not communicate to any business connection using that. They would just fire us if we were caught and shun liability that way.
  - hammock 3y ago
    > I can guarantee your compliance department was monitoring all of your private communications and not telling you about it. This is just what happens in the finance industry It’s a little bit like the government’s argument that they collect data but they don’t read it Lots of companies track you, the flow of data, your use of USB ports, web traffic, etc. But they don’t do anything with it 99% of the time. The one time Google or Goldman Sachs realizes you’ve exfiltrated source code or something though, they have the full paper trail they can pull up at will should they choose to pursue it
cookieperson 3y ago
I've heard of bosses asking about whether they could monitor WFH employees personal conversations in their own homes. I think the answer was "there are loopholes". In the US there are very few protections for workers. The only buffering people can get is by reaching C level positions. But even then... It's only what you can negotiate.
- throwaway743 3y ago
  Depends on if it's the employee is using company hardware and/or they're connected to the company's network and/or they installed bossware on hardware
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  >I've heard of bosses asking about whether they could monitor WFH employees personal conversations in their own homes. You probably signed an agreement to allow audio and visual recording. This is usually for the company to CYA to allow video conferencing but also for more nefarious reasons like you said. If you signed an agreement for audio recording (almost every Fortune 500 requires this), then assume your mic is always hot and that you cannot control when it records
  - markandrewj 3y ago
    Private contracts can not invalidate federal laws or rights, although many corporations would like you to think that.
    - grepfru_it 3y ago
      Right, you have to agree to audio recording in certain states (google 2-way recording laws). To ensure they have that acceptance, they have you sign a disclosure that audio recording may happen while you are using work resources. Nothing federally that is being invalidated here, just CYA for all 50 states
      - markandrewj 3y ago
throwaway743 3y ago
Doesn't have to be a big Corp. Monitoring of screen activity, keystrokes, email/messaging communications, personal email/accounts via mitm, webcam, etc was done by my last employer. Management used it to play politics. Even learned from IT some managers used it to read the CEOs emails between them and their SO.
- logifail 3y ago
  > Monitoring of screen activity, keystrokes, email/messaging communications, personal email/accounts via mitm, webcam, etc was done by my last employer Honestly, why would one go anywhere near one's personal email account - or indeed one's personal anything - from any device owned or controlled by someone else, barring a complete emergency?
  - blitzar 3y ago
    Most employees, most of the time ... In the old times people used their work email for everything - browse the ashleymadison leak from way back and you will likely find people registered using their @jpmorgan work email. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-bankers-used-their-work-emails-on-ashley-madison-2015-08-19 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-bankers-used-their-w...
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    Some combination of (1) I have no reason to suspect it’s being monitored, and (2) the amount it bothers me if in fact it is is minimal.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- hammock 3y ago
  > personal email/accounts via mitm This one is the most out there for me. How common is that?
  - simiones 3y ago
jordanmorgan10 3y ago
It sounds just crazy to me. Reason 10231 I'm thankful my employer doesn't issue us "Work laptops", and just outright buys us ours which we happen to use for work _and_ personal use.
- easton 3y ago
  Curious, why wouldn't you rather them buy you (or issue you) a work laptop and you get a personal laptop? Just don't use work hardware for not work things. (Unless you don't make enough to buy a personal laptop I guess, but of the jobs where they issue you hardware I bet they probably pay you enough to buy your own.)
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Especially if you do a lot of travel, having to consciously partition what you use your devices for is just inconvenient. Circumstances differ of course. But I've never had an issue intermixing personal and work use.
    - macintux 3y ago
      I’ve seen people sharing their screens when private text messages pop up. Sure, if you’re careful enough with notifications that shouldn’t happen, but I’d much rather take a personal iPad with me on travel and never risk it.
    - lib-dev 3y ago
      Travels a good one. Also, it's nice to be able to use personal devices for work stuff. Say you want to read a doc on your iPad or respond to an email on your phone. I totally understand the security perspective though.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Totally depends on circumstance. Senior government officials should almost certainly maintain clear separation. Highly regulated industries that are logging everything as in the current example. But a dogmatic position that no employee should ever intermix personal and work presences just isn't universally the case.
SanderNL 3y ago
What about the employer’s side of the story though? The one that’s on the other side of the economic engine. You expect to be paid in full and in exactly the right amount at the right time, but if we so much as superficially check you are actually present it is dystopian? I know checking “results” is what should be happening, but guess what? That’s actually pretty difficult and open to all kinds of debate. You being “present” during office hours is not up for debate and easy to check. We all know you are not “making up for it” in the evenings. You are watching netflix and eating hot dogs while sending some superficial emails and notes to give off the impression you are working. It’s not some small marginal group taking advantage every way they can every chance they get, it’s nearly everyone I know. It’s insane. But they expect to be paid in full. I am not completely opposed to introducing some metrics to track your value. I agree time “in seat” is not the best metric, but it’s better than nothing.
- frumper 3y ago
  These people taking advantage of it at home(nearly everyone) are very likely doing the same thing in office. What the heck is wrong with having Netflix on and eating a hot dog while you work? You didn’t mention they didn’t accomplish what they needed to.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Companies have strong incentives to mix and match two paradigms of employment/compensation, such that they get the best of both, and their employees suffer the worst of both. In one paradigm, people are paid per productivity unit. In the other, people are paid a set amount per time period but are required to perform above some minimum threshold. They tend towards the latter paradigm outside of specialized scenarios... so the hope is that someone performs well above the minimum and perhaps even at some extraordinary level in this second paradigm. But the pay does not increase for the employee if he or she does overperform. However, the minimum performance is rarely spelled out, and can (and does) increase without employees being aware that this has happened. Regardless though, the pressure is to demand that employees work in a way that would only make sense if they were paid-per-unit. That is to say, constantly, and with the minimum amount of rest that they must have without being injured or dying of exhaustion (maybe without even that!). This is bad enough if your work is pulling onions out of the ground by hand (a job that I remember reading is sometimes paid-per-unit). It is far worse for someone salaried, working something semi-creative. I don't know that the drugs exist that might make me able to focus only on work for 8 or 9 hours at a stretch, day-in and day-out. I have my good days when I look up and its 5pm, and I never let go of a problem the entire time. And then there are the mornings where I flounder about, not even sure where to start. Bonuses for those who can do it seem rare to non-existent. So those that can drive themselves that way are often angling for promotion, sometimes for positions that aren't even available. They want the productivity from A, but to pay the wages of B. I don't think this is some conspiracy... they don't even realize they're doing this, when they do it. If they were that self-aware, they might start to wonder what happens when exhaust the supply of what is a rare and difficult-to-acquire resource. They can't make more of it. And once it's used up and gone, business will eventually take a big hit. But, as un-self-aware as they are, and given the timetables involved (it can take years for the consequences to rear their heads), they'll chalk it up irrationally in their heads as that things beyond their control changed to make the business unviable. Supposing of course, that any of the original management is still there to worry. One might think it would almost be better to be managed by supervillains than by buffoons. So, to answer your question... the problem with Netflix and hot dog eating is that if an employee is doing that, then they aren't performing at the maximum theoretical output. They're not constantly working at that level.
411111111111111 3y ago
You might want to check your Task Manager if you've got a windows device provided by your employer. Even in europe you quiet often have CarbonBlack installed (cb.exe) as an Administrator, which provides the employer with full access to everything you do, including screengraps etc. You just might not be aware that this is true over here as well, even if its technically illegal for the employer to do so. they usually dont care any way.
- nobleach 3y ago
  Carbon Black is one of the most evil pieces of software I've ever seen. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s there was a trojan that did pretty much all the same stuff this thing does. The worst part about it is that I could barely use my machine! Typing `ls` in a terminal made me wait 5 seconds. Using Vim was soooooo bad.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Cult of the Dead Cow's Back Orifice?
    - nobleach 3y ago
      I am pretty sure that was it! I read Hacking Exposed back in the day. That's where I learned about it!
- redblacktree 3y ago
  Here's a PowerShell script courtesy of ChatGPT to detect if Carbon Black is installed on your machine: # Define the registry path where installed programs are listed $registryPath = "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall*" # Get the name of all installed programs from the registry $InstalledPrograms = Get-ItemProperty -Path $registryPath | Select-Object -Property DisplayName # Check if Carbon Black is among the installed programs $CarbonBlackInstalled = $InstalledPrograms -match 'Carbon Black' if ($CarbonBlackInstalled) { Write-Output "Carbon Black is installed." } else { Write-Output "Carbon Black is not installed." }
martinjacobd 3y ago
> maybe because I'm not in the US? Or haven't spend much time at BigCorp? My wife works at a BigCorp and I work at a small but established company. The differences in this arena couldn't be starker. I was given a laptop (and assembled my own desktop) and told to set it up according to my preferences first day. My wife has many metrics that she knows about tracked through her locked down MacBook (and I'm sure many more she doesn't know about). For my case I can't even think of how they'd track me while I work from home; for hers, she already knows that they do.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  If you have 2 employees, it's not worth spending a bunch of time setting up systems to monitor them. And you should just be able to do it by interactions anyway. If you have 200k employees, it makes sense.
  - martinjacobd 3y ago
    There is the economy of scale problem you are talking about. There is just also a difference in culture. Many of the people at my work place are burned out from big tech jobs (or equally burned out from startup culture and want to work somewhere stable and established). I think they'd just leave if we implemented tracking. They are also unusually productive people who like the work they do. (At least it seems unusual from what I've heard about on here and elsewhere. I was self-employed before working here so unsure what is usual for wage earners.) Many of the people at my wife's workplace are hard-working but unenthusiastic and also tend to be older.
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      That sounds like a good place to work!
  - thomastjeffery 3y ago
    There economy of scale makes it less inefficient, not sense.
michaelt 3y ago
> That sounds dystopian to me already (maybe because I'm not in the US? Or haven't spend much time at BigCorp? But is that really the default minimum these days?) It's not the norm for white collar professional jobs, no. On the other hand, some blue collar jobs have a long history of detailed tracking. Clocking in when you arrive, maybe with biometrics, and clocking out when you leave. A call centre worker might find their employer monitors the number of calls they take, the time they spend on each call, records the contents of the call, and surveys the caller for their feedback.
- AuthorizedCust 3y ago
  That makes sense for task-oriented work regardless of collar color.
  - conductr 3y ago
    This. Most bank employees are line workers in a data processing factory.
- NoGravitas 3y ago
  Right — "dystopian" is when white collar workers and professionals start getting treated like blue collar workers, or when people in the imperial core start getting treated like colonized people.
  - lionkor 3y ago
    I think dystopian is when you track workers to a degree that invades their privacy. For example, if you recorded personal conversations people have on break. This is effectively what happens if you record all audio and video, and possibly the screen, of a work from home device. Not sure blue collar workers have been surveiled using hidden microphones and other such devices, say, 20-30 years ago. If you are tracking time by "how much time the employee spends in the building" then yes, you need to check when they come and go. You dont need to do this in jobs where performance is very obvious based on commits and similar metrics, as compared to jobs where possibly your attendance is your job (i.e. you dont produce anything, by "just" protecting something, or surveiling something, etc). There is a reasonable degree of employee surveilance, such that you can make sure someone does their job. Most of the stuff in the article absoutely goes beyond that. I dont think this has ever been about poor vs rich, imperial core vs colony (yikes), or blue collar vs white collar. Its simply that white collar workers may have more ways to see theyre being surveiled (i.e. webcam being on). White collar workers are IMO more likely to be in a position where they know that their livelihood is not at risk by simply speaking out about being surveiled to this degree.
gautamdivgi 3y ago
Just keep work devices separate from personal. I think there may be some regulatory aspect to recording conversations in banks. Either way workplace isn’t personal space. What exactly are folks planning at work that shouldn’t be recorded? Some may say have unions. But only Union activity would be covered under that. I don’t think you’ll ever get a Union that can negotiate for not tracking time and activity while on the clock.
- saos 3y ago
  > Just keep work devices separate from personal. Ngl I’m not doing this at the moment. Thinking of getting a Mac mini asap
  - gautamdivgi 3y ago
    I use a system76 for personal use and an iPhone. My Apple accounts for personal and work are separate. I also use a vpn on all personal devices and use Firefox for browsing.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
>That sounds dystopian to me already That's because it is Think about any dystopian sci-fi. There's always groups that live in the dystopia and groups that don't feel the effects of it. That's the current state of the world. 1% of the population (including basically everyone on this site) live in luxury, while the rest of the 99% of the population toil under increasingly desperate and precarious living standards. There's no avoiding it anymore, it's unambiguous, the world is a hellscape of our own doing that we could have avoided if not for wanton, rampant anti-social greed. Think of this quote and it will be clear: "The future is here it's just unevenly distributed" Where "future" is synonymous with "hope, life, time, joy"
- youreincorrect 3y ago
  Agree with everything in your comment, except, this isn't just greed. It's also hubris coupled with technology-worship / scientism / futurism. I'm a pretty unabashedly greedy person, in my own opinion, and this social trajectory absolutely disgusts and frightens me. I can want money without wanting to pry into people's private lives beyond what they will personally tell me. I can very easily be greedy without wanting to violate those norms. I understand the point that greed helps people erode any moral sense that this is simply wrong, but I think they have to have some level of belief in technology and some sort of futurism ideology to take the next step toward, "This data can be analyzed correctly and will be highly useful for our productivity!" Just my opinion of course. If they ever come up with a way for tech to read your mind, companies like Chase will have zero qualms about employing it. Fun thought: Gaddafi got knife-raped by a mob while Jamie Dimon roams free.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    >If they ever come up with a way for tech to read your mind, companies like Chase will have zero qualms about employing it. Might I introduce you to Neurallink? How about WorldCoin that is based on your Iris (Iris changes are correlated with specific brain activity[1]). [1]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2018.00021/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2018.0002...
  - 3y ago
fredgrott 3y ago
1. Are you familiar with the SEC requirements to trading and other bank regulations? 2. Are you aware of how many past SEC and bank regulation actions against JP Morgan and Chase? Those two factors play heavily in the current tracking solutions and systems.
- NoboruWataya 3y ago
  This is the answer. That level of tracking is not common in industry generally, but it is pretty standard in the heavily regulated banking sector. (The stuff described on Reddit, of course goes way beyond even that.)
conductr 3y ago
“We” let Alexa in our homes long ago and gave up about any expectation of privacy along the way
sgustard 3y ago
> common place for employers to record audio and video at the office Curious for a source on that. My BigCorp has disallowed Zoom recordings, since they don't want legal liability of anything embarrassing leaking out. Or the usual reason of having to produce all those recordings when they get sued.
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> That sounds dystopian to me already (maybe because I'm not in the US? My singular anecdote: I worked for a company I won’t name but you’d be familiar with if you work in tech. We did a lot of expansion and hiring in European offices. The EU managers were far more likely to track and show things like number of lines of code written and they’d want to publicly reward employees who worked nights and weekends. Not all of them, of course, but it was common enough that we had to spend some time training that habit out of some of those teams when they came on. We had a few projects that went bad because the teams were chasing vanity metrics like number of commits, number of lines of code written, or number of Jira tickets closed. It happens in the US, too, but it’s definitely not a US-specific thing. I won’t even begin to talk about some of the draconian work time measurements that happened in our Asian offices. The work culture in some countries is… harsh.
jpmcThrowAway 3y ago
[flagged]

gamesbrainiac 3y ago

This is dystopian. Something like this would be illegal in the EU.

hef19898 3y ago
Any workers council, and union, I onow woupd slap managers backsidesnfrom here to Mars and bavknforbthat. Before, during and after suing said employer to death. With basically a guaranteed win at any labour court. Since everybody knows that, only the most sketchy employers consider something along these lines. Again one ofnthe reasons I am really happy with my job and the country I have it in.
- brightstep 3y ago
  This is a perfect example (finally) of why even white collar workers need unions. Yes, even you in finance. Yes, even you in software engineering. It’s not just about pay!
  - lucozade 3y ago
    There are perfectly good reasons for having unions in finance. This is definitely not one of them. The heavy monitoring of communications, access etc is mandated by regulators primarily for the protection of customers. There's zero chance a union, or any other body below government, will get them to change that. I doubt they'd even try and nor should they.
    - c0m 3y ago
      Monitoring of workplace comms is fine and legal, ditto for access logs; (taking this post at face value) monitoring of facial expressions, undisclosed webcam and microphone monitoring at home, abusing access to workers’ personal phones, and feeding all this in to a black box for a score that your manager basically pinky swears to not use as part of your review is not okay.
      - lucozade 3y ago
        I agree. I wasn't responding to the original post, I was responding to a comment about monitoring. I also don't believe for a second that JPM are doing what the original post is saying they're doing in regard to private devices. It would be astonishingly expensive and illegal in some jurisdictions. And thousands of people would need to know, in detail, for it to be useful so wouldn't just have come out in a subreddit. It would be widely known in the industry (and it isn't).
    - pydry 3y ago
      The point would be to stop them peeking for other reasons.
    - datavirtue 3y ago
      Unions can do whatever they want. The rules are different. Sort of how the FBI meets with leaders of a terrorist militia to negotiate because they are afraid of a shootout (it's called "power"). An individual would just be arrested. Any union of citizens will have power.
lucozade 3y ago
The ECB require it for banks in the EU. As does the PRA in the UK and the FRB in the US.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  What is the actual requirement?
  - lucozade 3y ago
    There are multiple but the main one is that all communication related to the activity of the bank needs to be recorded and be auditable. There are limitations for expediency. For example, only phone calls with customers or peer organisations are usually recorded. Most phone calls aren't as it's very expensive and not massively useful (although AI may change the calculus on usefulness). But all email, IM, BBG chats etc are recorded. And it's as pervasive as it is primarily because of the scandals of the credit crunch. Similar controls existed before then but they were less pervasive and not as strictly enforced.
    - stingraycharles 3y ago
      > There are multiple but the main one is that all communication related to the activity of the bank needs to be recorded and be auditable. That’s very different from constantly recording audio and video of the employee which is what the grandparent described as dystopian. I’d also argue the focus here is on audits / transparency, rather than employee productivity.
    - raverbashing 3y ago
      But that's more on the 'communications' side rather than general monitoring of the worker (if the mouse is moving, etc)
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Don't let facts get in the way of euro exceptionalism.
Mizoguchi 3y ago
As a former employee of some of the largest European corporations I can assure you they usually operate way pass legal boundaries. The absolute worst that can happen to them is to get fined, which is not enough deterrent as usually the fines eat a tiny portion of their profits. No one goes to jail either, a major corruption scandal may send a CEO on early retirement with a full compensation package and/or to work for a competitor. So assuming European companies won't spy on employees just because it is illegal is pretty naive. Always assume you are being monitored by your employer, because more likely than not you are.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Looking at badging data? The FAANGs do this for the EU employees... Why do you think the EU would make it illegal to see who badges into secure buildings?
- namdnay 3y ago
  It’s illegal for an EU employer to use badge data for HR purposes, it can only be accessed by security, and only if there is an incident
  - beambot 3y ago
    How do hourly employees clock in? Isn't that the same as "badging in" for an HR function?
  - namdnay 3y ago
    sorry i should have clarified that this was for employees who aren't on a strict hourly contract.

fakedang 3y ago

Honestly, I think that most of the dystopian developments happened during Covid. When I left whiteshoe finance back in 2019, it wasn't this bad. Sure, swipe cards and stuff were normal, but nowadays, it even baffles me how much people-to-people things like online interview selections and the like have been automated away. Edit:- I was also in a European office so it's possible that we didn't get to experience some of the more dystopian facets.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
I can guarantee your compliance department was monitoring all of your private communications and not telling you about it. This is just what happens in the finance industry, but the data is not used the same way it is in other places. Your manager and his manager (and so on) may not even know that any sort of surveillance happened. This is not the usual type of workplace surveillance, which is management-driven.
- fakedang 3y ago
  Oh yeah, definitely. We had strict regulations about what we could talk about, where we could talk about it and how we were supposed to. There was always the looming threat of FCA regulation. But tracking and other privacy-breaching forms of surveillance and tracking were definitely not bothered with - in fact, a number of firms would have rather not tracked employee work hours because of all the conversation around junior level fatigue at the time. Most of the tight-lipped tracking of email and other communication came from compliance largely because of regulations against insider trading and the like. Edit:- we all had personal phones that we could use out of work, which compliance did not track. But it was strictly enforced to not communicate to any business connection using that. They would just fire us if we were caught and shun liability that way.
- hammock 3y ago
  > I can guarantee your compliance department was monitoring all of your private communications and not telling you about it. This is just what happens in the finance industry It’s a little bit like the government’s argument that they collect data but they don’t read it Lots of companies track you, the flow of data, your use of USB ports, web traffic, etc. But they don’t do anything with it 99% of the time. The one time Google or Goldman Sachs realizes you’ve exfiltrated source code or something though, they have the full paper trail they can pull up at will should they choose to pursue it

cookieperson 3y ago

I've heard of bosses asking about whether they could monitor WFH employees personal conversations in their own homes. I think the answer was "there are loopholes". In the US there are very few protections for workers. The only buffering people can get is by reaching C level positions. But even then... It's only what you can negotiate.

throwaway743 3y ago
Depends on if it's the employee is using company hardware and/or they're connected to the company's network and/or they installed bossware on hardware
grepfru_it 3y ago
>I've heard of bosses asking about whether they could monitor WFH employees personal conversations in their own homes. You probably signed an agreement to allow audio and visual recording. This is usually for the company to CYA to allow video conferencing but also for more nefarious reasons like you said. If you signed an agreement for audio recording (almost every Fortune 500 requires this), then assume your mic is always hot and that you cannot control when it records
- markandrewj 3y ago
  Private contracts can not invalidate federal laws or rights, although many corporations would like you to think that.
  - grepfru_it 3y ago
    Right, you have to agree to audio recording in certain states (google 2-way recording laws). To ensure they have that acceptance, they have you sign a disclosure that audio recording may happen while you are using work resources. Nothing federally that is being invalidated here, just CYA for all 50 states
    - markandrewj 3y ago

throwaway743 3y ago

Doesn't have to be a big Corp. Monitoring of screen activity, keystrokes, email/messaging communications, personal email/accounts via mitm, webcam, etc was done by my last employer. Management used it to play politics. Even learned from IT some managers used it to read the CEOs emails between them and their SO.

logifail 3y ago
> Monitoring of screen activity, keystrokes, email/messaging communications, personal email/accounts via mitm, webcam, etc was done by my last employer Honestly, why would one go anywhere near one's personal email account - or indeed one's personal anything - from any device owned or controlled by someone else, barring a complete emergency?
- blitzar 3y ago
  Most employees, most of the time ... In the old times people used their work email for everything - browse the ashleymadison leak from way back and you will likely find people registered using their @jpmorgan work email. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-bankers-used-their-work-emails-on-ashley-madison-2015-08-19 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-bankers-used-their-w...
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  Some combination of (1) I have no reason to suspect it’s being monitored, and (2) the amount it bothers me if in fact it is is minimal.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hammock 3y ago
> personal email/accounts via mitm This one is the most out there for me. How common is that?
- simiones 3y ago

jordanmorgan10 3y ago

It sounds just crazy to me. Reason 10231 I'm thankful my employer doesn't issue us "Work laptops", and just outright buys us ours which we happen to use for work _and_ personal use.

easton 3y ago
Curious, why wouldn't you rather them buy you (or issue you) a work laptop and you get a personal laptop? Just don't use work hardware for not work things. (Unless you don't make enough to buy a personal laptop I guess, but of the jobs where they issue you hardware I bet they probably pay you enough to buy your own.)
- ghaff 3y ago
  Especially if you do a lot of travel, having to consciously partition what you use your devices for is just inconvenient. Circumstances differ of course. But I've never had an issue intermixing personal and work use.
  - macintux 3y ago
    I’ve seen people sharing their screens when private text messages pop up. Sure, if you’re careful enough with notifications that shouldn’t happen, but I’d much rather take a personal iPad with me on travel and never risk it.
  - lib-dev 3y ago
    Travels a good one. Also, it's nice to be able to use personal devices for work stuff. Say you want to read a doc on your iPad or respond to an email on your phone. I totally understand the security perspective though.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Totally depends on circumstance. Senior government officials should almost certainly maintain clear separation. Highly regulated industries that are logging everything as in the current example. But a dogmatic position that no employee should ever intermix personal and work presences just isn't universally the case.

SanderNL 3y ago

What about the employer’s side of the story though? The one that’s on the other side of the economic engine. You expect to be paid in full and in exactly the right amount at the right time, but if we so much as superficially check you are actually present it is dystopian? I know checking “results” is what should be happening, but guess what? That’s actually pretty difficult and open to all kinds of debate. You being “present” during office hours is not up for debate and easy to check. We all know you are not “making up for it” in the evenings. You are watching netflix and eating hot dogs while sending some superficial emails and notes to give off the impression you are working. It’s not some small marginal group taking advantage every way they can every chance they get, it’s nearly everyone I know. It’s insane. But they expect to be paid in full. I am not completely opposed to introducing some metrics to track your value. I agree time “in seat” is not the best metric, but it’s better than nothing.

frumper 3y ago
These people taking advantage of it at home(nearly everyone) are very likely doing the same thing in office. What the heck is wrong with having Netflix on and eating a hot dog while you work? You didn’t mention they didn’t accomplish what they needed to.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Companies have strong incentives to mix and match two paradigms of employment/compensation, such that they get the best of both, and their employees suffer the worst of both. In one paradigm, people are paid per productivity unit. In the other, people are paid a set amount per time period but are required to perform above some minimum threshold. They tend towards the latter paradigm outside of specialized scenarios... so the hope is that someone performs well above the minimum and perhaps even at some extraordinary level in this second paradigm. But the pay does not increase for the employee if he or she does overperform. However, the minimum performance is rarely spelled out, and can (and does) increase without employees being aware that this has happened. Regardless though, the pressure is to demand that employees work in a way that would only make sense if they were paid-per-unit. That is to say, constantly, and with the minimum amount of rest that they must have without being injured or dying of exhaustion (maybe without even that!). This is bad enough if your work is pulling onions out of the ground by hand (a job that I remember reading is sometimes paid-per-unit). It is far worse for someone salaried, working something semi-creative. I don't know that the drugs exist that might make me able to focus only on work for 8 or 9 hours at a stretch, day-in and day-out. I have my good days when I look up and its 5pm, and I never let go of a problem the entire time. And then there are the mornings where I flounder about, not even sure where to start. Bonuses for those who can do it seem rare to non-existent. So those that can drive themselves that way are often angling for promotion, sometimes for positions that aren't even available. They want the productivity from A, but to pay the wages of B. I don't think this is some conspiracy... they don't even realize they're doing this, when they do it. If they were that self-aware, they might start to wonder what happens when exhaust the supply of what is a rare and difficult-to-acquire resource. They can't make more of it. And once it's used up and gone, business will eventually take a big hit. But, as un-self-aware as they are, and given the timetables involved (it can take years for the consequences to rear their heads), they'll chalk it up irrationally in their heads as that things beyond their control changed to make the business unviable. Supposing of course, that any of the original management is still there to worry. One might think it would almost be better to be managed by supervillains than by buffoons. So, to answer your question... the problem with Netflix and hot dog eating is that if an employee is doing that, then they aren't performing at the maximum theoretical output. They're not constantly working at that level.

411111111111111 3y ago

You might want to check your Task Manager if you've got a windows device provided by your employer. Even in europe you quiet often have CarbonBlack installed (cb.exe) as an Administrator, which provides the employer with full access to everything you do, including screengraps etc. You just might not be aware that this is true over here as well, even if its technically illegal for the employer to do so. they usually dont care any way.

nobleach 3y ago
Carbon Black is one of the most evil pieces of software I've ever seen. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s there was a trojan that did pretty much all the same stuff this thing does. The worst part about it is that I could barely use my machine! Typing `ls` in a terminal made me wait 5 seconds. Using Vim was soooooo bad.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Cult of the Dead Cow's Back Orifice?
  - nobleach 3y ago
    I am pretty sure that was it! I read Hacking Exposed back in the day. That's where I learned about it!
redblacktree 3y ago
Here's a PowerShell script courtesy of ChatGPT to detect if Carbon Black is installed on your machine: # Define the registry path where installed programs are listed $registryPath = "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall*" # Get the name of all installed programs from the registry $InstalledPrograms = Get-ItemProperty -Path $registryPath | Select-Object -Property DisplayName # Check if Carbon Black is among the installed programs $CarbonBlackInstalled = $InstalledPrograms -match 'Carbon Black' if ($CarbonBlackInstalled) { Write-Output "Carbon Black is installed." } else { Write-Output "Carbon Black is not installed." }

martinjacobd 3y ago

> maybe because I'm not in the US? Or haven't spend much time at BigCorp? My wife works at a BigCorp and I work at a small but established company. The differences in this arena couldn't be starker. I was given a laptop (and assembled my own desktop) and told to set it up according to my preferences first day. My wife has many metrics that she knows about tracked through her locked down MacBook (and I'm sure many more she doesn't know about). For my case I can't even think of how they'd track me while I work from home; for hers, she already knows that they do.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
If you have 2 employees, it's not worth spending a bunch of time setting up systems to monitor them. And you should just be able to do it by interactions anyway. If you have 200k employees, it makes sense.
- martinjacobd 3y ago
  There is the economy of scale problem you are talking about. There is just also a difference in culture. Many of the people at my work place are burned out from big tech jobs (or equally burned out from startup culture and want to work somewhere stable and established). I think they'd just leave if we implemented tracking. They are also unusually productive people who like the work they do. (At least it seems unusual from what I've heard about on here and elsewhere. I was self-employed before working here so unsure what is usual for wage earners.) Many of the people at my wife's workplace are hard-working but unenthusiastic and also tend to be older.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    That sounds like a good place to work!
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  There economy of scale makes it less inefficient, not sense.

michaelt 3y ago

> That sounds dystopian to me already (maybe because I'm not in the US? Or haven't spend much time at BigCorp? But is that really the default minimum these days?) It's not the norm for white collar professional jobs, no. On the other hand, some blue collar jobs have a long history of detailed tracking. Clocking in when you arrive, maybe with biometrics, and clocking out when you leave. A call centre worker might find their employer monitors the number of calls they take, the time they spend on each call, records the contents of the call, and surveys the caller for their feedback.

AuthorizedCust 3y ago
That makes sense for task-oriented work regardless of collar color.
- conductr 3y ago
  This. Most bank employees are line workers in a data processing factory.
NoGravitas 3y ago
Right — "dystopian" is when white collar workers and professionals start getting treated like blue collar workers, or when people in the imperial core start getting treated like colonized people.
- lionkor 3y ago
  I think dystopian is when you track workers to a degree that invades their privacy. For example, if you recorded personal conversations people have on break. This is effectively what happens if you record all audio and video, and possibly the screen, of a work from home device. Not sure blue collar workers have been surveiled using hidden microphones and other such devices, say, 20-30 years ago. If you are tracking time by "how much time the employee spends in the building" then yes, you need to check when they come and go. You dont need to do this in jobs where performance is very obvious based on commits and similar metrics, as compared to jobs where possibly your attendance is your job (i.e. you dont produce anything, by "just" protecting something, or surveiling something, etc). There is a reasonable degree of employee surveilance, such that you can make sure someone does their job. Most of the stuff in the article absoutely goes beyond that. I dont think this has ever been about poor vs rich, imperial core vs colony (yikes), or blue collar vs white collar. Its simply that white collar workers may have more ways to see theyre being surveiled (i.e. webcam being on). White collar workers are IMO more likely to be in a position where they know that their livelihood is not at risk by simply speaking out about being surveiled to this degree.

gautamdivgi 3y ago

Just keep work devices separate from personal. I think there may be some regulatory aspect to recording conversations in banks. Either way workplace isn’t personal space. What exactly are folks planning at work that shouldn’t be recorded? Some may say have unions. But only Union activity would be covered under that. I don’t think you’ll ever get a Union that can negotiate for not tracking time and activity while on the clock.

saos 3y ago
> Just keep work devices separate from personal. Ngl I’m not doing this at the moment. Thinking of getting a Mac mini asap
- gautamdivgi 3y ago
  I use a system76 for personal use and an iPhone. My Apple accounts for personal and work are separate. I also use a vpn on all personal devices and use Firefox for browsing.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

>That sounds dystopian to me already That's because it is Think about any dystopian sci-fi. There's always groups that live in the dystopia and groups that don't feel the effects of it. That's the current state of the world. 1% of the population (including basically everyone on this site) live in luxury, while the rest of the 99% of the population toil under increasingly desperate and precarious living standards. There's no avoiding it anymore, it's unambiguous, the world is a hellscape of our own doing that we could have avoided if not for wanton, rampant anti-social greed. Think of this quote and it will be clear: "The future is here it's just unevenly distributed" Where "future" is synonymous with "hope, life, time, joy"

youreincorrect 3y ago
Agree with everything in your comment, except, this isn't just greed. It's also hubris coupled with technology-worship / scientism / futurism. I'm a pretty unabashedly greedy person, in my own opinion, and this social trajectory absolutely disgusts and frightens me. I can want money without wanting to pry into people's private lives beyond what they will personally tell me. I can very easily be greedy without wanting to violate those norms. I understand the point that greed helps people erode any moral sense that this is simply wrong, but I think they have to have some level of belief in technology and some sort of futurism ideology to take the next step toward, "This data can be analyzed correctly and will be highly useful for our productivity!" Just my opinion of course. If they ever come up with a way for tech to read your mind, companies like Chase will have zero qualms about employing it. Fun thought: Gaddafi got knife-raped by a mob while Jamie Dimon roams free.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  >If they ever come up with a way for tech to read your mind, companies like Chase will have zero qualms about employing it. Might I introduce you to Neurallink? How about WorldCoin that is based on your Iris (Iris changes are correlated with specific brain activity[1]). [1]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2018.00021/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2018.0002...
- 3y ago

fredgrott 3y ago

1. Are you familiar with the SEC requirements to trading and other bank regulations? 2. Are you aware of how many past SEC and bank regulation actions against JP Morgan and Chase? Those two factors play heavily in the current tracking solutions and systems.

NoboruWataya 3y ago
This is the answer. That level of tracking is not common in industry generally, but it is pretty standard in the heavily regulated banking sector. (The stuff described on Reddit, of course goes way beyond even that.)

conductr 3y ago

“We” let Alexa in our homes long ago and gave up about any expectation of privacy along the way

sgustard 3y ago

> common place for employers to record audio and video at the office Curious for a source on that. My BigCorp has disallowed Zoom recordings, since they don't want legal liability of anything embarrassing leaking out. Or the usual reason of having to produce all those recordings when they get sued.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

> That sounds dystopian to me already (maybe because I'm not in the US? My singular anecdote: I worked for a company I won’t name but you’d be familiar with if you work in tech. We did a lot of expansion and hiring in European offices. The EU managers were far more likely to track and show things like number of lines of code written and they’d want to publicly reward employees who worked nights and weekends. Not all of them, of course, but it was common enough that we had to spend some time training that habit out of some of those teams when they came on. We had a few projects that went bad because the teams were chasing vanity metrics like number of commits, number of lines of code written, or number of Jira tickets closed. It happens in the US, too, but it’s definitely not a US-specific thing. I won’t even begin to talk about some of the draconian work time measurements that happened in our Asian offices. The work culture in some countries is… harsh.

jpmcThrowAway 3y ago

[flagged]