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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 car

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
  - pydry 3y ago
    This reminds me of the government protesting that they only used dragnet surveillance to find terrorists. And then Snowden was like "actually Ive seen them snooping on your nude pictures".
    - blitzar 3y ago
      iPhones had to go to IT to be upgraded to the new iOS ... everytime they would "test" that the install worked by browsing through your photos (always check the deleted folder too ...) and messages

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
- pydry 3y ago
  This reminds me of the government protesting that they only used dragnet surveillance to find terrorists. And then Snowden was like "actually Ive seen them snooping on your nude pictures".
  - blitzar 3y ago
    iPhones had to go to IT to be upgraded to the new iOS ... everytime they would "test" that the install worked by browsing through your photos (always check the deleted folder too ...) and messages