3 ms·

Every time one of these stories comes out I sigh a little and conclude that it's more showing the failure of modern management practices and the legal environme

Every time one of these stories comes out I sigh a little and conclude that it's more showing the failure of modern management practices and the legal environments these companies are required to operate in than anything about employee responsibility. Companies should be judging their people by results. If someone's performance is acceptable then all of these surveillance metrics don't matter. If someone's performance is not acceptable then all of these surveillance metrics still don't matter. If the company can't tell if an employee's performance is acceptable then maybe that's something they should think about first. Some of the nastier management practices are also CYA policies because of potential liability if the employee does something they shouldn't or suffers some harm personally while working from home and the company is held responsible even if there was little it could or should practically do to avoid the harm. It seems likely that some of our legal frameworks for employment relationships are outdated in the WFH era and could benefit from review. It should be clear what responsibilities an employer has to a WFH employee - for example providing WFH staff with suitable equipment to do their job properly and safely - but I don't think we should burden employers with responsibility for bad things that happen beyond their reasonable control. Maybe some of the perceived need for these aggressive and often covert surveillance measures goes away if some of the arguably unreasonable liabilities for bad things happening are also taken away.

Nextgrid 3y ago
> Companies should be judging their people by results. You're not accounting for the many companies where a sizeable chunk of the workforce are "bullshit jobs" and are just there to create work for other bullshitters and/or be there for political reasons to pad someone's direct reports list and justify their salary. This is an major epidemic in some countries and cultures especially in Europe, and remote working threw a big wrench into this machinery by giving those workers a lot more power and perks that are usually reserved to elites within the company. In this case there is no tangible output to measure, the only "output" is the suffering of the employee and the appearance of them working hard. This kind of spyware thus makes sense to force the employees to "work" hard and not become too complacent/comfortable in order to perpetuate the charade. I don't expect this being used in startups or smaller/more modern enterprises where the org chart isn't (yet?) bloated and productivity is measurable based on output, but to be fair this is also not a vertical that Microsoft is targeting (nor can compete in even if they wanted to). This is targeted at large, bloated companies where they need to keep herds of bullshit jobs under control and make sure they don't get too comfortable - otherwise it would rock the boat if some low-level employee appeared to "have it easy" more than some high-level director/VP/executive, regardless of their actual productive output (if any). The spyware will efficiently detect such occurrences and make sure they are addressed.
clarkmcc 3y ago
This is a naive take imo, especially in a small business where you're signing checks from your personal bank account to your employees. When I'm paying someone for work out of my own pocket, I'm going to make sure that they're reaching peak productivity. I don't know why this expectation wouldn't exist at a larger company as well. Two things can be true at once: my employee can be delivering good results, and my employee can deliver even better results. Just because an employee is delivering results doesn't mean that is their maximum potential. The other thing you're not considering is the fact that management has a responsibility to maximize productivity with the workforce they have. Where you see management failure, I see managements responsibility. Now, none of this means there aren't poor managers (I've had those), nor does it mean that the solution is straight up surveillance. What I am saying is as someone who does manage, and as someone who does pay employees, this issue isn't nearly as cut-and-dry as you're making it out to be.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  I don't understand your objection. I also run a business. I also pay people to do things for that business. The amount of money that eventually reaches my personal bank account does depend on the performance of the business and that in turn does depend on how much we pay people and how good a job they do for us. So I care very much about whether they get those jobs done well. But I couldn't care less how much time they spend with their backside in a chair or how many messages they sent last week or whether they took a 1h30 lunch break yesterday because they went out shopping for a birthday present for their kid. I default to trusting people working for us to be honest and do their job to an acceptable standard. I'm only interested in intervening if that isn't happening. In that case the kind of metrics under discussion here aren't going to help me figure out the real problem and how we can fix it. They aren't even likely to be worth much if as a last resort we do have to lose someone who can't get the job done properly and later we have to defend that decision in some kind of dispute proceeding. This isn't to say we can't give feedback and provide training to help anyone working for us to perform better. But I don't see what relevance these kinds of metrics have to that either. I've always found talking with people openly about how things are going to be far more effective. YMMV.
  - 3y ago

Nextgrid 3y ago

> Companies should be judging their people by results. You're not accounting for the many companies where a sizeable chunk of the workforce are "bullshit jobs" and are just there to create work for other bullshitters and/or be there for political reasons to pad someone's direct reports list and justify their salary. This is an major epidemic in some countries and cultures especially in Europe, and remote working threw a big wrench into this machinery by giving those workers a lot more power and perks that are usually reserved to elites within the company. In this case there is no tangible output to measure, the only "output" is the suffering of the employee and the appearance of them working hard. This kind of spyware thus makes sense to force the employees to "work" hard and not become too complacent/comfortable in order to perpetuate the charade. I don't expect this being used in startups or smaller/more modern enterprises where the org chart isn't (yet?) bloated and productivity is measurable based on output, but to be fair this is also not a vertical that Microsoft is targeting (nor can compete in even if they wanted to). This is targeted at large, bloated companies where they need to keep herds of bullshit jobs under control and make sure they don't get too comfortable - otherwise it would rock the boat if some low-level employee appeared to "have it easy" more than some high-level director/VP/executive, regardless of their actual productive output (if any). The spyware will efficiently detect such occurrences and make sure they are addressed.

clarkmcc 3y ago

This is a naive take imo, especially in a small business where you're signing checks from your personal bank account to your employees. When I'm paying someone for work out of my own pocket, I'm going to make sure that they're reaching peak productivity. I don't know why this expectation wouldn't exist at a larger company as well. Two things can be true at once: my employee can be delivering good results, and my employee can deliver even better results. Just because an employee is delivering results doesn't mean that is their maximum potential. The other thing you're not considering is the fact that management has a responsibility to maximize productivity with the workforce they have. Where you see management failure, I see managements responsibility. Now, none of this means there aren't poor managers (I've had those), nor does it mean that the solution is straight up surveillance. What I am saying is as someone who does manage, and as someone who does pay employees, this issue isn't nearly as cut-and-dry as you're making it out to be.

Silhouette 3y ago
I don't understand your objection. I also run a business. I also pay people to do things for that business. The amount of money that eventually reaches my personal bank account does depend on the performance of the business and that in turn does depend on how much we pay people and how good a job they do for us. So I care very much about whether they get those jobs done well. But I couldn't care less how much time they spend with their backside in a chair or how many messages they sent last week or whether they took a 1h30 lunch break yesterday because they went out shopping for a birthday present for their kid. I default to trusting people working for us to be honest and do their job to an acceptable standard. I'm only interested in intervening if that isn't happening. In that case the kind of metrics under discussion here aren't going to help me figure out the real problem and how we can fix it. They aren't even likely to be worth much if as a last resort we do have to lose someone who can't get the job done properly and later we have to defend that decision in some kind of dispute proceeding. This isn't to say we can't give feedback and provide training to help anyone working for us to perform better. But I don't see what relevance these kinds of metrics have to that either. I've always found talking with people openly about how things are going to be far more effective. YMMV.
- 3y ago