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TikTok Rankles Employees with Return-to-Office Tracking Tools

41 points by WoollyMammoth 3y ago

guilhas 3y ago
Every company has been trying to explore a office/home tracking system My company added a book "work from home" to the holiday/absence booking system, even though it can be several days a week, you need to book/justify everytime The full time remote worker has so many spyware it gives anxiety, watch desktop, view camera, websites accessed, files written... They say they respect developers privacy, and wont be paying attention, and I believe just because they are too busy at the moment to follow-up on anything. But as soon as things start to tighten up, it has all the ingredients to turn bad
WoollyMammoth 3y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/tiktok-return-to-office-tracking-tools.html?unlocked_article_code=P7MEdro-4APca-F0Z8MedMjPIMJlQXOc3uEBCvblbQRgdcfl_JYwtUUEFLy-GkTD3BU_0mEOl4CQgrygHxqoKyneFMMGO9ALlG8iHh9v1CyyLKBbhRAJehcaPTuBT3aMKVOEdlhkW4TKeYqvFakC7Wa7Bng3IfGpmpMghn1Abbe_EWbXTD9a7Ul6Z2UE-Fg7hR5msgFHHs-e1IQtNoAPXlpzJKg-RkbPwt_tKpk8xkxWU-zsU8YwlMOxu3QbQZRWqvNvDuhwbIlLzcdoD5b6BGzh_2aPOUMnsySsNc9OJGVKMnAlrxZROctMIhLxrIhhULg2n3LSOGhSjKjZTaaFdSZ7roJ5Z8NOUZGMWfl2-MvK https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/tiktok-return-to...
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> "the MyRTO dashboard" nice. dealing with these office theatrics after so many years feels utterly demoralising and demeaning. need to find a way out...
- deprecative 3y ago
  Easy, retire. That's the only way out. For most of us it'll never happen.
LiquidSky 3y ago
“So how is productivity? Are the employees getting their work done well and on time?” “Please, we’re not wasting time on unimportant things like that. We’re focused on the most important metric for any company: how many microseconds a particular butt is in a particular seat.”
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > “So how is productivity? Are the employees getting their work done well and on time?” I can guarantee that this will not be measured because it will make RTO bosses look bad.
rspy 3y ago
as if only TikTok is doing this...Stripe has their own attendance tracking tool as well, go/attendance.
codeTired 3y ago
I work for non-tech company. I report to VP. He doesn’t care if I work 30 or 40 hours. Sometimes I work more, and sometimes I work less to clear my mind. What he cares about is deliverables. I want to try a new challenge but I have a hard time finding a corporation that does this. There is always annoying cringey slogans about “collaboration”. I have built large gaming communities. Hosted servers and worked with other people all over the planet. But some execs just want ass in the seats.
- deprecative 3y ago
  My employers have always cared that I am working for 40 hours. Work less and my pay gets docked. Work more and I make less per hour.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Metrics like "engagement" and "butts in seats" are preferred by many leaders over deliverables and profit because they are fuzzy and easy to manipulate. Hours spent by employees may seem concrete, but we all know an hour spent working doesn't have a definite or consistent output. Hopefully that attitude becomes more embarrassing for employers to have, because I'm certainly embarrassed for the ones who care about how many hours of "work" they've extracted from you or whether you work remote.
  - motbus3 3y ago
    I worked in a company which decided to make employees to come back to the office during the pandemic. The metrics of performance and delivery were somewhat public and people pointed out that performance had increased due to a lack of distractions and interruptions. The high leadership said the numbers meant nothing and people should return immediately. I will come back to this point. Many many people did not comply with basic health requirements like using alcohol frequently nor using face masks. One specific case was a "tech lead" who was infected with COVID but only used an open face shield without a mask. He went to the office even being sick and he got at least 5 cases that could be directly attributed to him. One of my team mates complained because to me and as lead for that team I tried to mitigate the problem. To make the story short, the face shield guy was praised by higher ranks and I was reprehended to stay with my team mate. I left the company about one year ago but my team mate stayed. Recently the company used the same numbers to layoff 25% of people due to poor performance. I am glad to say that one person had a video of the executive saying that the numbers meant nothing and used that to win a legal dispute with the company. All dismissed employees have received 1 year of salary and had all benefits extended for that period. Not the best solution I assume but better than nothing
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
Surely this is just a direct statement that managers have no clue what their reports are up to. Any vaguely competent manager with even a passing contact with people they're managing will know all of this and more already.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > Surely this is just a direct statement that managers have no clue what their reports are up to. Any vaguely competent manager with even a passing contact with people they're managing will know all of this and more already. By this point in 2023 in the world of social media, everyone knows that management in tech industry is a joke. Leeches who thrive off the labor of the real brains. This is why there is so much backlash against RTO, and so much quiet quitting and so much job hopping. Until corporate structures continue to treat people like fungible headcount, people will treat corporations like fungible source of money.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    typo (Until corporate structures STOP treating people like fungible headcount) corporations in the SF Bay Area often use contractors for hard work with deadlines.. twenty five years ago, employee salary at corporations generally started sliding downward.. thirty years of continuously rising executive pay however. Tech jockeys under thirty years old are a special case
  - greesil 3y ago
    I actually think it's not about the low level managers. I think those folks are more permissive than what senior leadership would like, hence these stupid tracking tools. If your report gets stuff done then you don't care that they are in the office. Senior leadership just sees a bunch of engineers who cost money and they want to maximize ROI. And, they see the bottom rung of managers enabling these slothful engineers to remain lazy, which is why these internal tracking tools are created.
    - nine_zeros 3y ago
bertman 3y ago
https://archive.ph/FxRvC https://archive.ph/FxRvC
garethsprice 3y ago
Something whispered about by the MBA set right now is how the recent hard RTO push at these companies is a form of "stealth layoffs". Don't have to pay severance if someone quits voluntarily. I doubt TikTok has too many old-school types who just love being in office given they had barely a few hundred employees in the US prior to 2019, and didn't exist as a company until 2016, so it's a good control for the "outdated middle managers just want butts in seats/so they can exert power" theory (which as a prior middle manager myself I just didn't see in any of the hundreds of other tech EMs I interacted with). TikTok did however scale from <500 US employees in Jan 2020 to >8,400(!) today. They set an aggressive hiring target of 10,000 employees by 2023 when the economy was going strong. Lots of biz dev and recruiting people amongst them who aren't required in a (predicted) recessionary cycle. So by forcing RTO and making it unpleasant, the rational conclusion (imo) is that they're hoping to thin the ranks. Here's an article from CNBC about it: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs-in-disguise-according-to-workplace-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs...
- alkibiades 3y ago
  they can hire those outdated middle managers from elsewhere

41 points by WoollyMammoth 3y ago

Every company has been trying to explore a office/home tracking system My company added a book "work from home" to the holiday/absence booking system, even though it can be several days a week, you need to book/justify everytime The full time remote worker has so many spyware it gives anxiety, watch desktop, view camera, websites accessed, files written... They say they respect developers privacy, and wont be paying attention, and I believe just because they are too busy at the moment to follow-up on anything. But as soon as things start to tighten up, it has all the ingredients to turn bad

WoollyMammoth 3y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/tiktok-return-to-office-tracking-tools.html?unlocked_article_code=P7MEdro-4APca-F0Z8MedMjPIMJlQXOc3uEBCvblbQRgdcfl_JYwtUUEFLy-GkTD3BU_0mEOl4CQgrygHxqoKyneFMMGO9ALlG8iHh9v1CyyLKBbhRAJehcaPTuBT3aMKVOEdlhkW4TKeYqvFakC7Wa7Bng3IfGpmpMghn1Abbe_EWbXTD9a7Ul6Z2UE-Fg7hR5msgFHHs-e1IQtNoAPXlpzJKg-RkbPwt_tKpk8xkxWU-zsU8YwlMOxu3QbQZRWqvNvDuhwbIlLzcdoD5b6BGzh_2aPOUMnsySsNc9OJGVKMnAlrxZROctMIhLxrIhhULg2n3LSOGhSjKjZTaaFdSZ7roJ5Z8NOUZGMWfl2-MvK https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/tiktok-return-to...

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

> "the MyRTO dashboard" nice. dealing with these office theatrics after so many years feels utterly demoralising and demeaning. need to find a way out...

deprecative 3y ago
Easy, retire. That's the only way out. For most of us it'll never happen.

LiquidSky 3y ago

“So how is productivity? Are the employees getting their work done well and on time?” “Please, we’re not wasting time on unimportant things like that. We’re focused on the most important metric for any company: how many microseconds a particular butt is in a particular seat.”

nine_zeros 3y ago
> “So how is productivity? Are the employees getting their work done well and on time?” I can guarantee that this will not be measured because it will make RTO bosses look bad.

rspy 3y ago

as if only TikTok is doing this...Stripe has their own attendance tracking tool as well, go/attendance.

codeTired 3y ago

I work for non-tech company. I report to VP. He doesn’t care if I work 30 or 40 hours. Sometimes I work more, and sometimes I work less to clear my mind. What he cares about is deliverables. I want to try a new challenge but I have a hard time finding a corporation that does this. There is always annoying cringey slogans about “collaboration”. I have built large gaming communities. Hosted servers and worked with other people all over the planet. But some execs just want ass in the seats.

deprecative 3y ago
My employers have always cared that I am working for 40 hours. Work less and my pay gets docked. Work more and I make less per hour.
ravenstine 3y ago
Metrics like "engagement" and "butts in seats" are preferred by many leaders over deliverables and profit because they are fuzzy and easy to manipulate. Hours spent by employees may seem concrete, but we all know an hour spent working doesn't have a definite or consistent output. Hopefully that attitude becomes more embarrassing for employers to have, because I'm certainly embarrassed for the ones who care about how many hours of "work" they've extracted from you or whether you work remote.
- motbus3 3y ago
  I worked in a company which decided to make employees to come back to the office during the pandemic. The metrics of performance and delivery were somewhat public and people pointed out that performance had increased due to a lack of distractions and interruptions. The high leadership said the numbers meant nothing and people should return immediately. I will come back to this point. Many many people did not comply with basic health requirements like using alcohol frequently nor using face masks. One specific case was a "tech lead" who was infected with COVID but only used an open face shield without a mask. He went to the office even being sick and he got at least 5 cases that could be directly attributed to him. One of my team mates complained because to me and as lead for that team I tried to mitigate the problem. To make the story short, the face shield guy was praised by higher ranks and I was reprehended to stay with my team mate. I left the company about one year ago but my team mate stayed. Recently the company used the same numbers to layoff 25% of people due to poor performance. I am glad to say that one person had a video of the executive saying that the numbers meant nothing and used that to win a legal dispute with the company. All dismissed employees have received 1 year of salary and had all benefits extended for that period. Not the best solution I assume but better than nothing

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

Surely this is just a direct statement that managers have no clue what their reports are up to. Any vaguely competent manager with even a passing contact with people they're managing will know all of this and more already.

nine_zeros 3y ago
> Surely this is just a direct statement that managers have no clue what their reports are up to. Any vaguely competent manager with even a passing contact with people they're managing will know all of this and more already. By this point in 2023 in the world of social media, everyone knows that management in tech industry is a joke. Leeches who thrive off the labor of the real brains. This is why there is so much backlash against RTO, and so much quiet quitting and so much job hopping. Until corporate structures continue to treat people like fungible headcount, people will treat corporations like fungible source of money.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  typo (Until corporate structures STOP treating people like fungible headcount) corporations in the SF Bay Area often use contractors for hard work with deadlines.. twenty five years ago, employee salary at corporations generally started sliding downward.. thirty years of continuously rising executive pay however. Tech jockeys under thirty years old are a special case
- greesil 3y ago
  I actually think it's not about the low level managers. I think those folks are more permissive than what senior leadership would like, hence these stupid tracking tools. If your report gets stuff done then you don't care that they are in the office. Senior leadership just sees a bunch of engineers who cost money and they want to maximize ROI. And, they see the bottom rung of managers enabling these slothful engineers to remain lazy, which is why these internal tracking tools are created.
  - nine_zeros 3y ago

bertman 3y ago

https://archive.ph/FxRvC https://archive.ph/FxRvC

garethsprice 3y ago

Something whispered about by the MBA set right now is how the recent hard RTO push at these companies is a form of "stealth layoffs". Don't have to pay severance if someone quits voluntarily. I doubt TikTok has too many old-school types who just love being in office given they had barely a few hundred employees in the US prior to 2019, and didn't exist as a company until 2016, so it's a good control for the "outdated middle managers just want butts in seats/so they can exert power" theory (which as a prior middle manager myself I just didn't see in any of the hundreds of other tech EMs I interacted with). TikTok did however scale from <500 US employees in Jan 2020 to >8,400(!) today. They set an aggressive hiring target of 10,000 employees by 2023 when the economy was going strong. Lots of biz dev and recruiting people amongst them who aren't required in a (predicted) recessionary cycle. So by forcing RTO and making it unpleasant, the rational conclusion (imo) is that they're hoping to thin the ranks. Here's an article from CNBC about it: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs-in-disguise-according-to-workplace-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/why-rto-mandates-are-layoffs...

alkibiades 3y ago
they can hire those outdated middle managers from elsewhere