5 ms·

> People can debate endlessly over the benefits, or not, of working in an office but it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for a company to want its workers to show

by isykt 3y ago

> People can debate endlessly over the benefits, or not, of working in an office but it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for a company to want its workers to show up at an office and reasonable to measure if they actually do. This is a non story. Germany disagrees with you. This kind of employee surveillance is illegal.

oxapentane 3y ago
Guess folk in Germany finds it way more reasonable if this surveillance is carried out by a flesh-and-blood manager? :) I don't really see how it changes anything of substance, except of being formally non-compliant.
- Muromec 3y ago
  Managers care about things being delivered and aren’t into making waves
  - oxapentane 3y ago
    After four years of filling out attendance sheets with hours per every day worked (this is in Germany btw) with monthly reminder from the manager about it I beg to differ. Even though the job (academic research) doesn't have a strong correlation between output and hours spent on site
tannhaeuser 3y ago
Please elaborate. According to a verdict of the Federal Court for Labor from last month [1], not only is tracking an employee's presence legal, it's even mandatory as a necessary consequence of European Court of Justice verdicts. Whereas in Germany before, a trust-based system was common practice at least for white collar jobs, and only the time on top of regular contract time needed tracking AIU. [1]: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/arbeitszeiterfassung-stechuhr-urteil-bundesarbeitsgericht-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/arbeitszeiterfassung-stechu... (in German)
- isykt 3y ago
  This ruling is about recording the number of hours worked, not the presence or absence of workers in a certain place.
karaterobot 3y ago
Counterpoint: the incident we're talking about doesn't take place in Germany, so that's not relevant.
- isykt 3y ago
  Amazon has offices in Germany, and the comment I was responding to called this kind of surveillance “perfectly reasonable” as if this were a globally uncontroversial policy. It’s not.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    a more generous and normal interpretation is that the statement is true most of the time, not true in literally every single case it seems to be mostly true to me, though Germany may be an exception
  - imwillofficial 3y ago
    This tracking will not be done in Germany and several other nations
illumin8 3y ago
Germany is irrelevant to the story at hand, but I find it extremely rich how since Covid many younger workers now feel entitled to a paycheck and full-time employment benefits even if they refuse to show up at work as requested or actually get any productive work done, whether in-person or remote. Workers who have entered the workforce in the last few years, especially technology workers, seem to have a sense of entitlement and privilege previously unheard of. I hate to break it to those of you in this camp, but life is hard. You have to go to work to make money and build a career for yourself. Your manager will probably ask you to come into the office at a location that is inconvenient for you and involves hours of weekly commuting time, and you'll have to decide whether you'll sacrifice your commute time for a paycheck and a chance at building your future career. When we eventually get a recession (it will inevitably happen, sooner or later) these workers are going to have the rudest awakening ever when they discover that yes, you actually do have to work for money, and no, your manager is not required to pay you or keep you employed if you directly disobey an order like "please come into the office 3 days a week."
- aseo 3y ago
  Doesn't each new generation of the workforce have a sense of entitlement and privilege previously unheard of? Workplace expectations change every decade; just b/c this expectation of working remote is new doesn't mean that it's irrational. Many tech organizations genuinely do not reap the benefits of working in-office like some other fields might. If I were an automotive design engineer, being in-person in the company's design studio would make sense; if I'm developing a highly abstracted and distributed messaging system, what office resources would I utilizing? From my experience, in-office interactions are not necessarily more productive than online interactions. In fact, when a team has a good grasp of the remote-working tools, we, more often than not, end up communicating more succinctly and effectively. "Life is hard," sure, but no need to make it any harder than it needs to be.
  - illumin8 3y ago
    Anyone who has done software engineering on a reasonably sized "2 pizza team" would have to acknowledge that it's easier to do software engineering if you're all co-located at the same physical location in the same timezone several days a week. The fact that we _can_ get work done remotely doesn't mean it's the most effective way for software engineers (which make up most engineering teams these days) to work.

by isykt 3y ago

oxapentane 3y ago

Guess folk in Germany finds it way more reasonable if this surveillance is carried out by a flesh-and-blood manager? :) I don't really see how it changes anything of substance, except of being formally non-compliant.

Muromec 3y ago
Managers care about things being delivered and aren’t into making waves
- oxapentane 3y ago
  After four years of filling out attendance sheets with hours per every day worked (this is in Germany btw) with monthly reminder from the manager about it I beg to differ. Even though the job (academic research) doesn't have a strong correlation between output and hours spent on site

tannhaeuser 3y ago

Please elaborate. According to a verdict of the Federal Court for Labor from last month [1], not only is tracking an employee's presence legal, it's even mandatory as a necessary consequence of European Court of Justice verdicts. Whereas in Germany before, a trust-based system was common practice at least for white collar jobs, and only the time on top of regular contract time needed tracking AIU. [1]: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/arbeitszeiterfassung-stechuhr-urteil-bundesarbeitsgericht-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/arbeitszeiterfassung-stechu... (in German)

isykt 3y ago
This ruling is about recording the number of hours worked, not the presence or absence of workers in a certain place.

karaterobot 3y ago

Counterpoint: the incident we're talking about doesn't take place in Germany, so that's not relevant.

isykt 3y ago
Amazon has offices in Germany, and the comment I was responding to called this kind of surveillance “perfectly reasonable” as if this were a globally uncontroversial policy. It’s not.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  a more generous and normal interpretation is that the statement is true most of the time, not true in literally every single case it seems to be mostly true to me, though Germany may be an exception
- imwillofficial 3y ago
  This tracking will not be done in Germany and several other nations

illumin8 3y ago

Germany is irrelevant to the story at hand, but I find it extremely rich how since Covid many younger workers now feel entitled to a paycheck and full-time employment benefits even if they refuse to show up at work as requested or actually get any productive work done, whether in-person or remote. Workers who have entered the workforce in the last few years, especially technology workers, seem to have a sense of entitlement and privilege previously unheard of. I hate to break it to those of you in this camp, but life is hard. You have to go to work to make money and build a career for yourself. Your manager will probably ask you to come into the office at a location that is inconvenient for you and involves hours of weekly commuting time, and you'll have to decide whether you'll sacrifice your commute time for a paycheck and a chance at building your future career. When we eventually get a recession (it will inevitably happen, sooner or later) these workers are going to have the rudest awakening ever when they discover that yes, you actually do have to work for money, and no, your manager is not required to pay you or keep you employed if you directly disobey an order like "please come into the office 3 days a week."

aseo 3y ago
Doesn't each new generation of the workforce have a sense of entitlement and privilege previously unheard of? Workplace expectations change every decade; just b/c this expectation of working remote is new doesn't mean that it's irrational. Many tech organizations genuinely do not reap the benefits of working in-office like some other fields might. If I were an automotive design engineer, being in-person in the company's design studio would make sense; if I'm developing a highly abstracted and distributed messaging system, what office resources would I utilizing? From my experience, in-office interactions are not necessarily more productive than online interactions. In fact, when a team has a good grasp of the remote-working tools, we, more often than not, end up communicating more succinctly and effectively. "Life is hard," sure, but no need to make it any harder than it needs to be.
- illumin8 3y ago
  Anyone who has done software engineering on a reasonably sized "2 pizza team" would have to acknowledge that it's easier to do software engineering if you're all co-located at the same physical location in the same timezone several days a week. The fact that we _can_ get work done remotely doesn't mean it's the most effective way for software engineers (which make up most engineering teams these days) to work.