Hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God

April 27, 2022 9:46 AM

Bossware is coming for almost every worker the software you might not realize is watching you. Work from home reproduces the same state of surveillance as the cubicle.

"A survey of 1,250 US employers found 60% with remote employees are using work monitoring software of some type. And almost nine out of 10 of the companies said they had terminated workers after implementing monitoring software."

“It was the lack of human oversight,” he says. “It was ‘your numbers are not matching what we want, despite the fact that you have proven your performance is good’… They looked at the individual analysts almost as if we were robots.”

"It monitors workers through their webcams with real-time facial recognition and object detection technology to ensure that no one else looks at their screen and that no recording device, like a phone, comes into view."

posted by bodywithoutorgans (44 comments total)

Unions for everyone!
posted by Going To Maine at 10:04 AM on April 27, 2022 [43 favorites]

These same companies will spend more money surveilling the productivity of their own employees than they spend hardening and surveilling their network security. Which is ass-backwards for many reasons. It's pretty damn hard to earn loyalty from employees who are given such a perfect example that they aren't trusted.

So now, despite what they perceive as best efforts to control the variables, these companies are diluting resources they could have spent monitoring for external threats while simultaneously increasing the likelihood of insider threats by fostering a hostile environment.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:15 AM on April 27, 2022 [53 favorites]

Taylorism in a new coat. And just like the original Taylorism of the 1890s, it will backfire, because metrics-driven assessment do not reflect the true holistic role of an employee, and also corrodes the workplace into a hostile environment.

Unionize, unionize, unionize. Management is never your friend, never has been, never will be.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 10:21 AM on April 27, 2022 [63 favorites]

If you as a manager have to spy on your workers to confirm that they're working, you should be fired.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:22 AM on April 27, 2022 [96 favorites]

Which is ass-backwards for many reasons.

Not really. Network security is something that doesn't have a direct payoff. If you monitor employees you were certainly find someone doing something that you don't agree with or is deemed in Orwellian corporate speak a risk. Then you can report that your software purchase has found all these hidden risks. Your purchase is justified and you're looking productive for finding these things. What would be really interesting is tying employee behavior to actual quarterly earnings or some sort of metric.

You don't pay a quarterback to practice, you pay them to throw touchdowns.
posted by geoff. at 10:23 AM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

(I do think this particular article is thick enough to make you worried but thin enough & with enough Silicon Valley puffery to make the whole thing a muddle. Hopefully a good ol’ magazine article will show up soon.)
posted by Going To Maine at 10:23 AM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I used to joke that I could work for a stupid company and I could work for an evil company, but I couldn't work for a stupidly evil company. If the company's evil impulses don't even actually benefit the company, that was too much. Time to move on.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2022 [13 favorites]

In defence of managers, many of them don't have the power to push back against stupid corporate bullshit like this, or to implement broad policy changes to allow their workers to perform to goals rather than micro management. On the other hand, some managers are just little trolls who should be sent to service McDonalds shake machines mid rush on a summer holiday weekend.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2022 [15 favorites]

I've worked in the nonprofit sector most of my career. Sometimes I think "I wonder how much more I'd make in the private sector" and then I see things like this and I remember there's no amount more I could make in the private sector that would make it worth it to put up with shit like this.

Obviously, the point is not that everyone should go work for nonprofits, but there is something to be said for employers who care about their reputations when it comes to how they treat workers. We need to make more companies afraid to be known as abusive.
posted by lunasol at 10:27 AM on April 27, 2022 [25 favorites]

A quarterback is paid to throw balls accurately and consistently, which requires practice. A quarterback who merely throws balls does not get paid to do it (Terry Bradshaw aside).
posted by rhizome at 11:11 AM on April 27, 2022

Sometime in the past, I remember reading here about how UPS trucks are all wired up to report back to HQ what each driver is up to as they drive around tossing packages here and there. It sounded horrible. As an example, drivers would clip their seat belts across the back of the seats so that the monitor stuff would report that they had their seatbelt on, when in fact they didn't because it was easier to jump in and out of the truck without having to bother with it. This intense monitoring now seems to be more ubiquitous. From management's point of view, if someone asks you how so and so is doing, it's a lot easier to rattle off some performance metric numbers than it is to actually sit down with the employee to talk to them about their work. How long will it take for employees, actual humans, to realize that in the minds of the management, there is no fundamental difference between a human and a machine that bolts the top left screw of the rear bumper to the frame? Is "cogs" the new metaphor for employees? I think "wrench" would be better, especially if it has been "thrown in to the works."
posted by njohnson23 at 11:12 AM on April 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

I feel like there is a bygone era where the UPS company would have designed special seatbelts that were both safe and easy for drivers to use quickly. I mean, even a current shoulder belt anchored over the right shoulder instead of the left could probably improve compliance. In a way, this is a kind of monitoring that is agreeable: making sure doing the company's business isn't a drag, or worse.

That said, slavery is an ideal state of capitalism. They will push a rhetoric that working constantly is the least a company can expect from its employees, nevermind the decades of research to the contrary.
posted by rhizome at 11:25 AM on April 27, 2022 [18 favorites]

Amazon, of course, leads the way:

Amazon’s AI Cameras Are Punishing Drivers for Mistakes They Didn’t Make

The sense I get from this article is that these "safety measures" have nothing to do with safety, and are used mainly to pinch pennies from drivers by giving them impossible standards and then reducing their performance pay.
posted by meowzilla at 11:28 AM on April 27, 2022 [21 favorites]

It was ‘your numbers are not matching what we want, despite the fact that you have proven your performance is good'

Huh. I guess this is it. I'll mark my calendar. Today is the day when words stopped meaning things.
posted by Mayor West at 11:30 AM on April 27, 2022 [21 favorites]

This is shit. But, when my family member was a security guard in the '80s, they had to punch a watchman's clock every few minutes. The history of Pinktertons posing as workers to figure out who is disgruntled is well documented. I'm not sure things are actually any different. But, it's still good to point them out.
posted by eotvos at 11:43 AM on April 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

Sometime in the past, I remember reading here about how UPS trucks are all wired up to report back to HQ what each driver is up to as they drive around tossing packages here and there. It sounded horrible.

UPS drivers are, of course, in a union.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:30 PM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

UPS drivers are, of course, in a union.

And UPS is doing better retaining workers than non-unionized, private-contractor-dependent Fed Ex.
posted by fogovonslack at 12:39 PM on April 27, 2022 [9 favorites]

With regard to the post title, there are a lot of very interesting interpretations in contemporary Jewish theology about the parts of the Torah concerning building of the Tabernacle. They touch on all sorts of social justice issues, including intersectionality and communal building. Nice choice :)
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 12:48 PM on April 27, 2022 [6 favorites]

hewers of spreadsheets, drawers of quarterly TPS reports, throw down your burden.

Fill your google calendar to bursting, and block your webcam, freedom is nigh.
posted by eustatic at 1:16 PM on April 27, 2022 [17 favorites]

It's BS. There are people who spend 80% of their working hours just walking around thinking, and then do more work (and better quality work, to boot) in the other 20% than most people do in 120% of their hours. With so many people these days being "knowledge workers", it's well past time for management to get it in their stupid heads that thinking is also working.
posted by hrpomrx at 1:36 PM on April 27, 2022 [29 favorites]

> You don't pay a quarterback to practice, you pay them to throw touchdowns.

@geoff I would like to see you tell that to somebody who has a NFL QB gig. I think if you stop showing up at practice you most definitely do not get paid. In fact I think you would soon no longer have a QB gig.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:58 PM on April 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

Hey, if police body cams can conveniently stop working all the fucking time, why not laptop webcams?
posted by xedrik at 2:47 PM on April 27, 2022 [14 favorites]

i would like to see monitoring software for hewers of wood. actually i'd love to see more hewers of wood in general. it's a glorious profession.
posted by danjo at 2:51 PM on April 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

> I do think this particular article is thick enough to make you
> worried but thin enough & with enough Silicon Valley puffery
> to make the whole thing a muddle.

Definitely. So much so that this...

60% with remote employees are using work monitoring software of some type, most commonly to track web browsing and application use

... probably means that someone turned on logging on Norton Antivirus.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:57 PM on April 27, 2022

@xedrik Police are agents of capital. It's the same reason there's never an expectation to put the cameras on management.
posted by kzin602 at 3:00 PM on April 27, 2022 [6 favorites]

I run IT for my firm. I was asked if such a thing was possible when we went remote.

I said no. Not because it wasn't possible but because I refused to invade privacy that much. I monitor for porn and other stuff that could endanger our network, that's it. If people aren't getting their work done that isn't an IT issue it is a people issue. Suck it up and talk to the employee.
posted by charred husk at 3:23 PM on April 27, 2022 [41 favorites]

Right now I'm commenting on metafilter while I have an earbud in listening to a conference call that takes just enough concentration to not do anything else substantial while I'm listening. I hope they're watching and say to themselves Hey! We have way too many conference calls and way too many people on them who don't really need to be! 'Cause that's totally what they would think, not "this guy is doing nothing!" I'm sure of it.
posted by ctmf at 3:46 PM on April 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

Actually though, I have a serialized sticker over the camera that's forbidden to take off. For security. But that doesn't mean there isn't some sort of screen-sharing spyware.
posted by ctmf at 3:47 PM on April 27, 2022

Bossware is effectively a tunnel between your internal network and your employee's unsecured one, controlled by a third-party you already know is into spying. If it's not "industrial-espionage-ware" yet, give it a minute.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 3:50 PM on April 27, 2022 [7 favorites]

work. to. rule.

bring back the classics.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:17 PM on April 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

This will turn out to be an ideal way to convert your highly productive employees into freelancers while retaining the drones.

I wish them all the success they deserve.
posted by jamjam at 4:46 PM on April 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

I don't even use my work laptop at home so... good luck with that. But I'm in content/marketing so my output isn't correlated to 8 hours a day, I either can create or I can't.

This comment actually sums it up very well.

It's BS. There are people who spend 80% of their working hours just walking around thinking, and then do more work (and better quality work, to boot) in the other 20% than most people do in 120% of their hours. With so many people these days being "knowledge workers", it's well past time for management to get it in their stupid heads that thinking is also working.

My boss keeps telling me to take more time off because I need to create and that's important. Which is true.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 5:50 PM on April 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

But, when my family member was a security guard in the '80s, they had to punch a watchman's clock every few minutes.

One of my elder relatives was a night watch man in this era (50s) and being both handy and let say willing to stick it to the man worked over the course of a few weeks to copy all the station keys after which he could make most of his rounds in the guard shack just by occasionally turning one of his knock off keys in his clock.

I'm pretty sure at least some of this monitoring software is being subverted in similar ways today.
posted by Mitheral at 6:44 PM on April 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I would like to see you tell that to somebody who has a NFL QB gig. I think if you stop showing up at practice you most definitely do not get paid. In fact I think you would soon no longer have a QB gig.

Maybe football was a bad example since it is a team sport that requires coordinated practice. For sure golf though. John Daly, whom I'm no fan of, has stories about beating Tiger Woods and downing booze when Tiger was out hitting practice balls or the gym.

The point being that if you emphasize how you get there over actual results you are looking at the wrong thing.
posted by geoff. at 6:58 PM on April 27, 2022

If my company were to implement this kind of tech, they’d be firing everyone in my department. Yes, we aren’t always hunched over the screen slaving away or in meetings or furiously sending emails. We’re sending funny texts to each other, or looking at other stuff online. We’re creatives. The more you tell us to produce, produce, produce, the less we’re going to be able to do so, and you get far inferior work that way. My previous employer, I’m guessing, would be giddy at the prospect of being able to install bossware, not just for home workers but at the office as well. If you don’t trust me to get my work done, then I don’t trust you either.
posted by azpenguin at 6:59 PM on April 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've spent a few years unemployed because of health reasons. It's been weird; it took a couple of years for my brain to wind down to its normal functional level after a high-stress job, but then...

It would have looked, to an outside observer, like I was spending a lot of time sitting, looking out the window, and smoking pot. Which was, in fact, what I was doing. But in addition to that, I'd set myself a problem, a wonderful, absurd problem, and given that I had the time (and the weed), I was working on it. Every so often, like every few weeks, I'd write something down or draw a little diagram. After a while, I knew the first of the skills I'd have to learn, so I started studying and practicing, getting a rudimentary knowledge of electronics, and soldering, and 3D design, and 3D printing, brushing up on my programming skills, that sort of thing. And still, of course, spending a lot of time staring out the window, smoking pot. I built a prototype, and it was interesting, so I built another, and I screwed it up, and months passed before I was ready to do try anything else, and that was okay. And then more screw ups, and more prototypes, and more long leisurely hiatuses, a flurry of work, and then I'd made a whole new type of musical instrument that was ridiculously easy to play.

Absolutely none of that would have happened if the world hadn't left me alone for a good long while. For the first time in my life, despite being miserable, despite being poor and stressed and in varying amounts of pain, I had the time to think long thoughts. I had time to leave things unresolved for weeks while my subconscious processed them, and I had time to mess up, re-think, and re-approach things when I felt ready. Mostly I sat and thunk. Sometimes I spent weeks of twelve hour days working myself sick trying to get these things to work. And it was glorious.

An essential part of the creative process, hell an essential part of any process, is just leaving the person involved alone long enough for them to get their part of the job done. How much time, and just how alone the person can be, both have a direct impact on the quality of the work done. In this culture of constant pressure and lack of privacy and production metrics and managerial makework, we never have time to actually think. And I'm pretty sure that's why so few problems get solved.

But I'm sure it's more important that we perform business theater for the managerial class monitoring us every minute of the day. Whatever would we do without them?
posted by MrVisible at 9:07 PM on April 27, 2022 [21 favorites]

There is an absolute "no supervision" rule with my union. This has been in place for decades. Despite the context and technology changing, this applies to Bossware.

"Work" is a scam, sieze the means of production, wage theft is real etc. etc. things would be much worse without the union.
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 2:02 AM on April 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Have laptop manufacturers started making devices with fisheye webcam lenses for whole-room surveillance, specifically for work-from-home workers in shitty companies, yet?
posted by acb at 2:44 AM on April 28, 2022

This is one of the nicer things about working in IT...I've got absolute control over my laptop (for now), and I decide what gets put on it. They haven't tried to do surveillance on us, and I don't think the union would let them, but if they ever tried, it's reassuring to know that I can "forget" to install the software for a good long while.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:19 AM on April 28, 2022

@j_curiouser

work. to. rule.

bring back the classics.

Alas, this concept is undefined in non-union workplaces (i.e. almost all US workplaces these days) where the "rule" is "obey the boss or else."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:03 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

there is something to be said for employers who care about their reputations when it comes to how they treat workers

I'm glad you've had a good experience, but mine has been that nonprofits are not necessarily any better about employee well-being or surveillance than for-profit concerns. There's a reason a lot of nonprofit employees have been unionizing, usually to the chagrin of their organizations.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:23 PM on April 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

work. to. rule.

Great if you're a unionized employee. Not so great if you're a faceless contractor on the other side of a VPN client. As the rule will be meet the metrics for your whole shift and don't be detectably idle or interfere with the spyware, or bye.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:38 PM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

How do I know if any of this is on my work issued MBP?
posted by The Adventure Begins at 9:55 PM on April 28, 2022

Check the Privacy settings panel to see what has screen recording and other permissions, for starters (camera, mic, accessibility settings). That won't catch everything (like things that work at the same deep level that exam software does) but it's a good place to begin.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:07 PM on April 29, 2022