The rise of workplace surveillance [audio] (opens in new tab)

Why not?

No it isn't my problem. The company I work for knows that I have a business. Because they were originally my customer. I was honest and completely transparent with them, so there was no issue. Completely different if I had kept the business and not told them about it.

It's about integrity, something many people lack here in America today. And I very much doubt they are producing enough. They are likely working 10 hours a week per job. Being both an employee and a business owner that has employees, integrity is critical to any type business relationship. It may not seem like it, but trust me, it is paramount.

Simple, because most likely your employment agreement says that you should be devoting your full time and attention to your job for 40 hours a week or whatever. If you're pulling 80 hour weeks across two companies, there's theoretically nothing wrong with that[1], and I suspect those are not the type of people the parent poster is against. The same applies to businesses. If you had a contract with a vendor promising that you'll be their sole client, and it turns out they're actually working for other companies, that would be unacceptable as well.

[1] unless your employment agreement also specifices some sort of exclusivity.

So work as a part-time contractor in that case. The issue isn't working for more than one company--many do--but being dishonest about it.

Those are really not comparable things.

In the episode, you here about people who like the monitoring as it "levels the playing field" and reduces the perceived performance (eg: slackers that get promoted), leaving only the concrete performance as monitored by such tools

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with that position personally, just exposing it

It’s a long episode, but it is in fact mentioned in a lengthy segment near the end that some workers interviewed liked the accountability and focus the monitoring provided.

Perhaps not the wisest opinion, but so it goes.

Yeah I suspect it isn't exactly a 50/50 split between "both sides" of this issue - not that the article necessarily argued that, of course.

I've noticed that the same sort of people who support workplace surveillance are also the ones who insist they love open offices and pair programming. I think they appreciate having another person to "fall back" on when they get stuck somewhere. If their boss is constantly monitoring them, and they're unable to solve a particular problem, the boss might wander over and say, "hey Bob, you've been on this spreadsheet for a while, let me show you this formula that might help". Or at least, that's the only explanation I can think of that makes sense.

I'm the opposite - I learn best by studying and tinkering (what with having 6 years of higher education steering me that way and all...). Nothing kills that off faster than having somebody looking over your shoulder saying, "why are you looking at the HTTP specification, somebody else already knows how that works".

I listened to the podcast episode yesterday. Apparently some (I think they only cited one person as a source) people use it as a form of motivation and focus. They also said some women view it as a type of equalizer. But the ultimate takeaway was that the systems and the data are inherently not very accurate in their measurements.

if it's transparent and includes everyone including whoever is in charge it creates objective data to judge performance by. Just like pay transparency if it's universal it's a good way to make compensation more meritocratic. Catching slackers isn't a bad thing, Only doing it in one direction is.