Working in an open-plan office where people expect that it looks like you are working is "very accepting of surveillance"?

Welcome to Germany.

On a more serious note: No, i am not. Only in my work life.

I'm from Germany too and as far as I can tell this isn't the truth for every company here. When I find clients/employers behave like that, I warn them and then I quit. This is what everyone should do. If you accept such horrendous conditions it's your fault people begin to think this is "normal".

You're quite privileged.

Maybe, I don't know.

But, I lived in these conditions the past. One day I said to myself, I don't want this anymore, and quit.

What is preventing you to change your life for the better? :)

As i said in my post, i don't mind having upwork's program send 6 screenshots an hour from my work machine while i'm working, because it keeps me from being hassled by nontechnical clients who're otherwise fine people to work with.

So i guess the only thing keeping me from making things even better than they already are is finding technical clients with Perl work that pay on the level of ~100$/h.

Hm okay, if it works for you. It's just sad that it perpetuates the idea that this kind of stuff is okay.

I had problems with non-technical clients as well. What helped me was calling them 2-5 times a week, depending on how insecure they feel.

That would be utterly horrible to me and i couldn't stand it at all.

I see, okay :)

It was horrible to me, too :D

I just noticed that people were more douchy on chat/email than on phone, so I started to call them when they started to rage online, haha.