One of the reasons I'm a supporter of universal basic income is so that the employees can have a better negotiating position. I suspect many bullshit rules will go out the window when the alternative to employment isn't destitution.
For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer.
I've seen no overtime pay happen, lies from management to get unemployment claims denied, management not actually firing people but just giving them zero or reduced hours to mess with the unemployment claim process, the VISA fuckery you mentioned, harrassment. Intentional scheduling of conflicting days for people with multiple jobs. Being made to work 7 days a week for long periods of time. Being made to repeatedly close late at night / early in the morning and then open the restaurant the next morning, a few hours later, and work a double. Being made to work while sick (this happens a lot).
A gold comment I heard from one manager was "I don't pay overtime because these motherfuckers already take enough of my money" (referring to the employees). This same guy was shaving time slips to keep them below 40 hours.
That was pretty much all it took.
And I understand, he'd been running that business for over 20 years and started it from nothing. He was fairly successful while I was working there, but he'd been at the bottom before and would keep working back up from there again if it came down to it.
He's probably one of the best bosses i've had, he was fair and would invest in employees and the business, but the business always came first.
Just last month: https://web.archive.org/web/20200410153705/http://www.lafari...
(They've since re-opened)
Which means that with UBI, I might be less inclined to take risks. I'm not an economist enough to tell what that means, but a rough estimate say it won't increase my income. And at this point of the discussion, we haven't even touched the topic of taxes...
It sets a minimum bar.
Realistically you need both -- a UBI and a union. The UBI sets the minimum bar that all jobs must reach, the Union sets the livable bar for one particular workplace (or maybe a group of similar workplaces).
UBI and Unions serve different purposes. A UBI prevents modern slavery, a Union provides for a decent quality of life.
Henry Ford had to double the pay to lower employee turnover.
To be honest, though, the average worker doesn't have that kind of leverage, they don't have pockets deep enough to wade through the interview cycle, and many of the other employers they'd go work for are doing exactly the same thing. For them, the alternative to employment at a company deploying these kinds of tactics is very much destitution - especially right now.
I'm with you on one thing: if my employer demanded minute-by-minute accountability for my time, I'd leave, no questions asked and minimum notice given. I have that choice, though; when discussing things like UBI, I always try to remind myself that someone for whom that support would be life-changing is in a very different situation from mine, with a much more constrained set of responses / actions available to them.
Suffice to say that his confusion was reflected in how engineers were treated.
At the time, there were few other choices for technology work in Kansas City.
What happened? Free trade.
Cheap goods from other countries gutted the local industries. Hard to compete on price when labour costs are so different. The only jobs remaining become min wage or importing.
People not working as hard as a generation ago doesn't factor in.
They sold out American workers to increase their profit margins.
"free trade" allows for the free movement of capital, but not the free movement of labor which is stuck relatively immobile (except maybe from "cheaper" countries to the more "expensive" ones)
Really, no reason to protect the guilty here. It was AdKnowledge.
It's definitely a popular line of thought. Though having worked in multiple areas of the US, I don't think it is. You won't need to look hard in SF, NYC, or London to find corporate leadership that doesn't really consider engineers to be humans like them.
Is it possible people are looking for patterns in noise?
Personally, I find the purported cultural commentary of others on offer here to be an uncomfortable echo of the cultural snobbery one hears daily offered by Californians to the "flyover states".
(Cerner is in the KC area.)
It's not always an adversarial thing.
This is best done by regular check-ins, not by monitoring everything an employee does every single minute.
I'm not saying it's never abusive. Just that it isn't necessarily abusive.
So ask them what tool they are using and why. Or set up a video chat where they can show you what they are doing and you can make suggestions about better tools.
> he may be using an ineffective sales pitch
So listen in on the sales call and then give feedback afterwards.
Still don't see why any of this requires minute by minute monitoring.
> I'm not saying it's never abusive. Just that it isn't necessarily abusive.
If there are obvious alternatives that are (a) much less intrusive, and (b) much more respectful of the employee's professionalism, then it sure seems to me like minute by minute monitoring is abusive.
I agree.
But the surveillance tools have been around for A LONG TIME, and people haven't really complained much about it.
The thing is whenever people ask questions about how the surveillance is performed and how to respond to it, the answer (in the USA) has traditionally been something like "It's your employer's equipment, they can do whatever they want with their equipment-- don't do anything on it unless you want the man to know."
Now, "the equipment" is at home. I don't think that makes much difference, but yeah, there's some interesting edge cases like turning on camera/microphone in employee home without employee consent.
It makes me wonder about countermeasures.
Is there a way to know if you're being screenshotted or some enterprise shit-ware is logging stuff? Yes, it's always true that it "could happen". I would like to know if it IS happening. Is that even possible?
They were told to put this on their "personal" computers. Not work computers. This is way over the line.
But how do you tell if that or something like it is on your work machine? Look for "hubstaff.dll"? ... half kidding, but seriously how do you tell if there's corporate fuckery on your work machine (eg screenshotting, logging time on URLs, keylogging, etc etc)?
This "surveillance-ware", I am suggesting, can be thought of as a kind-of malware and be detectable in some way, either on the disk or as a running process.
I am surprised that no one has created something to check if such surveillance software is running or perhaps even actively screenshotting.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3047375/simulating-key-p...
to instead of simulating a single keypress, have it open a text editor and simulate typing in the source code of the app you're working on. That way any keylogger running will pick up a lot of code. If manager is dumb enough to use a keylogger he probably won't recognize that it's the same code each day.
I don't know how much of what these pieces of software are capable of on Mac (because of all the privacy stuff in Catalina that requires the user to agree) and Linux (because I doubt there's a huge market for these tools on Linux), so if you don't have Windows on your machine you are probably even more okay. But in any case, assume they can.
Sure, the man "could" do it, but it's a separate and more interesting thing to know if it is happening.
Sounds like a "Tit for tat".
Why?
If I cut your finger off and stabbed you in your kidney, would it change your personal situation if you did the same?
If your immediate boss calls you every 30 minutes you are away from work, you want to do the same?
That's madness!
There is no "poor management".
What are these uneducated decision makers even doing at your place of work?
There's always a boss.
The boss is paying for the behavior they want to see.
Now if you argue the ultimate boss is clueless, then, what are you even doing there?
You might want to tell yourself that your immediate boss who calls you every 30 minutes you are away from work is just ineffective, but if he was not delivering on what his boss wanted from him, he would be gone.
"Tit for tat" is a great children's activity.
Adults are not children.
If your boss behaves like a child it's time to have a conversation.
Depending on your specific situation that conversation might very well be with a new company.
How much sleep are you getting??
Anyway, using the DOL's standard of 2,087 work hours in a work year, we can do the following calculation: 2,087 / (365.24 * 24) = 23.8% of your total time spent at work.
Let's use a generous figure of 8 hours of sleep per night: 2,087 / (365.24 * 16) = 35.7% of your waking hours spent at work. The rest is your time, to spend however you choose to spend it, whether that's commuting, cooking, chores, errands, hobbies, whatever.
And we haven't even factored in vacation and sick days -- the 2,087 work hours figure only includes federal holidays.
I'll contribute a counter argument, if only because I don't see it mentioned much.
I'm the counter argument. Since I'm at home now, with kids, if I'm not directly on the phone with a coworker or boss, I'm likely not working. Recently our boss mandated that webcams must be on hereon-forward... before today, I would sometimes just have airpods on for the meeting but otherwise be doing stuff (cooking, clean dishes, other chores). Honestly this part I don't really enjoy -- because rarely there is stuff said in the meetings for which I need 100% of my brain head-on.
But that's just me with all of my mental disorders and problems, who needs a helicopter boss to be productive. You may be different.
If you're getting paid for results, then it shouldn't matter what you are doing every minute, as long as you are producing the results you are expected to produce.
If you are a heart surgeon or Lebron James you can understand why you are making so much money — you have exceptional skill at something in high demand. The average manager is more like someone who found a bank error in their favor and prays every morning that it isn’t discovered.
No need to reach for an analogy here, you could just say “if you are an engineer.”
In my experience what you’re saying is rarely true at the top tech companies, the managers there generally either come from a tech background themselves or they show an unexpectedly strong understanding of technical aspects of the product anyway, and typically have strong organizational and people skills that clearly stand on their own as rare and valuable.
What you’re saying is almost always the case at small- to mid-size tech companies (which is most of them), and I think it’s because they’re perpetually unable to attract and retain top tech talent... so anybody that can code is de facto placed and kept in a role where they’re coding, and ideally only coding.
A side effect of that is the pool of candidates for promotions and managerial positions is reduced to “only people who can’t code.”
It creates this bizarre situation where the company is looking to its least talented people and least impressive outside candidates to fill the management positions, and actively trying not to promote or give any credit to its most impressive and productive people (because then they might realize their value and demand something the company can’t give them).
These are also the companies most likely to be running against deadlines and having people work evenings and weekends, because again, they can’t attract or retain enough talent to comfortably hit those deadlines. They’re always able to create those deadlines though, because as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to sell software than it is to make software.
Then at 5pm on Friday when all the engineers are looking forward to another 4 hours of coding, all the managers get to throw up their hands and go “I’m useless anyway, I guess I get to go home now!”
And they might as well.
(If you’re an engineer and this sounds familiar to you, go apply to 50 tech companies right now because you’re way more valuable than you realize)
Average managers didn't and so they just derp around hoping everything'll turn out alright.
Everything else is the same.
I think you're adding a bit too much personal animosity towards management.
The vast majority of management does not have goals/behaviors they are measured in.
I'm still fascinated that it's largely considered impossible to have a VP count how many 1:1's a manager had or how many times they gave positive vs. negative feedback. Imagine if no one kept any statistics for any sports player, and just say "it's too hard, you have to manually count".
Most managers should be fired, they largely are flailing around underneath directors who should also be fired, underneath VPs who have so little control over their org they largely are future predictors with no inputs (aka random output).
I say this from a place of love - I think they're all working very hard. But I've only ever met 1 manager in my life that counted their small interactions with their reports to try and improve.
They may have plenty of room for improvement, but their actions aren't motivated by "I don't know what I'm doing here", rather "I don't trust my employees enough to let them run free". That's a very different motivation and confusing the two will only lead to not understanding actions and reactions.
There is no "poor management".
What are these uneducated decision makers even doing at your place of work?
There's always a boss.
The boss is paying for the behavior they want to see.
Now if you argue the ultimate boss is clueless, then, what are you even doing there?
You might want to tell yourself that your immediate boss who calls you every 30 minutes you are away from work is just ineffective, but if he was not delivering on what his boss wanted from him, he would be gone.
> in highly secured environments or when dealing with highly sensitive documents
Its about control.
No matter how highly secured an environment is, human ingenuity can and will still work around it. There's literally several professions dedicated to it.
NO matter how highly sensitive a document is, if someone decides to share it, they will.
Crocodiles, fire pits, stripdowns, armed guards, MRIs or any camera is no obstacle to a determined individual.
> If you don’t understand your employees workload and don’t trust them then either you resign or fire the employees.
Nah - it's just about control.
Look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA_fJh4lzqQ
Did "Jim" not know that he was on facebook for 8 hours yesterday?
Will bringing that to his attention suddenly make him "more productive"?
Why would it have that effect?
You could try and fake empathy for the hand that feeds you (you have reason to!) but even if this kind of management had absolute clarity into employees workload, they still would do surveillance.
Why?
... because their messaging is "we control you during the hours you work for us".
It's unlikely anyone's watching the surveillance data and footage. Honestly, people don't have time and it's a very high noise-to-signal ratio activity. Even at retail where loss prevention is at least one dedicated department, it's impossible to follow up on surveillance data and footage.
Do you honestly believe anyone would look a those verbose reports generated in the video at any detail?
No.
For all purposes, its not the how but the why.
Control.
All this talk about productivity, workload and trust are "feel good" concepts that give the illusion that there just some "miscommunication" happening.
If only that "miscommunication" went away, everything would be perfect with the world again.
It provides a distraction from the reality that the people one's working for are sycophants and extremely manipulative.
The truth is - action has no miscommunication - it either works or it does not.
The toilet needed to be scrubbed?
Its either done or not done. Couldn't be done because someone was having a seizure there that required a team to come in and block the cleaning from happening? Check.
If the cleaner had to badge in and out and had a camera mounted at the restroom entrance to check if they went in or out - does not have any relation to the job getting done.
IF the individual cleaner was so determined to clean the restroom during the seizure, they would manage to do it.
Russia, China and the companies that hire the likes of InterGuard Employee Monitoring for surveillance is doing it for control.
Putin wants dirt on you so when you become a problem for him, he can use it against you.
Surveillance is all about control.
Yup!
With over a million views of my content, I have noticed that this style is preferred by an overwhelming majority of readers.
I am sure there are who disagree. I am explicitly open to open dialog with all my channels listed on my profile.
My focus is to reach people and listen to what they have to say.
My objective is to test the clarity of my thoughts and the best way to go about it, I feel, is to discuss it with someone who holds a contrarian view.
That said, I've been having a hard time doing that here on HN as once downvotes (which work like a silencing mechanism here) happen, I literally cant respond back until a few hours have passed since the last downvote.
Except in cases where:
- That boss's boss is related to the CEO and is coasting / not at the wheel
- That boss's boss is already looking for ways to let go of them
- That boss's boss needs that boss in place for a while longer, due to other factors, but is still annoyed by the micromanagement
- That boss's boss is intimidated by their underling and feels something bad might happen if they take action against the unwanted behavior
I've seen all of the above and consulted management on a few of those as well. There are a million little ways in which the "system" (dynamic between a group of people at work) has achieved a form of control which is out of the grasp of the individual and in contravention of the ultimate boss's way of doing business.
Specific interventions can completely change the dynamic, but the tendency is to blame the problem on individuals rather than emergent effects, which IMO makes individuals feel even more helpless. Usually something can be done.
Let me explain.
> - That boss's boss is related to the CEO and is coasting / not at the wheel
i.e. the boss is paying for the behavior they want to see.
> - That boss's boss is already looking for ways to let go of him
then it's a solved problem - unless the boss's boss continues to look for ways to let go for months on end, in which case really, again, the boss is paying for the behavior they want to see
> - That boss's boss needs him in place for a while longer, due to other factors, but is still annoyed by the micromanagement
i.e. the boss is paying for the behavior they want to see
"annoyed"?
It seems like the value is "needs him in place for a while longer" and all the "annoyance" does is affect that somewhat.
Can we measure the effect of the "annoyance" on the decision? Let's see:
If I have a racist employee and their racism "annoys" me, I still am supporting racism with my dollars.
Otherwise, real action is: ask them to move on.
If I have a noisy neighbor and their noise "annoys" me, I still am supporting their behavior with my dollars.
The real action would be: I move/ I ask them to move, or take them to court while getting an stay order to ensure the noise is constrained while the matter is settled.
At a previous apartment, there was a stay at home mom above mine who would begin her aggressive yoga and home gymnastics at 5AM and end at 9AM. Constant pounding. I spoke with her first and she felt the gym in the complex was too crowded for her. I recorded her activities from below in my room, sent it to the office, yelp, facebook for the complex, broke my lease and moved.
Life is too short for nonsense.
> - That boss's boss is intimidated by his underling and feels something bad might happen if he takes action against the unwanted behavior
i.e. the boss is paying for the behavior they want to see
I feel there's some sympathy for the boss, almost as if they were misguided children.
Adults are not children.
If your boss behaves like a child it's time to have a conversation.
Depending on your specific situation that conversation might very well be with a new company.
If you see a purported optimization problem and a solution that doesn't fit it, there are two possible explanations. Either whatever does the optimization is bad at optimizing, or the objective function isn't what you think it is.
For almost every feasible solution, you can contrive an objective function so that that solution is the optimum. So perhaps the managers are deliberately engineering the business to take some money out of their bottom line to send a message. But in the spirit of Hanlon's razor, it's more likely that the managers are simply bad at their job.
> In some sense, it doesn't even matter. If the manager is sacrificing profit for a fuzzy feeling of domination, then he's doing a bad job at increasing profit. And if the business is in competition with another that doesn't succumb to that kind of error, then the market will make it very clear
We have to be consistent in our views.
In the first sentence, the Hanlon's razor applies but not in the second one?
What if the market is inefficient and the manager sacrificing profit for a fuzzy feeling of domination actually comes ahead?
Does the Hanlon's razor support that theory?
In that case, how does this conversation proceed?
I am (trying to) applying a consistent view - that there's always an objective function in a game and society is a game.
Right now, you and I are playing a game - I'm trying to clarify my thoughts and so are you.
My objective function is to test the clarity of my thoughts and the best way to go about it, I feel, is to discuss it with someone who holds a contrarian view.
That said, I've been having a hard time doing that here on HN as once downvotes (which work like a silencing mechanism here) happen, I literally cant respond back until a few hours have passed since the last downvote.
Don't hesitate to reach out over email. I am enjoying this exchange.
Reality is what remains after all beliefs have been stripped away.
I did not respond to your comment as the grandparent made no sense - neither management, nor boss nor god in the sky works for you.
Only you work for you and they work for them.
Naivety is believing it works any other way.
Your software reports on their browser history when an employee is not on the clock, Congratulations, that's another felony.
Your terminate someone because the software is saying they aren't at their computers the whole day, that's a class action lawsuit and possibly another felony.
And all of it is EASY AS HELL TO PROOVE BECAUSE YOU MADE THE LOG FILES AND INSTRUCTED YOUR IT STAFF TO DO IT YOU DIPSHIT.
Think that your employment contract which stipulates you get to watch everything and anything they signed to keep or get their job will save you? Think binding arbitration will save you? Not only will it not save you, but it will make your sentance longer.
We have entered a brave new worlds of uncharted territory.
One of the key driving factors of bad behaivour of company staff is the consequences of a fertility rate so bad a newborn male child has a 1 in 2 shot at procreating. Many people in "trap" jobs have chosen to live well and die young; if that means fucking your company over for the maximum dollars than so be it, they will do it, and you are going to be forced into putting up with it. The disconnect of plantation management is unbelievable; they think it's honorable capitalism to cannibalize society and lament they have no choice but to do so. They have a choice, they just prefer not having responsability. And that's when they are not intentionally sabotaging you. Piss off your employee and they might let an APT group in on their personal computer who will then attack your infrastructure.
And if I were IT Staff, I'd asking the question and Nop'ing that and quoting the law.
But let's stop pretending it's an 8 hour workday then, shall we? The US habit of doing lots of random shit during work is absolutely nuts - because you can't do anything well if you're constantly switching tasks.
Oddly, it's perfectly possible to have an environment where both are true - management trusts you to get work done, and you actually get focused work done. It "just" requires maturity on both sides. A willingness to honor an agreement on both sides, as opposed to constantly looking out for #1 only.
I don’t see how this makes any employee productive. This adds more stress imo. An employee gives you 8 of their 12 hour day. Now, you tell me if that works only for you - the management. They’re people just like you. They have a life just like you. They have responsibilities similar to you. They might have a family similar to you. There’s no fucking way they can manage all this, giving you a focused 8 hour. They might need a few mins to pay a bill, lookup a medication, place a personal Online order. And many other activities that come with “living”, being alive.
I am certain most managers that implement this are antisocial fucks. It’s poor management. Uneducated decision making.
Now, it does has its place. For example in highly secured environments or when dealing with highly sensitive documents. But for a small or regular office, no!
HR/Payroll companies such as ADP and Insperity need to start setting ground rules. I know that they’re in favor of the employer, however, it would make good on them.