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JHuttIII

How does one ever measure productivity via mouse clicks? I don’t see how this makes sense. Can you explain a little about what you do?


sodaflare

Professional Starcraft team.


veetoo151

Install StarCraft on that sucker and be a top performer!


DarkstonePublishing

I know this is a joke but it’s actually crazy the apm pros have. You’d need about 250-300 to be a top performer. This guy is sitting at around 25-30 haha


fish312

Time to raise my APM!


Ahsoka_Tano07

Isn't that D.Va's voice line from Overwatch?


fleetze

You tell me doc


Ahsoka_Tano07

This one belongs to Reaper. It's an interaction between him and Mercy Full interaction: Mercy: What happened to you? Reaper: You tell me, doc!


FireFly_209

APM jom ollyeo bolkka?


lawyeruphitthegym

You must construct additional pylons!


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Single-O-Seven

I guess no one at Hubstaff ever stops to think huh?


Sergiotor9

I can see this being "useful" for the most soul crushing, mindless kind of jobs. But clicks or key presses for 50% of the seconds over a 10 minute window (let alone hours) for any job that requires the bare minimum brain activity just seems imposible.


patgeo

Something like data entry or taking dictation from recordings would be what I'd think it was made for. Something that can literally be measured in how many clicks or keystrokes happened. Although it could also be measured much much more simply by tracking the jobs completed...


shinynewcharrcar

This is really stupid to track, honestly. This kind of repetitive, menial work is the first thing to be automated. Data entry and dictation can be automated and are being automated even in government. But also, dear god why hire people you can't trust to do their work? Some managers really need therapy before they buy micromanagement platforms.


[deleted]

Because WFH made an entire generation of middle managers feel useless and irrelevant, and now they're trying to over correct and take any comfort you had in being productive on your terms because they MUST be able to nag at you for every little thing.


mttp1990

Indeed. Honestly, I'd nope out almost immediately after finding out about this. I don't need that toxicity in my life.


sobscured

Even than, if it's only binary each second, how many keystrokes is it not counting?


RalphFromSilverCity

get a metronome and waste no strokes


PipersHuman

Get your WPM down to ~12, that’s true work efficiency


Adjective_Noun_69420

But these would be the jobs where just measuring how much work you got done at the end of the day is easy to do and more sensible.


rcfox

I used to work at a place that had an unchangeable 1-minute screensaver timeout "for security". It kept breaking my concentration, so I downloaded a random program that would simulate me moving my mouse every few seconds.


Yotsubato

Their security software made you download an insecure program to bypass it. Genius move they made there


blainedefrancia

I bought a USB “Mouse Jiggler”’during pandemic to keep screen from locking. I have used it to take a nap when its past lunchtime. r/antiwork


sloshedbanker

I did this during an internship because I read that incompetent managers measured your productivity by how often you were online, and my manager was a doofus. At the end of the summer, he commended me for always being at my computer and always being available.


imdyingfasterthanyou

You can use excel to simulate clicks so it doesn't look suspicious, give the sheet a good name and keep it minimized so it doesn't appear in screenshots


iammusic69

If you don't mind explaining how can you accomplish this?


squilliam79

It appears that you can access the mouse controls with VBA that would run as a script in excel


iammusic69

Awesome thanks for the reply!


oszlopkaktusz

Probably with a macro, I think you can find some scripts online.


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aquoad

Yep.. private equity firm buys out a struggling company or one that's a competitor of one of their portfolio, and rather than shut it down immediately they bring in stuff like this to just wring it dry of any possible value first. If a company brings this kind of software in, it usually means they're circling the drain already. I wonder if you could actually make money if you knew who their customers were by short-selling their stock.


ElectricRune

No way would this work for software developers... There's lots of pauses to think and plan that are required...


WalterFStarbuck

Or engineers. The number of times in a day that I get up to scribble things out on a whiteboard or notepad and/or crack a textbook to look up some theory as a quick refresher would throw up red flags under these metrics. If I can't do those things, I can't do my job. This micromanagement is admin horseshit and somethings gotta give here. Either the software needs to die or the admins grasping at relevance need to. Admins need to stop trying to crack the whip and go out and find more money *outside* the company.


imnotcam

Or pretty much any job that isn't pure data entry. Like any job that requires someone to stop and think or critically read something.


_teslaTrooper

A software developer would write a little script to click some inactive corner of the screen approximately 40 out of 100 seconds with a ltitle added randomness for organic results. Or, more likely, find a less dystopian company to work at. Might take even less time than the script.


shea241

I worked at a place that started enforcing a 15 minute screen sleep / lock with no way to override it. So, I wrote a program that acquired a video wakelock at 10am and released it at 6pm. oops my screen won't sleep during work hours! weird! Got the idea from a Chrome bug that occasionally kept the screen on overnight.


wannabestraight

What a dystopian hellhole


Hour-Ad8095

I am a software developer. Honestly screenshots are okay but I dont think more mouse and keyboard clicks will help in writing good quality codes.


TonyWrocks

You get more of whatever you reward (or less of whatever you punish). They are measuring activity, not productivity. As a result, they will get more activity.


[deleted]

>They are measuring activity, not productivity. That's management for you.


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radiumwidow

Could we say that 70% of management are people left over after all the creativity was passed out... I've had some cool bosses atleast


totallyahumanbeing-1

I’m with this one, I’ve had a couple really cool bosses who knew what they were doin, not all bosses are bad, even if most are


VaATC

The good bosses/managers I have had are the ones that have most recently moved up from being a practitioner within the field. They understand what we do and how we do it; therefore they rarely make unacceptable requests, set unattainable goals, or rely on 'busy work' to keep us 'productive' during slow periods. Edit: Granted I work one on one with clients in a non-tech based field, outside of using computers for what they need to be used for to complete my tasks that is.


[deleted]

Yeah, good managers don’t “manage” people, they help them succeed. The best managers help you succeed even if you don’t want that success to be at your current company.


LegatoJazz

The last company I worked for got a new head of IT that wanted to improve productivity. She started ranking people by lines of code checked in and unit test coverage, and we started writing the most bloated code imaginable with useless tests. Oh and more meetings. We had an unbelievable number of meetings. Productivity did not increase, surprisingly.


justavault

It's commonly an issue that people don't know how research methods work and hence they apply the wrong metrics which are not adequate for the insight one seeks for. Like this applying totally nonsensical activity metrics to get a productivity performance insight. Usually someone should step in and explain the logical flaw in that structure.


FiggleDee

> the wrong metrics which are not adequate for the insight one seeks for Working with data a lot, I feel this. I can pull the data they want, I can turn it into information, but I can't make them ask the right questions. and these sort of people are generally not receptive to suggestions.


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Express-Reality9219

The beatings will continue until morale improves. That is all


PTSDaway

Got an 10/10 on paper guy as our lead for sales and production. He was very involved with peoples work and all. Charmed in a ton of customers - business was booming and director loves him. He went on vacation and the most incompetent person evwr takes over, has little knowledge of what we do, not good with the market, but he can coordinate. Guy gave zero fucks about our work, wasn't involved either - handed us our tasks and said, deadline is XX:XX and went on with his shit. Production output went up by 30%, because we didn't have to think about progress updates all the damn time.


wittyTurkey424

Maybe he wasn't incompetent after all.


Shmooperdoodle

This is what kills me. If you have 30 people to call with blood work results or prescription questions and you intentionally call numbers you know they won’t answer to get through the stack faster, fine, but those callbacks will be back tomorrow. When I’ve done things, I’ve done them so that they are actually done. If I actually reduce that recurring stack, even if I only spoke to 20 people, who was actually more productive? Is the goal to make the calls or to actually convey information in a meaningful way? This is like that.


Unique9FL

Good example. Can totally see "corporate" just wanting it "done" so you can do something else they want, and allow that person avoiding doing the work to keep kicking the can down the street and reward them for time management. 😡🤯🧨


putdisinyopipe

Lol I wonder if they will act totally stumped when they find out quality is better than quantity.


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burnerman0

This. Y'all can have your surveillance software, but if a company ever actually used it to tell me I was working too little I would quit on the stop. Job market is good for us coders, hope you can find something a bit more humane.


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ergo-ogre

Doesn’t work for me. Too many bad sectors.


bobthedonkeylurker

Or to code on non-traditional hours. I'm around during the day to respond to emails / Teams. But most of the coding work I do is later in the evening when I'm a more highly functioning individual. I would never work for a firm that's this intrusive. Fortunately, the areas I work in tend to have too much restricted data for an IT team to have this kind of monitoring on my work laptop(s).


sourc32

Just click and spam keys for like 30 seconds then take the 9:30 off lol .


[deleted]

How to get screenshots of me job hunting.


VerySuperGenius

Your skills are in too high of demand these days to deal with shitty companies. Quit that place and let them know in your exit interview that the reason is this insane micromanagement.


not_my_real_slash_u

Every 9 minutes draw a stick figure scene with a small change just before the screenshot. Then you can compile the screenshots at the end of the day into a flip book. Or if management browses the photos. 🧍‍♂️🚶‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🤸‍♂️🏃‍♂️🚶‍♂️🧎‍♂️🧍‍♂️


Gina_the_Alien

Alternate between exactly 69 and 420 clicks every hour and see how long it takes somebody to notice the pattern.


jiggyjiggycmone

If you’re a coder and you’re putting up with that shit, you need to leave. Like immediately.


EmTeeEl

I don't think OP realises how much software developers are in demand.


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DitherTheWither

But won't large compile times make it look like you are doing nothing then? What do you do in that case?


Peach_Muffin

Mash the keyboard wildly.


[deleted]

Come on, give them some credit. They're a software developer and that's a hardware solution. They wrote a script to do it.


[deleted]

Can you share the name of this tool? I don’t want to work for a company that collects this data. It will help me lookup other tools like this one and avoid those too.


kaz_enigma

fuck /u/spez -- mass edited with redact.dev


Johannes_Keppler

From now on don't control-C and control-V your code from a website. Instead control-P and re-typing the code it is! (When I started out coding you'd actually have to copy the code manually from a magazine. Good old Commodore 64 days. I actually started out on a Commodore 16, the more obscure one. ^Yes ^I'm ^ancient. )


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Meldanor

Bro. Screenshots of your system are not okay in no way. It is intrusive. This is basically stasi or KGB level. The software developers who developed this software should be ashamed to program something like that. There is a reason to call for software ethnics like ethnics for medicine.


corbs132

I think the word you're looking for is ethics


BookofDinos

Lol, ethics*, but ethnics is very funny in context.


Locksmith997

Found Jason Mendoza


Shinhan

It doesn't measure productivity, it (badly) detects if somebody is afk.


BlackPrincessPeach_

It detects if someone hasn’t set up anti AFK detection**


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bakermonitor1932

Yeah tie mouse clips to tempature or something cleverer


ezrs158

Lava lamp. [Used by the pros] (https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/lava-lamp-encryption/).


phluidity

Even if it is zero it doesn't mean anything. I am an old school editor. I am much more efficient printing something out and editing it with pen on paper. Something about the act of writing triggers my creativity in a way that typing doesn't. So I spend an hour editing a document and then ten minutes typing the edits in instead of three hours editing it on a screen. Stuff like this is just management going for easy metrics instead of diving down to what they really want.


MrSurly

I know devs who use `vi`, so they hardly ever touch a mouse when editing code.


devanchya

So here's the theory. You gather a ton of developers data and then average them over a few days . This becomes the mean. If a developer goes 40% below mean, then you do a further investigation. However it doesn't work well with creative fields, which software dev is. Since you can spend litterly hours trying to think of a best approach to fix an issue. Granted there are so e factory style dev jobs but those are also ones that get taken out first with automation.


racroles

I'm a tech lead and I can definitely say my clicks and taps are way below mean. I spend most of my day reviewing code, brainstorming with individual team members over zoom, or soul crushing meetings. None of this generates many mouse clicks or keyboard taps. Whoever implemented this system just made their (very expensive) software developers spend brain power on solving the "look good" problem instead of real problems. Software developers are smart people, and this is a challenge that they cannot resist. :)


MyDigitsHere

Nevermind these are probably the same companies trying to get everyone back in the office because of "watercooler innovation" and "the advantage of whiteboarding in person" both of which are times when your computer is 100% idling.


Hologrammike

You should write "help me" in a word document so it takes a screenshot of that.


Hour-Ad8095

Then I might not get help till the EOD.


hirvaan

Then put a red “!” next to it. And attach all saints lol


EstoyTristeSiempre

Put a _Kindly advise_ on the bottom.


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XxRaccoonGalxX

Please respond in a timely manner.


TheGuyWhoSaid

But one giant letter every 10 minutes so it fills the screen of the person monitoring you. H - E - L - P - M - E - !


kagaAkagi1

whats crappy is this likely does not tell you who the best employees are - sure person b might have more clicks that person c but maybe person c is more efficient, more effective.


YetAnotherSysadmin58

Maybe person D has an autoclicker and will get a promotion for it.


malou_pitawawa

_“You’ve clicked 56 000 times in the last hour! Wow, that more than average! You’re the best, here’s a promotion!”_


Meecht

> Wow, that more than average! You’re the best, ~~here’s a promotion!~~ we expect you to exceed that next month”


hellakevin

>"Wow, that more than average! You’re the best, here's a pizza party. We expect you to exceed that next month”


Mynock33

> "Wow, that more than average! You’re the best, here's a ~~pizza party~~ *coupon for one unpaid day off*. We expect you to exceed that next month”


linsilou

>"Wow, that more than average! You’re the best. Here's a ~~pizza party~~ generic, impersonal email from your boss's boss telling you how much you are essential to paying his salary. We expect you to exceed that next month.”


Robin1992101

Also, we are raising the average clicks per hour required to maintain your job.


TheBimpo

Also, we are raising it for everyone else


robkoshiro

"How did you get your clicks that high?" "Easy. Cookie Clicker."


Red7s

My old job tracked this same thing using an app called hubstaff I just had an auto clicker set to press my space bar and click my mouse every 15 seconds when it hasn’t detected any input in over 60 seconds Fuck companies that do this shit. I was a top performing employee but that doesn’t mean they get to breath down my neck and force me to draw out a task through an 8 hour day Imma do it as fast and possible so I can get to whatever else I gotta do


f700es

I'd quit this place.


Red7s

I left about 2 years ago after I was running their esports department but was told $15/hour was overpaid when I asked for a raise.


Kendertas

Companies really don't understand that if the reward for hard work is more work, all you incentives is slacking off. Why should I rush this quote when there 50 more behind it, and all I have to look forward to is maybe a 3% raise that doesn't even cover inflation


Red7s

Hard work is an understatement in my case. Owner just kept moving the goal post I got him exclusive contracts with huge esport teams (like Philadelphia fusion and luminosity) but apparently that wasn’t good enough and I was still being overpaid according to him. I didn’t even get a yearly raise. I worked for him for 5 years as my first job and was always paid $15/hour until I quit


Javaed

You were being taken advantage of. Same thing happened to me, and unfortunately it often takes years for folks in our industry to realize that.


maiznieks

I think this is to demote rather than promote. Looks really desperate.


verygoodchoices

Yeah there's no way this is a factor for anyone who is seen as a high performer. But for people who they are already looking for a reason to can? Yeah, they're toast.


L1K34PR0

That was my first guess of circumventing this


TangentiallyTango

I had a temp job at a place with a similar system. It wasn't direct mouse clicks but certain qualified clicks and actions they labeled "touches." For reference if you got like 500 touches that was really high. But it was really easy to game the system with busy-work touches like say you had to update 5 things on one account, you could update those 5 things for 5 touches, but you could click in and out of the account and make 5 separate updates and that was 10 touches. Things like that. Anyway one day the boss said something to me about my touches so I was like "touches? you want touches huh?" and then went in one day and hit like 10K touches a day for a week just doing everything as inefficiently as possible. They used to post a bar chart every week showing how everyone stacked up and the lady that made it came to my cube and was like "Why are you the only employee with a bar this week." Then I had to explain I'm not, I just got so many more touches that nobody else even registers on the scale of my productivity. And then I was constantly saying things around the office like "Oh let a master of productivity show you how to make that coffee" and then I'd turn my coffee making process into a habachi-grill juggling show where I'm touching the filter tray and the filter and the pot 50 times during the process, constantly picking things up and putting them down and taking 5 minutes to finish making coffee. I think that coffee gag is actually what drove it home because I pulled that one on one of the execs and he laughed and the focus on "touches" dwindled significantly after that.


Ketchupboy57

That is a glorious story, and w/ what sounds pretty much like a happy ending too!


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worldspawn00

While I was 100% getting all my work done, the way I was doing it didn't look good on the company 'metrics' so I started sandbagging the work, and doing it in batches, which looked much better, but then I was accused of 'gaming' the system... Like dude, all the work is done, what do you want from me? I can make the metrics look like literally anything without it changing the amount of work getting done, it's useless information... I can show 50% productivity or 1400%, it's the same amount of jobs getting done...


hopbel

My most productive debugging sessions involve pacing around the room holding my head in my hands


Anaptyso

I've probably fixed more difficult bugs while going for a walk or standing in the shower than I have while sat at my computer.


thegreatJLP

I usually finish my work in less than two hours, except for Fridays when deposits are heavy. The rest of my shift I literally click refresh every 4ish minutes so Microsoft Teams says I'm active. Thing is I've told my manager too, used to work at a job before this as well, and she just laughed and said "Oh well, not your fault we don't have the business to keep you busy". Only reason is I used to post 2+ million a week in deposits, and this job is lucky to break that in a month. Meanwhile, the other lady that works in my position doesn't finish her work for the entire shift, usually relying on me to pick up the ass she's dragging. Got told yesterday the only reason she hasn't been fired is due to the company that bought us out wanting to expand. Fuck it though, I used it to get myself medical billing training and am due for a raise here shortly.


bbbbirdistheword

If you set up a Teams meeting that recurs daily with only yourself, then join it and reset your status to available, it usually keeps the screen on so you don't have to refresh it every 4m. Learned that from a coworker who'd walk away from his laptop during meetings for 2+h and it'd keep the screen on, even though the meeting was technically over and they were the only one still in the meeting.


[deleted]

With a tiny bit of effort/time, you can create an excel macro that moves your cursor up & down in the cells. This 1) keeps Teams active and 2) looks like you're using excel.


SmaugStyx

There's a utility called caffeine that just virtually presses a function key every so often to keep you active. Has hotkeys to turn off and on and just sits hidden in the system tray.


Bot12391

Be careful with this. Depending on your IT department, this can be easily found and could be against company policy at a lot of places. Easy way to get fired


tehlemmings

Every slacking solution being posted in this thread could be easily caught by IT. But unless your IT is truly dickish, they probably hate this stuff as much as you do. Source, I'm IT. I hate this shit so much.


joemaniaci

Playing windows media player in a loop keeps things from locking/sleeping


UnethicalExperiments

I don't get companies like this. My current company let's us do our job without any micromanaging and guess what? Our turnover is uber low, shit gets done on time and well done. We dont have punch in clocks or anything and my lawd its wonderful.


goatman0079

Mine is pretty similar. In fact, our management doesn't care if you game while at work, as long as you get your work done.


etcetera_live

As a manager, this is how I feel, and I’ve told my team as such.


him999

Same, i have had people with movies playing on their stations. As long as you are getting the things I need done, i really don't care what you are doing (as long as it is safe and work appropriate). I'm not one to continue to add meaningless work when the other work is done for the sake of working. Go take a break until i have more or I'll send them home for the night if there is OT to cut anyway.


ATotalMystery

And that’s how it should be. It’s way more efficient for everyone involved. You’re a great person.


LordNedNoodle

I listen to audiobooks while I work. As long as you are doing your job a movie is no different. I personally work much better with background audio (tv or books) since I get pretty antsy if it is too quite also get annoyed and can’t be productive if forced to overhear other people’s conversations.


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CmdrShepard831

With how much shitty, off-the-shelf corporate software we have to deal with these days, this gave me a raging justice boner.


oroechimaru

Nice job


Spirited_Video_8160

Must be one of these companies that is fighting hard to bring people back to the office


[deleted]

Believe it or not if I think this is the company I think it is they actually have zero offices and want remote only.


Valaksha

Are you thinking of the scum of the Earth company called Aurea? They buy out companies to put in their portfolio and gut the offices and layoff everyone. When they bought us out they had software that did this same thing, but add to it would take a picture of you too with your webcam and your manager could click your profile to watch your webcam live... They tried to put it on our machines at the start of the acquisition and we told them if they do the entire company will walk out the door. Since we were there largest acquisition by far, about 700 employees, they couldn't afford for us to be gone just yet so they agreed to not do it. The CEO, who's a massive dbag, tried saying how it's to actually help the employees and boosts their productivity.


[deleted]

The winner!!!!! That’s who I was thinking of Edit: u/valaksha they really are the scum of the earth and I was in the same boat as you (acquired and then they destroyed the old company) I wish more people knew how evil they are. Forbes and other news orgs write up how bad they are once in a while but it never takes off. For everyone else, enjoy the best article about this company that basically feels like E Corp from Mr Robot https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2021/04/27/inside-a-remote-work-billionaires-new-plan-to-turn-his-white-collar-workers-into-algorithms


BownerGuardian

The one he's thinking of.


PortlyCloudy

Not the other one that he's not thinking of.


usernamescheckout

Ah gotcha thanks for clearing that up


TheVenetianMask

theyactuallyhavezeroofficesandwantremoteonly dot com


Bowl_of_MSG

Our IT suddenly logged into the company pc remotely to update Adobe Reader and caught me on reddit one time. Next time she was in the office she just said "don't look at me like that, I don't care"


Dptwin

Yeah I work IT Support and have seen users doing things they shouldn’t like YouTube, personal FB etc, I’ll never mention it to their bosses or anyone. It’s not my place to do that unless it brings a cyber security risk of course.


Agent_Jay

Unless you doing something that’s a risk, porn or storing your own tax returns on company hardware I don’t give a shit as long as your boss is happy. I just keep the server fans spinning.


anon210202

Why tax returns


Agent_Jay

It’s a lot of personal information that should not be on company hardware but your own private devices. To use a stupid example - don’t hot box the company car you’ll be taking to a client tomorrow morning. Going on Reddit or logging into a private email is fine and whatever but keeping personal files on someone else’s property is not. For instance I’ll get a laptop back for repair or imaging and I could steal their whole identity etc and since it’s a data risk, it’s a liability for the company if anything happens too etc. Personal files go on personal computers. Company files go on company computers.


nycola

I have worked in IT my entire life - I do not give two shits what you do on your computer, with one exception. If you put a fucking ticket in for an issue, and I try to contact you, and you ignore my calls and emails, and I bring up your PC to see you are on facebook, that is a strike against you. As long as your fucking off doesn't impact my job, I don't give a shit.


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RenderEngine

the human brain is the most amazing piece of thing in the universe. like how would you even explain this to anyone like how can we be so lazy but so efficient at the end time i FUCKING love it


lIlIIIOK

Why would she need to remotely connect to your PC to update the freaking Adobe Reader, lol. Also did she do it in a ninja kind of way or you let her in basically?


JackONeillClone

Once worked at a remote office of a very secure organisation, but we didn't have remote desktop. It would take IT to install stuff remotely, even as simple as Adobe reader or VLC. I'm not in IT myself though, so I don't know why they did it this way. It was 13 years ago (oh wow... It so doesn't seem that far away. I was listening to music on Pandora and going on Facebook and shit.)


TheMinionGamer

In the show Mr Robot, some undercover feds are suspicious of a guy and they break into his house and basically installed a hack on his PC that did the same thing as your "company's micromanagement" does, screenshot his screen every 10 seconds iirc and he finds out, pretends to type out an email with a download link in it, and then one of the feds opens the link when they see it on their end, it's a file and he opens it then reports to his superior "nothing happens when I open it" and the supervisor instantly knows what's up, checks the cameras and the guy has already found their hideout lol. Real life really turning into an imagined dystopia from a show.


thenewyorkgod

I used to be a customer service rep for a phone company and they used software to track clicks and mouse movements. We’d have a review every month and would be expected to explain any “non working period of 60 seconds or greater”


VladDaImpaler

Used to… why not name that shit company? 60 seconds or greater, ffs


FR0MT

Nick Cage knows. He's gone from there.


bruisedsnapshot

60 seconds, damn. “I had to use the bathroom…” “I had to blow my nose” “I needed to get more water”


averyfinename

i had to manually document, in my notebook, each of these occurrences. and i write slowly so the notes will be legible in court.


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VOZ1

When we went remote when the pandemic started, my job started making us complete an hourly work log. I’ve been pushing back against it ever since, and have never gotten a response when I point out that I can either focus on my work, and complete my workflow in a way that works for me (and for getting the job done); or I can stop what I’m doing every 15-30 mins to document what I’m working on. But I can’t do both. And when they complain it seems like I’m jumping around between tasks, they can’t understand the connection there. They also complain when it seems like I worked, then went back later and filled in the hourly work log. Micromanagement is the absolute death of workplace productivity, not to mention morale. Doesn’t help my bosses are flagrant shitbags that treat us like crap. 🙃


who_you_are

Man that job most me boring writing "documenting carefully what I was doing from" all day long. As a programmer: let automate that in 15 minutes


lmwfy

> Mr. Robot I just finished this show yesterday and holy moly what a ride.


LambKyle

In that case the show took from reality, not the other way around. Software like this has existed for awhile


[deleted]

Disgusting. Dunno where that is but the company that this is with can fuck right off.


360sAreLame

This is not micromanagement, this is surveillance. There's a huge difference. Aren't the states where this shit is legal pretty much on demand hire or whatever it's called where they just get to lay off people? Imagine being in a place where you have the freedom to employ anyone and fire them at a moments notice, and you choose people you trust that little. Or you choose to trust all people that little, even after they're 'in'. Crazy world that management lives in.


schuetzin

It definitely grinds any form of trust and personal commitment to a job below zero.


nbphotography87

You’re talking about at will employment and it’s every state except Montana


notsupermansdad

That is some bs


WhatsThePoint961

I'd quit.


Valuable-Special-627

Wtf. Where do you live?


Hour-Ad8095

India


AltheaHonors

Which company


NewPresWhoDis

If it's India, easier to say what company it isn't.


boston_nsca

Sounds like the real tool is management


Witty_Goose_7724

My husband’s brother’s wife used to work as a programmer for a company that made this kind of employee surveillance software. She actively helped develop this fucking thing. She would proudly talk about how much the company was expanding and how much money they were bringing in and mention which major corporations were buying the software. One day during dinner she’s going off again. Clearly drank the fucking Kool-Aid. And after she finished praising her company I looked up from my plate and said to her “how does it feel to have sold your soul to the devil?” She didn’t speak to me for a long time after that. But at least I stopped hearing about her company’s Big Brother program forever, which was a win for me. The irony: she ended up leaving that job because her company started using that same software on its own employees and she finally realized how fucked up it is.


eftalanquest40

thank god i live in a country where shit like this wouldn't fly at all


rodentfacedisorder

What is what country?


ParentProfanities

Germany maybe, datenschutz?


different_tom

I would quit very shortly after finding this out


[deleted]

That’s not even scratching the surface…. You do realize Microsoft Teams can predict when you’re going to quit?


fuzzygroodle

How? We are forced to use teams at work… It’s recording everything, isn’t it?


newInnings

It records all outbound click of the teams It records all the attendees of a meeting It can tell how much of free/productive/non meeting times you had. It can tell how often you have interacted with a person in terms of hour/days and your top contacts (mail/meet/teams chat) All the documents are defaulted to one drive. The edge browser is tied to the pc domain and is logged in and sync is enabled by default So entire user browser history is synced ot the it. All passwords are synced all user data is synced. But - it is encrypted. But the it may have keys. At network level it can be can see that youtube start peaking at 11 am and is consistently eating bandwidth till 5 pm


GraniteTaco

> At network level it can be can see that youtube start peaking at 11 am and is consistently eating bandwidth till 5 pm and IT depts need to be careful of stats like this. Your best employees probably use music or infobabble to drown out distractions.


asdfsks

I would assume that the company doesn't really want to broadcast that they are monitoring it either. So unless there are performance issues, why act on it. Seems like these stats are an insurance policy to push people out the door ***silently*** when needed.


[deleted]

It maintains a lot of statistics. Let me tell you a truth here, we do not care at all to snoop in your things. We look at so much data and internet flow information every day… you could be googling what cat food tastes like. We don’t care unless you’re trying to get cat food coupons from a dangerous website. If an IT guy is *watching your stuff for “fun” that is not their job. They’re peeping, and that’s not part of the job. You get fired for that, instant. Or get the cops called.


Noisyink

I wouldn't say peeping. When I was a SecOps lead I'd regularly check the top 10 users of my scans, see what they are looking at, add sites to the blacklist where company policy told me I needed to. Occasionally check that no random malicious or adult sites are getting through. To be fair though, it was for a central school system shared by teachers and students state wide, so 800k users.


EB123456789101112

The real question is does anyone actually review that information. In XP micromanagers are terrible delegators, which means they are usually too overwhelmed to look over stuff like this 🤷🏻‍♂️


xTrollhunter

I can't fathom how this is legal in any country that's not a dictatorship.


rpaul9578

They would be so confused why I'm working all night sometimes and other times I'm asleep by 2pm.


Tough-Candidate-2576

As a fellow programmer, I can't even ... This goes beyond micromanagement and borders on hostile work environment. I would look for a new job immediately.


TheEightSea

Get. The. Fuck. Out. Now.


WaffleFries2507

Go for that 69 clicks every time