Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too?
>Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression.
Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare.
> Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass.
—- Snowcrash
'The “robot” installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked nothing like the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like C-3PO or futuristic like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line robot. Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called “Manna”, version 1.0*.'
Where's the software letting me surveil my supervisors? They're supposed to be spending some time and effort on me, so I have a legitimate need to make sure that's happening. There should be software that scans their emails and chat for discussions about open positions, projects, or trainings that are a good fit for me. Then it'll let me know if they recommended me, or mentioned my name in a negative context. Of course, we'll need AI for that. Maybe even let me just read the logs, to get a human in the loop. Purely a professional interest, of course.
At an ex-job, shortly after I quit they got a new middle-level manager. The new boss started complaining to everyone about every time he saw them arriving to the office late, so the guys collaborated on a spreadsheet to track the boss's work hours to the minute, every single day.
> Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work
Automating the good old “floggings will continue until staff morale improves”.
Though given a choice between that and the utterly cringy gamification¹ that some managers² seem to think doesn't make us want to high-five them in the face with a chair, I know which I'd hate least.
[1] which thankfully seems to be going out of fashion, but it'll be back again soon with a slightly different mask
[2] or “team togetherness and efficiency encouragers” or other fanciful titles they might have
I genuinely shiver when I read language like this despite being very much a corporate child. I count my blessings that, at least until now, even when I was tracked, my boss either cared about results or 'metrics' were good enough or the boss liked me.
I am not entirely certain how to prepare a child for this world. Short of running your own company, it will be hard to avoid the beast.
I suspect double speak will be elevated to a new artform. a large corporation has no standard basis by which t judge output. Managers may love your work, but it's hard to objectively quantify whether they have the right calibration.
Software that automatically says “you should push how harder”, “john is harming morale”, “jane is overworking”. Will be too tempting for a detached senior leadership to resist.
At my firm, laptops seem to have mysteriously gotten slower recently, chrome now regularly crashes on moderately sized documents. I would be surprised if it's not spyware related.
I'm moving over to a Linux machine as soon as I can, that way I can benefit from lack of software support.
Many Japanese companies have really fucked up ways of measuring "work". They work hard to make these AI and tech-based things to measure some dumb stats that have nothing to do with getting actual work done.
I've heard of a company measuring how "well" a meeting went based on some AI analysis of people smiling. So much time here is wasted on managing workers and talking about how to work, instead of just getting shit done.
> I've heard of a company measuring how "well" a meeting went based on some AI analysis of people smiling. So much time here is wasted on managing workers and talking about how to work, instead of just getting shit done.
its ironic because this is what it was like in the soviet union from what i hear...
There is an urban legend that being asleep at work would be seen as being productive since you obviously work so hard. This would be my chance to become employee of the month.
Some jackass dean or administration flunky complained about (sleep deprived) students asleep on the couches in Georgia Tech's Klaus CS building. I guess it didn't look good for donors or something.
So they put up a bunch of signs above each couch and bench that said "No sleeping."
I've still got a collection of pictures of people sleeping directly under the signs. Fight the power. :-)
Now KPI is stuck in my head as Klingon Productivity Indicator…
"You have challenged me for the position of Employee of the Month, and must now meet me in single combat…! Do not forget to bring your Bat'leth, I will not be merciful."
"Live Gagh will no longer be provided in the break room, as it was encouraging too many breaks. "
"The sales team has no honor, and our Product Manager acted like a spineless P'taaq in that meeting! I have deleted their logins and assumed command myself!"
" A true Klingon warrior tests their code in production."
"What is this talk of "Pull Requests"? A true Klingon warrior makes DEMANDS! "
"The beatings will continue until this team shows a TRUE warrior spirit. "
" This burndown chart is pitiful. It is barely singed!"
" When I take a mental health day, it is for YOUR mental health. Do not waste this opportunity. "
"You joined our team over a year ago and have still not challenged me for my position. We need to discuss your career goals."
... or treat and think of your employees as human beings who sometimes are more productive than usual and sometimes less productive than usual, but on average perform "well enough".
If companies aim for maximum, minimum and average to trace one flat line across diagrams visualizing some kind of performance metrics, then us humans will never ever live up to those expectations.
>Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance.
If bosses could have slaves working for them, a vast majority of them would use slaves in an instant, without thinking about it. At best, they'd use a contractor or two removed from them, to mitigate the ethical accusations (same way they justify the use of sweatshops, child labor in mines, violently threatening and beating or even murdering workers when they stand up, and so on, in the production/supply chains the most seemingly "progressive" companies).
The only reason they don't have everything they want atm, and societies got things like paid leave, the 5-day 8-hour workweek and such, has been pushback (which was reristed fiercely, with many dead in the process). Pushback, plus, when the global communist movement was still a thing, and still shiny to many, the danger of working classes falling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism, which between the 30s and 70s did wonders in securing concessions from capitalist governments.
Since pushback has stopped, and the alternative system of production is dead and/or discretided, in any job market that they have the upper hand, they'll reinforce any 19-th century norm they like.
^This a thousand times over. The workers' benefits we enjoy today in Europe like 8 hour workdays, minimum 20 days vacation, paid sick leave, free healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc. were due to the communist movements sweeping Europe after WW2 which governments and industrialists fought hard to suppress so they had to give concessions to the workers in order to keep their business afloat and prevent them from rioting/striking.
But, the collective labor pushback has stopped since the great offshoring took over in the last 30 years thanks to globalization, and various labor unions lost their power as the great industrialists moved the labor intensive jobs overseas where they could easily enforce their 19-th century norms and environmentally damaging practices and make killer profits, which in term bought them more lobbying power and political influence back home to push for lax immigration and lax trade policies with oppressive regimes, to further water down local wages and working conditions to "increase economic competitiveness" with those oppressive regimes.
Now we're slowly moving back to longer working hours and worse working conditions, but not by force like in the past, but by making housing and living so insanely expensive and getting a job so competitive, that the only chance people have is to willingly sacrifice the quality of life to get a head start in the rat race over everyone else, unless they were lucky enough to inherit some generational wealth that has appreciated, like a house.
Couple this with economic policies where at every crisis or dip in the economy, the well off, asset holder and big companies get further boosted up and amass even more wealth, while the lesser well off and small business go bust and end up worse off and pushed "further back on the monopoly board".
> But, the collective labor pushback has stopped since the great offshoring took over in the last 30 years thanks to globalization, and various labor unions lost their power
Not just that. A large portion of the loss of influence of unions was the riseup of the pacifist dogma. Just look how all the benefits were won: by (sometimes extremely) brutal violence, by the blood of the workers who died by the hands and guns of corporate goons [1].
A very good example is the social structure and workers rights of the two neighboring countries France and Germany. French workers are routinely willing and able to commit to violence both in the office (in the form of "bossnapping") and on the streets and the public supports that, and when German protests escalate into a couple of banks getting redecorated with paint, concerned citizens turn up to clean the fucking bank [2]!
As a result of that difference in attitude, German workers have it way worse than French workers - politicians in France know that the cost of going against the people is high. A society that doesn't fight for its rights eventually gets taken over by those that do. Democracy is not god-given, it is earned by blood and needs continuous maintenance, otherwise it erodes.
Re G20: The people making the mess were young activists, the article even mentions their group affiliation by name. They are not the working class, they are a nuisance to the working class. I'd be in favor of classifying them as terrorists.
>I'd be in favor of classifying them as terrorists
Same with Antifa. Some protestors are basically just mindless hooligans and their protests and property damage are harming the small business and working class people a lot more than the politicians and the ruling class.
Like during the protests in France I kept seeing many mid-range Renault/Peugeot/Citroens on fire on the streets of Paris. Chances are those were most likely the cars working class people used to get to work the next day and not the cars of fat-cats.
I agree with protesting violently against governments but what use is destroying working class property?
The problem is that violence gets attention and sometimes conciliatory action like nothing else.
Riots and terrorism generate world headlines, while peaceful picketing rarely gets anywhere near the attention (unless it's also met by violence, as the nonviolent demonstrations and sit-ins were during the Civil Rights struggles in the 60's).
I am a pacifist myself, and am completely against violence, but I can see why some people who have less of a problem with it might find it strategically advantageous.
The willingness to resort to violence is a great part of the reason that the world is as much a hellhole as it is now.
> The problem is that violence gets attention and sometimes conciliatory action like nothing else.
The thing is, the government itself is violent at its core:
- cops beating up peaceful protesters or executing people on the streets
- cops evicting people from their homes because they can't keep up with rent
- cops arresting women because of miscarriages (over 1.200 in 15 years per [1]!) and soon because they dared to abort an unwanted pregnancy
- social security systems, especially unemployment insurance, are purposefully laced with endless hoops to be jumped through, all in the name of denying as many people as possible access to these while still being able to claim that "we have a system for poor people"
"Peaceful resistance" against this level of violence is a pipe dream. The insistence on "peaceful" resistance, the complete lack of material consequences for offenders acting as part of the government is the reason why civil rights are under attack by the government as harsh as they are at the moment.
I'm not a friend of violence myself, but I absolutely refuse to look down on people for deciding to go the militant path in the face of the violence that governments are committing against the common citizen every day.
Something else to consider, for those that don't object to violence on moral or ethical grounds, is that violence is often counterproductive.
If used against powerful governments it usually results in violent crackdowns which wind up killing off and/or imprisoning the leaders of the anti-government movements.
When used against weak governments, the government may topple, but what arises in its place is often even worse than the toppled government, and that tends to be followed by much more bloodshed.
If used against the populace it tends to cause both vigilante violent reaction and a resentment of the populace against one's cause.
Violent action usually leads to violent reaction, and the moderates are killed off by those who are even less reluctant to use violence to achieve their aims.
Countries thus afflicted not infrequently are plunged in to the horrors of civil war, which suits the extremists of every stripe, while ordinary people who just want to live their life are devastated.
Non-violence however requires (!) a functioning democracy that listens to the citizens - one might argue that a democracy that listens to and serves the interests of all people is the only way for any progress that is achieved non-violently. For me, the rise in political violence in the US is not surprising at all given how more and more of the citizenship has been left behind and ignored by its representatives. And even the progress that happened in the US' recent history... a lot of it only happened after large scale riots (such as the Civil Rights Act 1968). Fittingly, it was MLK himself who said the famous quote "riots are the voice of the unheard".
Especially regarding revolutions against authoritarian regimes - I can't name even one major society that went through the change from an authoritarian government to a democracy without a war or revolution of some sort (even the British parliament's history has a couple of wars related to it). Usually, two or three revolutions, civil or external wars are part of any major democracy's history.
Burning down property of the working people is not gonna make you friends, you know. If you are being violent and made up some excuses for it, at least direct it towards your enemy.
> In Germany at least Antifa aren't terrorists. Actual hooligans are much more destructive by several magnitudes.
Not to mention much more murderous. Fascists have murdered over 200 people since the reunification [1], left-wing oriented people four in the same time [2]
It's little weird to slip tight-immigrarion into your communist manifesto. Immigration is only a problem when workers are forced to compete for livelihood. Immigrants crrate demand which creates more work opportunity.
Except you are competing for livelihood. The supply of real estate, doctors, schools, teachers, jobs, is very inelastic, all of which is needed for the newly arrived.
If there really was a shortage, employers would offer concessions, better working conditions, WFH, more vacation days, etc. Just look at truck drivers or hospitality for example. Just because employers say it's a shortage doesn't always make it true or it doesn't mean it's not their fault for the shortage for refusing to offer better conditions.
Depends on the field of course, but from my experience interviewing in tech, the market is very competitive now in my area in Europe for those without a lot of experience, and employers are not willing to offer any concessions besides the minimums mandated by law. Asking for full WFH is also out of the questions most of the time. This signals to me that there is no shortage, otherwise employers would be more accommodating for this.
In my country there is also a perpetual shortage of doctors and nursing staff in the public sector despite an abundance of them in the private sector. So the shortage is purely because the government is not offering the right financial incentives and working conditions for them to stay in the public sector.
My point is that "shortage" is always relative and we should look at the full story and the complete context to understand where it comes from and why it's happening, because without context I'm also having a perpetual shortage of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, though the full story is that my budget is $5000 and not a cent more, yet that information kind of changes and explains everything.
So, in conclusion, most of the times, "shortage of workers" just means people unwilling to work for the poor conditions and compensation being offered by employers, not that there's a shortage of people capable of doing said work or capable of learning to do it if offered the chance/training.
I think there are several factors that play into this and beyond the points you mentioned, I wanted to introduce one more.
Size of the companies appears to matter when it comes to accommodations. In my industry, companies are effectively offering the same WFH policy across the board making people like me suspicious that CEOs banded together to discuss 'best practices', but anecdata from social circle suggests that smaller companies do work to accommodate people they want to keep.
For a counter, see the following article on demand outstripping supply of remote jobs: [1]
In some fields, like tech, there's a strong demand, but not so in plenty of others -- especially if you as a worker make the unreasonable demand to be paid a living wage or not be worked to the point of burnout.
There is a shortage of people willing to work shitty jobs for shitty pay. Employers could fix this by either making the job less shitty or raising the pay.
The inflation complaint is similar. We've had ludicrous inflation in housing, college tuition, health care, and many other things for over a decade. Inflation is not a problem until it starts to hit wages and supply chains.
There's a shortage of people willing to work in terrible conditions.
I'd usually add "for a pittance," but I see FAANG (is it now "MAANG"?) companies offering pretty insane salaries, but they are notorious for difficult working conditions.
Finance is another industry notorious for working their employees like slaves. Which I never understood, as these are some of the richest companies in the world, which could easily afford to hire more people instead of overworking the ones they had.
Doctors and nurses are also infamously overworked, with crazy shifts and lack of sleep being the norm. This is even more unconscionable as lack of sleep can lead to mistakes where patients die.
Here in NY, many of my friends were once traders or brokers, in Finance. They passed their Series 7 (or whatever), and worked a few years in brokerages or banks.
Pretty much universally, they report the experience was a tornado, and they could only manage it for a few years.
But they made a lot of money. The smart ones, lived humbly, and saved up, using their earnings to do things like start small businesses.
It’s kind of surprising, to talk to a painter, or shopkeeper, and have them tell you about their “days on The Floor.”
Try front-line and front-line-adjacent healthcare. Due to federal privacy laws, a lot of ordinary office surveillance tech is not permitted.
It's not uncommon for regular offices to have "security" cameras. But when IT tried to put the cameras all over our building, the legal department told them to go stick their heads in a pig.
I wasn't part of the discussions that followed, but based on my company's privacy training, I can imagine a couple of problems:
- Legal didn't want even the remote possibility that a "security" camera might be able to view a patient's records on someone's screen.
- Legal didn't want any record that a particular patient went into a particular office, thus identifying them as having a particular ailment. (It's the same reason all of our promotional flyers sent in the mail have to be in a plain white envelope, and not postcards announcing to the world "You're overdue for your herpes follow-up!")
There are still security cameras, but they're only allowed in the employee parking lot. And I think I've seen them in the server rooms. But that's pretty much it.
They probably also didn't want video evidence when their doctors or nurses screw up, which would make malpractice cases against them stronger.
Video evidence could also exonerate them, of course. But they probably erred on the side of opacity and the status quo over more transparency, as ass-covering corporations often do.
Just make some friends in the accounting department and plant a few seeds.
Our developer systems come with 32/64GB memory, multiple TB of NVMe storage, high-end processors, discrete GPUs to drive 4 4K monitors, etc. But we save $30 via the Dell configurator by skipping bluetooth, wifi, cameras, etc.
Nah, in retail, we used to have this software known as "secret shoppers." If they didn't see someone smiling, the store or department would be docked points on its evaluation, and you'd be hearing about it from your boss and boss's boss. Now all of us WFH minions below the lowly programmers will be subject to a smiling rictus as our cameras, microphones, and keyloggers determine productivity scores, work morale, and redundancy scores for the next layoff.
Oh man, thats too funny, can you imagine the glitchy smiles snapping off someones face as they slightly turn their head? All the sudden every meeting is filled with barely perceptible uncanny artifacts... So far everywhere I've worked is cameras off except for intimate meetings (and even then its optional/reciprocated), usually a few people will try to keep their cameras on to start a trend or something but I imagine ends up feeling like an idiot with the only camera on.
you can do that with the snap filters. I use the mac app to overlay all sorts of goofy hats, sunglasses, laser eyes, etc.... onto my face to spice up dull zoom/teams calls.
>Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression.
Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare.