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Comment by A2017U1 | Hacker News Reader

A2017U1

I would quit any job that implemented something like that. Having your day logged down to second sounds horrendous.

You do know that most hourly jobs have you clock in and out either at a kiosk or computer? This is just using facial recognition instead of a password to clock in and out.

Why not time cards that are punched by a machine? The tech to scan them in for payroll already exists, I'm sure. Reminds me of the push for replacing paper ballots for no good reason.

Cheating is possible - others clocking in for you

Cheating is possible - others clocking in for you

Having someone else clock in for your isn't always cheating. For example, leaving early so you can drop by the post office on your way home from work to drop off the company mail.

Or the opposite where my wife works: People will punch in for her because she has to go to an off-site meeting or event.

For the same reason some people want to use Machine Learning to do code reviews, rather than.. you know, have the team pair program and review each other. Providing solutions to problems nobody had. And making new businesses out of old ideas. Kinda like "url shortener in php" -> "url shorterer in nodejs" -> "url shortener in golang" -> "url shortener in rust" -> "url shortener serverless with aws lambda" -> the cycle goes on. New stars for old ideas. Newtimers excited, oldtimers cynical alike.

We have the technology.

Why not time cards that are punched by a machine

I know a factory in Chicago that still has huge time-card punching machine from the late 1800's. It's enormous, and looks like a cast iron wheel of fortune. Very cool.

Somehow the company has managed to function for 150 years without adding facial recognition to it.

Those systems are fun but not practical anymore. Anything you can do on a network connected computer will be faster, easier, cheaper, etc.

I used to think the same way. Recently I started my own consultancy business, and the first thing I did was write a small shell script to track my comings and goings - to the second, so that I'd have good billing data. It has saved me an amazing amount of bookkeeping, and I regret not doing this twenty years ago.

Previously, I spent I don't know how much time going "now, how long did I actually work last Monday?" whenever I've tried to figure out whether I've worked enough or not (there was, of course, a target hours/week in my contract when I was employed). Now I know, at the push of the button: I worked eight hours, sixteen minutes and three seconds. OK, then!

Any chance of sharing that script?

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