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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

What about work that does not have deadlines, but requires constant attention? Like monitoring security cameras, or the status of a medical patient or a nuclear power plant..

These types of work have the added risk of unauthorized people, such as the employee’s kids or friends, snooping in on sensitive information.

That might be helped by the employer providing a dedicated computer for remote work, with screen-recording and facial recognition that locks the system if you’re not (the only person) in view.

Perhaps having always-on video and voice surveillance on that computer, and announcing that fact, would force employees to create a dedicated distraction-free work environment in their homes.

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You do the same thing that you do in the real world. Have you ever noticed how sometimes security guards will walk around with a little key fob and touch it to a point on the wall? That's because in order to ensure they're doing their required patrols they physically have to log they've been to a point.

If you're requiring someone pay attention to a monitor you can do the same thing - for example put a square on the image and require the employee to click it. Obviously though, this requires someone to actually critically think about protocols for ensuring work is done to a standard.

The measure becomes the mark.

If touching points is all that's required, then that's all that will get done. The neural nets of all employees will eventually become trained to touch the points and not do the actual work you desire.

In the case of a security guard the 'real' job is to catalogue all things 'out of place' and then react if necessary.

One of the more interesting examples of this is the NYC subway operators pointing at signs to show attention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9jIsxQNz0M

Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14011793

“Why Japan’s Rail Workers Can’t Stop Pointing at Things”

So externalising office costs onto the workers - lovely

You might want to think about how this effects the housing market if this take off long term.

Every home of the future would/should have an office, with the kitchen evolving into a general in-house factory with 3D printers etc. :)

This would have the added benefit of reclaiming the space currently taken up by many office towers, reducing traffic and the associated stress from daily commutes, improving overall health, increasing leisure time, which in turn improves the economy, and so on.

So an extra room per home then is going to increase housing costs longer term to the worker long term is what I was getting at.

Why is this companies' faults? What can they really do anwyays besides giving a small budget to situate oneself?

All homes - should - begin to have offices anyway as people realize that physically going in to work isn't necessary to be productive.

Why do you need an extra room?

Laptops can go anywhere, and my living room is empty until ~4pm when my kids get home. I've been remote for going on 5 years now and routinely take my work laptop to the kitchen or living room (though I'll concede I need a quiet room for some calls/tasks that involve PII).

If remote work became a norm, I'd expect housing market in large cities to sink dramatically. Why would one move e.g. to New York if their hometown provided same same job opportunities?

There are ways you can 'force' attention. Things like semi-regular unannounced drills, audits, etc. I agree it's harder, and for things like the status of a medical patient or nuclear power plant the potential damage of someone going to the pub in the afternoon and missing something is far worse than missing a couple items in a sprint, but it is still possible to assess.

Those are the jobs that should be automated, and I imagine will be soon.

What stops people just watching cat videos on Facebook in those situations?

What stops people watching cat videos while walking around and touching their key fob against specific points?

Can't you walk around a familiar place whilst looking at your phone or reading a book? Been doing this for years on daily commute...

Yes but as a security guard, or someone monitoring patient vitals, you want them to actually pay attention to details, not reflexively act from memory

I understood that. I think OP was saying that forcing a path and specific, physical actions, meant the security guard will perform as expected. Which is... kind of not the case?

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