Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week | Hacker News Reader

Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

bbc.co.uk

198 pointsjoshuahughes160 comments

So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US?

This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft - including theft of company time spent talking to other employees. Are you a call center employee that has to go poop often that day or are 3 minutes late from break? Expect a call from HR for the bathroom breaks and an attendance issue for the tardiness.

I'm guessing if this were in the US and put in place for low-level employees, it would have never been scrapped.

It does happen in the US, and in banks, and not just low-level employees. Palantir sells the service. It has been used by JP Morgan for a few years: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel

In LOTR the Palantir is used by Sauron to corrupt and subdue Saruman by displaying visions of terror. Coincidentally a Palantir employee in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica were instrumental in the Republicans hard lean into fear-based messaging leading into the 2016 Presidential election.

Wow. How do Palantir engineers sleep at night? Later in the article, it describes how LAPD uses Palantir software - tracking almost everyone in poor neighborhoods at all times. All of this use is completely without warrants, and the police know to avoid mentioning Palantir in court documents so that its use won't be challanged.

> Wow. How do Palantir engineers sleep at night?

Like other >99% of the engineers in the world.

> All of this use is completely without warrants

Do you need a warrant to stake out a public place and write down everything you see? I get the impression that that's the analogous non-automated workload. (Except for the scale; to get equivalent results, you'd have to have thousands of people watching.)

>Except for the scale; to get equivalent results, you'd have to have thousands of people watching.

Which is the only thing that matters. Sure, warrants aren't necessary, but the concept of mass, automated surveillance is so new that we simply haven't figured out what to do about it yet.

>Sure, warrants aren't necessary, but the concept of mass, automated surveillance is so new that we simply haven't figured out what to do about it yet.

We haven't? It seems like we have: we're embracing it wholeheartedly. We're just careful to only use it (for now) on groups of people who don't have much power to push back on it.

So who is "we" here?

Society, of course.

Some people may disagree with it, but the society at large is doing this things, either led by or approved by our political leaders, whom most of the citizens elect.

It's worth considering that the scale argument is exactly why it didn't require a warrant before. If you only have the man power to invade the privacy of ten people, you'll do so with thought and diligence.

However, if you can use the same manpower to invade the privacy of ten- or one-hundred-thousand people, the thought put into who you monitor so closely drops precipitously.

Yes, but IIRC, the project was cancelled or greatly scaled back after Senior Management discovered that Palantir was also reading their emails and just not the drones in Sector 7G.

I think it is helpful to remember that this story came to us through good journalism, so we are lucky to know this much, and surely damage-control is a natural next move for a business caught out. What I do know is the technology is on the market, and why wouldn't a business use it if they can do it privately while avoiding the mistakes of JP Morgan?

I almost spit out my coffee because I thought you were about to say: "Yes, but IIRC, the project was cancelled or greatly scaled back after Senior Management discovered that Sauron was also reading their emails and just not the orcs in Sector 7G.

A company I talked to (Bought by National Cash Register), was using cameras software analysis to monitor employee theft.

felt very big brothery but it worked well enough to get bought out.

"The ScanItAll Checkout Vision Suite is a collection of StopLift’s video analytics technologies applied to inventory shrinkage at the checkout. ScanItAll automatically analyzes video from checkouts every moment to detect inventory shrinkage visually, even when it leaves no data trail.

ScanItAll detects Sweethearting, Self-Checkout Loss, Basket-Based Loss, Operational Error, etc.

https://www.stoplift.com/solutions/ "

>Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft

In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now.

I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociopathy that did that). During this process we were asked to optimize a store in our region. This optimization process included outlining for store staff the process to remove "internal shrink" read: employees stealing.

One of my stores had the highest "internal shrink" and "employee arrests" in the entire chain. My solution was to make a differential pay scale for that store. I increased all wages across the board by $3/hr up to the store manager level.

"Shrink" stopped in the first month. Not just "internal shrink" but external as well. The employees were actually NOT stealing and ACTIVELY stopping people from stealing.

I was told it wasn't as cost effective as installing cameras in common theft areas and outsourcing security to a third party, and it was scrapped after a year.

That was when I decided to leave retail and the corporate world in general.

I worked at a company during college who at the end of the year would give every employee a "Shrink" check depending how well/poor their store performed over the course of the year.

If you came in mid year they just pro rated the amount you would have gotten if you stayed the whole year.

I remember this helped employees keep an eye on each other as you were essentially stealing from everyone else's shrink check.

Oh yes, delation... Nothing like not trusting anyone, especially your peers. Lovely!

I worked there for 3 years.

First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus.

The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so.

Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local craigslist/pawn shops and finally e-bay.

He found one account on e-bay that coincidentally was selling all the same items our store kept missing! (Some of these were brand new laptops)

The account name of the seller was firstinitial+lastname+numbers

He took that account name, and cross referenced it with our employees and found a match. He then forwarded all this information to the police.

I remember one day going to our monthly manager's meeting (once a month had a store wide meeting where managers went over everything with all employees)

We did the entire meeting, free pizza and donuts, talked numbers shrink etc, and the best part was that on the last page of the presentation they had the guy running the Lost Prevention department come up to talk shrink. He explained everything above and then flipped the presentation paper to the last page which had the e-bay account giant sized on the paper. He said this is the person who has been caught selling everything and they will be taken care of.

We all turned around from our meeting and there were police offers waiting to arrest the perpetrator on the spot.

Said person was a 20 year old who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He drove a $40,000 car his parents paid for type of thing where most of us had rusted beaters to drive around.

He was doing it only for the thrill, worked in the electronics department so he was able to steal things from the cages when trucks came in and you are supposed to unload all the pallets.

I just remember that meeting so vividly because they let the kid go through everything, thinking everything is normal and I wish I was able to see his face when his username was shown right away.

I won't forget his face and cries as he was being arrested saying, "You cannot prove that is me!" even though it was his first initial + last name and year he was born in.....

Why would it be illegal?

They aren't docking the employees pay for shrinkage (which is illegal), they are paying out a bonus based on company performance (the performance being level of shrinkage).

There is no guarantee after a few months this wouldn't go back to the way it was. Too often people think the change will affect permanent behaviour, when change itself affects behaviour.

This makes me wonder what the numbers are for Costco, who pays their employees very well.

Kind of hard to sneak out a 20 lb rack of ribs or 50 lb bag of rice.

Not really, put it in the bin, collect outside later. And how is that any different to other stores? Does costco not sell chocolate or tampons or things that are easy to steal? Even if in big packages, break it open, it goes out the back.

Maybe for small stuff. But the bins are well locked up for that reason. The garbage goes out in a sealed bin accessible only within the store. Returns get palletized for 3rd party resale and then forklifted into a trailer.

Could just scan out your friends and “miss” scanning some items for a cut.

Or “overlook” their 20lb of ribs scanning as 20lb of rice.

Can’t do it entirely because of the exit checks, but the checks aren’t 100%.

Though when buying a gift card, they don’t let you pick it off the rack: you get a receipt to ask someone else.

This is what gets referred to as "sweethearting".

What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?

In the end who cares, everyone would have been way happier without resorting to big brothery solutions and solving anyway he problem. But no, we gotta chase that additional profit at the cost of any other metric!

I mean, the business cares how much profits they make. If it was cost effective, it is easier to justify moving it to other stores.

That's my point. Businesses care only about profit, even when its clearly detrimental to everyone else. There's no consideration for happiness or quality of life and no ethic if you only chase profit. For how much we've been pushed to believe this is perfecly normal, to me it's insane.

you guys are cynical but lets take this one step further. the real reason the OPs plan wasn't implemented was because some cto or ceo had stock or got a kick back from some surveillance company ;-)

You know what would quickly increase happiness and quality of life for a whole bunch of people? If you would just donate your entire life savings to charity tomorrow. Your not doing that is clearly detrimental to all those people you would have helped. Please consider happiness, quality of life, ethics, etc, and stop chasing profit.

Oh please, do a favour to yourself and use your intelligence before engaging in discussion. I as an individual have barely what I need to survive. My choice is not between huge profit and slightly less profit, but between paying the rent or ending on the streets. Businesses on the other hand have proven again and again that they will do anything to increase the profit even when already largely profitable.

Yeah, the ceo of charity would be really happy.

Why doesn any argument about "a LITTLE less profit" must be countered with reducting to absurd? I really would like to know why did you make such argument.

Or does this simply show a cultural problem among upper-management types, where they exclusively use the stick over the carrot because it makes them feel powerful, important, and morally superior?

It's it just the management types? Plenty of users here in HN defend abusive practices like these just to save some money.

Agree on this...

I only had one quarter to measure. We were on track to show a massive reduction, just under the cost of the raises. Had we stuck to it for two quarters or even a year, the trend was that we would've broken even around month 8, and showed a positive return after one year.

I bet the bigger problem was that the raise went into operating costs, whereas investment in surveillance goes into capital costs. The corporation doesn't get to list any money it pays out to employees on its balance sheet, but that Orwellian surveillance system is capital and counts as an asset the corporation can leverage for a higher valuation.

It's all part of how Capitalism reduces humans to a drain on the system in favor of material.

Capital depreciates. It's an expense.

But it still shows up on the balance sheet, so it doesn't look like you're bleeding money the same way an operating expense like a raise does.

> What was the cost difference?

Doesn't matter. I bet it adversely affected someone's bonus and that was why it was scrapped.

What if instead of an extra $3/hr, the differential pay were an extra $10,000/hr? Obviously then the cost difference would matter. So, there must be a cutoff somewhere. Is the cutoff more than $3 or less than $3? We don't have enough information to know, nor do we have enough information to know whether upper management were just being comic book villains or whether their decision was based on crunching the numbers.

Might be the type of cost.

Outsourced = expense Salary increase = fixed cost can only write-off %.

It's probably the other managers who don't have the issue not wanting to increase their wages. Or explaining why the worst employees were paid more etc.

> explaining why the worst employees were paid more

except they were likely only viewed as 'worst employees' because of the theft. stopping theft - internal and external - would normally be chalked up to 'best employees', who would be quite deserving of raises (in a hypothetical world).

So you're saying retail is offensive the moral sensibilities of a sociopath?

I'm not sure I understand your statement, I think you're missing a word in there.

What I'm saying is that I was deeply depressed and therefore didn't give a shit about myself or the other people around me. And that is the personality trait that seemed to put me ahead of my co-managers.

I'm not sure "Want a raise? Start stealing!" is the greatest incentive structure...

Otoh "Want employee loyalty? Start treating them reasonably." probably is.

Yeah, there may have been other long term benefits that were not accounted for in the cost comparison. For example, people like to shop at places with happy employees. The commenter mentioned that the place doesnt exist any more.

Company pays minimum wage. Employees give minimum effort. Company: shockedpikachu.jpg

Paying more only motivates higher level people. Lower level only respond to the stick. That’s how a lot of people seem to think.

bullshit; Agree on that "lower-level" do not always respond linear to better wage, however that's not the only thing of motivation. What about trainings? Holidays? And not the stick...

You don't treat reasonably your tools. That's how some companies see their employees.

You believe this?—ask any tradesman, mechanic or PE—"Take care of your tools and they will take care of you" is gospel in those fields.

The same, then, should apply to "living tools" if your analogy obtains.

> "Take care of your tools and they will take care of you"

In my increasingly out of date experience in that area, this definitely applies to "don't leave your wrenches out in the yard overnight, dummy" but usually not so far as "don't use that as a pry bar". In either case though, if the tool breaks you toss it and move on...

You may care about an expensive tool as long as it works, but you'll throw it away as soon as it breaks. A tool has no rights, and you'll never care about it enjoying working for you. Yes, the analogy still work for me.

There's plenty of people in the trades who consider their tools disposable like work gloves but on a longer time line.

In most of the western world labor is so absurdly expensive compared to material goods that it usually makes sense for anyone paid by the job (most people in the trades) to just treat tools as a cost of doing business and treat them whichever way gets the jobs done the fastest.

> Start treating them reasonably

This is stupid though. Is $3 more treating them reasonably? Where is that definition?

No, they treated them as slaves because they’re not people; they’re Human Resources.

These managers or execs are outside of this scrutiny. They’re the slave masters and they don’t see that the greatest wastage is amongst themselves.

This kind of capitalism is highly American and a product of its success through exploitation. America didn’t come to be without the slave trade.

> "Managers would never get away with breathing down employee's necks, personally monitoring their screens or logging toilet and water breaks,"

They wouldn't? Isn't that reality for a lot of workers?

This actually happens a lot in call centres. This is why I am very polite to those on the phones because I know they are likely to be working in a horrid office.

At least in the US I know a number of call centers that have been sued into bankruptcy for attempting to use phone agent login status as a timeclock. The worst of these were telling staff that they had to login to their computers and get everything ready on their own time... then they would be paid once they logged in... On another note, I feel that such abuses really need to start to incur jail time for management since abuses like this still seems to be pretty common in US Call centers.

To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US.

I know very little about the environment in British call centres, but many call centres used by British companies are in India.

>To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US.

Interesting. How will this revelation impact your future comparative thinking?

The US often offers more protection compared to most countries.

Many countries copy the US so it's important they act as a leader.

You're kidding, right? Worker protections?

I am polite to all people because it is the right thing to do, I don't even worry about whether they have a horrid office or no.

You should notice that I qualified it with "very".

And treating people like crap makes one feel like shit!

Article author has clearly never worked in a call center.

Isn't that the point of open offices?

Yes. In my experience you change your state to an unavailable state with a particular reason (lunch, end of day, restroom, etc.). This way, when the people monitoring the efficiency of the call center know why person XYZ hasn't taken a call in 10 minutes, they know why.

Probably depends on which country you live in.

"The software, Sapience, claims to create "unprecedented transparency" within companies."

The spin makes me dizzy.

LOL, is the CEO's office being monitored and played by the water cooler? It's only transparent if it goes all the way around.

Exactly. If it made people mutually accountable, such that line employees could keep the execs in line, I'd at least be willing to listen. But micromanagement isn't transparency.

I will believe it once the transparency goes both ways. So far it always goes only downward.

It is transparency, it was always wrong to think that transparency is some universal good.

Nah. It's only transparent like a one-way mirror is: it lets the powerful watch the people they can control without being watched in return.

True transparency would make everybody visible to everybody, while making it just as clear who is monitoring whom. Often the problem isn't information, it's information asymmetry. In the offline world, we have a whole vocabulary for peeping toms, nosey parkers, eavesdroppers, busybodies, creepy starers, and outright stalkers. That's because observation is in itself generally observable, and can often be countered with social pressure. It's when, as here, that one group can observe without being observed or criticized, things can very quickly get ugly.

This makes me wonder if there's ever been any studies done showing worker happiness over time at comparable jobs compared against the increasing rise of workplace surveillance over time. It would be interesting to see if there's any correlation between the two. I know personally i've always been happier and more productive at jobs when I don't have employers breathing down my neck and counting every second of work I do.

Humans need a level of autonomy and a small amount of freedom to 'fuck around' as it were. Not to the point where productivity starts to fall, but there's a balance between oppression and total freedom I feel creates the ideal working environment.

It really does boggle the imagination to think that somewhere, out there, somebody actually thought this system was a good idea in the first place.

They stole the idea from American call centers. This sounds similar to the monitoring in place 20 years ago at a telephone company call center I worked at.

Twice

They tried this back in 2017 too

If your employees love their jobs and trust their leaders, they will not steal, and will not tolerate other workers who do. In order to be trusted as a leader you must earn the respect of those you lead. Earned respect is hard, but worth it.

> unprecedented transparency

I think where they can go a step further here is to install Spy cams in all of the bathroom toilets so we know how much bathroom time is actually spent going to the bathroom, and how much is spent on cell phones. It may sound invasive but I'll bet the efficiency will go up and that's all that matters at the end of the day, right?

Since efficiency can be broken down into money earned/lost, this should probably start up the top-most level (CEO) since the highest paid positions would yield the most gain/loss depending on efficiency changes. So once the CEOs have spy cams installed in all of their toilets, we can really measure how well efficiency improves!

EDIT:

I'm coming back to this because I don't think this is quite efficient enough. We should have a team of resident defecation experts who can detect exactly when the CEO should start the wiping processes, and gradually phase them out with AI that learns different pooping patterns. It can also give recommendations to the employee in terms of eating more fiber to speed up the defecating process and result in more solid stools, thus optimizing all bathroom time and shortening the amount of wipes required to as little as possible, again, to save more time and thus, money.

Not only that, but eating more fiber can prevent troubles like constipation as well as other health issues, saving even more money for the company when it comes to healthcare.

These are just a few more ideas, but I have plenty more.

EDIT #2:

I feel stupid for not thinking of this earlier, but another good strategy to prevent time away from the desk would be to simply remove all water and refrigerators from the building, and naturally all bathrooms would follow suit. The bathrooms would be replaced with closets filled with amphetamines, which are huge efficiency boosters, and bananas, so the employees don't die of hunger. The amphetamines will keep the heart rate so fast the bananas will be burned off like fuel.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "but what about the pumping rooms for breastfeeding moms? What happens to those?" It's a great question, with a simple solution - Barclays doesn't hire parents anymore. This is about efficiency, remember? Barclays will henceforth only hire asexual and sterile men and women to nullify any risk of pregnancy.

However, for those parents who need to keep their job, Barclays will also offer a free service called "reverse adoption" where you bring in your kids and the company gives them away. This can save dozens of dollars per day from employees getting distracted by things like "family" and "not working."

Between this, the spy cams in CEO toilets, the defecation expert AI, and removing the bathrooms, there will be tons of money saved, a portion of which will go towards financing the amphetamines and bananas. It'll be expensive for all the drugs but the efficiency will be so high it'll be a drop in the bucket!

Pooping during work hours, that's like stealing from your employer. Just hold it in like those dedicated staff at Amazon.

I seem to remember a social media story about someone who was fired for posting a meme on their Facebook account that said "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime; That's why I poop on company time".

If my boss was monitoring me like that, out of work time even more, I would place a GPS tracker on his car as privacy obviously doesn't matter and neither does personal time.

Filthy degenerate time thiefs each and every one of them./s

It is almost like Outer Worlds is not a parody, but an instruction manual.

Already ahead of you: slanted toilet seat that causes leg cramps after a couple minutes.

https://www.today.com/health/new-toilet-design-aims-cut-your...

The fiber thing might have the opposite effect: going poop even more. Best to remind employees to eat at regular times so they poop at regular times. Then one can plan their breaks around pooping. After all, that's what rest breaks are for, after all.

See my update - I've decided that removing all the bathrooms would be more efficient due to how much time and money it would save. They'd be converted to closets that contain only speed and bananas.

you have an aptitude for a CTO position, but T does not stand for `tech`

These sort of systems for desk workers is the equivalent of measuring productivity by lines of code. Completely misses the point of generating value.

This reminds me of one of the big telco company I was working for:

Big announcement came one day that youtube and other "non work releated" websites were blocked to "encourage" people to work "harder". After two days, blocking is gone without futher announcement since some C-level started to complain to IT, that they use it.

I used to work for a company that turned on corporate blocking for a lot of sites. I learned a lot about DNS to trying to get around all of that stuff :). The system was also really stupid because it broke DNS for localhost when using the corporate VPN.

I was briefly at Dell (acquired company I worked for), and they sent out an email to some of the management that mentioned they were spending several million a year on internet services, but half of it was being consumed by YouTube. I'm sure they'd have blocked it if they could, but the CEO was busy posting videos there and sharing using Salesforce's social network feature (Chatter).

Lucky they didn’t selectively unblock the c level

I am pretty sure this will come back just slightly modified. And other companies will do the same. It will be really hard to stop the trend toward total surveillance. It gets cheaper and cheaper every year and more capable.

What should be the response of workers?

Unionize and refuse to work under those conditions.

individually it’s very hard to do something. Unions or laws would help setting up a framework for acceptable workplace conditions. But neither of them are especially liked in the US.

I could see unions making a big comeback in the US. They are still alive and well in the healthcare world (for nursing at least - my wife is a nurse at a large hospital in the US and has been a member of multiple nursing unions).

If you compare profit margins to wage increases there's an obvious (and expected via capitalism) disconnect. It's hard to galvanize this type of activity though. And new unions would definitely need a constitutional overhaul, probably based around transparency and making sure power and decision making is distributed.

Down tools.

Stuff like this is common in the US. And newspapers are still amazed at why the socialist candidate is leading in the polls for one of the presidential election nominations.

Honestly, there is no fix for this sort of thing except through the political system. Corporations will keep pushing the boundaries on maximizing worker productivity because their CEOs get massive bonuses for squeezing 1% more work out of terrified employees like this. Even if the initiatives fail, they can always blame it on economic factors and get their golden parachute.

With the corporations, you can go elsewhere.

With the socialists, you can't leave.

> With the corporations, you can go elsewhere.

Typical quote from the 60s. This may be the reality for in-demand jobseekers in the current bubble, but it's typically not an option in the modern labor force.

Show me the machine guns. It may be difficult to leave - mostly because of what you give up, and the disruption in your life - but nobody is going to shoot you if you try.

Socialist regimes larger than a kibbutz have always been established and maintained by force.

Our current economic system is not perfect, but the results over decades are infinitely better than other systems - particularly socialism.

https://fee.org/articles/extreme-poverty-rates-plummet-under... https://reason.com/2019/01/31/global-poverty-decline-deniali...

Contrast with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... 10s to 100s of millions killed under socialist governments, both direct and also as a result of failures of the central planning. This includes mass killings in Castro's Cuba, USSR, and Nicaragua, whose governments were each endorsed in the 80s by Bernie Sanders. Mischaracterizing non-socialist economies like Denmark is probably a better strategy.

The thing is: you guys are talking about two different things but using the same word. One is talking about Scandinavia and one is talking about The Khmer Rouge.

Well, Bernie was also endorsing Castro's Cuba, the USSR, and the Sandinistas' Nicaragua. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhpVAkBDg5o (He visited each of these countries in the mid-to late 80s, when the atrocities were already well-known).

Not quite the Nordic model.

He praises socialist governments, ignoring their murders and killings of people trying to escape, and when their economies inevitably tank, he shifts to different examples (1980s Bernie "Castro...totally transformed society" visited for the third time in 1989. The "special period" crisis began in 1991 with widespread famine. 2016 "The Cuban economy is a disaster" 2020 "Let's talk about...Denmark!").

The new strategy of endorsing non-socialist economies (Scandinavian countries with capitalist free market economies and strong social safety nets) is probably a better long-term model. Danish Prime Minister: "I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy." https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/denmark-tells-...

When I wrote this comment, I certainly wasn't expecting Bernie would start a new round of endorsing Castro as the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination.

If you have questions about Castro's contributions, you may consider https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-comme... "Pre-Castro, Cuba was already better off than most Latin American countries on such indicators. Also, Mr. Castro's rule knocked Cubans to the near-economic bottom of all Latin American countries"

Americans never feel trapped in their jobs and enjoy the highest mobility.

Is this sarcasm?

> Campaign group Privacy International said: "Data protection rules are very clear, strict and do not allow employers to carry out such monitoring unless they are able to prove that this is strictly necessary and proportionate and it does not severely impact employees' rights.

Is this an EU or UK thing? Does anyone know the law implied?

They'll mean the 'Data Protection' Act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/contents/enacte...

But I'm not familiar to cite a specific section on needing to 'prove that this is strictly necessary and proportionate'.

See also: https://www.gov.uk/personal-data-my-employer-can-keep-about-... - the implication might be that the burden is on the employer to prove that it's not 'sensitive' data or it has permission, and that 'time away from computer' has implications for health & habits and is therefore 'sensitive'.

I briefly worked for Barclays as a subcontractor and they would improve their efficiency much more if they monitored in such detail how slow are the (virtual?) machines they provision remotely to their contractors and employees.

What problem are they trying to solve really?

Seems to me that their management skills, training, hiring is the issue. If there is a perception among managers that workers are slacking or over-working, they should be able to solve the issue without invasive tracking. Moreover, if they are genuinely interested in improving productivity and reducing work-related stress, they'd communicate all of that in advance and resolve employee concerns before installing it.

Sounds like management does not have an open, healthy dialog with employees in general.

Whatever physical or social friction stands in the way between me, an upper-mid-level manager, getting mad because (?? someone cut me off in traffic? indigestion?) and being able to express it by summoning a giant fist and crushing one of my neo-slaves to death with a comical "splat" noise. They're not genuinely interested in anything that doesn't relate to their own prestige or comfort or ability to discharge discomfort.

At work, my staff (20ish developers) usually clock in/out sharp bcoz of attendance, but they take 2+ hours lunch break and ~1hr for prayer breaks (2x within work hour), which I don't mind. But what frustrates me is their work is slow and low quality (not everyone), and I do thought about "short term" tracking like this. Thoughts?

(I just joined, so I "inherited" this)

Are you new to this specific company or the software industry in general? This post reads like the latter. People come barging out of school with a pathological focus on "efficiency", which less-charitably stated is just lighting yourself on fire to serve the company dollar.

Software engineering has a phenomenal burnout rate. By the time they're 30 almost everyone I know starts thinking about their exit. I honestly don't believe software engineers can consistently put in more than 4 hours of good work a day on corporate code without being ground down in the long term. The people who stick around tend to be those who sit in meetings all day rather than actually writing code.

All of this is to say that you should prioritize things people have in short supply (happiness, dignity) over things corporations have in spades (money, time). Don't be that person who starts keeping track of how others use their work hours.

You're largely just going to lose the people that are genuinely trying but just aren't as productive for whatever reason and give legitimacy to those who aren't as honest who will learn how to game the metrics to defend their jobs. The former can be mentored and made more efficient, even with 2 hour lunch and prayer breaks, while the latter will just dig themselves deeper and cost the company more and more. Meanwhile, your best people who can find another job anywhere will leave immediately because they don't have to deal with the changes.

I'm not a manager, but if I were I'd probably try to track their goals and projects foremost, and let them manage their time under those constraints.

Micromanaging will just piss people off, and cause them to look for work elsewhere. Challenge them and let your quality expectations be known.

If the work is slow and low quality, you should analyze the decision making processes behind how work is assigned. At my previous job (as a developer), tickets were assigned based on who was interested, rather than who would best complete it (i.e. the dev who recently built something similar). Also, I'd recommend figuring out a way for your developers to share codebase knowledge effectively. It's much more efficient to spend an hour pair-programming with someone than debugging an issue for 2 days.

Set expectations on the work, not over what periods in the day it's done.

Exactly this. More managers need to start tracking the Work and not the Time.

'2 hours lunch break and 1hr for prayer breaks' and the work is low quality.

You don't need to track those people, you need to replace them.

I might agree with you if all you quoted was the low quality part. My experience in software is that it’s typical to only get ~4 good hours out of someone per day. That’s 2or3 1.5-2hr streches. So the 4 hours worth of breaks, just means it takes 8 hours to get those 4 hours in. I’ve worked with devs who can maybe squeeze in another period into an 8 hour day (and if you’re reading HN you are probably more likely to be one), but I don’t think that’s something you can force someone to do, and probably shouldn’t assume you can hire for.

As for the low quality output, I’ve seen teams improve significantly by implementing good biweekly retros (note that bad retros can make things worse). Fostering the right atmosphere can do wonders to bring out latent talent. Also things like tooling can really help. CI with linting, and a no-judgement ‘you broke the build you fix the build’ rule can also really help.

A 2 hours lunch break is the standard in France.

"You can't fire these people" is also the standard in France.

Also standard: a stagnant economy (~0.25% GDP growth on 0.18% population growth) and sky-high youth unemployment (20-25%).

You can definitely fire people in France. I don't know how you got the idea you can't.

Also quality of life is perhaps more important than these numbers. People don't care about the GDP growth, don't want to have artifical employment with terrible and badly paid jobs (looking at you Germany), and prefer to eat good food for 2 hours.

People don't care about the GDP growth

They most certainly do when thinking about about the social programs GDP funds.

People care when they can't be hired for a good job, they care when their paycheck is stuck at the same level forever, and they care whether their government services are any good. If GDP isn't going to pay for those things, what is? Debt? Plunder?

Maybe you can get away with being absent for 3 hours of the workday if you're competent - but according to the OP they are not.

Seems unfair to one's employer and one's colleagues.

Does anyone here know if HSBC is still using this sapience software? I know they bought into this a couple of years ago.

"Barclays said axing the tracking system was a response to "colleague feedback", but would not say if it was permanent."

Quietly put it in when the controversy has died down, and disable these notifications:

"and sent warnings to those spending too long on breaks."

I’m amazed that someone would think that the investment banking division would be an appropriate trial. I don’t know about long breaks but that seems like a crew that definitely puts in over 8 hours a day.

Employee panopticons only work if you want your employees to perform a precisely defined task with no improvisation. As soon as you watch someone their creativity drops to ~0.

> In a statement, the bank said: "We always intended to listen to colleague feedback as part of this limited pilot which was intended to tackle issues such as individual over-working as well as raise general productivity."

Riiiight.

If they intended to listen, or indeed cared an iota about their employees, they wouldn't have rolled this out in the first place. This level of intrusive monitoring would very clearly be hated by those it monitored, and make then feel very uncomfortable.

Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it?

Having listened to some of the conversations in my MBA class, I am genuinely not surprised.

The current consensus seems to be that cellphones spying on your every move is ok so logically it does make sense to just expand it. This had to be scaled back since people are not sufficiently conditioned yet.

Speaking from US perspective, Baxter has some ridiculous user monitoring tools in their call centers.

Easy. The people at management level aren't the ones being monitored. There's no cost to them. Easy to trade someone else's happiness for your own profits.

"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

> Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it?

They valued maximizing the amount of profit one worker produces over privacy.

I rather doubt that miserable, downtrodden employees are more productive than happy, motivated ones are.

They don't teach that in MBA classes. They just teach that employees who aren't at their desks aren't being productive right now.

Systems like that are actually great for the employees, because every minute is accounted for and when you stay an hour longer at work you can expect to be paid for it at overtime rate.

In a previous company I worked for, they implemented a clock-in / clock-out system. The system "broke" after a month when employees asked for their overtime sheets. It was never replaced.

Not when everyone is classed as Exempt staff and therefore ineligible for Overtime.

Except in the US exempt position are subject to pretty harsh restrictions. Just because a technical position is OT Exempt in the US that does not translate to the employer being allowed to request they work "OT" for free (Like asking you to +5/10 every week). In fact many large companies had been slapped by the DOL and forced to move those technical positions and even managerial in some cases to hourly due to systemic abuses.

Dont ever let anyone tell you that you are defenseless as an OT exempt salary employee in a technical position. Contact a Lawyer if you feel you are being abused and your management refuses to fix the issues.

It's weird that exempt employees can be required to clock in and out. My current employer does this but claims it for tracking capital vs operational expenses and has nothing to do with productivity or policy enforcement. I'm rather skeptical. One thing is for sure, the definition of what constitutes an exempt employee has expanded far beyond its original intent.

I'm exempt and have to do a timecard because of how we bill projects internally.

Very common if you're handling government contracts/etc. too. Often a requirement.

I think you forgot the /s at the end.

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