Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

This happened to me years ago. I was put in an empty office at the opposite end from my boss, and because he couldn't walk up behind me to see me working, he secretly installed a program on my computer that took a screenshot every 30 seconds (or so?).

I quickly noticed that my computer was hitching regularly (when the screenshot was taken - this was in the late 90s BTW), and so investigated my computer on a day when he wasn't in the office.

After finding what looked like malware on my computer, I checked with other colleagues - and the other owner - and no one had any idea what it was.

So we put the office network on lockdown, halted everything and started the process of rotating all our passwords and scanning every computer in the office looking for signs of intrusion, etc..

We lost a solid day of productivity for everyone, and when we finally reached the other boss, he owned up to what he had done, and the other owner - who had spent the day in a panic - wasn't thrilled about it to say the least.

The irony was that I was probably the most productive person in that office (in my humble opinion).

Two sides of the story.

One: people that are doing this are likely to have already been bad bosses. I don't think this changes anything.

Two: I work for a large bank. My director, on a town hall, told us they do understand that not everybody will be able to focus on the job as before and that they expect us to spend less time actually working and be unavailable more often. Then he URGED us to actually do so. To take time off, to deal with family problems first. He wanted us to know it is ok and that they will allow it without deducting pay so that we don't have to worry about our salaries.

I am pretty sure there will be people that will abuse this. You know what? People who do this probably have already been bad employees so not much is lost. Most people I know to be good employees feel very happy about this as a convenient option and do whatever they can to use it as little as possible. I see this as an investment that is most likely return in other ways, employee happiness, retention, engagement from the staff you really want engaged.

My institution tried to implement "productivity" software during the shutdown. I, and one other director, were the sole voices of reason, saying "this is a waste of money and time when we're busy enough as it is".

We apparently were persuasive, they cancelled that buy. Then, once we were out, executive leadership tried to implement a 'task tracking' timesheet to be filled out by every employee.

I took a HUGE chance on my career. I e-mailed all leadership and the board, explaining that implementing this was needless busy work. If we were working remotely, and the expectations were that the same things were getting done, implementing something like this and NOT when we were physically present would just prove that 'management' at our institution meant control of people's lives.

We're higher education, and everyone is slightly anti-establishment in some fashion. This put the hair up on everyone's neck. One hellstorm of an e-mail thread later, and they killed that form, too.

Management just needs to realize that people fuck around at work. It is not important whether that is at physical work, or remote. It will happen. What is important is that you evaluate the work done, and, unless you're working on billable hours, evaluate whether there are more efficient ways to do business. If you enter those conversations honestly, then your people will have just enough time to fuck around, while still being super productive.

Being human is part of work. Fucking around with the people you spend a lot of time with is part of being human.

We had a bad manager at my last company who really wanted to do this sort of thing.

I said to him “So this is an interesting proposal... if we install this software then I can save on management costs by replacing your position with this spyware?” He never brought it up again and we later just got rid of him completely.

Micromanagement and this sort of spying rarely builds high performing teams. Managing worker productivity is one thing but blatant spying is a sign of much deeper problems with a company and its management.

I’ve generally found a fairly strong inverse correlation between how good a manager is and the amount of paranoia they have on their teams not doing what they should. Good managers build great teams and then trust them.

Two things:

Productivity is going to plunge no matter what, with the possible exception of singles who don’t have roommates. There is no way that during an ad hoc and unorganized push to work remote (though necessary in this circumstance) can result in good productivity, monitoring or not. Under the best of circumstances it would take months for a mass of people to adjust and be productive.

The apex for open office design was reached and we’ll go back to something more normal. It’s funny people derided “cubicle farms” but we’re more or less okay being in a “bullpen” like setting cuz it was sold as being counter cultural and cool.

I have moved from "solutions architect" to "WFH consultant" at the behest of my clients.

The problem I am seeing is that many managers have NO idea how their employees actually work. If you take your average MacDonalds manager they can (mostly) work every station in the joint and then know how to do MORE things. Your average corporate middle manager has NO idea what their staff does or how.

To be quite honest, most of these middle managers are not only at a loss as to what they should be doing but are also dealing with the isolation far worse than "staff". I have come to realize that a lot of their time was spent on social aspects of the workplace and they have been removed.

I have one client who wants to snapshot staff at their computers, and another who is ready to cut middle management fat... we live in interesting times.

As someone who has recently seen a lot of freelance work as a "Remote Coach" for companies who aren't used to remote teams, I have the following observation: If you have trouble managing remote teams, you're likely not great at managing teams in general.

The largest part of my calls were not about remote specific topics, but rather general management topics like result-oriented management vs time management and how trust and alignment is foundational for motivation.

Not surprising in hindsight, but due to selection bias from working remotely for many years now, I'm used to companies who don't require spyware to get results from their team, and was quite taken aback at first.

This may be hard for those of us in tech to comprehend; not everyone can function without having a boss to keep them 100% accountable.

In 2004, I worked for a startup and we had beer in the fridge. We'd have an occasional afternoon where we would grab them. No big deal.

Most startups I worked at embraced a similar attitude.

Finally I worked for a company that went a step further and had beer on tap, but had rules, no beer until 5p M-Th, and 4p Friday.

It was foreign to me, but understood that in other divisions, the types of employees (like inside sales) were essentially entry-level roles.

Many of us in industry are used to flex hours, and the ability to remotely (including WFH), that we forget that for many others, it's novel. Seeing "asses in chairs" was a proxy for diagnosing productivity deficiencies, and bosses thrust into this new paradigm of working haven't necessarily picked up the skill sets to effectively manage remote teams.

I found this article pretty funny, but not in the way intended.

Here is a tip for managers (new and experienced out there): If you can't tell by their work product if your people are working or not, then you have a much bigger problem than what they are doing on their computer when you aren't looking.

My experience as a new manager was pretty chaotic. I knew it was my job to lead my team to get something done but between telling them to get something done, and it being done, how could I know that they were working on it? It drove me nuts for a while so I asked a friend who had been a manager for while what they did and the answer surprised me in its simplicity, it was "How much time do you give people to do something, and did they do it?"

The secret was having something that was unambiguously measurable as "done" and establishing that expectation at the beginning. These days I'll say to the team "When we are done, these things will be true ..." and list off the set of things we can say are true to indicate completion. I'll also note them in my notebook so that I can track them over time.

The whole team knows what the exit criteria are so everyone knows if we're done or not. Once you get to know your team better you can add incentive things, so that conversation would sound more like, "The minimum we have to do to insure this is done are x, y, and z. If we can also do p, q, or r it will have this additional positive effect."

It also means I can go to a team member at a 1:1 and say, "Ok, I'd like you to take x, what needs to be true for you to be able to say that x is true?" Which encourages them to break up the problem into smaller bits.

If you have weekly 1:1s with people then you can check in on the status of their smaller bits, toward making the larger bits true. You always know who is doing work and who is under performing or needs help.

For more service type teams (like IT or SRE) you measure things like "our backlog has not grown over the last 30 days" or "the median time to resolve tickets is less than 24 hrs" etc. The key is you can measure it, and the measurement is not subjective.

Managers who need "spyware" to figure out if there folks are working or not need to be replaced with managers who know how to manage.

Upwork has a system to automatically capture screenshots while a user is on the "clock". While we never request this functionality, some people enable it. I found it interesting to browse, however, I found it distracts from the ultimate goal, work product. It can also breed distrust, i.e. instead of looking at what your co-workers/team gets done, you start asking questions like, why is this person doing that. My point is, it's counterproductive.

What we found was very product was goal setting and work product review at regular intervals. I.e. once a week evaluate the code quality and velocity of work. What we found was if it's good, it's almost always good, and if it's bad, its bad from the start and doesn't really improve.

“ Frost declined to comment on whether Garrabrants, one of America’s top-paid bank CEOs in 2018, is subject to the same monitoring when he works from home.”

Tells it all pretty much...

PSA for businesses: how about instead of spying on the deadweight you fire them and reward the productive employees.

There are tons of work from home employees (who normally work from home) who are 10x more productive than the in-office ones, because they realize the value of what they have.

It's too bad most people will only work when you're looking over their shoulder, but lets not keep that on life-support with spyware. Let it die and usher in a time when people actually take the initiative to do their work.

Mark Cuban got it right last week when he said that the way companies treat their employees over the next few months will define their brand for the next several decades. Companies insisting on this level of control are simply adding cost now and making employee retention difficult for when we end up coming out of this. If your company can't handle ground-level employees having some autonomy in their work, then your business model isn't likely to survive.

Besides, given the extraordinary circumstances I don't think it's fair to expect everyone to be equally productive to being in the office. In addition to the fact that some people just don't perform as well without the structure of an office (I'm personally one of them), we've got kids to take care of, extra chores to do, and the general anxiety coming from the media. People are not going to be 100% right now, so the need to build a work culture that can support that reality is more important now than ever.

We need a tutorial on how to detect if you're being monitored like this. As an employee I would like to know just so that I'm aware. I don't necessarily think my company is doing this but it would still be great if there was some kind of a way to at least know.

It's a given that any company you work for has full and complete access to your work email and private Slack workspace messages(DM or private channel). Same goes for MS Teams or anything else similarly paid for and/or run by the company.

I would especially like know if they were doing something like:

- keystroke logging

- taking screenshots at intervals

- process monitoring

- deep packet inspection

My recommendation:

A) Audit your base machine for any suspicious processes. Most of the time, something will stick out. For Windows boxes, pay attention to the Startup/Autorun sections of the Windows Registry/Group Policy. On *Nix boxes, either unit or init scripts; audit your launched plists.

B) If you do suspect information exfiltration/monitoring; cripple/subvert the sensors/information stream. Exact details will vary depending on the nature of the spyware. A hardware bug is harder to do deal with than a software one, and some forms of software bugging are more difficult to circumvent than others.

C) If it is really overt and obnoxious; organize with coworkers. The only thing that'll eventually get the message across to unscrupulous and invasive employers is collective organized resistance. One or two or up to 100 depending on size they may not give a damn, but when half the workforce is up in arms, there will have to be a carefully considered response.

D) Always be ready to leave. Seriously. Particularly in today's day and age. I don't think it's natural at first, as we all at some level I think hope that our employer has some intrinsic loyalty toward us as an employee; but that really isn't the case at all culturally anymore. Don't let it hold you back from doing your best, but always keep in mind they are making more off you than you them; otherwise it isn't a business that's going to be staying around for very long.

A manager wanting to use spy software is overtly telling the world and themselves they are a poor manager.

No, just no. If a boss can't communicate deliverables and verify that these are getting finished, they are too incompetent to manage their domain. They shouldn't be scraping personal information off screencaps, video or audio feeds. This doesn't even seem like it ought to be legal.

Workers are there to do a job, not have every personal detail monitored and tracked. Should the show password feature be turned off in UIs given how much sensitive information shows up on a screen? How much control of people's lives can a free society hand over to shareholders before it's no longer considered humane?

Eventually someone will come up with a site that lists which companies install spyware on worker's computers, after which there will be a shaming period, and then only the scummiest companies will continue with such a policy.

Here is the key part of the article:

> Straight-up Big Brother, perhaps, but it’s perfectly legal for businesses to keep an unblinking eye on employees as long as they disclose they’re doing it.

It is the companies equipment, network (on their side of the VPN), time, and so forth. That being said it is legally fine so long as they disclose they are doing so.

If they monitor in ways that have not been disclosed they risk of a class action lawsuit should that knowledge be leaked to employees.

Let's look at a far more extreme example: US Army. US Army is not allowed to monitor user activity in that way and all users of Army networks are made aware of this. Users must also sign their agreement to an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) before gaining access to the network. The Army example is more extreme because the Army owns the computers, the network, and all physical network infrastructure that companies typically lease to ISPs. The Army has the ability to monitor user activity in ways that companies cannot and yet the Army does not do so because it's illegal without a probable cause search warrant or command directive with legal authorization.

For example, computers with an Army image monitor for attachment of mass storage devices and moment a phone or hard drive is plugged in the network administrator is immediately notified, the local network switch is automatically dropped from the network, and a report is automatically drafted for the respective violating unit. The Army can monitor for that because it is a violation of the AUP users signed, but they cannot monitor any associated content without probably cause and an AUP violation on its own is not probable cause.

I have heard, on the other hand, the Air Force monitors absolutely everything because they require their users to sign a consent to monitoring directive to gain access to the network.

I would like to see a study of the productivity drain of having to have someone interpret all this extra data. Who looks at all the screenshots and keystrokes and logins to decide if they're kosher? It seems ridiculous and meaningless.

A manager in another department has sent a spreadsheet around for WFHers to fill in what they do hour by hour. Aside from the relentless mocking that the guy has received behind the scenes, does anybody believe that he'll be reading all that and gaining useful insights?

I think that assumptions on how people are going to act unsupervised are a great window on how the person making those assumptions would act in those circumstances.

I wrote an article regarding this topic few days ago: https://medium.com/@mjasinski5/how-companies-failed-a-trust-...

The same its happening in Poland and probably all over the world. Companies do not trust their employees.. and it doesnt end on buying spy software.

Where I work there is less focus on micromanaging people's time and more focus on results. Having your activity micromanaged at that level is mentally exhausting. When I was in college and had no skills whatsoever I used to do Lionbridge/Leapforce which had you do all kinds of stuff like rank search results, check videos for nudity, etc. They had an extension that would monitor all your activity and if you stopped and got distracted it would impact your rating/health and you could eventually be fired (not sure if firing is the right word its a gig type thing). IMO this is very nerve wracking and not mentally healthy for workers to experience. Treat people like adults and on average they will act like adults. You will always have underperformers regardless of whether you are micromanaging their time or not. Sometimes I want to take a break to play with my dog or decompress after a long meeting. Everyone should have the same right to do so. Ironically, archaic notions about micromanaging workers time works against employers more than working for them.

Human to human communication is such a better way to do it.

We've adjusted our "standups" (I say it with quotes as our standups are pretty informal compared to what some folks describe) to include folks who usually weren't included (president of company) before and done a better job of tracking time on our own.

That seems to make everyone happier... granted we're a small shop.

There's probably a "bad boss / culture" thing here for folks who are desperate to do these things... are just going to do it and don't know / care to do better / have no clue how to really grok productivity and the inherent vagaries of it.

Everyone else is just chugging along without these issues.

I got hit with something similar the other day. The funny part is; I have systems in place to document everything I do as part of compliance. Plus it just makes my job easier. There's nothing worse than solving the same problem twice.

Lately my employer has been so on edge they want me to document the work I'm doing. So basically they want me to perform some work, document that for compliance purposes, and then document that I worked and documented it again just so someone can read it in their inbox instead of the self serve help desk. It's insanity.

This thread is a funny coincidence. I was looking at mice to buy yesterday and came across this thing [0]. It's a dongle to make it look like your cursor moved because so many corporate laptops are locked down and it cant be done in software. People use them for everything from keeping the screen on to avoid going afk on work hours.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/WiebeTech-Programmable-Mouse-Jiggler-...

My workplace has been very reasonable about this. They were early to move to working from home, and simply accepted that it would hurt productivity. And yet the first remote-working sprint from my team has been incredibly productive. Less distraction from meetings and big lunches together, perhaps. I do miss the direct contact with my team mates, and we can't have the spontaneous brainstorming/whiteboard sessions we used to have, so we do need to figure out how to do those remotely.

Is anyone working at a tech company where this is happening to you? I can't imagine the stress this would cause someone.

If anyone is considering leaving the enterprise, and going freelance. Think twice, especially in the current climate - https://medium.com/@alexellisuk/what-you-need-to-know-before...

The boss of my girlfriend did this even when they were on-site.

I think such people should be forbidden from founding/leading a company. Nationalise that thing and be done with it.

Upwork has largely required contractors to install and run their spy software in order to earn money through their system.

Thankfully MacOS Sierra put the kibosh on the capture ability without special permissions. I denied that request and the client never brought it up.

I do get why these tools are needed, however I find the use of them counterproductive and creates an adversarial posture between clients and contractors.

Ugh I sat at a desk in front of our CIO once (I was service desk). I wasnt too concerned but boy was it didtracting! I couldnt see him so he could have been watching me all day, or just doing his work. The bottom line is it made me more stressed, lowered my productivity and I got VERY good at flipping between our asset database, ticketing tool and email.

What if a remote employee makes one room available in their home for full monitoring, camera, audio, whatever?

If the employee is not in the room, that's like a break.

Employers monitor cubicles in offices. Would it be worse if the are allowed to monitor one room in the house of a remote employee?

Feel free to discuss. Pros? cons? privacy issues? any other other thoughts, comments.

I wonder if the companies who make these products use their own product on their employees? I can't imagine them not (hard to sell a product you don't even use), but on the otherhand, it would be especially insulting as an employee to be developing the very tool that is being used to spy on you.

Here's a crazy idea. Look at the worker's output. "Keeping tabs" on your workers doesn't tell you anything about the bottom line. The worker's output does.

Can't determine the worker's output? Then you have much bigger problems than remote workers taking a nap in the afternoon.

And the old adage of "measure output, not input" comes to the fore again.

If you don't trust your staff to do good work when you're not looking, you hired the wrong people.

On the other hand, if productivity is within acceptable limits then why the need for monitoring in the first place?

This is mildly infuriating, I’d quit on the spot because of 1) dignity, I’m not a slave 2) this is illegal in most jurisdictions 3) this shit means trust between employer-employee is non-existant in both directions, that’s not a way to get any decent work done

"Panic-buying" is buying something with the intent of securing it before the resource runs out. Given the near infinite scalability of software, the phrase seems poorly applied here.

If your boss is doing this to you, you need a union. The economy is crashing, while you need a paycheck, you still have a lot of power. The bosses are feeling extremely threatened right now.

Of course they would. The modern work environment is as much about control as it is about money, if not even more.

Graeber goes a bit into this topic in his book bullshit jobs.

Is this really that bad? A little creepy I guess. But with remote work, you do want to have at least some system in place to make sure people are actually working.

At my business we all track our hours (me included) and the app takes screenshots of the screen every 15 minutes. It's really in case there is a problem. Not like I have time to check it / watch my employees work. It's more of an invisible system that keeps people honest. Plus it gives me peace of mind so I don't have to worry if people are working or not. I think it helps me micromanage less.

If you do not trust people then why did you hire them?

“It’s not because of lack of trust,” Miller said, who compared the software to banks using security cameras. “It’s because it’s imprudent not to do it.”

Puke!

Is this really a war they want to start, considering the people they're messing with were often hired for their computer skills?

Ironic that Bloomberg is reporting it, since Bloomberg spied on clients, and spied on employees' computers 30 years ago.

If you need spy software to get an idea of your colleagues' productivity you've already failed on several levels.

The more spy software a boss buys, the more insecure they really are about themselves.

honestly, if i were a manager and stuff wasn't getting done I would want to see what was going on. And that's a pretty common situation when people are implementing complex things like software.

Is there a map of where this is legal and illegal?

butts in seats equals results

Paywalled

I can not imagine wanting to work for someplace that doesn't have the infrastructure to allow for remote work. I'm lucky enough to be able to be choosy about who receives my labor and it's unfortunate that some people have to be relegate to working for bosses who fail to connect with people on a basic interpersonal level. It would be a good outcome for allowing remote work to become a new normal. Give the workers the option. You rely on them and your boss job is meaningless without them.

“Panic buying” is the new word for “purchases I condemn”

Aww, that's so cute, a humans making around x500 to x1000 more money as a median humans in their companies are crying about "unfaaair". Cry some more, @#$%^&*.

PS: somehow my 1000+ ppl international company manages to work from home and deliver results without authoritarian tools.