Company sends remote worker photo of herself, fires her for going to kitchen | Hacker News Reader

Company sends remote worker photo of herself, fires her for going to kitchen

dailydot.com

85 pointsdanielfoster62 comments

I don’t agree with the firing, but let’s be clear about what she was fired for because it wasn’t going to the kitchen. It was for posting negative content about her employer on social media. This could get you fired from practically any job and has naff all to do with working from home.

The surveillance is a whole other issue but I feel that point will be overlooked since everyone will focus on her disciplinary. Which is a shame.

If I was paying money to someone, and they were slagging me off online, I'd immediately cease paying them.

Depends on the details. For a lower level position I might give a written warning, on the provision they take down the offending post(s). But since she’s named a client, that could harm business relations. So in that instance the severity of the misdeed is greater.

I’m sure their performance would be taken into account too. If someone is generally a high performing individual who had this one incident then a more lenient outcome might be expected. But if the company are already unhappy with the employee’s performance then this might just be used as an excuse to terminate their employment.

How would you feel if you were paying them and they were slagging off you?

Did you ever consider listening to the reasons they were slagging you off? Was it true, did you make changes

They should come to me with their issues, not social media. If a mutually acceptable accommodation can't be reached, it's time to part ways. After that, then they can slag me off online all they want, short of slander.

> They should come to me with their issues, not social media.

So many companies say this to just fire people that bring feedback. Whistleblowers are needed for a reason.

This concept that companies are always right is alien to me. I have only heard it from management, and only towards subordinates because management are the first ones to badly complain about their own salaries and jobs.

Whistleblowing is something different.

> This concept that companies are always right is alien to me.

I wasn't saying that they were. I just said I don't care to pay people that say hateful things about me. I seriously doubt you or anyone else would, either. Suppose you hired a maid, who then posted online about all your unattractive habits?

I answered that question. In short, “it’s nuanced”.

There needs to be a line drawn somewhere and the company suspending that individual while that review her case to see which side of the line she falls seems like an entirely reasonable reaction.

Or you could treat them like humans and they wouldn’t be complaining about being poorly treated while you’re paying them?

Cratchit, you'll want the whole day off tomorrow, I suppose.

Social media is no longer a side technology, it is the main method of communication for a generate or more of adults.

Demanding workers adhere to a restriction on their inalienable right to free speech cannot continue.

It doesn’t matter if their main method of communication was crop dusting entire neighbourhoods with thousands of tattooed teddy bears. What matters is the content of that speech. If you’re publicly slagging off a company that you’re contracted with (whether that’s as a supplier or employee) then that company is reasonably within their rights to say you’re bringing their image into disrepute and thus terminate that contract.

The only issue social media brings I to the equation is that it makes it much easier for silly people to post silly things to wider audiences (and easier for employees to evidence that silliness too).

Now given this employees job is support and that she’s already named the client that her employees serves, this could theoretically impact her employers renewal as a supplier (because that client are just as much in their right to terminate their contract as the employees are). Which is a pretty serious problem and might even cost her employers more than one FTE in lost revenue — in fact I’d almost guarantee that would be the financial cost to her employer in such a scenario otherwise it wouldn’t make financial sense hiring that employees to begin with.

So what would you do? Keep an employee on the payroll who is costing you more than the value they add? Also bare in mind that they’re (if I read the article correctly) still within they’re probation and thus are still yet do demonstrate themselves.

In this instance the company’s approach is correct: review her case but make it explicit that a potential outcome might be dismissal. This is exactly how a well structured HR department should operate even within territories with much stricter employment laws.

The fact that she’s still sharing internal company discussions despite now being aware of the reach is has and the potential ramifications shows a lack of remorse. And that wouldn’t help her case during the review.

This is not a free speech issue, the government isn't involved.

Why would companies want to pay people to publicly trash them online?

You're conflating the 1st Amendment with free speech. The former is rooted in the latter. Free speech is a natural right, applicable to all situations. This is a free speech issue.

This is the argument used by people who think you should be able to say anything on Facebook, Twitter etc. And the response is always the same - you have the right to say what you want, but there are consequences. In this case, firing.

You made the same mistake as the higher comment. Yes, this is how it works legally in the US. But the concept of free speech is not tied to US law. It is a free speech issue and it’s perfectly conceivable that a countries laws would reflect these rights for social media protections.

You’re agreeing with the op. You do have free speech on social media. You also have consequences. Same as on the street, work, school, playground, grocery store, car dealership…

Employers should not and can not apply consequences for any reason they like. You could say “you are free to wear any color shirt you like, but if you pick the wrong one, you could be fired”.

That may be true in America but it isn’t in other countries. Arguably some speech on social media should be protected and not a reason for employment termination.

This is true in Europe and I guess in any other normal country.

If I stayed to insult my employer (wherever, including social media) they would have the right to fire me.

If I do not agree, I can go to court.

Of course, the nature of my comments matter. If I say that I like the color blue and they do not, they cannot do anything.

If I say that their products suck, they will fire me and the court will agree.

If I say that their products are dangerous (whistle blowing) then they can try to fire me but I will be protected by law.

in germany you have the right to publicly share your own opinion about your employer. you may not insult them, but you may well criticize them or their products, working conditions or anything else that is factually true.

you may also share your political opinions, something US companies seemingly often like to stop, as long as you are not disruptive.

>Arguably some speech on social media should be protected and not a reason for employment termination.

Why? Not saying I disagree, but I find the selective support of this concept interesting. So I'm curious to hear your argument and the framework for determining what speech should be protected on a private platform.

The problem in my view is tech companies have squeezed their way in to our lives and managed to get the majority to post their private conversations publicly. So posting a mild complaint about your place of work on social media has become today's version of complaining to a friend in person or on the phone.

Yes I do think employers do have reason to want to protect their image online, but I also don't like the situation where people are always under public watch. So either you should be allowed to say these things on social media without losing your job, or social media companies should be cracked down on for what they have done.

>So posting a mild complaint about your place of work on social media has become today's version of complaining to a friend in person or on the phone.

Significant difference in audience size and staying power of the comment. Telling a person privately stays private and is likely gone forever. Even if they blab to someone it's just second hand at that point. Posting shit about your employer on social media is more akin to putting it on a billboard or writing an op-ed in the paper trashing them.

Yes, but newspapers didn’t socially engineer everyone in to writing these things and publishing them to the world. It was the norm for your comments to be private and forgotten. Now it’s the norm for the same style of comments to be public.

I’m saying the system is at fault here. Either what the tech companies have done or the fact that a normal action is now a firable offence which has become a new problem.

It's not normal though. Most people would never consider shit talking their employer on social media. People with poor decision making skills do.

I think the negative content about the employer was the fact that her employer was monitoring their employees through the webcam, anything directly said about the company I see is other users reacting to the employer's surveillance.

The employee is just stating a fact about their employer which everyone feels is scandalous or negative including the employer themselves.

I feel like this is why unions are so important for lower wage jobs.

If my employer wanted to spy on me via Webcam I could simply refuse and tell them I'll walk because I'm confident that my specialization would keep me employed, or at worst have me onboarded elsewhere within a week or two.

People in these high turnover type jobs don't have the luxury to demand to be treated with basic human decency unless they band together. It's sickening.

Why in the world is this downvoted? I’d genuinely like to understand what’s disagreeable about this take.

Because this website is mostly frequented by highly specialised professionals, which some times do not empathise with the struggles of lower-wage workers.

> which some times do not empathise with the struggles of lower-wage workers.

I was having a conversation with a programmer, I told him I am worried about driverless tech becoming mainstreams and people losing their jobs which is not good for society. The other guy said dont worry they will find another job, that is when I realised that people in Tech live in their own bubble.

Possibly because it implies that higher-demand jobs do not need unions. Which is a position some may disagree with.

Given how anti-union HN and tech generally is, this is a pretty charitable read.

That would be an asinine interpretation of the comment. How can "A needs B" imply "C does not need B"?

That's not really what happened. Reading "low wage jobs need unions" as implying "high wage jobs do not need unions" seems reasonable to me, because there's no need to specify "low wage jobs" if the distinction wasn't necessary.

Probably because HR and management are among the higher paid jobs, which not only don't need unions but flat out hate them.

Not arguing directly with you, but the sentiment you suspect others have - I agree some may read GP this way.

It’s a bit of a leap from “With my job, I have the luxury of…” to “Unions for my job are not needed.”

I definitely do not intend to imply that. But I do believe unions are much more imminently necessary for those who aren't in high demand.

Significantly better employment law and employee rights would help.

I think unions for remote customer service roles would be counterproductive. Why would the company not just move the operation overseas?

I don't like unions in most cases, but I honestly think it would be a really bad idea in this case.

Unions are important for all jobs, ask the pilots Union, for example.

If you get X you can get even more of you have a better negotiating power.

Why do people believe that unions are a magic bullet and that in a unionshop something like this would be impossible?

I am here to tell you anyone that claims that clearly has no experience with US employment unions

While true the union will protect lazy, long tenured employees that do not rock the boat, follow the rules, and do the exact amount of required work (no more or less)

Troublesome employees, that rock the boat, are toss out just as fast in a union shop, there is just more paperwork

Very true, after the employment agreement is made, a union doesn’t protect the employee who is intentionally violating company policies as part of the agreement. It basically protects the employee from the company from intentionally violating their own policies towards the employee by giving them a layer of due process before they are terminated.

People on here might try to argue that the union would never allow surveillance, but I know from experience working in a union company, unionized employees were directly surveilled, supervised, and measured.

A union is what the label says. It's a union of employees. If your union is bad and everyone knows it's bad but doesn't do anything to change it, you're treating it like another employer.

You have to get involved.

Wow, this is absurd. I hope she names the company and finds a better job soon.

Most comments here are just based on the title. The commenters not even read into the article. This is somewhat a phishing message to test how shallow the reading is in a modern internet world.

I'd argue the root cause of the firing, the one that prompted the videos, was being actively and constantly monitored by her employer. The videos came second, but being locked out and told to contact her supervisor was because she stepped away to get something to eat.

Disagree with her method all you want (and I'd think you're right to), but her point stands: it's fucked up to monitor ones employees that closely.

Am I misreading this? They work for a Fintech and their computer locks when they are away from their computer? Sounds like a misunderstood (or badly implemented?) security measure.

No, there are several company the market these intrusive "productivity" monitoring solutions that monitor employee's actively, some even claim to be able use eye tracking to see when an employee looks away from the screen let alone walk away...

They monitor everything about the system, it is very very creepy.

I think this kind of surveillance should be illegal, but she was cooking, not just in the kitchen for a moment. If it was the first time maybe locking her out of PC was too much, a warning could be enough. But it wasn't and still she posted on social media, it's her fault.

> She claims she wasn’t warned when she accepted the job her pay rate would be dependent upon how many hours she works each week…

This part is confusing, did she not know she only gets paid for the time she works or does her hourly rate vary based on how many hours she works, like reverse overtime?

I briefly worked in a miserable call center 20-ish years ago. They paid one rate while you were on a customer call or available in the phone queue, and minimum wage at all other times.

I imagine this is 20-ish years of "progress."

I think it’s meant to say (with an example given I believe) that they didn’t tell her they would be the arbitrator of how many hours she worked, regardless of how many hours she actually worked.

There is a clear trend where companies want to abuse workers and want to them to not complain about it, and if they complain, they are fired.

Companies are using the fear of being fired to silence workers about their abuses, and I think it is working better then expected.

Look here how many people think companies are right when they fire workers that complain about abuses, and not only that, but how many people here think it's ok for companies to abuse workers.

I'm actually really surprised about this. Is it really still possible to take photos of someone via their webcam without the webcam recording light turning on?

I thought those things were hard wired in these days to prevent people spying like this.

Yes, it is possible even with some latest generation webcam designs.

A PoC video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggRU9gGVRzE

I feel I should lead with we're not watching people at work and we have no plans to.

However, people wonder why my work laptop is closed on a shelf, only used from a KVM, with the internal audio devices disabled.

If I need to be heard my KVM has a USB audio device I plug in a headset. I don't generally leave it plugged in either.

Supposedly the latest MacBook ones can’t do this but you have no way to verify that and some old models had issues. Better to just use a sticker if it matters to you.

“Y’all these people done locked my computer. They done locked my computer because I was in the kitchen cooking. Bro, this is why they don’t want us working from home,”

Is this person really working customer service? Also, are they admitting to cooking for themselves in company time?

What am I supposed to do when troubleshooting fatigue settles in? Keep staring blankly at the screen or make me some food and go for a walk around the woods behind my house? In the office I'd grab a coffee and go for a walk, was I stealing time from multiple companies because I didn't stare at my screen and instead solved the issue later with a fresh mind?

As long as they can accomplish their job duties I don't think it should matter what they're doing in their own home while working.

We don’t know if this person is accomplishing their job duties.

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