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Comment by shmatt | Hacker News Reader

Kind of terrifying to see all the comments just believing it as is

Line managers, even managers of managers, would have 0 loyalty to the company and could easily prove this is all true. The thousands of employees could prove the webcam flash every laptop login.

Things like this would be VP+ (who would have an org of 1000 or more, why would they even look if one of their reports body language is different this morning?) if it even existed under such a secretive blanket. Plus banks are literally known in the tech world as having the absolute oldest and crumbling tech

And lastly, as someone who works in the CV world, even having all those cameras up, successfully streaming, uploading, and inferencing as described in that post would be a technological marvel

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At JPM a VP isn’t going to have an org of 1,000+. That’s going to be managing director level. There are some VPs on the business side that can have numerous employees but that’s about it. In finance you can equate VP to being senior and line manager level at other companies Google, Meta, etc.

One you hit executive director things change a bit. Managing director is the real deal.

Agreeing with/adding to your post here:

With that being said this Reddit post has some fishy elements to me. I wouldn’t doubt the existence of this so called WADU but the capabilities (and laughable suggestions in the Reddit post like “don’t use a corporate laptop” as if JPM issues corporate laptops - most employees use the stupid VDI) seem a little outrageous to me. More likely scenario is they just track badge in and badge out and maybe something like the number of meetings on your calendar and do some super basic reporting up the chain to the HR tech teams who are trying to figure out what to do with the workforce.

Now from the article:

“Some employees described adopting unusual behaviors to evade the system's detection during breaks or interludes throughout the day.”

I don’t know where these so called employees work, but at least in the corporate offices uh nobody pays any mind to any breaks you take unless you have some really anal manager. At the Polaris office in Columbus people bring walking shoes and do laps and things. They have lots of space intended for leaving your desk and grabbing coffee or meeting. The Starbucks in there at the time I was there was supposedly one of the most busy Starbucks locations you could find. I don’t think they’re worried about taking breaks.

“Another current employee within the firm's commercial-banking division said she and her colleagues have resorted to discussing some work-related topics on forums like the iMessage app”

You mean like just normal work? You don’t text your colleagues? Since when is iMessage a forum? Dumb.

The article is really lacking substance and the Reddit post seems kind of conspiratorial. Is JPM tracking things like how long your VDI session is open and your badge in/out? Yea definitely. Is it some big AI conspiracy? No. To what end anyway?

Source -> worked in Digital tech for a little over 4 years and have a number of close friends who still work there and numerous colleagues in executive and managing director level roles.

WADU has a team or multiple teams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siân-davies

Peter Thiel’s data-mining company Palantir was an early contributor. In 2009 JP Morgan Chase engaged Palantir to track internal communications for suspicious activity. According to Bloomberg, the group “vacuumed up emails and browser histories, GPS locations from company-issued smartphones, printer and download activity, and transcripts of digitally recorded phone conversations. Palantir’s software aggregated, searched, sorted, and analyzed these records, surfacing keywords and patterns of behavior that [were] flagged for potential abuse of corporate assets”. Social network analysis allowed the firm to zero in on suspects.

What you’re describing JPMC was ahead of 14 years ago

<< I don’t know where these so called employees work, but at least in the corporate offices uh nobody pays any mind to any breaks you take unless you have some really anal manager.

I would not automatically discount it. I was once in a company that overnight went from happy clappy to 'more with less'. Upon that change, bathroom breaks became timed to capture specifically disliked employees so that a case can be built later to fire them. US. It can be such a bewildering space to work in.

> as if JPM issues corporate laptops

Really? You think they dont issue corporate laptops? The suggestion that they do "destroys" the case made?

> You mean like just normal work? You don’t text your colleagues? Since when is iMessage a forum? Dumb.

At most banks using non monitored communication tools to talk to colleagues would be a fireable offence. https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2022/09/whatsapp-ba...

> Really? You think they dont issue corporate laptops? The suggestion that they do "destroys" the case made?

I know they don’t issue corporate laptops to most employees. I had a Mac because I worked in Digital but that was the exception, not the rule. Yes some employees get laptops. It wasn’t the norm. In fact I believe MD and above aren’t actually allowed to have laptops.

This doesn’t “destroy the case” (whatever that means) - it makes me question the Reddit post given that most employees aren’t given laptops so suggestions “like cover your laptop cam” don’t make a lot of sense.

I have no doubt the firm is tracking a lot of stuff and always have been. Using swear words in chat apps like Symphony would get flagged to HR.

Like all good conspiracies there’s an element of truth. For example, let’s say you sit down at your VDI one day and you see some web cam flash. Does it make sense that they may have some app that takes a picture of the person logging in and makes sure it matches? Yea.

This, however, doesn’t make a lot of sense:

“You’ll notice that your web camera will flash right after login. This is not an “initial connection” flash. Your web camera just took a burst shot of pictures and sent them to WADU. The pictures will be scanned for anything deemed unprofessional or unsafe. Recreational drug paraphernalia, TVs, game consoles, and several other things are all flagged if detected in the pictures. If you see your web camera flash randomly, that was your manager or someone in security requesting a burst shot of pictures from your web camera.“

TVs and video game consoles are unprofessional? Surely they must hate when you bring your Switch to the office and talk about the new Zelda game with all your recent grad workmates!

> At most banks using non monitored communication tools to talk to colleagues would be a fireable offence.

It’s also illegal to drive over the speed limit.

I was consulting at a big 4 IB once. My company used Slack for ourselves, but were onboarded the client's chat tools and told to use them for all project communication which we mostly did. One time a coworker sent me an IM saying he'd follow up with me on Slack. The compliance team flagged it and came after me (not sure why me and not the guy who sent the message). They asked if I discussed company business on Slack and I, not wanting to lie and not wanting to stay on an account that was a meat grinder, just said "yes". They never followed up and I worked on that account for like 8 more months.

> Another current employee within the firm's commercial-banking division said she and her colleagues have resorted to discussing some work-related topics on forums like the iMessage app

> You mean like just normal work?

Not in a commercial banking division. I would expect that to be at least a reprimand, if not straight termination. There are very strict regulations about that sort of thing in banking. You are absolutely not allowed to discuss work on non-official media without approval. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's actively and strictly controlled.

And for good reasons! The SEC levied more than a billion in fines over text messages on non official media without even having to prove that those texts where eg insider trading,

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-174

They did this entirely on the basis that banks should have known that everything needs to be archived and monitored.

Indeed. It's a royal pain in the arse and completely justified from a customer protection and, for that matter, industry protection pov.

This is definitely one of those cases where, if you don't like having your work activity monitored, then finance is probably not the industry for you.

> I don’t know where these so called employees work, but at least in the corporate offices uh nobody pays any mind to any breaks you take unless you have some really anal manage.

I have first hand knowledge of a business that did not control the employees in the office, but wanted to rule that any time not spent in front of the computer while remote was not to be considered working time.

Don't know how it ended in the end, AFAIK the latest review wasn't so strongly worded.

So some business may bother with that, but not necessarily on all fronts.

> “Another current employee within the firm's commercial-banking division said she and her colleagues have resorted to discussing some work-related topics on forums like the iMessage app”

Now that's amusing and quite a tell as to how much BS the whole thing is.

No one at JPM cares how much loafing there is. However:

"JPMorgan Chase is paying $200 million in fines to two U.S. banking regulators to settle charges that its Wall Street division allowed employees to use WhatsApp and other platforms to circumvent federal record-keeping laws." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/17/jpmorgan-agrees-to-125-milli....

discussing work related stuff on iText? That will literally get you fired.

Update: And if you don't think the banks are serious Citi dinged a C-level guy a couple of million for allowing it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-15/citigroup...

> discussing work related stuff on iText? That will literally get you fired.

I guess it depends on who and also what we mean by work-related stuff.

I don't disagree with you or others that something like discussing a confidential deal or sharing idk screenshots of customer accounts or something would get you fired. As it should.

The article was generic with "work-related topics" so I was too. Sending a text saying "Hey I'm in the CCB analytics weekly business review meeting with so and so can I call you back" won't get you fired. Both are "work-related" but clearly there are differences.

In the context of the Reddit post and the article, I think the substance was basically a few 601 level employees (at most) sharing some vague "leak" of things they really don't know much about or understand and then the whole Internet speculating on Jamie Dimon sitting there taking screenshots of your bedroom to see if you bought a Playstation or an Xbox.

Like any good conspiracy there are elements of truth - JPMC absolutely monitors badge in/out and absolutely logs all of your VDI activities and it would not surprise me if from time to time (or even all the time) they take a quick screenshot when you log in to see if your face matches your employee ID as a security prevention feature.

But a lot of that post seemed like nonsense and saying "employees have to resort to talking about work on iMessage forums!" redoubled my doubt on the whole thing.

> The article was generic with "work-related topics" so I was too. Sending a text saying "Hey I'm in the CCB analytics weekly business review meeting with so and so can I call you back" won't get you fired. Both are "work-related" but clearly there are differences.

Being deposed by the OCC, SEC, Fed or OFHEO and having to make the argument that somehow your business communications weren’t subject to Federal banking record keeping regulations, is just not a spot you want to be in.

Sure. Yet tens of thousands of financial sector employees are going to send these kinds of work related messages every single day.

> It’s also illegal to drive over the speed limit

The old saying is titles are cheap. A VP title is a great way to give someone a small promotion with a small pay increase and they still feel special. Banks/Financial firms figured this out a long long time ago.

Most the VP's I've known at BoA and Chase over the years were individual contributors.

As you say iMessage is not really a "web forum". Informally though a "forum" is any place where discussion happens. It's a forum in that sense.

I worked for a large health insurance company. The development team switched to macbooks and could install their own tools. Corporate laptops where shitty and no one had local admin. The installed a tool like that on the macbooks. In the end they just used to check if the OS was up to date and your virus scanner was running. No one checked anything else.

Now this could be a slippery slope. A new manager finding out what is possible and demanding reports on the "dangerous" stuff could change this quickly.

> could easily prove this is all true.

Prove to whom? Snowden proved a lot, and what changed?

My friend works in JP, he is adamant this is true.

Regardless of the veracity lf this particular claim, once we have accepted government survailance, it was only a matter of time untill this happens.

> Prove to whom? Snowden proved a lot, and what changed?

A lot changed - maybe not what some hoped, but still. Fwiw I don't think much changed for the better

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_effect#:~:text=Accordi....

Idk why we dial back to Snowden, when it was James Risen who exposed Stellar Wind years earlier. And his expose lead to the program being shut down. Most of the huge NSA surveillance programs have withered due to lack of valuable intel or due to gradual sunset of the post-9/11 laws.

can your friend share a gif via imgur of the camera flashing when he turns on the laptop? preferably multiple times, with timestamps. There shouldn't be any identifying info in the gifs.

That would be unequivocal proof to everyone in this thread, in my mind.

I imagine cameras in the office would be a more likely scenario. Something like Amazon Go.

Also these days, just tools such as Microsoft Teams (just look at the crazy insights gained in Viva).

This is on r/antiwork... which isn't a particularly objective source when it comes to employers.

I’m a staunch unionist and whenever I happen across this subreddit it makes my blood boil. I wouldn’t take anything there seriously.

I don’t have trouble believing that working conditions in the US are sometimes dire, but I also suspect that r/antiwork and other associated subreddits are heavily influenced by foreign actors. I mean, why wouldn’t they?

I'd assume there are also plenty of non-foreign actors pissed off about their jobs. They wouldn't call it work if it wasn't work.

Not to mention karma farming bots commonly repost popular posts/images on different subreddits or just repost it at later dates.

I mean, if foreign actors are motivated to improve US working conditions then I'm not concerned, grateful really.

If these allegations are entirely false JPMorgan is welcome to share what information they do collect in a legally binding statement.

Foreign actors are motivated to foment discount and internal conflict. This might actually lead to improving working conditions, but that’s not the goal.

Or maybe paid shills are insinuating that an international worker's rights movement is some kind of foreign attack on one specific country, in an attempt to discredit it so they can keep exploiting people.

Reminds me of what lengths Amazon went to, spending millions on union busting instead of paying people a living wage. I wouldn't put it below them to do a little astroturfing, it probably pays for itself.

Since this alludes to my comment, as I was the one who said up the tree that that r/antiwork may very well have foreign interests working against the US, I'll say that my account is not anonymous, I'm not American, and I certainly have better uses of my free time than taking a few bucks from Amazon to shill anti-union propaganda.

Wow I think this is the first time it's been insinuated I'm a paid shill! Also being a noble genuine worker's rights movement AND a movement being amplified by foreign actors aren't mutually exclusive. If you want to cause internal strife of course it makes sense to pick a cause with credibility and grassroots support. Like I'm sure the US would jump at the chance to promote sweeping democratic reforms in its major opponents. That cause sounds pretty noble but the US's interest in promoting it is certainly not noble.

Also even the credible threat of something being the result of foreign influence, whether true or not, can already create the desired conflict. As we've demonstrated.

Back to the topic, I really have no opinion on whether r/antiwork has malicious influence. I have no idea on that. And either way the cause is still a just one. But my comment above was just noting that if it being influenced then those actors aren't "motivated to improve US working conditions", as the parent commenter said.

I think it's safe to assume that nothing that happens in r/antiwork or anywhere near it will ever result in anything a sane adult could describe as "improvement". Not even by accident.

/r/antiwork isn’t about improving working conditions, though. There was a huge drama about people splitting to some other “work reform” subreddit because they were tired of the, literally, anti-work tone that took over the subreddit.

They try to say it’s about something else, but the posts that hit the front page are always just being angry about something like a supposed text from someone’s boss or a piece of paper with a message taped to a wall. The effort to fake any of these posts is 10 minutes of imagination and prep, at most.

I believe the origins of r/antiwork are actually more literally "anti-work" like you mentioned. As in, moving towards a basic income post scarcity society where we don't have to work. It's a noble utopian goal but since we're so far away from it of course the posts make the problem feel intractable. As the subreddit grew there was a natural tensions between those that actually wanted to improve things and those that wanted to dream about a future and complain.

Well I've seen a huge number of r/antiwork posts and in my opinion they pretty much are all healthy.

They all tell stories of workers putting up with an unreasonable boss. I never see posts about workers criticizing all bosses or reasonable bosses, at least not that make frontpage.

I have a hunch it's actually to the long-term benefit of the economy if unreasonable bosses (emotionally abusive, sexually exploitative, illegal-action-requestinging, etc) are rooted out or rallied against.

I've always found the tone on r/antiwork to be immature and ineffectual.

It's telling that the vast majority of posts come from people working in jobs that would typically be taken early on in someone's working life, i.e. wage slaves. You don't really hear much from people who are established in their careers. It's true that wage slave jobs typically aren't very rewarding, but it's also true that most people have to work in unrewarding jobs for awhile until they gain the experience necessary to move up.

It appears to me that the folks in that forum feel entitled to skip over the whole part where they "gain experience in the world".

Not only that, but I've seen a repeating theme in which a manager makes a request of someone, and their response is utterly devoid of tact. Instead of just saying, "Oh, sorry I can't do that" or even just not responding and saying that they were busy and didn't see the message, they feel the need to become adversarial and "stick it to the man". I would argue that not only is it more effective to "take the high road" in such situations, it also takes less effort than adversarially engaging with your manager.

Like instead of starting a message with, "I already told you last week that I planned <some thing>, and in fact, I quit." Maybe instead try something like, "Hey, I'm so sorry, I can't tonight. I have that <some thing> at 7. Maybe Carter can cover the shift?"

There are numerous stories about this that predate this reddit post by a year:

https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/05/jpmorgan-spyi...

https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-des...

These stories describe wildly less advanced, less technologically complex, and less invasive tracking than the Reddit post.

Reddit post is made up. Good fiction writing.

Reminds me of having to pace the reading of a memo in Snowcrash, so the system didn't flag the employee as either skimming or loafing.

Stories that describe tracking basic activity, sure. Nothing about Chase scanning your home for "TVs, game consoles, and several other things."

The poster expects us to believe that Chase doesn't want their employees having "TVs"? What, are they going to hire an all-Amish workforce?

The post is a little too "Reddit" to take seriously.

It is, though, at least extrapolated from some real things, like non-trivial analysis of badge scans, fairly deep tracking of Citrix, Teams, O365 activity, and so on. Probably embellished to drive more interest, outrage, press coverage, and so on. Some attempt at a bit of bad PR revenge in exchange for being monitored in this way.

It sounds dystopian as hell but the software engineer in me has some suspicions about how well the whole system works. Basically I see 3 places where this tech would not work quite like the commenter said:

* The base stack - This is JPM, not OpenAI or Google. I would assume what the commenter mentioned is the "ideal" and certainly not how the system functions on a day to day basis. I'm sure there are bugs, and areas where managers are told "don't trust this info, it's most likely wrong".

* The integrations - To be able to track you like the commenter mentioned, WADU would have to integrate with all of JPM's existing systems. I don't know how many different systems JPM has but I would assume it's in the hundreds or thousands. I'm gonna say that maybe 75% of those integrations are working at any given time.

* The Usage - So assuming the system works, and alerts a manager to an employee having a 'bad day', is the manager going to care? Are they even going to notice? I would assume that the system is not accessed by managers on a daily basis unless you have a manager that is extra anal. Most likely managers only look into an employee if they have been hearing that they are underpreforming.

All of this is pure speculation, not associated in any way with JPM.

> I would assume what the commenter mentioned is the "ideal" and certainly not how the system functions on a day to day basis.

It's also possible they're just making it up.

There are lots of incentives to do so: revenge, boredom, karma farming, economic destabilization, stock shorting, competition, talent poaching....

It reads to me like embellishment from someone with a bone to pick. They noticed basic tracking and invented dystopian details that would be popular with the outrage sub they posted to.

They actually claim that Chase scans employees' homes for "TVs, game consoles, and several other things," which are "all flagged if detected," as if Chase will only employ the Amish.

It's just a little too perfectly tailored to Reddit.

Just an FYI, practically anyone is a VP at a bank. You have to go higher

Yeah that makes sense, I meant 3rd-4th level manager.

I work at a US BigCorp and am sure they check office swipes, even laptop usage, but as a line manager get absolutely no insight into any of those when it comes to performance/ratings/feedback. My direct reports could be using their laptop 2 hours a day and no one in the company is letting me know that

If someone is getting that data, its definitely not me or my manager. Beyond that level who knows really

Are there even similar solutions available commercially? Even at a size of JPM, I highly doubt that they would develop such a complex system in-house. Also, for any high-skill job, I feel such an "activity metric" is utterly useless and not correlated with value contributions.

Here I can probably weigh in a little. While we can argue day and night over whether tracking this is worthwhile, JPM ( and likely Discover ) has some history ( and manpower to do it ) of building their own systems when reasonable.

It feels like AI scare propaganda. Everything is just a little too perfectly dystopian.

I'd keep aware of updates on the story, but it just feels like exactly the kind of thing I would expect to emerge if there are powerful interests that want to slow down AI advancement.

As an employee, I can confirm I have seen my webcam light up when logging onto Citrix from my desktop, and every time I access it via the web, Chrome asks for permission to use the webcam.

They can be doing limited testing for now. I worked for a company that tracked everything they could get away with and managers routinely enforced minimal threshold of activity so I won't be surprised if some larger bank jumped on the same bandwagon.

Bridgewater famously had pretty obscene levels of tracking and monitoring and were open about it, lauding it as part of their company culture. This seems like the same type of thing.

While some areas of the firm may indeed have what you call old and crumbling tech, this is far from the rule. I expect the electronic trading arm of JPM to be far and beyond what you normally can find at tech firms. The arms race in electronic trading constantly produces innovations out of necessity. The reality is innovate or die, and no inventing yet another sloppy JavaScript framework does not constitute innovation.

>why would they even look if one of their reports body language is different this morning?)

Ineeed

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