This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The fact that they have to resort to checking logs to determine who is coming into the office should be enough proof of how pointless working from the office is.
If you literally can’t tell without a literal in/out log, you can’t claim performance or communication as reasons for requiring it. You’re literally saying “we can only tell if we check the logs.”
It's not about performance, it's about control.
It's not about control, it's about billions of dollars having been invested in commercial real estate.
People keep claiming this this, and yet it does little to explain hmthr large number of smaller companies that have no real estate holdings.
Also, it totally overlooks what the actual purpose of money is to the wealthy, namely control. It's not money for money's sake, nor is it control for money's sake, but rather money for control's sake.
Meanwhile, WFH is a big shift in worker autonomy. Many employers have treated employees working from home with extreme suspicion, going so far as to accuse us of theft just because they can't directly watch us sit at a desk. They installed computer input trackers on remote hardware, they got belligerent over the idea that people maybe - just maybe - they were doing laundry or soemthing on company time, and they're nettled over the idea that people were sitting on their couches.
This isn't the behaviour of people concerned about their stock portfolios, or of landlords upset that their renters may not renew their lease in 5 years. These are not rational actors making rational decisions about long term consequences. These are people who have lost their fucking minds over having given up just the slightest, insignificant amount of control over their employees lives and, importantly, having handed it over to those employees.
They'll happily take a productivity hit, a revenue decline, or even a massive loss in institutional knowledge if it means clawing back these miniscule gains in worker power.
And if we're lucky, it'll cost them significantly more control over workers in the long run.
I'm with you on this one, 100%.
Why else would some low level manager be so stupidly paranoid about whatever you do, if you get your work done?
Control and fear of losing it.
Software engineering manager here. My team went full remote and it is amazing. We get more done than we did in office.
I love cycling laundry or running the dishwasher in the middle of the day. It doesn't affect the amount of work I or my team gets done.
I really only have two rules. 1) Attend and participate in your meetings. 2) We deliver what we committed to at the beginning of sprint.
Otherwise I don't care when the work gets done. I am pretty sure one of my devs writes his code between 9 PM and midnight.
So ... are you hiring 😁
Jk, I have a nice job where people actually (like you) trust people. I mean I'd put in an extra mile just because of that.
And mixing work with home chores, naps, whatever is so good, both for me and for my productivity.
Man, i never thought i would be a multi-tasker. Yes being remotely deployed is beneficial. Less petrol costs, less wear and tear, i can do laundry and cook and feed my cats (yes have 3) and play games while working and still i dont have to rush through traffic jams.
One good thing is i noticed money is kinda saved and yes I'll definitely buy something from that.
For some. For others, it's the other.
For some, both.
But, they would save billions of dollars by selling it back. This is textbook sunken cost fallacy.
I've been saying CEOs should be making real estate donations to the cities theyve pillaged, for the expressed purpose of affordable housing/low income housing. Huge tax write-off. Turn this negative into a positive real easy.
It's almost like these are the kind of decisions CEOs get paid 1000x more than I do to make.
Except nobody wants to buy it.... that's the problem. Many of them have long term leases that they can't break without significant penalties.
Turn them into houses and fix the housing market problem along with it.
I'm with you, but it's harder for more modern buildings.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html
The link is behind a paywall, but its a good piece.
Sunk cost fallacy.
Depends who "they" are. Middle managers can tell who comes in and who is performing, but most of them don't care or want to work remotely too. Executives who can approve a program like this are the ones pushing return to office.
Do what you want, but please stop posting jobs as remote unless you actually want to hire remote. I am applying for the posted remote job. I am open that I intend to work remote. Why the fuck am I getting an HR person on a phone screen telling me they really want people in the office??
Stop posting remote. You don’t want me and I don’t want you. We don’t need to talk!
They know they won't get good applicants if they don't.
When I was going through a job hunt last year, I encountered a few of these. I either reported them on the job listing sites, typically as misleading, or told my recruiter.
I doubt anything came of it, but its what we still need to do when they pull this shit.
sources of data such as IP address information transmitted via Wi-Fi, ceiling-mounted heat sensors and weight-triggered sensors attached to chairs that can track workplace occupancy levels, executives and technology providers say.
Sorry americans, but your executives are getting paranoid.
What a lovely place, I wonder if they're hiring?
"VALMOND! Your butt to non-butt is only at 87%!! You're also colder than your colleagues!"
Getting your raise denied because the bald person next to you has a higher head temp average
Yeah so infuriating, he also only swipes twice when going to the toilet. Lackey.
Always have been.
Don't resist. Leave. Tell employers that are hostile to remote workers that you can find work elsewhere.
Resist while you leave. Best of both worlds.
Resistance is futile. (Sorry, I couldn't resist)
Sounds like it's time for some malicious compliance.
Absolutely ridiculous and serves nothing but to make the CEOs feel better.
https://www.vergesense.com/ is one such company that we use at my work as well as badge data and logs for laptops connecting to corporate wifi. All of these data points can be extrapolated to determine if someone has been in office or not.
There's a running joke of "well I got my one swipe in today, I'm going home" which seems to be common for every office I visit.
next up: office workers swipe in to the office for an hour a day
I swipe in 10am, leave 2pm. Twice a week. Commute time 1 hour each way, so 2 of my 6 hours are totally wasted.
Or one person swipes for his buddies.
From the logs, these guys are really in sync.
In school, when you sign the sign-in sheet with your handwriting, then with your other hand in order to cover for your buddy.
Keyme kiosks will not only copy keys, but can copy rfid badges. Tap your badge, pay your $20, and they will give you a cloned badge that 100% works with badge scanners.
Just some interesting information for anyone reading.
You can clone badges with a flipper and store a whole rolodex of badges on said flipper as well
That has become the primary use for my flipper, lol.
Just plan on quitting. They don't want you & other companies that aren't tied to commercial real estate do. I'm so happy my employer is in the latter category.
Hack the reader. Install a device that clocks you in and out automatically or remotely. There have been a few defcon talks on how insecure these systems are.
Every company I've ever worked for has had a clause in the Employee Handbook saying any attempt to circumvent a company system is a fire-able offense. Doesn't matter if the company-wide firewall uses admin/admin as the user credentials. You get caught tinkering with it, you are out the door with cause.
Meanwhile in at-will states
Even in at will states (which, let's be honest here, plenty of cities have more people than the population of the only non-at-will state - Montana, so it's not really even worth the distinction) there is a pretty huge difference between being fired for having red shoelaces and being fired for physically adding a device to circumvent building security or removing a security implementation from your work PC.
True
So show up once in a while and badge in 30 times or so. "I've been coming in all month, your badge reader must be broken if it's saying it was all on the same day". If they want to play games then let's play some fucking games.
Ok
Let the paying for badge swipes begin. If I pay someone to swipe my badge in and out everyday the metrics will be skewed.
