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Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

This may seem horrible but this, I fear, will become the norm. If the boss can’t see you, then they may suspect employees are slacking off at home. So out of caution (or CYA) managers and CEOs will start monitoring all activity available, and transform WFH employees into metrics on a spreadsheet.

If there is a cost savings argument the stock market might even start the drive.

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And if it's an effective method of selection, then those companies will thrive, if instead it's a poor method those companies will fill up with busy workers and sink under there own weight.

I look forward to seeing which it is.

Regardless of the outcome it will be spun as a success for the executive team, or if positive spin is impossible they will find a scapegoat or other mechanism to downplay their own responsibility.

Right on... Time spent reflecting, taking a walk to think things through... Running with headphones to keep the blood oxygenated while listening to the latest rambles from higher ups...

You're too optimistic. Companies that are big enough will inevitably do this because it appeals to management, which forms a cohesive and insular culture inside them, and because it can be sold as a cost savings. These companies will inevitably find ways to survive by exploiting their size and power, and so they will be held up as models, and everyone smaller than them will be under pressure to follow their example. The only way it will someday "fail" is if it falls out of favor with management, maybe because some celebrity CEO bashes it in a bestselling book. But after that CEO and his book pass out of the limelight, it will come back, until it falls out of favor again, and so on.

I work at a company that I think is probably big enough, and in a safe enough market that it can't fail. It might not keep up with its peers but competition in entrenched industries makes it hard for a company to fail once they become entrenched. Kind of like barnacles on a ship. The worst that could happen (from an employee perspective) would be being acquired, with the resulting consolidation eliminating redundant jobs.

And many companies are like this. I joke that when our company is trying to make a decision, the first (and often only) thing the executive team asks is "what are our competitors doing?"

This already is the norm. I've been asked multiple times why someone should hire me when they could hire 20 developers from India for the same price. Obviously, that stems from a mindset that assumes that productivity can be measured objectively and scales nicely with headcount.

The correct answer is to wait things out. After they've tried outsourcing for 3 months, they'll be ecstatic that with me, they only have to explain things once.

> Jira, Confluence, Gmail, chats, documents, dashboards

Metrics almost as bad as “butts in chairs”, “physically in the office” and my all time favourite “spending 4hrs a day responding to emails”.

I mean it’s possible that these 150 people were doing absolutely nothing… in which case these metrics can be a decent yardstick I suppose, but you can also generate a ton of activity in collaboration tools and contribute very little actual value.

It’s like the help desk tech who just closes the easy tickets because that is the metric they are evaluated on.

As they say, "“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

If I worked at a company like this I would spend my time doing visible work that bumps up the metrics regardless of whether that was what really brought value to the company.

-I used to work at a large multinational engineering company which was obsessed by mice - meaningless indicators of company efficiency - for a while, it was decided that we should have large, billboard-like displays at every site showing our progress towards various goals.

We had a (stifled) laugh when our designated goal was to increase delivery precision to 70%[], this was illustrated by a large, easy-to-read poster prominently displayed in the lobby where we received customer representatives.

Sigh.

[] After an outsourcing orgy had made our manufacturing facilities crash and burn, much to the surprise of upper-level management)

Of course it will become the norm. The same people who built today's surveillance dystopia will build this further refinement of it, because "if I don't, someone else will; might as well get paid".

>If the boss can’t see you, then they may suspect employees are slacking off at home.

If they think employees can't slack off while they're watching, they're probably making too much money for what little management skills they bring to the job.

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