Weekly Roundup Ep1: Working from Home and the Rise of the ‘Mouse Jiggler’
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- Опубліковано 20 чер 2024
- One of the best things about work-from-home & hybrid working is that it gives employees freedom and flexibility over how they manage their workload. But not every company sees that as an advantage.
Some companies (like Wells and Fargo) have invested huge amounts of money in tracking WFH employee activity. Others have invested huge amounts in developing products to prevent the tracking from working.
In this video, we dive into the pros and cons of working from home and talk about everything from the rise of ‘fake working’ tools like Mouse Jigglers; to the right way to manage WFH employees.
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You can avoid working far more easily in the office than home.
That is absolutely true. I get so much more of my job done on the 2 days/week I work from home.
Plus laundry, pet care, gardening, etc.
Lazy people are lazy in the office aswel as at home. Focus on the output
@tombruton But that would require competent management
@@cliveadams7629 And this is the actual problem. Old Boomer managers who don't trust their employees to think and breathe at the same time. Who don't really understand tech and can barely manage a Zoom meeting. Who have been doing it one way their whole life and can't adjust to modern life.
What you DO should be what you get paid for, not where you sit. Unless you are a security guard or something.
Walking around looking purposeful with a file of papers in hand.
"You don't learn sat at home in your pajamas"
I did my masters sat at home in my pajamas 😂 2020/2021
I got my BA in History in a similar outfit, thanks Open University!
2 masters and a PhD, here. In fact, I am currently writing an article for publication in my pjs. Seriously. No one cares *how* it gets done if the quality is high. This control nonsense drives me nuts.
That's where I got my PhD, too. Pyjamas were optional.
@@RichardFirthGodbehere I'm part way through my masters as well.
I got my AWS Practitioner yesterday - studying all done in pj's or oodie.
There is an attitude among a non-trivial percentage of employers that workers that are genuinely happy MUST be somehow cheating the company. They equate stress and misery with hard work, so anything else must be wrong.
That's a very strange mindset! 😳
@@capt.bart.roberts4975 I'm guessing that comes from the mentality from several decades ago that basically you have to basically kill yourself for your job. To corporate leadership it was basically "work yourself to the bone to get ahead" so they actually are used to equating work with suffering. So people now focusing on work/life balance and actually being happy/motivated is completely alien to them
It is a strange mindset, but it has existed for generations. Twenty years ago, I worked for Walmart as a department manager . We joked that the best way to stay under the radar was to look seriously stressed as you went about your work. If you looked relaxed and happy, management would worry that you couldn't be getting your work done!
My feeling about this is even more cynical.
Before CoViD, in many companies, only executives and high level managers could regularly "work from Home", that was a benefit exclusive to them. They got to swan around at home, saying they were working while pottering around the garden, taking the dog for a walk, or catching up on Netflix. Now more people are working from home, those same executives and high level managers think that's the way that everyone behaves, so they need to 'crack down' on it, to 'improve productivity'.
This sort of rhetoric tells us more about the people who engage in it, than it does about the people who work for them.
👆👍✊
I have worked from home for at least 10 years, and I am not an executive. I can guarantee you that executives are not goofing off. You don't get to that level by goofing off. Every exec I have ever known works insane numbers of hours and rarely sees their families. They have away to much to lose because they make way more than we do.
I'm not saying that all executives and high level manager are like this @@RiverWoods111, I'm just saying that you have to wonder about the motives of those who speak out about how important it is that everyone comes back to the office and don't trust their employees.
I have known executives who've literally spent half their time on the golf course "developing leads", or disrupted whole open plan offices nattering away on the phone about things which were obviously not work related, negatively impacting everyone's productivity. Sure there are plenty of people who have no work-life-balance, but that doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer the same fate and plenty of people work that hard for far less of a reward.
@@RiverWoods111those business mtgs on the golf course and lunches and dinners that are expensed to 1000s... all hard work
@@RiverWoods111 Keep licking them boots. You're going places, kid.
My husband is a remote worker. He began working at home because they had run out of office space. It made sense for him, and he loves it. He is more productive, always on time and takes his work more seriously because of it. Now, his entire team remote workers, he talks over his monitors and works harder so he can continue to work remote.
How do you know people are not working harder or longer?
Absolutely. When you treat people like adults they are happy to step up.
@@piggyinthemiddle This also is a key way to retain employees as well. If they feel more free to pilot their own ship as it were, then they are more likely to be invested in the company. Not too surprisingly, the answer is the same as it has always been, and especially on this channel: Don't be toxic and your company will grow and be successful.
I rarely oversleep, but I have woken up 1 minute before I needed to be to work, and signed on in my PJs (nobody could see me) and just started working immediately! HEheh
I have worked from home for over 20 years. I have never had any question my work output. I am more productive, more creative and more positive. I have a mid afternoon nap and the office knows it and doesn’t pester me during this time… because I’m the boss😂😂 We have an office where we all go once a fortnight for a catch-up/ planning meeting. Otherwise employees can go in the office to work if they want, but almost everyone works from home. I have never used trackers, we are output based, there are target bonuses and if you have hit 80% of your targets a year the company will send you and your family to Bulgaria for a 2 week fully paid for holiday. We have a very happy and productive work place and very, very rarely does an employee move on.
Are you hiring 😂
@@jafarolamide6596 I wish mate, we were based in Kharkiv, Ukraine… there is no office left, most of our workers volunteered and are fighting. Me and a few of us keep the company ticking over hoping that something might change but the Russians destroyed almost everything…
Can I work for you?
I need a job
Any freelance gig worker could have guessed this solution. Project based work with a deadline has been far better for me than pretending to look busy during a slow periods at the numerous in-office jobs that I’ve had. Even clients that I’ve worked for who prefer the screen capture option on Upwork don’t harass me if I shut it off to take a break, as long as I deliver their project on time.
Finding in-office work has been hard in this economy, and I’m still looking but with every new gig job I take, getting new clients gets easier and at some point I hope that I can choose to never go back to the office.
In the Netherlands we have an adage "zoals de waard is, vertrouwd hij zijn gasten" which roughly translated means "a person of low morals will expect others to also be of low morals".
Most managers/c-level dont really have much to do outside of an office building (and probably inside as well but they just appear busy due to endless/pointless meetings) so they assume "if I can slack off then why wouldn't my employees" (bit of self projection i think its called).
I use a mouse jiggler actually... primarily so i can work and do things at home, without having to deal with re-logging in every 5 minutes.. esp if IT forces a strict auto-logout policy when i live alone.. it's incredibly stupid
That does sound very unnecessary
@@Ben-Askins It ultimately comes down to whether or not a person is generating results. plenty of people sitting in chairs in a office, doing jack all.
@@Ben-Askins Isnt suveilance at peoples homes unethical/legal?
@@ULTIMARAGNAR0K I can answer that one. If they want occasional surveilance while you're working and of your workspace only during working hours, that's completely ethical. If they want constant surveilance while working, that's a bit harder to justify unless you work with high value records or funding. If they want surveilance outside of your workspace and/or outside of working hours, completely unethical and potentially illegal.
I use one because if I'm reading a document on my 2nd or 3rd monitor, it'll lock my screen after 5 minutes. Or I have to move my mouse around while reading... which is distracting.
I was hired in 2020 by a company that does not have an office in my country. My first remote job.
I work much more than my 40 hours. I work late into the night or at the weekend.... Not because I have to or because someone expects me to, but because I really want to. I love this freedom. No one in my company would think of telling me that I have to be there from 9-5. I often start later or go to the gym beforehand and that's okay for everyone. It's a win-win situation for everyone.
The office has given me COVID twice, I'm quitting before I go back full time. I get more done in one morning at home than 2 days in the office.
Absolutely agree. I do not have a work from home employment. They DO get a lot more completed in a shower period of time and have plenty of time for basic household chores and frees up a lot of time that they have off the clock. One of my besties moved across the country, from west coast to east coast. Just over 20 years ago and has been a huge improvement to her physical and emotional health. So so happy for her and her family. She is 77 and still works full time.
Interruptions in office waste significant time.
Same, commuting on public transport annihilated my Christmas one year.
Thanks for the company deciding a mandatory check box of remote workers to attend the office X amount of times a month.
Absolute waste of time for my job role at the time.
I got covid from my mandated office Christmas event.
@@Rickettsia505 mandates? Yeah, that isn't happening.
Switching to remote working allowed me to focus on some dire issues for the company I was working for. I was quite approachable in the office, so I was interrupted frequently.
As an example, I performed a task in 8 minutes which normally took me around an hour. Purely because I had absolutely zero interruptions. This was jarring to me.
Remote work afforded me the time to work on, and solve some serious issues in a much shorter period of time. My employers were very close to losing one of their largest contracts due to performance issues. It was the extra time I had, working remotely which allowed me to address the problems. The client stayed and no one was let go.
Needless to say this was one of those achievements I am immensely proud of and it was only possible due to remote working.
Studies for decades show that people get more work done and quicker when they telecommute or work remote and the more people are watched like a hawk the less work they get done but the busier they seem. And it really scares the managerial class when workers arent afraid or uncomfortable, like the hating retail or manufacturing workers sitting even it improves moral, health, and quality of work.
This is where it hangs up, and I've directly seen this - it's about "looking busy" not "work done"
When we went remote I got in a ton of trouble because the keylogger didn't show me being busy enough.
And I showed my manager that my actual code output, my MEASURABLE PRODUCTION was actually HIGHER than it had been at the office. Working from home let me be so much more efficient.
But that didn't matter to him. I didn't have 8 hours worth of typing on record so clearly I wasn't working as hard.
Hard being the operative term. They cared about perceived effort more than measurable output, and that seemed so insane.
@@maevethefox5912 yep its about keeping you busy for 8 hours, cause that what they are paying you for instead of getting your job done sooner. Now you are just fucking off on company time, which youd have probably been doing in the office but youd have to hide it and it was stuff that was completely unproductive, when you arent under the watchful eye of big brother you could be doing something fun or productive that doesnt benefit the company so thats an issue.
I 100% agree with the output based method. One thing you missed is asking the question why someone might be dossing off. Maybe the job isn't challenging or interesting enough? Maybe, as in my case once, I knew that if I did any more than I was initially asked, they would just keep dumping more and more duties on me until it took over my whole life? Maybe they have a mental health or motivational issue? Very few people doss off just because they're lazy.
I think the time-based model, something we have clung onto ever since it was invented during the industrial revolution, has had its day and it is time (excuse the pun) to move on.
The only reason I used a mouse jiggler is because I spent most of my time tailing log files and we had a rediculous screensaver timeout which kept locking my screen.
I also get frustrated with Teams that keeps marking me as away when I'm working at the command line.
Welp I can say I used to work from home in a call centre and I worked so much better at home. My productivity was up by something like 50%. As soon as they forced everyone back to the office, the queues got worse and so did people's productivity.
Have managed international virtual teams for years, it’s perfectly possible and with appropriate skills from you as a manager it is highly successful. This whole RTO is just managers who miss their ass kissed all the time and their inability to abuse their minions.
Measure on output and quality, NOT on hours.
I've never understood why people want to manage work, instead of output. I think a lot of business, and managers, just don't know how to measure the result of work and then try to monitor the effort itself.
Leaders have filled out the days of employees with pseudowork where the only tangible result of working is your physical presence. If the enployee did real work, they would not need that presence - the results would speak for themselves.
I agree with what you say about the rise of employers spying on employees and not understanding the advantages of WFH. I would like to add that the trend I have begun to see which is even worse, is employers trying to argue that if an employee works from home then they deserve a lower rate of pay, supposedly because they aren't paying for commuting, work clothes, lunches etc. Since when did an employer EVER factor those things into an employee's pay rate? Therefore how dare they think they can do so now. Pay rates are determined on amount of work, qualifications, duties experience etc, NOT what it costs an employee to work in the office.
Companies that know the price of everything, but not the cost. 😐
I just wanted to mention that traveling healthcare agents get a stipend for expenses if the facility is far enough from home. The amount is negotiable and the $ is tax free.
The last agency I worked for made the hourly wage the same for the location, then negotiated for a good stipend. The one contract I had that was an hour commute, the agency just got me a higher hourly wage.
May seem dishonest, but on top of the weekly commute and being away from home half the week, the facilities make sure to get every $ out of you and don't orient agency for shit. It's hard, but I banked enough to take a year off when we had family illness.
I can understand why people use tricks at home to look like they’re doing more than they actually are. Sometimes they are just untrustworthy, but that’s not usually the case. Many cases, normal expectations in the office are not available at home. For example , they track every second that you’re not at your keyboard. OK, but when you’re at the office, you can go to the bathroom, exchange pleasantries with coworkers, etc., and nobody has an issue. At home you get grief if you walk away from your keyboard, for any reason. You still have to go to the bathroom from time to time, maybe get a glass of water, that kind of thing. But at home you’re tracked constantly.
This right here is it. The actual problem is the useless layers of middle-management realising that they are unable to pretend to be vital parts of the company and trying to find a way to somehow prove that without them constantly hassling their subordinates then those subordinates will not work. The pandemic put them in a position where this wasn't possible, so now they need to find ways to pull any minor deviation from full speed work at all times and challenge workers on it so they can feel like they actually matter.
Conveniently they will also fail to recognise the amount of lost work-hours defending against this bullshit causes, let alone the recruitment cost of replacing the pissed off employees leaving.
Sounds like we need to legislate about intrusive monitoring of WFH.
@@capt.bart.roberts4975 The Data Protection Act 2018 already does this to a degree for the UK, as the UK's implementation of GDPR. Can always be improved, but worth remembering if you happen to be in the UK and can vote next month.
@@Arquinsiel Thank you, enjoy what's left of the weekend. 👍
@@capt.bart.roberts4975 Not a problem. You too.
You hit the nail on the head... output is a better way to manage employees.
I've worked for three companies that do it. The first resisted until COVID and they had to. We had the worst period ever due to COVID and then the best quarter ever when we opened up. They had "Trust" as a core pillar. Left them and went to another company that had it but never let you take advantage. Now I work in a place that says "you have a school play? WFH, make up the time and enjoy the play" guess which one I work extra time for? It all comes down to trust. The ones who don't trust you are the ones who would have done it when they were at your level.
Wells Fargo has been firing staff for NOT signing up customers for services the customers haven't requested and don't want. If WF is giving other reasons for firing staff, hear them with extreme suspicion.
Ah, the old "up-sell" tactic at work. Get hired by Wells Fargo, expect to be asked to act like a fast food employee again, complete with a script written out for you.
If you are competent enough at your job, it doesn't matter where you work. But from a study standpoint, I have noticed that, unfortunately, working and studying from home takes much more time.
An interesting point!
@@Ben-Askins I am speaking from my own experience. I changed jobs at the beginning of COVID, where at first I trained and worked from home. I began to see developments in my work when we were allowed back in the office. I also saw a gap in the children's studies, although interestingly their grades did not drop.
@@EikePilt I think returning to an office should be an option, but I don't think it should be forced. It would be great if companies invested in smaller office spaces across a larger area so workers can work further out from HQ and commute to smaller hubs if/when necessary.
Some people work better outside of the house with more structure, some people don't. I'm in the latter category because I, like most of the human species, can only do high quality work in 3 hour chunks; there have been many studies on this all over the world- in office jobs, productivity basically drags to a halt after 3 hours, so 5 hours at work are wasted. My work day is broken up into 3 hour segments, allowing me to maximize my productivity all the way around. I get more work and higher quality work done because my brain isn't fatigued and desensitized.
@@bearswithglasses Wow. You are making way too much sense.
For many companies, if their history shows that the majority of their WFH employees aren't being productive, I think they have every right to monitor that. Now if a company is massively micromanaging EVERYONE that WFH and targeting employees that are doing their job and being productive, I have an issue with that.
Sounds like a managerial problem if an employee isn't meeting targets and they should fire that person.
100 percent work from home is better than hybrid
Hybrid can be worse than just working in the office, depending on the location. Was forced to go hybrid for a company with offices over 100 miles from my home, two consecutive days of long commutes was draining. At least if I was in the office full time, they would have to put me up in a hotel.
Some Managers think that because the office is the center of their world, it should be the center of yours as well. For some, it’s a loss of power-control issue, though from my stance, As long as the work gets done and you do your bit, then who cares. I’m glad we have the option to work from home. It allows me to see my family, not put unnecessary miles on my car, sleep longer with no commute and ultimately I get less stressed because of it, which means I’m a happier and more productive employee.
I respect that you put the ad at the end.
They pay less for those, but it keeps the flow of the video.
Liars always think theyre being lied to. Thieves are always checking their pockets. Slackers are always accusing their staff of nicking off.
The technology to work from home for many office jobs has been around for 25 years, but the obstacle has always been how to manage remotely. Covid made it so that companies had to figure it out. Some did it well, or have been working out the kinks as they go, and now have something that works. Others just either put in stopgap measures as a short term solution without really thinking about the right way to approach offsite work as a long term plan. It’s a new way of looking at positions that will be evolving over time.
I worked at home for 10 years, best job I had, I could get decent rest, saved on commuting, and I could make my own lunch. The work got done, which is the point, if the work get's done what is the problem. I understand there will be people who take advantage, but if you can manage your time better and get the work done on time there should be no problem.
in my final job before retiring, I worked a "hybrid" model - for 24 years. There were activities I HAD to do at work, so I was there for them. But there were also activities that required a lot of time and concentration on the computer, and if they didn't get done then I'd be unable to do the necessary activities when at work. I found working half of my time at home enabled me to work with full concentration and minimal interruptions for long periods. I'm sure many other colleagues found the same.
My bosses were completely laid back - as long as the necessary things were done, then no one cared if they were done at home or at work.
This is a managerial issue, regardless of where the staff are working from, the basic principles of being a good supervisor haven't changed at all. An effective supervisor should be ensuring their staff are engaged, have clear targets and the right level of work.
In this sense, nothing has changed in the working world. Bad supervisors would have issues with their staff in a fully "in office" team too.
I think the jiggling started when bosses failed to recognized that not all work requires the movement of a mouse. If you are typing or on the phone you might not need to move the mouse.
I worked a hybrid job. I worked from home Saturday and Sunday, and in office Monday through Wednesday. One Sunday in December, it was really slow, so I only made 5 calls. I used that slow day to catch up on all my training that was due by the end of the year. My manager was not happy that I only made 5 dials that day, until I pointed out that I completed all my training without using overtime to do so.
Is the work getting done? If so, leave it alone.
I admire those who are able to work from home. It takes self-discipline skills that I never developed. These skills are valuable for a better quality of life and should be awarded by employers, not regarded with suspicion.
Also, being successful working remotely also requires knowing your own natural attributes and what environment best suits you. Being older (yes - baby boomer here), I know that my skills are most useful working away from home with other people. I simply never developed the disciplines it takes to focus and complete tasks in a physically isolated environment and I thrive in a busy, people-filled environment. And even though it is not ideal for me, I celebrate the generations who are thriving in the remote work model! Keeping families together at home, what an incredible innovation and benefit to society.
Last comment, companies need to trust their employees to know what environment works best for them to get the work done AND live a healthy life.
I think it depends on the industry. Working in IT, myself, I know that I can get several times the work done in person than remotely per day, mostly because of how we all (IT staff) interact with each other constantly. Also, trying to remote over to a computer that isn't working... and trying to get the employee to restart it so that I can log into it (which doesn't work half the time) - it's far easier to just do it myself and figure out the problem in person. Not to mention driving over to a site to fix something versus walking down the hall. It's just easier to be on-site in that type of job.
But many jobs, especially ones that are essentially you writing reports, working on projects, answering calls, or similar - those all do work better remotely.
EDIT - coding, doubly so. No, even more than that, because the ability to THINK creatively when stuck in a cubicle is dramatically less than at home. My monitor faces a window, my stereo, and a large TV screen on the far wall. If I need stimulation or a change of mental state, I have options. Whereas a cubicle offers none at all. Plus an hour in traffic each day.
Personally I prefer the hybrid model much better than wfh 100% of the time it is the perfect balance. I worked from home for 3 years and it was detrimental to my mental wellbeing. I found I overworked more when at home! I needed to see people and do myself up to go into the office not sit in joggers each day. To see people properly rather than a screen all the time. With the hybrid model you look forward to the odd day at home too as it gives restbite especially if you have additional needs (I'm autistic).
I love working at home. I get just as much done at the office as I do at home. I mainly work from home because I hate commuting. Especially in the winter an there is 10 inches of snow, and expecting 8 more. I don't have the stress of driving in the snow. Or crossing my fingers and praying my car starts when the temp is below zero.
Has anyone calculated the cost of maintaining huge office buildings, and how much not having one would save a business?
It's not just the rent or construction cost. It's keeping the furnishings up to standard, utilities, insurance, and the dreaded office supplies.
IMHO, it's the business culture that creates slackers, not the location they slack off in.
Probably, but here's the problem with that mostly(from the eyes of employers anyway). You have a large amount of financial assets tied up in this office space, it's worth whatever value but you wanted to get rid of it you are going to want to sell it to somebody for whatever you value it at minimum, but offices are less desirable space because of companies using them less and less. That makes the office worth less than you've put into it because it's value goes down as the demand for office space does, so actually even if you wanted to make your own company fully remote you counterintuitively are also incentivized to convince the world that offices are the way to go. So employers that want to convert to remote and who do not want any remote workers whatsoever both swing for the RTO side of the argument.
Maybe if government used budget to offer to purchase office spaces to build residential or something maybe that'd help solve some of it? Dunno how viable something like that is city planning wise, but I do know it's really unlikely in the US currently.
@@hikaratu
Perversely, my employer received tax breaks for employing X number of people in a big city. The city waived the requirement in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022 they put it back in force so everyone had to RTO to keep those tax breaks. 😢
My team members were scattered across the world. I'd come on, catch the folks on one side of the world, at the end of the day, catch the other. Why select who works for you by geography? Select by fit and performance. We worked hard, produced lots, had skills and slackers were slackers in the office or out. The downside for me of work from home was lacking the self-discipline to shut down at the end of the day, or not hop on early trying to catch the people ending their day. Most of us put in more hours because it was convenient and because we cared about what we did. Getting into the car and dividing work from personal is, perhaps, healthier for that aspect, but boy oh boy did I hate that waste of time traveling. Two hours there, hour and a half back, added to my day just to travel and accomplish exactly nothing. I turned down a significant pay increase without much change in responsibilities due to the commute. No thanks.
I have enjoyed the WFH option, it suited me with regards flexibility. I personally tend to work best at night or after hours when there are less interruptions and I can focus. My longer hours were offset by minimal travelling. We are now forced to increase our days in the office meaning 2 hours travelling for me. I am reluctant to add the extra 2 - 3 hours I put in when working from home. I am currently very demotivated and my opinion is misconstrued as being lazy. The insult was when the company cited productivity decline as a reason for returning to the office. I work extra hours and weekends and would welcome payment based on output.
We’ve built a company that is entirely virtual, it works brilliantly. We have regular get togethers in person but most of the time we are linked electronically. We measure outcomes not mouse moves.
One should be judged by their output and quality of work being turned in early or on time - that is all that matters
It's so weird the desperation of some managers and owners to have work be unenjoyable or deliberately miserable
WFH here, computer shuts down in 5 min of mouse movement stopping. Waste a lot of time logging back in at the end of breaks and lunch. That log back in tome counts against your break and lunch time. I figured out how to keep it from sleeping.
My job involves remotely connecting to equipment all over the country. My job can be done anywhere I have internet and cell service to make a vpn connection. I am the only member of my team that works from the office. I do that because I do not have a comfortable place at home from which to work. However, in a pinch or during off hours call out, I have worked from my bed. Most days there is only one other employee working in the same building as I am and we may see each other and say “hi” in passing as little as once or twice every other day. There really is no argument I have heard from management to justify requiring anyone on our team to be in the office. We have a VP that wants everyone to come back in but he cannot articulate why or what benefit the company would get out of it.
Had a friend quit a highly paying excellent job over return to office mandates.
He was hired as a remote worker, worked excellently for several years, a senior engineer as well, so an important position in the company.
And then suddenly he gets the notice 'all employees are to be back in the office in a month's time.'
Already sucks, and then you realize he lives in rural Tennessee, and the office is in Dallas. He questioned HR and basically got a "we can give you $500 towards moving expenses but we expect you here"
So $500 to move his whole family like a thousand miles, from a lovely house with a bunch of property, to a condo that costs twice as much....
Listening to my HR feedback I had from 8 years ago that I quietly recorded. The feedback from not getting the job I'd been doing for 5 years with no complaints from users. They claimed I failed on the "customer service question". I listened again and you can hear HR fumbling trying to make stuff up. I'm in IT, she claimed "Yes that was the one where the user said you didn't know what you were talking about". I, sadly, never picked her up on that at the time. She's totally made that up. They never even confirmed with the user. It was a real world example I gave. All went well, the user thanked me for sorting them out where they couldn't take payments over their chip n pin. Took the task on myself as no managers were around and all was fixed and sorted.
It was so clear that job role was rigged. They ended up hiring someone who wasn't even in the country for the interview and was only on a 2 year visa.
One of the reasons I can't stand interviews. My old manager was in the interview and said I did really well. She couldn't believe they'd rejected me and even herself said it was rigged. Its shocking companies get away with this shit.
It is interesting that so much coverage is given to a small percentage of the working population, one which is perceived to be amongst the least productive or useful, and that it is seen to be such an overwhelmingly important topic of discussion. The overwhelming majority of the working population are not office/cubicle dwellers. Yes, many operations would find it difficult to exist without officeworkers, however, It is those who do not have that opportunity to work remotely - those essential workers - who have genuinely suffered the most since the start of the pandemic.
I know two people who when under pressure to return to the office full time simply threatend to leave. In both cases the company backed down. There is such a shortage of skilled staff out there.
I've been WFH (part-time hours) for years as a callcentre rep for a small international company. We all WFH and there is no "office" to go to, it's all virtual. I've met a few of the other people IRL but mostly just virtually in team meetings, and phone conversations. WFH doesn't suit everyone, and those people tend not to stay for long, while some of us have been working together for years. It's a great company to work for, with a management that really does care about its employees. WFH is the best.
First, i am retired from work of any kind. I get calls often that insist that i " must" do x, clearly thats impossible or even inlegal to do. It seems this non issue is a molehill blown up into a mountain by middle/ top manglment. Not managment.
The reason from what I've heard is that people take longer to respond to calls and emails, so the companies freak out, thinking that they are not being serious enough. This idea that many toxic managers have that you must be at your desk staring at the screen every single second tensed and ready to pounce on a call instantly unless it's a break. Which is what most office work is. Being trapped in a box all day long. Emails can be answered from anywhere now, so that's not on the list any more. Same with calls if they give you a company phone. Meaning... the only reason you MUST show up is for meetings? Maybe for some emergency if your job entails maintenance? Customer service I can also see a need to be there in person.
My partner works from home , the company is in US , we live in Ukraine
I teach English here , sometimes in the classroom and sometimes online from home
He does the tickets efficiently as they come in , if he has no tickets then he uses another laptop to study programming
His employer isn't on his case all the time and my school doesn't check-up on me either
We are both respected by our employers and work effectively from home
Simple really 😊
I don't get any work done when I am at the office but I get to socialize with my colleagues. In my team it's completely expected (and 100% measurable) that we do 75% less work on our weekly "in office" day, but I still want to have at least 1 day pr. week where I have my whole team in the office, because I want them to socialize and create a bond with each other and the company.
Edit. I will also add that my employees are all really great at their jobs and I don't think they could be that good at what they do, if they did enjoy it on some level. That's why the idea that they are just slacking off at home, is so strange to me. They do great work from home, because they are reliable, trustworthy adults.
I could maybe imagine that if you have a "job" more than a "career", maybe it's more tempting to slack off at home, if you can get away with it more easy, but I generally don't think most of those jobs (stacking shelves, driving, sorting stuff etc.) are jobs that can be done from home anyway, for simple logistical reasons.
As a game dev I will never accept a t software like this to monitor me. Just cause the. Mouse ain't moved does not mean am not working
Yes, exactly! And you don't need a mouse to think.
Bad management is 100% it. Some employees need closer supervision to stay on task. Not spying but a manager who knows what they are doing and follows up on how they are getting on etc.
I work from home 2 day's a week, 3 days in the office. Im an electrical estimator and qualified supervisor. I originally want 3 Wfh and 2 office. For me it was family life. My wife is a nurse for the NHS and we have 3 kids, 2 under 3yrs. My office is 45mins drive from where we live. It just make sense for me to start earlier on the days im Wfh. The wife did nursary drop off then off to work i can then pick up from school and nursery. Then my wife works later into the day, she continues her career and i continue mine. Plus we save a bit on childcare. But my employer was initially very reluctant to do it. I think mostly because of bad experiences from other not working very well at home. If any thing I work better from home as less distractions, from other colleagues asking questions etc. Isn't that what teams is for?
Watching this and UA-cam whilst supposedly working from home
Are there any companies where they will pay you $X if you come into work, and $X- if you work from home?
I'd love to work from home. But people who chose not to do their work the entire shift, from home, by doing this with their mouse have ruined it for everyone that does their work. Majority of people I know have a mouse juggler working from home. So don't blame a certain age group. People have outed themselves thinking they're so clever. Blame those people.
The big thing is that you don't have to deal with crappy people... no one harasses you, no one flirts or touches you unintentionally, no one can force you to do more work that they should do themselves, etc. So many people in higher positions have to work themselves and can no longer bully others for fun, while at home you can do a lot of stuff in between ^^ Of course, this annoys those who bring such misconduct to the agenda... And you can do it at a time that works best for you and fits the biorthmus, so you're most focused!
As an IT professional, a one of my companies was installing monitoring software in 2016.. also we were expected to be in the office all the time after mid-2020 when most were at home!
You don't even need a jiggler. My mouse is an optical mouse and if it's just far enough away from a bumpy surface the mouse starts to jiggle all over the place
People always find a way to cheat, spoils it for everybody else. Companies expect the worst from staff because the company is the worst. Whenever I could work from home before retirement, was able to finish work a lot quicker, more accurate and always done timely. Didn't have to deal with the office social butterflies, meetings ended more timely. No dealing with micromanagement, wasnt exhausted at the end of the workday. Saved money.Those supervisors and managers scared they may need to step up and work like everybody else. Not all workers need to be WATCHED.
It's simple. People attracted to management positions are more authoritarian in nature. If you're not in the office, they can't wield their power over you as effectively, and that bothers them. It doesn't matter how much more money it makes the company.
I work from home. I'm constantly monitored and u was constantly monitored in the office. When you handle sensitive info monitoring is mandatory. There are horrible workers and great workers in either environment. I love remote and I work hard every day. It also helps that I'm commission only so that drives productivity.
One of my former coworkers floated the theory that many of the managers feel that they're feeling under used because they need people to stand over.
We have hourly reporting. Basically we report to 0.25 hour what was we working on. It doesn’t matter when you do it, if that is not a meeting. You are delivering results and there is no such issue as control of mouse move. If you don’t do what you say you do - you will be caught really really fast. It was stressing at first, but now I don’t remember how is it working the other way.
And I would from home last 7 years, damn I never want to work in the office again. Waking up way to early, drinking to work, spending hours just to get there and back, an hour to come back you your senses after the drive home in the traffic. No! Please no
Usa here.
I have a friend that wants to get me in on what she is doing.
She has 4 customer rep jobs all wfh.
2 are full time 2 are part time.
She starts at 7am and is done by 5pm. For most of the day she has 4 separate screens open on 2 monitors.
She moves between the calls sometimes taking two different calls at the same time.
She has been doing this for over 2 years at this point. She said she tried to fit another one in but it was to difficult to keep her productivity on the others in the green as she calls it. So she basically has 4 jobs at the same time and collects 4 paychecks.
As long as shes doing the work I see no issues but I’m not sure her employers would see it that way.
I appreciate this take so much, I've been struggling to try and put into words my feeling on this. I very much prefer hybrid work; mostly home but a couple of touch-down days in the office, and I have a coworker who is adamant that her supervisees just.... aren't working, and it drives her nuts. She will sit and watch and "wait for her dot to turn yellow, then write down the time spent away" And that really bothered me; if tasks are getting done, what does it matter if there's a load of laundry in there? For me, my particular type of brain works best when I can break tasks up; I get more done overall when I can focus-switch periodically. WHY does TIME matter if the TASK is done? *I* didn't choose to be paid hourly - that's my employer's choice, and it's on my supervisor if they dont give me enough to do in that 8-hour window. And in this climate of budget cuts where people keep asking "do we really need to keep you" I'm not asking for more work. Especially when work comes in waves and sometimes I'm putting in those extra hours to get it all done - I sure don't want to take on more duties that will carry over into the busy periods.
(Also, as a related side - I just get way more done at home when people aren't stopping by my desk to chat about their kid's soccer game or whatever)
As a matter of fact, I was always confused why companies would deem it necessary to track their employees in such a way. Be it remote or not every team member knows who is lazy and who is not. I would expect the same from a manager.
I think the reality that businesses don’t have KPIs setup even post pandemic is the reason. Managers worked of vibes before gen z brought it.
Are the projects getting done? Are they on time? Are they of quality? End of story, end of questions. I don't care what you do in between, I don't care if you did it all in one night...if it was great work. Write that proposal while riding a dolphin in the clouds of Venus for all I care. ;)
WFH may be better paid by salary, or salary-equivalent, unless it is provable that the responsibilities given require more than a 35-40 hour week. Salary was always about outcome of work (though you had to put on appearances by being in the office for x hours. Didn't stop long lunches provided work got done, water-cooler "meetings", etc).
Anything that will drop down substantially the real estate prices, in the UK, will have to fight a fierce cultural resistance...
Own a property is the most important thing in the British Psyche close followed by the feeling you are getting richer because of the "asked price" of your property is increasing.
Working from home will destroy the office market, followed by the substantial drop in housing prices when people start converting offices in flats...
I work better from home. I have less distractions, I'm not constantly interrupted, and I am more likely to work when I'm sick since I can have a snotty nose or a horrible cough and still do the work whereas I couldn't of I had to go in. I work more efficiently at home, and I do higher quality of work. My employer did the forcing folks to cone back into the office, and it took months of fighting to get an accommodation to WFH as I'm a disabled employee and a 2+ hr commute each way and being in an environment that put me at risk of getting exposed to illness, was unacceptable when I can do 99.98% of my work entirely from home. That last 0.02% is when I need to travel for work once or twice a year, and I bust my butt to make sure everything goes smoothly.
Yeah find people at office have time around water cooler talking and socializing
I think it's really obvious if the managers are doing their job to tell if someone working remotely or hybrid is pulling their weight - because their tasks, their projects etc will be done or will not be done.
Sure if they turn in the project and it's not their best work and it's a bit crap that can be an issue but thats what capability management is for. If they sold themselves to you as an all singing and all dancing expert and the work they put in could be done by the Junior of the team, then you have to question their capability to do their job.
I'm working in a hybrid role and my boss knows if my tasks aren't being done so I ensure that my work is done. It's that simple he knows what I need to do on a daily/weekly basis and can see what my output is visually. Therefore he doesn't feel the need to go "Mate, why aren't you sat at your desk slaving away?" when he knows that by the end of the week my stuff will be sorted out.
I've also worked previously in a fully remote role where the manager I worked for thought he was output orientated but was really time orientated. I was the only one capable of doing some of my tasks, the owner of the start up I worked for (there was only 3 or 4 of us in the company) had no idea of how to do everything my role entailed, but he did have a grasp on the most basic and most reliant on his job part of the role. (which was candidate onboarding, he understood the basics of this process obviously, I can only onboard as many candidates as he supplies me with since he was the recruitment lead). He obviously could not see me working so had no idea what I was up to half the time and realistically setting up his company database etc for recruitment didn't always show how complex a task actually was. He saw an output that looked simple and easy to use. Not the dozens of hours spent making it look that way. He thought I was dossing off on his dime as it were the truth was I was working probably a 1.6FTE to get things done with lots of unpaid overtime and a salary that when I factored in my actual working hours fell well below minimum wage. I ended up leaving the company after a falling out with him (he couldn't understand that I wouldn't be happy going from a 1.0FTE contract to a 0.2 FTE contract because he had decided to hire his wife into the company on a ridiculous salary and now we had a massive overspend in his business partners opinion on staffing whilst still having to put in the work of a 1.0 worker when I had no shares in his business and thus would not be benefitting as a stakeholder) he had a moment of panic where he tried reaching out to me through mutual friends because he needed my help as he didn't understand how to update/change some of the areas of the database. Unsurprisingly, given the toxicity of our friendship and working relationship by this stage I told him where to go jump off and haven't spoken to him since.
TBH, I use a mouse jiggler while sitting in front of my computer. Sometimes I need to reference books, watch tutorials, etc. But my work laptop times out after 5 minutes (even with something playing on the screen).
Granted, I still reply immediately when I get a Teams ping, so my boss knows I'm actually working.
But if IT decided to look at mouse movements it would be totally obvious that I'm using one about 95% of the time.
I would've loved working from home! My job really couldn't be taken home. I worked in an operating theatre and on A&E. It's a bit difficult for me to take the facilities and teams home with me, and getting patients delivered.
My company lets people work up to two days a week at home. I still go to the office everyday. I just don’t like working from home.
Maybe am lucky with a short stress free commute that helps keep home and work separate. I have enough spare rooms to have a dedicated office but I do not want my work and home to be in the same place and no change of scenery.
in 2004 I had a medical condition in which I couldn't go to work for a few months so I offered my boss a option for me to work from home
while this wasn't a long term thing it was agreed that for the next 8 weeks it would be how we would do things
id send a family member to my work place on a Friday they would drop off my work and pick up the following weeks work
what I noticed, id have my weeks work done by the Monday
what would take me 40 in work was now taking 20 hours at home
but the best thing was because I didn't commute id do two 10 hour days so by the end of the weekend all my work was done
the other thing id notice if I was halfway through something id finish it before I stopped
where as when I was in my workplace, if I hadn't finished id down tools at lunch/home time and leave
then when I got back spend as long as a hour trying to figure out where I was
or if it was 15 mins before we are due to go home and I needed to start a new thing I would just grab a coffee and start it the next day
it was very noticeable how much wasted time their was in work when I got back
when I worked at home I worked smarter and got disturbed a lot less
In the office, because I'm nice and I'm patient, I constantly get cornered by people who want to cry or moan, and even though I'm good at getting out of those too, it takes time and energy. I don't want to commute for hours each way - it's sweaty, it's expensive, it's crowded, and I need at least 20 minutes to decompress. I'm too tired for the gym, or to cook properly, and forget cleaning or hobbies. I don't want to live in an expensive big city. On my pretty good pay, I could have afforded a quarter of a one bedroom flat in Croydon. Being anywhere, I've been able to live in a modest house in the west midlands.
Wells Fargo has one teller lane open at a time but spend their time tracking remote workers.
As much as people like to say how they work better from home, when our company had to shift to working from home, several teams noted a very significant drop in productivity. So it's not like the suspicion is unfounded, on average workers do put in less effort at home as there is far more things that they can distract themselves with and their access to assistance from teammates is more limited. Granted this might be more unique due to the company being a call centre. That said, this is not across all countries, some seemed to be more resilient to this problem than others. So maybe companies are noting these issues in some places and get spooked that this is more common than it is.
Even a mouse juggler has a legitimate use.
My brother works for one company, but is contracted to another one, and they provide separate laptops, using separate work emails, Teams, etc.
One is used for the actual day to day work at the company he is contracted with, and is fairly locked down. I.e. Smart card has to be inserted to unlock it even and it VPNs in to the company network. The OS is locked down so you can't change the settings to stop it going to sleep every few minutes when he's responding to emails on the other laptop...
The workaround - a mouse jiggler - for the mouse of whichever laptop he's not actively using.
I think there is also a worry about the output based metrics, for those that are very efficient that they may be working in a non-exclusive manor. I believe this antiquated way of thinking falls into roughly three categories.
First if they can accomplish more, then the company is entitled to whatever excess output that employee can generate and with them outside the office you can't tell if they are also working on other non-work projects.
Second falls into the idea that the employee would understand their value, trapping people into the office is a good way to browbeat the self worth out of a valuable employee. If you can successfully break their self worth, then the a fear of financial instability can be leveraged to prevent upward mobility and cost savings through wage stagnation. Outside of an oppressive workplace setting the "You are lucky to be employed" comment from a supervisor doesn't have as much weight.
Third if a employee has a additional "full time" jobs, then the employee leaving becomes a higher risk. This falls squarely into the category of underemployment. It's basically the same reason that they would not hire a over qualified person.
3:59 Because people are not sitting in traffic for an additional one to three hours a day, yes.
I don't think one size fits all. It works for some, not for others. I called a utility company during covid. The lady apologised for the background noise, no problem. However, I then heard a number of excited voices speaking a language I didn't recognise, and a whole lot of squawking hens! To this day I have no idea what was happening, though I have a mental image of a group of people chasing chickens in some remote village!!
First thing that came to mind was Homer's keyboard bird. 😆 These companies are spend almost as much on trying to catch these mouse jiggler, then they would just getting people in the office.
In management class we learned about Theory X and Theory Y.
I would be interested to find out how many of these companies are in financial trouble. Instead of doing layoffs which signals that to the investors, they forced them to quit.
We have activtrak at my work place monitors all the activity on your laptop it can detect 'mouse jigglers'
I genuinely do not see any problems with working from home
I think it stems down to company’s or managers or bosses wanting to lord thire power over others and they can’t do it when the workers are working from home
Most of all my mates who are working in Londons banking and insurance companies all work from home and live way out of the city and have all claimed it has saved them an absolute fortune in expenses from lunch costs to fule to transportation costs and it’s improved there output in production resulting in most of thire companies making more money and thire companies do not track them they just check up with them once a week to make sure that they doing ok and if the companies can offer anything else
The working from home model has proved (in my eyes) to be better.
Working from home doesn’t work for all employees. I think their needs to be that option available. I myself couldn’t work from home due to having small children in my home wanting my attention (yes I did try for a day). Another colleague had mental issues working from home due to the isolation and needed that interaction with people. Some loved it but it helped that I was in the office so I could access some of our files that weren’t on line to give them the information.
Ya our company is just got way too much work for us while working from home.
Well, can’t blame Wells Fargo workers because everybody in the world knows that if you could work anywhere else you wouldn’t be working for Wells Fargo, Wells Fargo is a place where you go when there’s nothing else out there but desolation and hunger, Wells Fargo, or nobody wants
Only interview I ever walked out on was with a Wells Fargo division. The manager was a nightmare in the interview...oh no thanks.