The surveillance tech waiting for workers as they return to the office
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/02/the-surveillance-tech-waiting-for-workers-as-they-return-to-the-office/
The surveillance tech waiting for workers as they return to the office
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/02/the-surveillance-tech-waiting-for-workers-as-they-return-to-the-office/
12 Comments
**Warehouse-style employee-tracking technology is coming for the office worker**
Scan the online brochures of companies who sell workplace monitoring tech and you’d think the average American worker was a renegade poised to take their employer down at the next opportunity.
>Nearly half of US employees admit to time theft!
>Biometric readers for enhanced accuracy!
>Offer staff benefits in a controlled way with Vending Machine Access!
A new wave of return-to-office mandates has arrived since the New Year, including at JP Morgan Chase, leading advertising agency WPP, and Amazon—not to mention President Trump’s late January directive to the heads of federal agencies to
>terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person … on a full-time basis.
this is messed up but people do fuck around all day now (including myself). Back before phones we just used to work and that was it. I used to do 12 hrs every day with only a couple of breaks and all the other time I was actually working.
edit: you weirdo redditors acting like you’re being personally attacked for this comment (which is telling) 🤣 just stating facts, we didn’t have the same level of distraction back in the day and if you’re replying that you used to fuck around just as much pre-phones then that just means you were a shit employee then *and* now.
How could they possibly make work any shittier? Actually wait I don’t want to know
Hmm, I sense a new market for office surveillance countermeasures. I can’t be the only one thinking of new products to sell to these workers.
Because any company top tier C-level executives who seriously think their middle managers aren’t going to depend on automated surveillance technology that’s easy to defeat are more stupid than their middle managers.
It was never about productivity. It’s about power over the employee, and keeping the landlords happy lest the house of cards that are business districts collapsing.
Hyper accountability for the masses, and no accountability for the leaders.
At what point…
Does this same system monitor CEO’s and higher management positions, if not then why?
Welcome to Lumon! Please enjoy these complimentary finger traps!
It’s funny how if you predict a complete dystopian future, you’ll be called a sily doomsayer, yet we just boil the frog and slowly slip into it without fighting.
I find this a clear abuse of technology and a violation of our rights. I understand how it seems appealing for companies, because they can monitor productivity and rank staff. But it fails to measure just how angry it makes employees. No staff should accept this, ever.
What is missing today is the lack of a humanist approach in technology, and that just because technology can achieve this doesn’t always mean it should. It fails to recognise that a human can be heroic and flawed at the same time and that sometimes they might take 30 minutes off a task, but when you zoom out, you realise they achieved a lot over the course of a year.
Sounds like another pandemic may be needed to remind corporations about the value of remote work. Just because they CAN do this, doesn’t mean they should. Can’t RDIF my home. Corporate culture and the intensifying corporatetocracy is increasingly toxic to morale and people’s lives. Its purpose however maps to that of demoralizing and controlling the masses.
Just wait until they enforce brain wave monitoring, the techs already there and being pushed by WEF.