The totally off-topic thread

[JohnK]

Hardly much of a genius-brain, but if you wish to think that I can't stop you

Now, where is JohnK, so you can get into the Business QC

I got there, as planned, just after 6:00pm.

Had a chat to whereishome about his experience in trying to get an exit row. There could not have been any profit for QF in selling the exit row considering the amount of time the staff spent trying to process the payment for the exit row.

 

[JohnK]

Is anyone aware of, or have any experience with, Rescue Time?

It was secretly installed on my work PC last week and when I found out about it I uninstalled it. My boss had no idea what it was (yeah right) but all of a sudden knows everything about it and I have been told that it is being re-installed on my PC tomorrow and I am not allowed to remove it. Apparently a few of us have been selected for a trial.

I am totally against it and in my opinion it is an invasion of privacy. If a company can install this software then what is there to stop them installing key logging software on all PCs. I guess one of the reasons in installing this software is to analyse productivity yet the same company does nothing to improve a very disruptive open plan environment and allow people endless personal phone calls.

Anyway I have strongly voiced my opinion in reply to this email. I have lost any respect I had in the company I work for and I will now play their game and ensure that I do nothing personal on the work PC and the iSeries emulation session will have focus throughout the day. Increase in productivity? The analysis will show them exactly what they want to see....

 

[anat0l]

Is anyone aware of, or have any experience with, Rescue Time?

Haven't heard of it before. We have a thing called trust in our office. It seems to work. We still get work done and out the door on time, and I guess that's what really matters.

Trust seems to be in short supply in insurance, commerce, accountancy, legal, advertising and marketing firms.


In any case, I think employers almost toe a big line as to what they are allowed to see, access or track about you. They already reserve the right to seize emails....

 

[oz_mark]

Is anyone aware of, or have any experience with, Rescue Time?

I haven't seen it, but I have been at a place that used software to remind people to take breaks! Look away from the screen, stop typing, that sort of thing.

 

[anat0l]

I haven't seen it, but I have been at a place that used software to remind people to take breaks! Look away from the screen, stop typing, that sort of thing.

That's pretty trivial. You could set such a system up easily with any run-of-the-mill calendar-organiser system.

Or go to SourceForge and go get an open source one.

 

[oz_mark]

That's pretty trivial. You could set such a system up easily with any run-of-the-mill calendar-organiser system.

Or go to SourceForge and go get an open source one.

Trivial, but something rolled out to 3000 PC's.

 

[tuapekastar]

Is anyone aware of, or have any experience with, Rescue Time?

I just had a quick browse (unrecorded ) of their website, and used with the wrong intentions (and I suspect most employers who install it would do so) it seems particularly egregious.

Would take a great deal of convincing for me to allow it to 'track' me!

 

[JohnK]

Would take a great deal of convincing for me to allow it to 'track' me!

I am already convinced. It is an invasion of privacy. Unfortunately I/we do not have a choice in the matter other than resigning.

Short of seeking legal advice does anyone know, or guess, if what my company is doing is legal?

 

[anat0l]

Sorry to thread more threads in this thread (FYI JohnK's Rescue Time rant sub-thread is still open for business), but I was reading a random thread from PPRuNe and just thought about something that happened whilst flying the PER-BNE red-eye in May.

I was sitting in 4C on a 738 shocked: as if crossing the country in the mad hours wasn't bad enough) and there's a pax - probably 18 - 22 years old - in 4E who's watching the IFE. Obviously, with the screen almost directly above him, it isn't quite ideal viewing, so he resorts to manually "adjusting" the screen, i.e. pushing the screen so that the angle suits his viewing a bit better. Of course, the drop down screens pretty much only have two discrete positions - open and closed - but that didn't stop him from trying to push the screen a bit forward then "smartly" using bits of torn magazine cover to wedge in the front in order to hold the screen at its new, "optimised for 4E" angle.

I didn't say a thing because I was buggered and just wanted to get as much sleep as possible, but had he broke the screen you can bet I would have wished everything to go on his sorry a**.

Anyone seen anything like this before? What do you think?

 

[serfty]

Yes, Productivity Monitoring and Time Management Software | RescueTime is "Big-Brother" :-|

RescueTime Pulse: Employee Monitoring Software

The most valuable resource in the modern workplace is almost always the time and attention of its employees, yet most businesses (even those that use timesheets) have only the vaguest notion of how this resource is spent. With automated employee time tracking you gain the following benefits:

• You can identify employees who are aren't working very hard
• You can identify employees who are under tasked, but are afraid to speak up about it
• You can identify employees who are unmotivated
• You can see how environment variables in the work place affect aggregate productivity. For example, when a team doubles in size, how does that change how people spend their time? How has productivity changed since you changed the layout of the office? What would happen if you instituted a "no email on Fridays" policy?
• You can identify the web sites that are expensive distractions for your team
• You can understand which software is actually being utilized by your team

As far as work supplied desktops go - you really have little choice - other than to resign.

It's surprising you could uninstall it - where I work we have no administration rights.

(More to the point, where I am located a record of every web access by every desktop is made - a bit moot given 5000+ desktops, but if you're flagged, well ...)

 

[straitman]

Yes, Productivity Monitoring and Time Management Software | RescueTime is "Big-Brother" :-|

As far as work supplied desktops go - you really have little choice - other than to resign.

It's surprising you could uninstall it - where I work we have no administration rights.

(More to the point, where I am located a record of every web access by every desktop is made - a bit moot given 5000+ desktops, but if you're flagged, well ...)

I agree with serfty here.

Where I work ((worked) & JohnK knows where that is) adding or removing software without approval is a the second most common sacking offence. (Inappropriate us of Corporate Amex is first) It is all included (here we go again) in the T & C that must be signed prior to getting PC access let alone internet access which requires higher levels of approval.

Whether you like it or not it is an accept or leave situation :!:

 

[oz_mark]

It's surprising you could uninstall it - where I work we have no administration rights.

Different employers have different policies on this, some allowing open slather, and others locking it down to varying degrees. Where I work it is more job role based, so developers can be locked down less than office admin type people.

 

[Flashback]

Different employers have different policies on this, some allowing open slather, and others locking it down to varying degrees. Where I work it is more job role based, so developers can be locked down less than office admin type people.

Ditto. FWIW, in our employment contract it has a clause about the monitoring.,

 

[anat0l]

I agree with serfty here.

Where I work ((worked) & JohnK knows where that is) adding or removing software without approval is a the second most common sacking offence. (Inappropriate us of Corporate Amex is first) It is all included (here we go again) in the T & C that must be signed prior to getting PC access let alone internet access which requires higher levels of approval.

Whether you like it or not it is an accept or leave situation :!:

If I may draw a page out of one of the other threads floating around:

• Your signing a T&Cs employment contract only binds you to conditions which are not otherwise in contravention of your statutory rights under the relevant laws
• The consequences arising from a breach of the T&Cs are subject to reasonableness tests under the guise of the relevant laws

:mrgreen:.......

Complicated world we live in, isn't it? Let's not even mention getting the union involved......


FWIW it was only about over a month ago that I was granted local administrator rights on my machine - one of the biggest things this allowed me to do was have more control over installed applications (and since I came to my research centre I've had to ask IT support for several requests to install other apps and drivers); however, there are still some tasks I cannot do (for example, I can't change how I run Windows updates - appears to be group policy). I think it is mainly though because I have been here for a while (three years at least, although at one point only on-and-off) and the long-time IT support techie knows that I can handle a computer aptly, but obviously there's a high degree of trust there necessary.

Thankfully, the standard install images on our systems do not contain much annoy-ware, so uninstallations have been unnecessary!

In comparison, when I worked at an engineering consultancy, everyone logged on as an administrator and had according rights to the entire network - in fact, to every computer on it as well! (You easily had people transferring data between office machines without fuss, cf. now where we only transfer data between machines using USB drives or by using our common network drive).

Another comparison is when I worked on contract briefly for a mining company. The company issued laptop I was given was of course protected as per the usual (and as everyone else has relayed here).

 

[serfty]

... cf. now where we only transfer data between machines using USB drives or by using our common network drive). ...

The default desktop setup here has USB drive access disabled! :shock:

...Where I work it is more job role based, so developers can be locked down less than office admin type people.

This is the case - rights are granted almost grudgingly and are often automatically revoked without warning by bots trawling the network for non "Standard" setups!

 

[straitman]

The default desktop setup here has USB drive access disabled! :shock: This is the case - rights are granted almost grudgingly and are often automatically revoked without warning by bots trawling the network for non "Standard" setups!

This is the anomaly with our system in that you can run 'extra' applications from a USB drive :!:

 

[notzac]

Our SOE is quite restricted in what you can do (USB ports are locked down here too! :shock, but the flip side of that is our IT support guys are pretty good about installing extra software and allowing specific USB devices to be installed as needed.

 

[straitman]

The issue they have with us is that they are (justifiably in my opinion) paranoid about someone installing something and crashing the system world wide. :shock:

There are tens of thousands of PC's involved.

 

[JohnK]

(More to the point, where I am located a record of every web access by every desktop is made - a bit moot given 5000+ desktops, but if you're flagged, well ...)

I was aware that my company already monitors every website I visit. I have absolutely no issue with this type of tracking.

Doing research on Rescue Time in the past week has led me to believe the people making the decision to install it do not do a lot of thinking and they have already alienated all people on the trial. What they plan to achieve by it is beyond me.

Whether you like it or not it is an accept or leave situation :!:

No need to resign. It is only a trial for now but I was lucky to find out about it as soon as it was installed. The simplest solution is I will stop accessing the internet (I didn't access internet today) from the work PC so in essence it will render the collection of statistics useless.

I used to lock the desktop when I went to get water or go for a 5 minute walk around the office. I do not do this anymore and ensure my emulation session will have focus while I am away. I open Lotus Notes (for work e-mail) but minimise it so it cannot focus unless I want it to have focus. I will control what statistics the company collects from me.

We are supposed to be professionals paid to do a job not paid by the hour. I have lost track of the number of hours I have worked outside of business hours thinking of solutions to problems and going to work with a solution ready. Well I am not doing this anymore. If they want me to account 7h 30m everyday then I am going to account for 7h 30m everyday and not one minute more.

If I really want internet access then I may test the waters by bringing my own laptop to work with mobile broadband access. A laptop is really no different to a iPhone with internet access. I don't think they can stop me doing this but I need to make sure I only use my laptop during breaks.

 

[anat0l]

What are the chances that QF will have a ex-AU TT sale which will cover 11 Dec?

The current sale only covers travel to 9 Dec.

I can't remember from history what the sales are like, but just in case they may not have any sales covering that date, for obvious reasons....