我来当雷锋。一点点搬 A FEW YEARS AGO, Carol Kraemer, a longtime finance executive, took a new job. Her title, senior vice president, was impressive. The compensation was excellent: $200 an hour. But her first paychecks seemed low. Her new employer, which used extensive monitoring software on its all-remote workers, paid them only for the minutes when the system detected active work. Worse, Ms. Kraemer noticed that the software did not come close to capturing her labor. Offline work — doing math problems on paper, reading printouts, thinking — didn’t register and required approval as “manual time.” In managing the organization’s finances, Ms. Kraemer oversaw more than a dozen people, but mentoring them didn’t always leave a digital impression. If she forgot to turn on her time tracker, she had to appeal to be paid at all. “You’re supposed to be a trusted member of your team, but there was never any trust that you were working for the team,” she said. Since the dawn of modern offices, workers have orchestrated their actions by watching the clock. Now, more and more, the clock is watching them.
第二页 IN LOWER-PAYING JOBS, the monitoring is already ubiquitous: not just at Amazon, where the second-by-second measurements became notorious, but also for Kroger cashiers, UPS drivers and millions of others. Eight of the 10 largest private U.S. employers track the productivity metrics of individual workers, many in real time, according to an examination by The New York Times. Now digital productivity monitoring is also spreading among white-collar jobs and roles that require graduate degrees. Many employees, whether working remotely or in person, are subject to trackers, scores, “idle” buttons, or just quiet, constantly accumulating records. Pauses can lead to penalties, from lost pay to lost jobs. Some radiologists see scoreboards showing their “inactivity” time and how their productivity stacks up against their colleagues’. At companies including J.P. Morgan, tracking how employees spend their days, from making phone calls to composing emails, has become routine practice. In Britain, Barclays Bank scrapped prodding messages to workers, like “Not enough time in the Zone yesterday,” after they caused an uproar. At UnitedHealth Group, low keyboard activity can affect compensation and sap bonuses. Public servants are tracked, too: In June, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority told engineers and other employees they could work remotely one day a week if they agreed to full-time productivity monitoring. Architects, academic administrators, doctors, nursing home workers and lawyers described growing electronic surveillance over every minute of their workday. They echoed complaints that employees in many lower-paid positions have voiced for years: that their jobs are relentless, that they don’t have control — and in some cases, that they don’t even have enough time to use the bathroom. In interviews and in hundreds of written submissions to The Times, white-collar workers described being tracked as “demoralizing,” “humiliating” and “toxic.” Micromanagement is becoming standard, they said.
第三页、感觉这个文章很长啊 —————— But the most urgent complaint, spanning industries and incomes, is that the working world’s new clocks are just wrong: inept at capturing offline activity, unreliable at assessing hard-to-quantify tasks and prone to undermining the work itself. UnitedHealth social workers were marked idle for lack of keyboard activity while counseling patients in drug treatment facilities, according to a former supervisor. Grocery cashiers said the pressure to quickly scan items degraded customer service, making it harder to be patient with elderly shoppers who move slowly. Ms. Kraemer, the executive, said she sometimes resorted to doing “busywork that is mindless” to accumulate clicks. “We’re in this era of measurement but we don’t know what we should be measuring,” said Ryan Fuller, former vice president for workplace intelligence at Microsoft. The metrics are even applied to spiritual care for the dying. The Rev. Margo Richardson of Minneapolis became a hospice chaplain to help patients wrestle with deep, searching questions. “This is the big test for everyone: How am I going to face my own death?” she said.
ZT第四页 But two years ago, her employer started requiring chaplains to accrue more of what it called “productivity points.” A visit to the dying: as little as one point. Participating in a funeral: one and three-quarters points. A phone call to grieving relatives: one-quarter point. As these practices have spread, so has resistance to what labor advocates call one of the most significant expansions of employer power in generations. TikTok videos offer tips on outsmarting the systems, including with a “mouse jiggler,” a device that creates the appearance of activity. (One popular model is called Liberty.) Some of the most closely monitored employees in the country have become some of the most restive — warehouse workers attempting to unionize, truckers forming protest convoys. But many employers, along with makers of the tracking technology, say that even if the details need refining, the practice has become valuable — and perhaps inevitable. Tracking, they say, allows them to manage with newfound clarity, fairness and insight. Derelict workers can be rooted out. Industrious ones can be rewarded. “It’s a way to really just focus on the results,” rather than impressions, said Marisa Goldenberg, who ran a division of the company Ms. Kraemer joined, and said she used the tools in moderation.
第五页 Some employers are making a trade: “If we’re going to give up on bringing people back to the office, we’re not going to give up on managing productivity,” said Paul Wartenberg, who installs monitoring systems for clients including accounting firms and hospitals. But in-person workplaces have embraced the tools as well. Tommy Weir, whose company, Enaible, provides group productivity scores to Fortune 500 companies, aims to eventually use individual scores to calibrate pay. “The real question,” he said, “is which companies are going to use it and when, and which companies are going to become irrelevant?”
第六页ZT纽约时报 Captured on CameraMS. KRAEMER, the finance executive, thought she had seen it all. Years after working at Enron, the energy giant turned business blowup, she and former colleagues still held reunions to commemorate what they had been through. But she had never encountered anything like the practices of ESW Capital, a Texas-based group of business software companies. She and her co-workers could turn off their trackers and take breaks anytime, as long as they hit 40 hours a week, which the company logged in 10-minute chunks. During each of those intervals, at some moment they could never anticipate, cameras snapped shots of their faces and screens, creating timecards to verify whether they were working. Some bosses allowed a few “bad” timecards — showing interruptions, or no digital activity — according to interviews with two dozen current and former employees. Beyond that, any snapshot in which they had paused or momentarily stepped away could cost them 10 minutes of pay. Sometimes those cards were rejected; sometimes the workers, knowing the rules, didn’t submit them at all. While the tracker was on, “you couldn’t choose those bathroom or coffee moments — you just had to wing it,” she said.
这个article很长啊，ZT第七页。 Though Ms. Kraemer didn’t know it, that software had been created with a sense of promise about the future of the workplace. It was part of a bold plan for streamlining and “redefining the way people work,” as one of the creators put it. Office settings were choked with unnecessary interruptions, they believed, and constrained by geography from hiring the best talent worldwide. Smartphones and their constant pings were a growing threat to concentration. If technology could optimize productivity, everyone would benefit, the executives said. The company would accomplish more. Workers would
perform better
, then log off to live their lives. To carry out this vision, ESW deployed a firm called Crossover, founded in 2014, to hire and manage workers. Wages were high, and benefits sparse: Nearly everyone would be contractors, using their own computers. The executives adapted an existing tracker into WorkSmart, the software that placed Ms. Kraemer and others under a dome of electronic supervision. The system drew adherents, because the productivity gains were remarkable. Goofing off was excised. In interviews, former supervisors described having newfound powers of near X-ray vision into what employees were doing other than working: watching porn, playing video games, using bots to mimic typing, two-timing Crossover by programming for other businesses, and subcontracting their assignments out to lower-paid workers. Other employees, they said, became more efficient. “Once you see those metrics, those insights, something changes: You realize how much you waste doing nothing, or just multitasking and not accomplishing stuff,” said Federico Mazzoli, a co-creator of WorkSmart. Some overseas workers said the intrusions were worth the U.S. salaries that enabled them to buy homes or start businesses.
第八页ZT。说还剩一半。好心人接着帮忙搬吧。我去接娃了 But Ms. Kraemer, like many of her colleagues, found that WorkSmart upended ideas she had taken for granted: that she would have more freedom in her home than at an office; that her M.B.A. and experience had earned her more say over her time. Workdays grew longer for her and others, in part because offline work didn’t count, but also because it was nearly impossible to work online with unwavering focus. Taking time to mull or bantering with colleagues turned out to be necessary to both doing her job and getting through the day, even if those moments went unpaid. “You have to be in front of your computer, in work mode, 55 or 60 hours just to get those 40 hours counted and paid for,” Ms. Kraemer said. Though WorkSmart allowed payment requests for offline work, employees said managers did not always encourage them. (Executives from ESW and Crossover did not reply to repeated requests for comment including written questions about whether any of these practices have since been updated. But Crossover defends its practices on its website, saying that its “‘Fitbit’ of productivity” spurs motivation, accountability and “remote freedoms.”) Two years after helping to build WorkSmart, Mr. Mazzoli started using it. He became awash in anxiety and doubtful about its accuracy. “Some days you were just moving the cursor around just for the sake of it,” he said. The tool was powerful but dangerous, he concluded. (He left the company a year later.)
我在思考的时候咋算时间？这时候是没有产出的
不知道为啥，我手机上能看全文，电脑上就看不了。我没有订阅
文章里说了，思考的时间，看print out的时间，都不算工资
思考也算工作，也算在时间里。。
那就只能应聘打字员了... 现在还有打字员的工作吗？
律师用两分钟pull out文件，剩下58分钟开香槟喝酒，也会charge你1000$
A FEW YEARS AGO, Carol Kraemer, a longtime finance executive, took a new job. Her title, senior vice president, was impressive. The compensation was excellent: $200 an hour. But her first paychecks seemed low. Her new employer, which used extensive monitoring software on its all-remote workers, paid them only for the minutes when the system detected active work. Worse, Ms. Kraemer noticed that the software did not come close to capturing her labor. Offline work — doing math problems on paper, reading printouts, thinking — didn’t register and required approval as “manual time.” In managing the organization’s finances, Ms. Kraemer oversaw more than a dozen people, but mentoring them didn’t always leave a digital impression. If she forgot to turn on her time tracker, she had to appeal to be paid at all. “You’re supposed to be a trusted member of your team, but there was never any trust that you were working for the team,” she said. Since the dawn of modern offices, workers have orchestrated their actions by watching the clock. Now, more and more, the clock is watching them.
IN LOWER-PAYING JOBS, the monitoring is already ubiquitous: not just at Amazon, where the second-by-second measurements became notorious, but also for Kroger cashiers, UPS drivers and millions of others. Eight of the 10 largest private U.S. employers track the productivity metrics of individual workers, many in real time, according to an examination by The New York Times. Now digital productivity monitoring is also spreading among white-collar jobs and roles that require graduate degrees. Many employees, whether working remotely or in person, are subject to trackers, scores, “idle” buttons, or just quiet, constantly accumulating records. Pauses can lead to penalties, from lost pay to lost jobs. Some radiologists see scoreboards showing their “inactivity” time and how their productivity stacks up against their colleagues’. At companies including J.P. Morgan, tracking how employees spend their days, from making phone calls to composing emails, has become routine practice. In Britain, Barclays Bank scrapped prodding messages to workers, like “Not enough time in the Zone yesterday,” after they caused an uproar. At UnitedHealth Group, low keyboard activity can affect compensation and sap bonuses. Public servants are tracked, too: In June, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority told engineers and other employees they could work remotely one day a week if they agreed to full-time productivity monitoring. Architects, academic administrators, doctors, nursing home workers and lawyers described growing electronic surveillance over every minute of their workday. They echoed complaints that employees in many lower-paid positions have voiced for years: that their jobs are relentless, that they don’t have control — and in some cases, that they don’t even have enough time to use the bathroom. In interviews and in hundreds of written submissions to The Times, white-collar workers described being tracked as “demoralizing,” “humiliating” and “toxic.” Micromanagement is becoming standard, they said.
But two years ago, her employer started requiring chaplains to accrue more of what it called “productivity points.” A visit to the dying: as little as one point. Participating in a funeral: one and three-quarters points. A phone call to grieving relatives: one-quarter point. As these practices have spread, so has resistance to what labor advocates call one of the most significant expansions of employer power in generations. TikTok videos offer tips on outsmarting the systems, including with a “mouse jiggler,” a device that creates the appearance of activity. (One popular model is called Liberty.) Some of the most closely monitored employees in the country have become some of the most restive — warehouse workers attempting to unionize, truckers forming protest convoys. But many employers, along with makers of the tracking technology, say that even if the details need refining, the practice has become valuable — and perhaps inevitable. Tracking, they say, allows them to manage with newfound clarity, fairness and insight. Derelict workers can be rooted out. Industrious ones can be rewarded. “It’s a way to really just focus on the results,” rather than impressions, said Marisa Goldenberg, who ran a division of the company Ms. Kraemer joined, and said she used the tools in moderation.
Some employers are making a trade: “If we’re going to give up on bringing people back to the office, we’re not going to give up on managing productivity,” said Paul Wartenberg, who installs monitoring systems for clients including accounting firms and hospitals. But in-person workplaces have embraced the tools as well. Tommy Weir, whose company, Enaible, provides group productivity scores to Fortune 500 companies, aims to eventually use individual scores to calibrate pay. “The real question,” he said, “is which companies are going to use it and when, and which companies are going to become irrelevant?”
Captured on Camera MS. KRAEMER, the finance executive, thought she had seen it all. Years after working at Enron, the energy giant turned business blowup, she and former colleagues still held reunions to commemorate what they had been through. But she had never encountered anything like the practices of ESW Capital, a Texas-based group of business software companies. She and her co-workers could turn off their trackers and take breaks anytime, as long as they hit 40 hours a week, which the company logged in 10-minute chunks. During each of those intervals, at some moment they could never anticipate, cameras snapped shots of their faces and screens, creating timecards to verify whether they were working. Some bosses allowed a few “bad” timecards — showing interruptions, or no digital activity — according to interviews with two dozen current and former employees. Beyond that, any snapshot in which they had paused or momentarily stepped away could cost them 10 minutes of pay. Sometimes those cards were rejected; sometimes the workers, knowing the rules, didn’t submit them at all. While the tracker was on, “you couldn’t choose those bathroom or coffee moments — you just had to wing it,” she said.
Though Ms. Kraemer didn’t know it, that software had been created with a sense of promise about the future of the workplace. It was part of a bold plan for streamlining and “redefining the way people work,” as one of the creators put it. Office settings were choked with unnecessary interruptions, they believed, and constrained by geography from hiring the best talent worldwide. Smartphones and their constant pings were a growing threat to concentration. If technology could optimize productivity, everyone would benefit, the executives said. The company would accomplish more. Workers would
LinkedIn 吗？ 此厂politics 很厉害
搞一个自动装置，每隔几分钟就动一下鼠标可不可以？
估计也是大家在网上炫耀上班摸鱼太招摇了😂
话说很多firms（需要charge clients）一直都是要求每天严格填写timesheet，根本无法摸鱼。