Anyone else think corporate surveillance has gotten completely out of control?
Badge swipes trackd... VPNs tracked. Teams status tracked. Meetings in Calendar tracked. All emails scanned. Fu--ing Productivity Metrics... AI note takers in meetings nobody ever asked for.
Then leadership wonders why morale is unlived and nobody trusts mgmt anymore.
At this point I just assume every company laptop is basically a monitoring device with some work tools installed on it.
@g4 tracked versus monitored are two VERY different things, though.
Tracked? Of course it is. everything is tracked
Monitored? Unlikely unless it's needed to be looked at for xyz reason
I sadly helped get someone fired a few years ago for never being online. I had to dig up all his VPN logs and send them to a VP and well... he was canned.
His VPN logs were always tracekd but never monitored unless we had a reason to do so
@kf I've learned to turn on my laptop and sign into it before I drive into the office. It's a 20 min drive so I usually only have to wait on ot another 10 minutes before I can start working. Turning your work computer at 10 pm for any reason is crazy. Over the years I have learned that anything needing to be done at 10 pm will still be waiting for me at 9 am tne next day.
@b1 Glad it's not just me that has a laptop that takes 15 minutes to figure out which was was up in the morning. Pretty frustrating. I've learned to wake it up, then go make coffee and take a sh!te and by the time I'm back it will be functional. That said... it su-ks when it's like, 10PM and you have something urgent that needs done that will take less than five minutes, and once again you're waiting 15 minutes for it to be functional.
big brother has been around for decades
After all the problems with remote people not being responsible,what do you expect ? To many working a part time job for full pay
@he this makes no sense.
It comes down to how relatively expensive you are to the company. For people that have been there for 15, 20 years etc and have a few decades under their belt, they are probably the most expensive. It's all about the dollars.
@ft VPN usage is absolutely being tracked. One of my weekly tasks is to confirm that the VPN usage reports have been generated and sent. Whether or not they are actually looked at after being sent is anyone's guess.
Yeah dude... Literally EVERY company; especially large companies like Dell... does this stuff. This isn't specific to Dell lmfao
Ok man, settle down and stop. I will tell you first hand what is going on - I work for the org that does all this stuff.. for reference. You aren't entirely "wrong" on any of this but you are wrong in that you believe this is all being actively "monitored."
Badge tracking has been a thing for decades - only recently did they (execs) start monitoring and caring about them. - this is as far as I'm aware of, still a thing. Execs are monitoring your badge swipes. And making sure they add up to at minimum 45 swipes per quarter.
So, there is active and passive monitoring going on. Active would be the badge swipes as an example. Passive would mean it's technically monitored but not "tracked" unless necessary.
VPN's are not tracked - not sure where you heard that from. - Can this be done? Yes, very easily! I had the unfortunate, and forced, "opportunity" to get someone fired one time. This was 3 years ago but, I quite literally had to put a spreadhseet together for VPN activity to send to that person's VP's.
TEAMS status - if you mean the literal status's like "away/meeting/available" then who tf cares lol? I use one giant monitor at home and my status is usually "away" simply because your status only changes to "available" when you USE the app. Your "status" is irrelevant. People go po-p. People take personal phone calls. People go to lunch! And for those onsite, obviously it's going to change to "away" when they drive home...
Emails have literally always been scanned -virus's, malware, etc... along with making sure you can't/aren't sending certain types of files.
Always lol. - are they being actively monitored? Definitely Not. Can they dig up your emails if given a reason to do so? absolutely!
Quit creating something that's not happening dude.
nothing new...all companies do this. Dell is no exception. Finance companies are even worse. Don't be a snowflake and think you're special and being targeted.
@b1 You must have a good laptop. Mine tales 30-45 minutes to become usable after I login.
Keep training those AI agent bots!! Y’all are feeding the beast folks! Wake up and get the he-l out of Dell! Get your blinders off and understand that you are one day closer to being canned.
Plus since now the hype is for employees to get their hands dirty with AI usage, this is too being tracked, mostly for leadership visibility. The same with Windsurf.
It usually takes 10-15 minutes in the morning after '"waking up" my computer before it is usable. I'm guessing it's all of the monitoring stuff being activated and communicating to home base before it allows me to actually do anything.
Fun fact: these things have always been tracked. The badge reader system has been here for 30+ years and we have always had a report to know who is in a building when. In the days of Skype, we as managers used it to see who was online for what times. None of this is new. Just do your job and the rest will take care of itself. The only people worried about them watching are the ones who should be laid off for not working anyway.
TBH even as a remote holdout I don't feel overly surveilled. Part of it has to do with my "manager" having like 25 reports or something but they dgaf.
I unplugged my mouse jiggler months ago. I quit getting up at 8am to unlock my computer so I appear "online." Now I just log on whenever I wake up and nobody has said a word about my yellow bubble for most of the morning.
Meetings are being "tracked" but they're super easy to cheese. Just create your own trip reports in SW or create dummy meetings on your calendar with defunct email contacts at your accounts. That has the added benefit of blocking off large swaths of time in which none of the dorks you work with can put meetings on your calendar with 2.7minutes of head notice!
Maybe emails and pings ARE scanned. But there's no chance anybody could digest any of that data. It's just foldered away in case you ever need to be "investigated."
I totally understand how you feel, but it's not as bad as it appears. Most of the monitoring is just an empty threat.