this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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If not then fire them for that. Seems like a better metric that's more related to how well they do their job than "how much has your mouse moved?"
How much the mouse moved is explicitly, pointedly NOT the metric they were fired for.
The reason is in the headline.
How much work they were getting done is explicitly, pointedly NOT the metric they were fired for.
Why would a mouse jiggler be effective for any reason unless it was a metric being measured?
Not defending them. But ill take their position for a second. I give x amount of work and expect you to finish it. And you do. But if that work takes you 2 hours and the rest of the day you do nothing it just means I can give you more work because 2 hours is just abysmal. So I wanna know about it.
So is my work measured by how much I move the mouse? In my job if I used an automatic mouse jiggler it would have zero effect on my employment, because I'm not being employed to move my mouse, I'm being employed to do productive work.
It's insane that such a program was useful. If your boss doesn't know the difference between you working or not, and only knows how much your mouse moves, that is a shit boss who is terrible at their job.
Having worked in the financial industry for many years, I'm betting this has more to do with security than performance. Timeout before your screen locks is ridiculously short - you could be reading something, therefore not moving your mouse, then your screen locks, and you have to put in your password to unlock it. Then there's the nature of call center work, if you're not super busy, you might have a few minutes between calls, but when one comes in, you have to be immediately ready for it, not sitting there typing an overly complex password while an impatient customer is trying to give you all their information right away before you can take it down .. so I totally get the usefulness of a mouse jiggler. I wrote my own in Java way back when- actually it didn't jiggle the mouse, it was simpler to simulate a benign keypress, but same effect. I wrote it myself because I couldn't download one, any reputable site that I might get one from was blocked- but who knows, if I hadn't had the knowledge to write it, I might have been more motivated to find one, any one, any way, and that of course is a big nono- that's how keyloggers and shit like that end up compromising systems and leaking millions of passwords and/or credit card numbers... So I get why the company is concerned, even though I don't care.
Honestly, the whole concept of locked down machines makes no sense to me. If you don't trust your employees, why did you hire them? Let them configure their own machines and secure the edge network and physical premesis. Happy employees won't steal from you, and they'll be motivated to protect their workstations so they can keep their job.
I just... don't understand any of it, and refuse to work anywhere that doesn't give me admin/root access to my work machine. Just let me do my job and you'll be happier with my performance...
Right, but if you're paying x for y amount of work, then once y is complete and you expect y to increase, does x increase as well?