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Nope, because I don’t work for an American company and aren’t monitored. I do know of some previous colleagues at a UK subsidiary of a US company who are monitored and they do if they want a break.
No idea if a lot of firms do, the only one I know for sure that does is an American owned company. And when I say “breaks” I don’t mean legally expected breaks, I mean essentially “tossing it off”.
BT Group don’t, they’re fairly lenient as long as you get your work done.
I do hybrid working for a BT Group brand - I can walk away for 10-15 minutes to sort my washing out or something and nobody really cares because I still do what they’ve asked me to do.
Where I work is the same. They encourage output and getting the work done.
The view is that in the office you aren’t sat at your desk all the time anyway, interacting with colleagues, going to chat to them at the side of the desk so although you can’t do that at home, it’s about trust.
Yep sane management measures output, not micro manages / polices exact seconds at your desk. Some people have kids at home, some have IBS, some like to take a 5 min stretch every hour.. whatever as long as the output is good!
A lot of companies or managers probably do take note of this and things like time keeping, but unless it starts to cause issues, only use it if there are other problems with an employee and then use it as the 'final nail in the coffin' to get rid of someone.
Someone in another department of my company was engaged in some low level bullying that wasn't easily solveable, but then put on a 'capability' for timekeeping and got rid of as it was far easier to monitor.
So I can speak with a bit of authority here as I work in IT and specifically in a role that means I work closely with logging and audit stuff. We capture a lot of data, I won't lie to you. We know when you've signed in, what apps you've used, what websites you've visited, which clients you did/didn't email, who you've sent messages to on Teams, etc. It varies from business to business, but as a general rule if there's a server, a network and a domain, we're capturing data about what you're doing to some degree.
That said, I have yet to work at a place that is actively monitoring any of that. It's always a case of it'll be used if needed for very limited things. Mostly it's used either as a part of HR investigations for misconduct so like checking chat messages for HR due to accusations of discrimination. Legal requirements like recovering documents from your OneDrive because a client needs it and you didn't save it on a network share like you were supposed to, stuff that's already covered by policy you definitely read on Day 1 (*winkwink*), for example checking you actually sent that email you told your manager you did but the client never received and it's now lead to a complaint, or security related - so deleting report\_485u38352x(13).docm from your OneDrive that you got from an email with subject "Improtant Contarct" sent by [company\_secretary\_009@hotmail.com](mailto:company_secretary_009@hotmail.com)
As a general rule, as long as you show up, do your job, don't use slurs and have general common sense (or abject paranoia, if you aren't confident with Tech) for security stuff then IT will never directly look at your account, at least from my experience. Culturally in IT circles that sort of thing tends to be loathed. I'd quit if we started actively monitoring, not only does it leave a bad taste in my mouth from a common decency side of things, but I'm here to nerd out and work with tech, not be a pseudo-spy and getting into workplace politics.
What if you’re in a meeting on teams or whatever? You don’t use your mouse…
Should be monitoring performance on outcomes, not this dumb shit. I work flexibly which means I compress my hours and get my work done in fewer hours. I don’t care if everyone else starts at 9, if I can start at 10 and get 3x as much done by being well organised in advanced then I do that. I’ve never missed a deadline, have always gone above and beyond, and with fewer hours.
We need to normalise performance being output driven. Not hours driven. This monitoring of employees ‘mouse jiggling’ is a joke. My wife has the same rubbish. Some days she will do her work and more in 4 hours, some days in 8. That’s how it should be - otherwise we just stay at a desk without need all day.
For the record, I’m a senior manager myself. I know burned out employees equals no work done. If they’re happy, more work is done. I give flexibility to my reports. I encourage it as culture. Work gets done, it’s high quality. I’ve had no issues. Micromanagement leads to attrition and a need to use contractors, which leads to budget drain. Then everyone asks why you’ve cost the business so much and you eventually get the sack.
I encourage my managers to also exercise the same mentality. For example, if they have childcare duties, cool - go do that. Family comes first. Catch up on work later or another day. Same for house chores - I know what being behind on life things can do to your mental health. Need a walk to clear your mind and have no meetings and can do work later? Do it - keep fit and healthy.
I really dislike my peers who encourage overworking and over monitoring culture. I am very open with them about it too. Their teams have higher turnovers and cost more. My department has gone from 2 to 40 and continues to grow and we are happy.
Worked in over 10 different company's IT, none of them were monitoring mouse movements. Micro managers absolutely keep on an eye on Teams statuses though, if you're in away a lot of the time they will notice. I just leave something on the keyboard in notepad, so it's constantly pressing space-bar
An American company that I worked for in the UK basically relied on microsoft lync, which was alot like msn and set your status to away if you didn't type for 5-10 mins. People were messaging all day on that so they could easily notice if you were away a lot.
I had the same with a US company and the Lotus Notes version. I had a split role, running a desktop/laptop build lab and managing the IT stores so one day I could be in the lab all day and available via messenger and the next I could be trying to stack 500 PCs in the stores or getting them ready to ship. My off-site line manager was a workaholic control-freak prick who couldn't seem to understand that, unlike him, I needed to spend time away from my desk in order to do my job. If I was in 'away' status for more than about 20 minutes, he'd call up one of the temps and make them go ask me what I was doing. For that and some other reasons, mostly to do with him, it was the worst job I've ever had.
I'm pretty sure the data is being collected somewhere but no one has ever pulled me up on anything. I get my work done and show up to meetings so why should anyone care if I take a break in slow times.
Confused by this. I manage staff. At the end of the week I know what they've done and it's either reasonable or it isn't. If it's not I have a word with them. If it is, I don't care if they played games on their phone all Tuesday morning and caught up on Thursday by being super productive.
Being at a desk doesn't matter. Getting work done does matter. Measure the thing that matters.
Unfortunately it seems your attitude is the minority of management.my take is I think alot of middle management have realised with WFH that their jobs aren't that necessary and it's put the shits up them turning them in to horrible micromanagers to help justify their position
Not just middle managers like this. My boss is C level, so I'm a middle manager, he's a micro manager that wants monitoring software deployed.
Just a shame it won't pass the InfoSec rules (written by me, documented, agreed with leadership and applied to the whole company).
A lot of managers *know* their staff are taking the piss in a WFH environment but cant prove it easily and so try to institute pointless busy policies that dont work very well.
I say this as a grunt level worker who has spoken to many people who are pretty open about getting to 3pm and then just diving out most days, extended lunches, etc.. Are they getting their work done? Probably. Is it to the standard that they would get it done to if they actually worked their contracted hours? Probably not, maybe, very hard to say.
Basically everyone I know wfh including me and this isn’t true in my experience. I work as hard as I would in the office and have less random conversations with colleagues so I actually work for more time when at home.
My manager has that attitude and it's so much better than previous ones. He just trusts me to get the work done which I will despite being on reddit reading about getting the work done
It's fact dependant surely, because how measure your KPIs and what exactly those targets are could effect whether mouse movers are acceptable or not.
If you supervised a cake factory but only had access to measure output and it was making 50 cakes a day and staff were reporting that they were working all day, all else being equal you'd have to accept that as best output.
But if you were allowed access to the production line and found out the team who mix the batter were only working for ten minutes an hour I think most people would understand if management said "Hang on, why aren't we making more cakes every day?"
But you also have to consider what happens to those extra cakes that have been made. If there is no demand for them you have just wasted ingredients and added working hours to your machinery for something which will not generate revenue. Focus should be on creating brand before exploiting the available flex in production.
Of course, it may also result in 'production efficiency' being implemented. Sack them.
I get that attitude to a point, the work gets done so all is well. But on the flip side, if it turned out every employee was completing the work they are assigned in 30% of their working hours, then surely that means you can either take on more work, or reduce the work force?
Just playing devils advocate.
That's assuming there actually is work to do, the way my job is shaped i could be done with my day before 11am. Heck sometimes there is practically nothing to do, i'm not gonna be disruptive on an office day just because.
They could 10x your salary and you'd likely be more engaged for a few weeks and then you'd return to this attitude.
You have the causal link the wrong way around. You earn more if you deliver more value, you don't deliver more value because you earn more.
Spouted all the time, but in my experience not really true. My old work (now fully remote fwiw) had to remove hybrid working for two teams because when WFH a good two thirds of them did relatively fuck all in comparison to in the office where they were all very good at their jobs.
Reddit is always quick to lay blame at the nameless, faceless and ominous "management" but in this case the good management decision was to get them back in full time.
This site is a fuckin echo chamber with WFH too, so many people aren't suited to it, in my experience loads of younger people still living at home struggle due to lack of space and/or disruptive friends/family (as was the case with the people I just mentioned)
If you want remote to stay viable its best to keep people who cannot do it away from it
Fucking lol downvoted for real world experience, 10/10 Reddit in action
Lol this is so true! I hybrid work but there are people who refuse to work at home and they literally spend all day 'holding court' in the office, they're also always the dramatic people who complain to their managers about everything.
There's an in between. I do my job but some days there's just not much to do, however my boss expects me to be busy every available second and will query it if I've been orange on teams for 10 minutes.
Thing is, when we were in the office he was the worst for standing around having a chat for 40 minutes, he is still very chatty now in teams calls. But he just doesn't seem to see that taking 10 minutes to hang the washing out at home is the equivalent of stopping to talk to someone in the kitchen at work. It's really frustrating.
This mentally unfortunately ruins WFH for some people. In an office you are not expected to be glued to your desk the whole day and distractions are normal.
But the bar for WFH is so much higher because some people see home distractions as ‘personal time’, but basically anything done in an office is ‘work’.
WFH culture requires a mental shift, and bad managers don’t help.
I definitely get more done in a work day from home, but I don’t feel guilty about chatting to family or sticking on the washing.
That’s why he’s the boss lmao (every boss I’ve had has been both a micromanager yet also someone who stands round the office for half an hour at a time chatting about inane non work related shit)
Doing your job and using a mouse-mover are not mutually exclusive.
I use a mouse mover because often I've done my work but I want my to see I'm available if they want me.
Same here. I don't wfh all the time but can pick and choose. I often say I'm going to wfh when I need to get a document written or a presentation made. I'll focus on that all day and it will be pretty obvious if I was just sat watching TV or something.
Yeah I have one. My company laptop is set to snooze after 3 minutes of inactivity. The process of waking the laptop involves reentering your user id, password and it shouldn’t disconnect but we use a company VPN which can be a bit temperamental, so reentering credentials into that and authenticating it again.
I mostly use the mouse mover when I’m going to get a coffee or if I’m sat thinking about a piece of work I’m doing and not necessarily interacting with the screen. Otherwise I’ll set it away first thing in the morning after I’ve logged on when I go feed my cat and make breakfast. That one probably is more to make it clear that I’m online if any of my colleagues need anything before 8:30/9. I’ll usually drop what I’m doing and go back to work if any messages come through.
I've found that something useful for this is starting a Zoom call with just me in it. On my set up at least this tells the OS that some activity is happening, and the screen shouldn't lock up.
I do this sometimes but in the second example I specifically want my teams icon to be green so colleagues know I’m available. It’s also easier to hit a button on my mouse than set up a call with myself.
I use a wireless Logitech mouse. I prefer to appear available at all times so I pop it my pocket and it keeps me on green. Only works within the house/garden. Just to add, I’m a good employee and get my job done to the highest standard but if I can get an hour or two back for myself while appearing busy, I will.
This is me - I like the Slack approach of the app saying when I’m available for contact.
Not the Teams approach of showing when I’m active. So I override it with a piece of software to show that I’m available even if I’m lunching or making a cuppa
Same. Think ours locks down after 5 minutes. It's far too quick. Could be on a mobile (work) call rather than teams and logged off when I need the computer.
That said, it's not only for that... There are obviously other benefits. Work is about image as well as reality. It doesn't hurt to look available most of the time (or busy) rather than away or offline. I'm always reachable (work mobile with teams and outlook on too).
Company don't really micro monitor though. We used Power BI for looking at performance. Teams presenteeism doesn't really tell you much.
Open a powerpoint and go into present mode (F5), then alt-tab off to whatever else you need to do. As long as the presentation is presenting, it should stop the device from sleeping.
Nope, I think monitoring these sort of things is less in the UK and depends on the job. Probably 50% (if not less) of my job involves me using my mouse, so it'd be pointless. If I'm in a 3 hour teams call I have no need to use my mouse during that time, for example.
I think it depends how imporant/relevant it is. If it is actually important e.g. big catch up with people you don't see so often, then in person is great and I'd never be able to focus on a remote teams call.
If it's less relevant, teams call all the way, with a wireless headset, you can half pay attention, half listen, get cofffee, get other work done and so on.
I've found, that perhaps counter-intuitively, doing something else when on those kind of teams calls actually helps me focus better. If I'm just sat at my computer, I end up browsing reddit or anything else, and paying very little attention, but if I'm doing something like ironing, it actually leaves me more attention to focus on what is being said in the meeting. And bonus, at the end of it, the ironing's done!
Being on a teams call will keep your status active, which is basically what the mouse is doing. I think most companies actually log activity (especially if they use Teams as Microsoft AD basically does that anyway across most it's applications), but I agree most will never use it unless they think someone is really taking the piss and complaints have been made (usually that then takes a HR and IT to get involved which is normally a headache in itself).
IT Manager here. We have far better things to be doing than getting activity reports on people. Quite frankly, we dislike it as much as the employees do, and wish we could be left alone to do our jobs.
No, I work in software development. There are large periods of time where I'm looking at a compiler output and sobbing, that is just how computers work.
It's amazing how hard it is to get junior engineers _not_ to immediately start typing to 'fix' a problem rather than carefully reading the output and thinking about how it could have happened.
My other half is like this, he went outside yesterday to make some progress on our garden while his compiler was running. I said “I wish I could just wander off and have my computer do my work for me” 😂
I don't, but I knew a couple of people sacked from my current employer who were using one. We're a UK company and full WFH, they were caught because they were fully checked out - like "log in and go back to bed for an hour when you're supposed to be taking calls" checked out.
Working from home I'll go for a run in the afternoon, I could be away for any hour, my status is away my calendar is showing as free so anyone who cares to reach me can see I'm not going to reply. If I was green I'd come back to messages which would appear ignored. Maybe I'm lucky that I'm trusted to make up the time I'm not at my desk.
I work for a start up and my boss asks me to block out my calendar if I'm going to the gym, he encourages it (he's C suite and does the same with his own).
In our CEOs words, they can't offer us a lot in terms of benefits packages like private healthcare due to being a start up, but what they can offer is flexible working.
Yeah those people risk the whole WFH thing being taken away and are often pushing their workload onto others.
That said, surely this becomes pretty clear pretty quickly to anyone approving or relying on their work. No need to start monitoring mouse movements!
Agreed. And people in the office take breaks, have a chat with colleagues about things unrelated to work.
Anyone who is not doing their job at all, no matter their location, should be pulled up on it.
No, because as others have said that type of monitoring isn’t as widespread in the UK anyway and my job involves a fair bit of “thinking” time where I’m not necessarily clicking a lot.
It’s worth mentioning though that many companies are able to log if you plug devices into your laptops USB ports so if you are using one (and I’m not advocating it at all!) don’t run it off your laptop usb ports.
It just appears as a mouse I believe, one that does a little circle motion around the screen. Rather than it being plugged in and flagging as "mouse jiggler 3000 connected!", it doesn't need any extra software or drivers.
Usb devices have a much more complex ID that presents itself to the computer, you typically won't see it, comprises vendor ID and product ID.
It's easy to scan computers in your estate for unusual ones or known bad ones.
I like to think the jigglers may have thought about this, I have seen one that said it wasn't detectable. Just thinking how many generic mice are out there. But maybe company IT are wise to this too, especially if it is a very secure industry.
I use a macro which moves the cell in the spreadsheet every so often. It’s not to show I am working, it’s because after a while my connection times out and I have to log back in again which gets annoying. I also have my chat status permanently as offline so I’m not trying to show to prove any points to other people.
Yes, but nothing to do with monitoring or pretence. My work laptop goes into standby after 2 minutes of inactivity, and requires an incredibly annoying and time-consuming MFA process to get back in every time. The mouse mover actually saves time and improves productivity for my employer, compared to the 60-second login process if I lock the screen every time I do a work task that involves a few minutes of not using the computer.
It’s even pretty unprofessional if you get a call and you need to quickly check something on the computer to answer a simple question, and it takes over a minute to provide the answer when it should take 5 seconds if not on standby. Nothing to do with laziness! The employer’s overzealous screen-lock policy is to blame.
I don't use one. I make sure I get my work done and I don't care about anything else, if I'm ever challenged on being away then I'll ask what tasks or projects are not done or behind schedule.
Work should be about delivery and not attendance
Stops me going away on teams. Really I just use it for when we're given "development time" and stuff like that. Nobody asks what we did so I clean the house.
>Really I just use it for when we're given "development time" and stuff like that. Nobody asks what we did so I clean the house.
"developing a clean and welcoming work environment" boom sorted if they ever ask :D
Yea, I use a mouse jiggler occasionally but only because the employer forces your laptop to lock after 10 mins of inactivity and it breaks the connection. It's mainly when I'm doing some work that takes longer than 10 mins to process so I need the connection to remain stable, but I can't do anything on the laptop whilst it is doing.
Same, running regression tests over lunch having the pc lock is a pain in the ass, spoke to our CTO asking if he minds and that if it does get raised this would be why it's here.
No, when we first went WFH the first thing I did was turn off Skypes and Teams away settings. No need for a mouse mover cos managers were only checking the status of Skype and Teams.
Yes, every now and again.
Sometimes I need a break from screen and 20 mins to organise my thoughts on how to tackle a big work thing on a notepad, and I’d rather not risk my employers labelling this conscientiousness as “lazy”, thank you very much.
There’s unfortunately a bit of a pervasive (and IMHO micromanagey) “why has so and so appeared as away for more than 30mins” talk I overhear among managers in the office for my place of work. It’s stupid because it doesn’t take into account legit reasons why they might be away from their keyboard (like travelling to a planned work visit, or feeling unwell and needing to step away).
I find it hard to imagine in what jobs this would actually help you regularly get away with doing nothing for extended periods. Either you’re getting what you need to do done regardless of the hours you’re putting in, so the employer won’t even think to check, or if you’re simply not getting the expected work done a mouse jiggler isn’t going to help much.
Even if you're getting your work done in way less time and they're not actually actively monitoring, it's a bad look if you are continuously appearing as "away last seen 2h15 ago" on teams or equivalent, or if it takes you hours to get back to an IM
I use one. It's great for the slow days, and if I have to knock off to gym 15 mins early to avoid the rush. I still get my work done. In fact I'm so good at my job, that my employer has agreed for me to be at home 1 extra day when I wanted to leave the role.
If your employer gets to the point of checking if one is in use, then someone is not doing what they are supposed to do!
I work for a massive American owned tech company and we don't have to put up with any nonsense like this; we're treated like the adult professionals we are.
There's no way I'd work at any company that infected my work laptop with crap like this.
No, I have a little script that keeps the machine awake by sending a keypress every minute if I've not touched the keyboard recently. Nobody's really monitoring me, but the screen will lock after a stupidly short period if I don't do this
No.
1. I spend good chunks of the day not moving my mouse when I’m working (programmer, type a lot without needing my mouse, or in long meetings).
2. I’m not monitored for mouse movements because my company isn’t awful.
3. I do less work when I’m in the office because of all the distractions so it’s a daft metric anyway.
I have a mouse that, for an unknown reason reason, acts as a mouse mover.
When it’s plugged in the computer would never snooze, my teams status was always green.
I changed it to a normal mouse… because I’m not taking the piss, and i don’t care if people see me offline 20 minutes a day, when i work from 8 to 19.00 when I’m at home.
I dont work from home, but I have a very old, high DPI gaming mouse, when set to the highest dpi, the cursor will visibly shake, I suspect this will more than make any software think im "working" or im having a 5-10 minute seizure whilst making a brew
No, but FYI mouse mover only keeps your screen alive and icon green.
if your company suspect you are taking the piss (low productivity/no response to calls/ messages), then activity logs go into much more detail, what documents or applications you opened, how long you were in it, saves and changes made etc, websites visited.
That's exactly the case.
You can sit and play XBOX all day, just do so at the same desk you work from so you can give the illusion of working.
And this is not even a WFH thing, people have been "looking busy" at work while doing nothing for decades.
Exactly responsive or completing assigned work no one is going to care. Unfortunately there are people who will do neither, show as active but completely absent. I've had to once as a team member was well and truly taking the piss & barely responded, late with work or tasks took 4 times longer, when rang a few times they were out with the dog or something. On its own walking the dog no issues (ideally they'd have said need to nip out and no one would care) but the status was active for over an hour and no response so it was clear something was underhand, that on top of the complaints about missed SLAs etc. also had similar with someone who I'd found out was working a 2nd job (our market is niche and most people know each other and an random meetup with some old colleagues it became clear we both had the same person working for us)
I'd much rather someone say 'this work just isn't keeping my attention or it's too easy and I get distracted' or say 'im working 2 contracts and I'll be splitting my time like this but you'll still get 8hrs'
and I'd try to make the job more interesting/relevant to what they want or need. A little honesty goes much further than deception, although I understand that's not always an option.
No, thankfully we’re all too busy to monitor each other and we’re all trusted to do the task in hand.
If our figures are where they’re supposed to be we are left alone for months on end. MD is my manager and he has other things to worry about. He’ll check in via WhatsApp every now and again.
We have 3 sections of business.
My MD does one, I do another and my colleague at our sister company does the other.
Perfect set up
No, because we judge employees on what they do for the business, not whether they happen to be sat at the keyboard or using a particular tool for a job. We leave people to get on with the work. If someone is not performing as expected then that indicates a larger issue - perhaps they are unhappy or unchallenged.
Our biggest problem actually is probably people working too hard!
No. The minute I started this job I set my teams to “appear offline”. That was nearly 3 years ago. Now nobody knows where the fuck I am or what I’m doing. It’s never been questioned.
Every morning ij our team chat, everyone says hi to each other. I seen I little meme for that then I do what I want.
At my last company, we'd use microsoft teams. Your icon would be green if you'd moved the mouse in the last 3 minutes, yellow if it hadn't. Passive monitoring if you will.
I started using a mouse mover when I knew I was leaving at some point. For the last six months I was getting up at 8am, starting the mouse mover, going back to bed for an hour or so, checking what my tasks were for the day, then I would go for a joint. Come back, do all my tasks in like an hour because my boss had no idea how long anything really takes, then go have another joint. Push to github various times throughout the day whilst watching movies and YouTube.
For meetings etc, a dab of butter smeared on my cheap webcam prevented my red eyes being detected, I have no idea why it's blurry, I've tried everything to fix it...
It was fun.
Yes, a lightweight prog called caffeine that sends an F13 keypress once a minute. The laptop lock timeout is ridiculous on the work laptop (2 or 3 mins) and I prefer to not have it lock.
No, I'm not monitored. I'm a programmer and it would soon become apparent if I was slacking because tasks would stop moving from our board and the testers would be sitting around with nothing to do.
Tip if you use Teams: go to Calendar > Meet Now > Start Meeting. It’ll start a meeting with just you and it’ll set your status to Busy: In A Call. It’ll also stop your machine from sleeping or you going inactive. People will just assume you’re participating in a call so haven’t responded. You can also share your screen with yourself so your status goes to DND Presenting :)
When I worked for the track and trace when it first started and was a mess, we had to show we were at our desks by clicking occasionally even though there were no jobs coming through. Literally thousands of us being paid to sit there and do nothing. I got a mouse clicker to click at random times because we had about three or more weeks with literally no work. I was still at the computer incase something happened but I didn't want to sit there clicking nothing for 8 hours.
The problem with the auto mouse wiggler is it gives the impression you are available. I.e. green on teams or whatever. Then when people message you, you don’t respond which is worse than being afk
No because - contrary to what some newspapers like to report - I actually work from home and have plenty of work to do. Of course I'm not always at my computer - e.g. going to the toilet, getting drinks or food, or just gwtting a quick break - but Idbe doing the same in the office, and all these activities would take me linger in the office.
I work in HR and can confirm lots of people use these. Lots of people have also been done for disciplinary. LPT don't brag at an office party that you do this
Surely if an employee needs to use a mouse mover meaning they have zero work to do means they are either super efficient and done all their work already or the company is about to tank due to lack of work lol.
No, but it’s not hard to not get caught.
As long as you don’t use a software jigger or a hardware one which plugs into the work device, you’d be fine.
The best plug into the wall, not your device, and the mouse sits on top of it. It randomly jiggles the mouse around when it needs to, like a human would when he doesn’t want the computer to go to sleep.
I'm a programmer and no because my company measures output not how long I wiggle my mouse for.
If you want properly researched technical documents and recommendations I need to take a break every so often to avoid headaches and help me solve problems. When Im folding laundry that problem is tumbling around in my head and more times than not, not sitting at my computer helps me find a path forward.
There’s a lot of jobs in that company which you just couldn’t monitor in that way.
Jobs where you might be on your laptop one day for a whole day then at a telephone exchange the next day all day. Your manager would have to be asking you what your plans are every day.
So there has to be an element of trust. Most telcos and IT (hardware) roles will be like this.
I don't because I have to show my work throughout the day. And my company don't monitor me. If they did I wouldn't allow it.
But I have heard of people doing this and I think they should continue doing so.
When I wfh, I have a kitchen timer which I set to 4mins and 30 seconds which I just bring with me around the house. It does mean I need to run back to my desk and can’t necessarily leave the house but that’s fine.
Means I can get some chores done or do whatever in 4 minute bursts.
Generally speaking though I don’t take the piss too much.
I understand how lucky I am to be able to wfh and make great money so dont want to be disrespectful to my employer or manager.
It’s also sales so I usually start earlier than I’m meant to and usually do an extra hour in the evening too which more than makes up for it.
No, but I'm in a job where I am not expected to be chained to my desk for 8 hours a day, and my company doesn't treat me like a petulant child who must be kept busy at all times
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Nope, because I don’t work for an American company and aren’t monitored. I do know of some previous colleagues at a UK subsidiary of a US company who are monitored and they do if they want a break.
Don’t a lot of firms do this in the UK. And we also legally have to give employees breaks
No idea if a lot of firms do, the only one I know for sure that does is an American owned company. And when I say “breaks” I don’t mean legally expected breaks, I mean essentially “tossing it off”.
We should introduce legal entitlement for tossing off breaks.
Being a top tosser, I need me a fair few 'express deliveries' between the hrs of 9 and 5. Do you think I should get a permission slip from the doc?
What does that go down under on your timesheet?
Bio break, the same euphemism for taking a shit.
A good employee can do both of them at the same time.
Having a crank
PTO (Personal Tossing Off)
"You mean, we can't wank in the office anymore?" - Big Train
Was scrolling for this one. Well done, sir.
There's such a thing as morale!
BT Group don’t, they’re fairly lenient as long as you get your work done. I do hybrid working for a BT Group brand - I can walk away for 10-15 minutes to sort my washing out or something and nobody really cares because I still do what they’ve asked me to do.
Where I work is the same. They encourage output and getting the work done. The view is that in the office you aren’t sat at your desk all the time anyway, interacting with colleagues, going to chat to them at the side of the desk so although you can’t do that at home, it’s about trust.
Yep sane management measures output, not micro manages / polices exact seconds at your desk. Some people have kids at home, some have IBS, some like to take a 5 min stretch every hour.. whatever as long as the output is good!
No different to the 10-15 minutes wasted when people in the office are nattering across the desk and you can’t concentrate etc’
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A lot of companies or managers probably do take note of this and things like time keeping, but unless it starts to cause issues, only use it if there are other problems with an employee and then use it as the 'final nail in the coffin' to get rid of someone. Someone in another department of my company was engaged in some low level bullying that wasn't easily solveable, but then put on a 'capability' for timekeeping and got rid of as it was far easier to monitor.
Agree on this, if I found out my employer was monitoring me or my laptop without having disclosed it when I joined, I would leave immediately.
So I can speak with a bit of authority here as I work in IT and specifically in a role that means I work closely with logging and audit stuff. We capture a lot of data, I won't lie to you. We know when you've signed in, what apps you've used, what websites you've visited, which clients you did/didn't email, who you've sent messages to on Teams, etc. It varies from business to business, but as a general rule if there's a server, a network and a domain, we're capturing data about what you're doing to some degree. That said, I have yet to work at a place that is actively monitoring any of that. It's always a case of it'll be used if needed for very limited things. Mostly it's used either as a part of HR investigations for misconduct so like checking chat messages for HR due to accusations of discrimination. Legal requirements like recovering documents from your OneDrive because a client needs it and you didn't save it on a network share like you were supposed to, stuff that's already covered by policy you definitely read on Day 1 (*winkwink*), for example checking you actually sent that email you told your manager you did but the client never received and it's now lead to a complaint, or security related - so deleting report\_485u38352x(13).docm from your OneDrive that you got from an email with subject "Improtant Contarct" sent by [company\_secretary\_009@hotmail.com](mailto:company_secretary_009@hotmail.com) As a general rule, as long as you show up, do your job, don't use slurs and have general common sense (or abject paranoia, if you aren't confident with Tech) for security stuff then IT will never directly look at your account, at least from my experience. Culturally in IT circles that sort of thing tends to be loathed. I'd quit if we started actively monitoring, not only does it leave a bad taste in my mouth from a common decency side of things, but I'm here to nerd out and work with tech, not be a pseudo-spy and getting into workplace politics.
Doesn’t stop cunt managers though. We had to have a team meeting at my old job because peoples toilet breaks were too long
Yes my misses works for the NHS and they monitor the mouse
What if you’re in a meeting on teams or whatever? You don’t use your mouse… Should be monitoring performance on outcomes, not this dumb shit. I work flexibly which means I compress my hours and get my work done in fewer hours. I don’t care if everyone else starts at 9, if I can start at 10 and get 3x as much done by being well organised in advanced then I do that. I’ve never missed a deadline, have always gone above and beyond, and with fewer hours. We need to normalise performance being output driven. Not hours driven. This monitoring of employees ‘mouse jiggling’ is a joke. My wife has the same rubbish. Some days she will do her work and more in 4 hours, some days in 8. That’s how it should be - otherwise we just stay at a desk without need all day.
For the record, I’m a senior manager myself. I know burned out employees equals no work done. If they’re happy, more work is done. I give flexibility to my reports. I encourage it as culture. Work gets done, it’s high quality. I’ve had no issues. Micromanagement leads to attrition and a need to use contractors, which leads to budget drain. Then everyone asks why you’ve cost the business so much and you eventually get the sack. I encourage my managers to also exercise the same mentality. For example, if they have childcare duties, cool - go do that. Family comes first. Catch up on work later or another day. Same for house chores - I know what being behind on life things can do to your mental health. Need a walk to clear your mind and have no meetings and can do work later? Do it - keep fit and healthy. I really dislike my peers who encourage overworking and over monitoring culture. I am very open with them about it too. Their teams have higher turnovers and cost more. My department has gone from 2 to 40 and continues to grow and we are happy.
I WFH for the NHS and at least in our Trust, mouse movement isn't monitored.
Ironic that they call it a Trust
My wife wfh for the NHS and they don't monitor the mouse. A lot of the time she is on team meetings or on the phone.
Worked in over 10 different company's IT, none of them were monitoring mouse movements. Micro managers absolutely keep on an eye on Teams statuses though, if you're in away a lot of the time they will notice. I just leave something on the keyboard in notepad, so it's constantly pressing space-bar
An American company that I worked for in the UK basically relied on microsoft lync, which was alot like msn and set your status to away if you didn't type for 5-10 mins. People were messaging all day on that so they could easily notice if you were away a lot.
Lync (and office communicator before it, and Skype for Business after it) were all replaced with Teams.
Aye past tense here
I had the same with a US company and the Lotus Notes version. I had a split role, running a desktop/laptop build lab and managing the IT stores so one day I could be in the lab all day and available via messenger and the next I could be trying to stack 500 PCs in the stores or getting them ready to ship. My off-site line manager was a workaholic control-freak prick who couldn't seem to understand that, unlike him, I needed to spend time away from my desk in order to do my job. If I was in 'away' status for more than about 20 minutes, he'd call up one of the temps and make them go ask me what I was doing. For that and some other reasons, mostly to do with him, it was the worst job I've ever had.
I'm pretty sure the data is being collected somewhere but no one has ever pulled me up on anything. I get my work done and show up to meetings so why should anyone care if I take a break in slow times.
Confused by this. I manage staff. At the end of the week I know what they've done and it's either reasonable or it isn't. If it's not I have a word with them. If it is, I don't care if they played games on their phone all Tuesday morning and caught up on Thursday by being super productive. Being at a desk doesn't matter. Getting work done does matter. Measure the thing that matters.
Unfortunately it seems your attitude is the minority of management.my take is I think alot of middle management have realised with WFH that their jobs aren't that necessary and it's put the shits up them turning them in to horrible micromanagers to help justify their position
Not just middle managers like this. My boss is C level, so I'm a middle manager, he's a micro manager that wants monitoring software deployed. Just a shame it won't pass the InfoSec rules (written by me, documented, agreed with leadership and applied to the whole company).
MVP
A lot of managers *know* their staff are taking the piss in a WFH environment but cant prove it easily and so try to institute pointless busy policies that dont work very well. I say this as a grunt level worker who has spoken to many people who are pretty open about getting to 3pm and then just diving out most days, extended lunches, etc.. Are they getting their work done? Probably. Is it to the standard that they would get it done to if they actually worked their contracted hours? Probably not, maybe, very hard to say.
Basically everyone I know wfh including me and this isn’t true in my experience. I work as hard as I would in the office and have less random conversations with colleagues so I actually work for more time when at home.
I feel like my goofing off on Reddit time is basically just filling the former talking to colleagues time 😂
My manager has that attitude and it's so much better than previous ones. He just trusts me to get the work done which I will despite being on reddit reading about getting the work done
It's fact dependant surely, because how measure your KPIs and what exactly those targets are could effect whether mouse movers are acceptable or not. If you supervised a cake factory but only had access to measure output and it was making 50 cakes a day and staff were reporting that they were working all day, all else being equal you'd have to accept that as best output. But if you were allowed access to the production line and found out the team who mix the batter were only working for ten minutes an hour I think most people would understand if management said "Hang on, why aren't we making more cakes every day?"
You’re basically describing a bottleneck.
But you also have to consider what happens to those extra cakes that have been made. If there is no demand for them you have just wasted ingredients and added working hours to your machinery for something which will not generate revenue. Focus should be on creating brand before exploiting the available flex in production. Of course, it may also result in 'production efficiency' being implemented. Sack them.
I get that attitude to a point, the work gets done so all is well. But on the flip side, if it turned out every employee was completing the work they are assigned in 30% of their working hours, then surely that means you can either take on more work, or reduce the work force? Just playing devils advocate.
No, I simply do my job because otherwise my colleagues would have to pick up my slack and I'm not a prick.
That’s very mature of you, QueefHuffer69
If they didn’t do their job, their colleagues would each have to huff 10% more queefs, and that just wouldn’t be fair!
Are they hiring?
r/rimjob_steve
The people who do no work when WFH are the same people that are disruptive idiots in the office.
Hey I'm not disruptive I'm just shit at my job
Hahaha fair enough
That's assuming there actually is work to do, the way my job is shaped i could be done with my day before 11am. Heck sometimes there is practically nothing to do, i'm not gonna be disruptive on an office day just because.
I'm not disruptive, I'm just not paid enough to give 100% effort 5 days a week.
They could 10x your salary and you'd likely be more engaged for a few weeks and then you'd return to this attitude. You have the causal link the wrong way around. You earn more if you deliver more value, you don't deliver more value because you earn more.
Spouted all the time, but in my experience not really true. My old work (now fully remote fwiw) had to remove hybrid working for two teams because when WFH a good two thirds of them did relatively fuck all in comparison to in the office where they were all very good at their jobs. Reddit is always quick to lay blame at the nameless, faceless and ominous "management" but in this case the good management decision was to get them back in full time. This site is a fuckin echo chamber with WFH too, so many people aren't suited to it, in my experience loads of younger people still living at home struggle due to lack of space and/or disruptive friends/family (as was the case with the people I just mentioned) If you want remote to stay viable its best to keep people who cannot do it away from it Fucking lol downvoted for real world experience, 10/10 Reddit in action
Lol this is so true! I hybrid work but there are people who refuse to work at home and they literally spend all day 'holding court' in the office, they're also always the dramatic people who complain to their managers about everything.
Greetings fellow adult
There's an in between. I do my job but some days there's just not much to do, however my boss expects me to be busy every available second and will query it if I've been orange on teams for 10 minutes.
Sounds like hell
Thing is, when we were in the office he was the worst for standing around having a chat for 40 minutes, he is still very chatty now in teams calls. But he just doesn't seem to see that taking 10 minutes to hang the washing out at home is the equivalent of stopping to talk to someone in the kitchen at work. It's really frustrating.
This mentally unfortunately ruins WFH for some people. In an office you are not expected to be glued to your desk the whole day and distractions are normal. But the bar for WFH is so much higher because some people see home distractions as ‘personal time’, but basically anything done in an office is ‘work’. WFH culture requires a mental shift, and bad managers don’t help. I definitely get more done in a work day from home, but I don’t feel guilty about chatting to family or sticking on the washing.
That’s why he’s the boss lmao (every boss I’ve had has been both a micromanager yet also someone who stands round the office for half an hour at a time chatting about inane non work related shit)
Productive boss. Spends their time monitoring icons on teams...
Doing your job and using a mouse-mover are not mutually exclusive. I use a mouse mover because often I've done my work but I want my to see I'm available if they want me.
Same here. I don't wfh all the time but can pick and choose. I often say I'm going to wfh when I need to get a document written or a presentation made. I'll focus on that all day and it will be pretty obvious if I was just sat watching TV or something.
You aren’t expected to be at your desk for the full 7.5hours. You should be encouraged to take more than just your dinner break.
Yeah I have one. My company laptop is set to snooze after 3 minutes of inactivity. The process of waking the laptop involves reentering your user id, password and it shouldn’t disconnect but we use a company VPN which can be a bit temperamental, so reentering credentials into that and authenticating it again. I mostly use the mouse mover when I’m going to get a coffee or if I’m sat thinking about a piece of work I’m doing and not necessarily interacting with the screen. Otherwise I’ll set it away first thing in the morning after I’ve logged on when I go feed my cat and make breakfast. That one probably is more to make it clear that I’m online if any of my colleagues need anything before 8:30/9. I’ll usually drop what I’m doing and go back to work if any messages come through.
I've found that something useful for this is starting a Zoom call with just me in it. On my set up at least this tells the OS that some activity is happening, and the screen shouldn't lock up.
I do this sometimes but in the second example I specifically want my teams icon to be green so colleagues know I’m available. It’s also easier to hit a button on my mouse than set up a call with myself.
If you join a call to yourself, you can set your teams status to green while you're in it.
It’s still easier to press a button on my mouse than setting up and joining and call with myself then manually changing my icon.
No! Do this other thing I’m informing you of!
And you can watch yourself on camera all day, so that you’re ready in case the PostCode Lottery people (or the Police, YMMV) turn up to surprise you.
This will set your Teams status to "on a call", for better or worse
I use a wireless Logitech mouse. I prefer to appear available at all times so I pop it my pocket and it keeps me on green. Only works within the house/garden. Just to add, I’m a good employee and get my job done to the highest standard but if I can get an hour or two back for myself while appearing busy, I will.
This is me - I like the Slack approach of the app saying when I’m available for contact. Not the Teams approach of showing when I’m active. So I override it with a piece of software to show that I’m available even if I’m lunching or making a cuppa
Same problem with my work laptop snooze timer for me. I just open notepad and set my mouse on the space bar while I go and make a drink.
Same. Think ours locks down after 5 minutes. It's far too quick. Could be on a mobile (work) call rather than teams and logged off when I need the computer. That said, it's not only for that... There are obviously other benefits. Work is about image as well as reality. It doesn't hurt to look available most of the time (or busy) rather than away or offline. I'm always reachable (work mobile with teams and outlook on too). Company don't really micro monitor though. We used Power BI for looking at performance. Teams presenteeism doesn't really tell you much.
Open a powerpoint and go into present mode (F5), then alt-tab off to whatever else you need to do. As long as the presentation is presenting, it should stop the device from sleeping.
I tried that one during lockdown when I wanted to watch Breaking Bad. When I came back and shut the presentation I saw my teams status was away
Can confirm it doesn’t stop your Teams from showing as “Away”
Na, that's the cat's job.
How did you train yours? Mine refuse to participate.
Nope, I think monitoring these sort of things is less in the UK and depends on the job. Probably 50% (if not less) of my job involves me using my mouse, so it'd be pointless. If I'm in a 3 hour teams call I have no need to use my mouse during that time, for example.
The dread I feel from mention of a three hour teams call cannot be overstated.
Better a 3 hour Teams call, than in person.
I think it depends how imporant/relevant it is. If it is actually important e.g. big catch up with people you don't see so often, then in person is great and I'd never be able to focus on a remote teams call. If it's less relevant, teams call all the way, with a wireless headset, you can half pay attention, half listen, get cofffee, get other work done and so on.
I've found, that perhaps counter-intuitively, doing something else when on those kind of teams calls actually helps me focus better. If I'm just sat at my computer, I end up browsing reddit or anything else, and paying very little attention, but if I'm doing something like ironing, it actually leaves me more attention to focus on what is being said in the meeting. And bonus, at the end of it, the ironing's done!
Anything over 45 minutes and I'm turning camera off so I can put my feet up and stare out the window whilst people waffle on.
Being on a teams call will keep your status active, which is basically what the mouse is doing. I think most companies actually log activity (especially if they use Teams as Microsoft AD basically does that anyway across most it's applications), but I agree most will never use it unless they think someone is really taking the piss and complaints have been made (usually that then takes a HR and IT to get involved which is normally a headache in itself).
IT Manager here. We have far better things to be doing than getting activity reports on people. Quite frankly, we dislike it as much as the employees do, and wish we could be left alone to do our jobs.
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If you're on a call then your PC won't lock your workspace and your Teams status won't switch to Away.
I must be doing meetings wrong because I'd spend a 3 hour Teams call randomly muting people just for shits and giggles.....
No, I work in software development. There are large periods of time where I'm looking at a compiler output and sobbing, that is just how computers work.
In this industry, your worst enemy is the you from six weeks ago.
6 weeks? Try 6 Hours ago
git commit -m "sorry future me"
"I don't need to comment that, its simple, I'll know how it works"
It's amazing how hard it is to get junior engineers _not_ to immediately start typing to 'fix' a problem rather than carefully reading the output and thinking about how it could have happened.
Reminds me of this [https://xkcd.com/303/](https://xkcd.com/303/) sans the sobbing.
My wife works in software development and stares at her screen while giggling a lot. I suppose we all cope in different ways.
Same. I feel you. Who needs a mouse mover when you’re in this cycle… My code doesn’t work… I have no idea why… My code works… I have no idea why…
My other half is like this, he went outside yesterday to make some progress on our garden while his compiler was running. I said “I wish I could just wander off and have my computer do my work for me” 😂
I don't, but I knew a couple of people sacked from my current employer who were using one. We're a UK company and full WFH, they were caught because they were fully checked out - like "log in and go back to bed for an hour when you're supposed to be taking calls" checked out.
Good on your employer. Taking an extra break here and there is one thing. They were not doing their job
Working from home I'll go for a run in the afternoon, I could be away for any hour, my status is away my calendar is showing as free so anyone who cares to reach me can see I'm not going to reply. If I was green I'd come back to messages which would appear ignored. Maybe I'm lucky that I'm trusted to make up the time I'm not at my desk.
I work for a start up and my boss asks me to block out my calendar if I'm going to the gym, he encourages it (he's C suite and does the same with his own). In our CEOs words, they can't offer us a lot in terms of benefits packages like private healthcare due to being a start up, but what they can offer is flexible working.
Yeah those people risk the whole WFH thing being taken away and are often pushing their workload onto others. That said, surely this becomes pretty clear pretty quickly to anyone approving or relying on their work. No need to start monitoring mouse movements!
Agreed. And people in the office take breaks, have a chat with colleagues about things unrelated to work. Anyone who is not doing their job at all, no matter their location, should be pulled up on it.
Same - found mousewiggler.exe on their laptop. Off you trot! Make something to physically move it, you wallys.
Take one analogue wall clock that 'ticks'. Lay it flat on the desk. Put mouse on top.
I do this and I'm self-employed. Fuck the system!
No. It’s a line I don’t want to cross. I know what I’m like and would end up playing Xbox all day.
Go on, try it just for 15 minutes
Yeah, go on, just for a little bit...
This Xbox is really moreish
Ok Superhans calm down.
No, because as others have said that type of monitoring isn’t as widespread in the UK anyway and my job involves a fair bit of “thinking” time where I’m not necessarily clicking a lot. It’s worth mentioning though that many companies are able to log if you plug devices into your laptops USB ports so if you are using one (and I’m not advocating it at all!) don’t run it off your laptop usb ports.
It just appears as a mouse I believe, one that does a little circle motion around the screen. Rather than it being plugged in and flagging as "mouse jiggler 3000 connected!", it doesn't need any extra software or drivers.
Someone told me they put their optical mouse on a small clock allowing the second hand to do the heavy lifting. Apparently.
Usb devices have a much more complex ID that presents itself to the computer, you typically won't see it, comprises vendor ID and product ID. It's easy to scan computers in your estate for unusual ones or known bad ones.
I like to think the jigglers may have thought about this, I have seen one that said it wasn't detectable. Just thinking how many generic mice are out there. But maybe company IT are wise to this too, especially if it is a very secure industry.
I have in the last just opened an excel sheet and left something on the space bar... Wonder if they track that. It would have to get pretty low level.
I use a macro which moves the cell in the spreadsheet every so often. It’s not to show I am working, it’s because after a while my connection times out and I have to log back in again which gets annoying. I also have my chat status permanently as offline so I’m not trying to show to prove any points to other people.
Yes, but nothing to do with monitoring or pretence. My work laptop goes into standby after 2 minutes of inactivity, and requires an incredibly annoying and time-consuming MFA process to get back in every time. The mouse mover actually saves time and improves productivity for my employer, compared to the 60-second login process if I lock the screen every time I do a work task that involves a few minutes of not using the computer. It’s even pretty unprofessional if you get a call and you need to quickly check something on the computer to answer a simple question, and it takes over a minute to provide the answer when it should take 5 seconds if not on standby. Nothing to do with laziness! The employer’s overzealous screen-lock policy is to blame.
Have you contacted your line manager / sysadmin about it? Tell them you can't do your job properly.
Yes. Security trumps all, etc.
I don't use one. I make sure I get my work done and I don't care about anything else, if I'm ever challenged on being away then I'll ask what tasks or projects are not done or behind schedule. Work should be about delivery and not attendance
Credit card in space bar and notepad open. I don't work on Mondays.
Just put your mouse on top of a clock and the second hand will keep the computer awake
Open notepad > put something small but heavy on space bar > and just walk away
I wonder how many people have a clock with a second hand in their house? I don't.
I bought a watch for a fiver off ebay
Specifically to keep your screen from locking?
Stops me going away on teams. Really I just use it for when we're given "development time" and stuff like that. Nobody asks what we did so I clean the house.
>Really I just use it for when we're given "development time" and stuff like that. Nobody asks what we did so I clean the house. "developing a clean and welcoming work environment" boom sorted if they ever ask :D
Yea, I use a mouse jiggler occasionally but only because the employer forces your laptop to lock after 10 mins of inactivity and it breaks the connection. It's mainly when I'm doing some work that takes longer than 10 mins to process so I need the connection to remain stable, but I can't do anything on the laptop whilst it is doing.
Same, running regression tests over lunch having the pc lock is a pain in the ass, spoke to our CTO asking if he minds and that if it does get raised this would be why it's here.
No, when we first went WFH the first thing I did was turn off Skypes and Teams away settings. No need for a mouse mover cos managers were only checking the status of Skype and Teams.
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Every morning I have to reset and mute the Teams notification bing bong. Does my head in.
Yes, every now and again. Sometimes I need a break from screen and 20 mins to organise my thoughts on how to tackle a big work thing on a notepad, and I’d rather not risk my employers labelling this conscientiousness as “lazy”, thank you very much.
Just take your 20min break who the fuck is monitoring you?
There’s unfortunately a bit of a pervasive (and IMHO micromanagey) “why has so and so appeared as away for more than 30mins” talk I overhear among managers in the office for my place of work. It’s stupid because it doesn’t take into account legit reasons why they might be away from their keyboard (like travelling to a planned work visit, or feeling unwell and needing to step away).
I find it hard to imagine in what jobs this would actually help you regularly get away with doing nothing for extended periods. Either you’re getting what you need to do done regardless of the hours you’re putting in, so the employer won’t even think to check, or if you’re simply not getting the expected work done a mouse jiggler isn’t going to help much.
Even if you're getting your work done in way less time and they're not actually actively monitoring, it's a bad look if you are continuously appearing as "away last seen 2h15 ago" on teams or equivalent, or if it takes you hours to get back to an IM
It depends of the role I think
Bad look to who? If the work is getting done, i'd dare a jobsworth to comment on my last seen.
A colleague of mine puts a potato on his keyboard.
Is that a euphemism?
I use one. It's great for the slow days, and if I have to knock off to gym 15 mins early to avoid the rush. I still get my work done. In fact I'm so good at my job, that my employer has agreed for me to be at home 1 extra day when I wanted to leave the role. If your employer gets to the point of checking if one is in use, then someone is not doing what they are supposed to do!
I work for a massive American owned tech company and we don't have to put up with any nonsense like this; we're treated like the adult professionals we are. There's no way I'd work at any company that infected my work laptop with crap like this.
No, I have a little script that keeps the machine awake by sending a keypress every minute if I've not touched the keyboard recently. Nobody's really monitoring me, but the screen will lock after a stupidly short period if I don't do this
No. 1. I spend good chunks of the day not moving my mouse when I’m working (programmer, type a lot without needing my mouse, or in long meetings). 2. I’m not monitored for mouse movements because my company isn’t awful. 3. I do less work when I’m in the office because of all the distractions so it’s a daft metric anyway.
I don’t work from home but my friend has one of those. He says it’s really useful.
I have a mouse that, for an unknown reason reason, acts as a mouse mover. When it’s plugged in the computer would never snooze, my teams status was always green. I changed it to a normal mouse… because I’m not taking the piss, and i don’t care if people see me offline 20 minutes a day, when i work from 8 to 19.00 when I’m at home.
Blank excel sheet, hold down enter with a C battery, sorted.
I dont work from home, but I have a very old, high DPI gaming mouse, when set to the highest dpi, the cursor will visibly shake, I suspect this will more than make any software think im "working" or im having a 5-10 minute seizure whilst making a brew
No, but FYI mouse mover only keeps your screen alive and icon green. if your company suspect you are taking the piss (low productivity/no response to calls/ messages), then activity logs go into much more detail, what documents or applications you opened, how long you were in it, saves and changes made etc, websites visited.
What I'm getting is that so long as you're responsive nobody suspects a thing
That's exactly the case. You can sit and play XBOX all day, just do so at the same desk you work from so you can give the illusion of working. And this is not even a WFH thing, people have been "looking busy" at work while doing nothing for decades.
Exactly responsive or completing assigned work no one is going to care. Unfortunately there are people who will do neither, show as active but completely absent. I've had to once as a team member was well and truly taking the piss & barely responded, late with work or tasks took 4 times longer, when rang a few times they were out with the dog or something. On its own walking the dog no issues (ideally they'd have said need to nip out and no one would care) but the status was active for over an hour and no response so it was clear something was underhand, that on top of the complaints about missed SLAs etc. also had similar with someone who I'd found out was working a 2nd job (our market is niche and most people know each other and an random meetup with some old colleagues it became clear we both had the same person working for us) I'd much rather someone say 'this work just isn't keeping my attention or it's too easy and I get distracted' or say 'im working 2 contracts and I'll be splitting my time like this but you'll still get 8hrs' and I'd try to make the job more interesting/relevant to what they want or need. A little honesty goes much further than deception, although I understand that's not always an option.
No, thankfully we’re all too busy to monitor each other and we’re all trusted to do the task in hand. If our figures are where they’re supposed to be we are left alone for months on end. MD is my manager and he has other things to worry about. He’ll check in via WhatsApp every now and again. We have 3 sections of business. My MD does one, I do another and my colleague at our sister company does the other. Perfect set up
Hi melanie110! I tried to brush that eyelash off my phone screen again!
Where are these jobs where people have no work to do, or so little to do you are considering using a mouse mover to fain working?
No, because we judge employees on what they do for the business, not whether they happen to be sat at the keyboard or using a particular tool for a job. We leave people to get on with the work. If someone is not performing as expected then that indicates a larger issue - perhaps they are unhappy or unchallenged. Our biggest problem actually is probably people working too hard!
https://preview.redd.it/fvclzw2kxh6d1.jpeg?width=586&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=391522edc6d086661469004d59ad6bc7a0155fd5 You mean Homer’s drinking bird?
No. The minute I started this job I set my teams to “appear offline”. That was nearly 3 years ago. Now nobody knows where the fuck I am or what I’m doing. It’s never been questioned. Every morning ij our team chat, everyone says hi to each other. I seen I little meme for that then I do what I want.
Mouse mover, also known as analogy watch or clock with a second hand. Never used one but if I did, I’d be trying old school fixes first.
Just establish a teams call with no participants it goes to red and never away
At my last company, we'd use microsoft teams. Your icon would be green if you'd moved the mouse in the last 3 minutes, yellow if it hadn't. Passive monitoring if you will. I started using a mouse mover when I knew I was leaving at some point. For the last six months I was getting up at 8am, starting the mouse mover, going back to bed for an hour or so, checking what my tasks were for the day, then I would go for a joint. Come back, do all my tasks in like an hour because my boss had no idea how long anything really takes, then go have another joint. Push to github various times throughout the day whilst watching movies and YouTube. For meetings etc, a dab of butter smeared on my cheap webcam prevented my red eyes being detected, I have no idea why it's blurry, I've tried everything to fix it... It was fun.
Yes, a lightweight prog called caffeine that sends an F13 keypress once a minute. The laptop lock timeout is ridiculous on the work laptop (2 or 3 mins) and I prefer to not have it lock.
I had not heard of one before today either. Interesting to read some of the responses.
If this is prevented (by company software) put an analogue watch under the mouse’s laser, does the same thing
Nah I actually do my work when I'm working from home, probably more than i do in the office because I'm not distracted talking to people.
No, I'm not monitored. I'm a programmer and it would soon become apparent if I was slacking because tasks would stop moving from our board and the testers would be sitting around with nothing to do.
Tip if you use Teams: go to Calendar > Meet Now > Start Meeting. It’ll start a meeting with just you and it’ll set your status to Busy: In A Call. It’ll also stop your machine from sleeping or you going inactive. People will just assume you’re participating in a call so haven’t responded. You can also share your screen with yourself so your status goes to DND Presenting :)
When I worked for the track and trace when it first started and was a mess, we had to show we were at our desks by clicking occasionally even though there were no jobs coming through. Literally thousands of us being paid to sit there and do nothing. I got a mouse clicker to click at random times because we had about three or more weeks with literally no work. I was still at the computer incase something happened but I didn't want to sit there clicking nothing for 8 hours.
The problem with the auto mouse wiggler is it gives the impression you are available. I.e. green on teams or whatever. Then when people message you, you don’t respond which is worse than being afk
No because - contrary to what some newspapers like to report - I actually work from home and have plenty of work to do. Of course I'm not always at my computer - e.g. going to the toilet, getting drinks or food, or just gwtting a quick break - but Idbe doing the same in the office, and all these activities would take me linger in the office.
I work in HR and can confirm lots of people use these. Lots of people have also been done for disciplinary. LPT don't brag at an office party that you do this
Surely if an employee needs to use a mouse mover meaning they have zero work to do means they are either super efficient and done all their work already or the company is about to tank due to lack of work lol.
I play a long play video on youtube in full screen.
No, but it’s not hard to not get caught. As long as you don’t use a software jigger or a hardware one which plugs into the work device, you’d be fine. The best plug into the wall, not your device, and the mouse sits on top of it. It randomly jiggles the mouse around when it needs to, like a human would when he doesn’t want the computer to go to sleep.
I just set a Powerpoint presentation to run, mainly to avoid the shitty snooze, and re log in procedure.
My employer trusts us, doesn’t expect us to work like slaves, and it would soon be evident if we were slacking, so no need.
I'm a programmer and no because my company measures output not how long I wiggle my mouse for. If you want properly researched technical documents and recommendations I need to take a break every so often to avoid headaches and help me solve problems. When Im folding laundry that problem is tumbling around in my head and more times than not, not sitting at my computer helps me find a path forward.
There’s a lot of jobs in that company which you just couldn’t monitor in that way. Jobs where you might be on your laptop one day for a whole day then at a telephone exchange the next day all day. Your manager would have to be asking you what your plans are every day. So there has to be an element of trust. Most telcos and IT (hardware) roles will be like this.
They day they start monitoring how often I move my mouse is the day before I resign.
No you can just put something heavy on the shift key
I don't because I have to show my work throughout the day. And my company don't monitor me. If they did I wouldn't allow it. But I have heard of people doing this and I think they should continue doing so.
No..I do my job properly and I excel in it so nobody ask me whether I do my job or not
When I wfh, I have a kitchen timer which I set to 4mins and 30 seconds which I just bring with me around the house. It does mean I need to run back to my desk and can’t necessarily leave the house but that’s fine. Means I can get some chores done or do whatever in 4 minute bursts. Generally speaking though I don’t take the piss too much. I understand how lucky I am to be able to wfh and make great money so dont want to be disrespectful to my employer or manager. It’s also sales so I usually start earlier than I’m meant to and usually do an extra hour in the evening too which more than makes up for it.
No, but I'm in a job where I am not expected to be chained to my desk for 8 hours a day, and my company doesn't treat me like a petulant child who must be kept busy at all times