BIG BROTHER NOW LURKS IN THE DEN By Michael S. Malone
I’m writing this little essay at midnight, after a day in which I worked in the yard, wrote a couple dozen emails, edited ten stories, wrote a half-dozen more, met with an IT guy, attended an evening meeting, and worked on my next book.
I’ll probably turn off my computer at 1 a.m. — though if the inspiration strikes, I may work even later. Sometimes I get up at 4 a.m. to write down an idea or a particular turn of phrase; other times I sit and watch a movie at 11 a.m., or take a nap on a nearby couch in the afternoon. I sometimes write in my underwear, other times in a suit after returning from a dinner. I write in cars, on planes, on the bench in the yard, while watching TV and in bed. And I haven’t seen a movie that wasn’t a matinee in two decades.
I’ve worked like this now, with the exception of three years when I had a ‘real’ job, since 1981. During that time, I’ve authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, co-produced a TV miniseries (and hosted three other PBS series), and written probably two thousand newspaper and magazine articles, columns and editorials. In other words, by most objective measures, I’ve had a pretty successful and productive freelance career.
And yet, if a new trend identified by the Wall Street Journal takes hold, I will be considered utterly and permanently unemployable. Why? Because employers, despite a half-century of evidence that trusting your employees to make responsible decisions is the key to higher productivity, are becoming increasingly obsessed with the notion (as used to be said about the Puritans) that someone, somewhere, is goofing off on the job.
So, they are now turning to employment companies that market freelancers, such as oDesk.com (which manages 90,000 code writers, network admins, writers and graphic artists –pray for them – for 10,000 clients worldwide), which have developed a whole suite of tools to help them spy on these contractors as they work at home. oDesk, for example, uses freelancer’s own computer camera to track his or her moves, periodically conducts screen grabs to see if work is being done, monitors keystrokes, even eavesdrops for the sound of a dog barking or children talking – and then offers those services to its clients.
All of this is, apparently, an attempt to assuage the ever-present fear by contractors that somehow they are being ripped off by the people they contract. The result, as the Journal portrays it in chilling terms, is that people working at home under this regime are forced to create work environments in their homes that seem far, far worse than any cubicle at corporate headquarters.
So why do those 90,000 oDesk serfs put up with this nonsense? Because they are hungry. Because they don’t want to commute. Because, somehow, this is actually better than the sweatshops and vicious bosses they usually work for. Because they are fools.
But however foolish they are, these poor freelancers aren’t nearly as foolish as the companies hiring them. Treating your employees, even temporary ones, as children who cannot be trusted and must be continuously watched, is always paid back in kind. How many of those 90,000 freelancers do you think will stick with oDesk and its counterparts when the economy turns good again? And how many of them will forget what those contractors thought of them?
Today’s pay-off for paranoid, mistrusting employers, will be tomorrow’s payback by their victims. And those employers better hope it is just that — because if the economy continues to slow, and if the ranks of these 21st century Winston Smiths continues to grow, the world of freelancers will be ripe for union organization. And these companies will have only themselves to blame.
As for me, whatever happens, I don’t intend to change habits that have worked for so long — which may mean that someday some sleepy corporate freelancer survelliance specialist will get a surprising glimpse of me working in my underwear — or less – at 2 a.m. I’ll be sure to wave.
Does this piece have an author? Is there a reason it doesn’t say anywhere?
There’s a simple answer to this– don’t charge by the hour. I try very hard to charge only by a project fee. It gives the buyer a set cost and no reason to care what I’m doing when or how I get it done. I’m rewarded for diligence and penalized for goofing around on the internet writing comments when I should be working….
I’m not a contractor, I’m a full-time employee of a global IT household name corporation. My job for the past 2 years has required me to work from home rather than the office due to the shifts and teams I am part of. Many of my co-workers have been forced to work from home as well as it is a LOT cheaper for the company than paying for “seats” in the office. The global nature of 24x7x365 IT teams now exacerbates this. I want to doubt my company would implement this but who knows…I would do everything in my power to not cooperate, and I’m really just looking for a reason to leave as it is.
Anyone who envies those of us who work from home really needs to learn the truth. This is just the latest insult. I’d go back to the office in a heartbeat.
What do you people think you’re doing reading this?
Get back to work.
Never mind unions, by monitoring a frelancer’s time like that, the freelancer goes from being an independent contractor, to being an employee, who is owed little things like overtime, and unemployment insurance (by law)
Here is the IRS’ rules
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=99921,00.html
among the other rules are “behavioral rules” – you are an EMPLOYEE if the company tells you:
When and where to do the work.
What tools or equipment to use.
What workers to hire or to assist with the work.
Where to purchase supplies and services.
What work must be performed by a specified individual.
What order or sequence to follow when performing the work.
The monitoring of your when/where is the big one in this case.
There needs to be a database of companies that use such services, so that we can know who to avoid. Those that don’t so such things should advertise it to attract better people.
In the meantime, there are probably ways of hacking their tools, feed false video signals to the webcam and microphone etc… I’d bet some of the “serfs” are already doing that.
I like Seerak’s suggestions.
God, I’m glad I’m old.
There is a very high demand for technical workers. If companies start spying on their workers to such an extent they would need to pay a lot more money then the competition or people will leave for better quality of life positions.
The supply and demand is in favor of the employee, rather then the employer. Companies may try something like this but in the end most will have to give up.
kg2v has it exactly right. oDesk.com and the companies using those “contractors”—–who are not contractors, but are instead de facto employees—-are just begging to be on the receiving of multiple lawsuits. Remember how Microsoft got dinged hard a few years ago by a similar lawsuit from contractors-cum-employees?
Glad someone brought up the payroll tax angle: Do you want the work or the costs? Wouldn’t that be rich? Outsourcing because it’s cheaper, sued because you had an irrational and burning desire to know if someone was working on your project, right now! And oddly, would that mean I could get overtime if I worked more than 8 hours a day on a project, or on weekends? Most freelancers I know do that sort of thing. Besides, as we all know, people at work are always uber productive . . .
Heck, I’m not even a contractor, and I’m not wild about the idea of my boss telling me exactly when and where to work. If I need to do a literature review that involves reading multiple articles and taking notes, and I can do that better outside or in a coffee shop than in the office at 8 am, why not? Everyone’s reachable by cell phone these days.
Luckily, I work in a field where output is easily measured and highly valued, time input is flexible, and the managers are sensible enough to recognize that the workplace isn’t about punching a time clock anymore. The companies who try to exert this much control over people who aren’t even their full-time employees are, I think, destined to fail. The smart people who produce results – like the author of this article – will go elsewhere.
I’m not sure I quite understand Mr. Malone’s anger about this since he is clearly very self-directed but also pretty successful in his field. I really doubt he would reach the point where he found he had to use oDesk for anything other his derision.
The contractors at oDesk, however, have other concerns; perhaps some (or many) of these concenrs are simply incomprehensible to Mr Malone. Foreign workers, workers who have moved (back) to small towns to be with family, people who just don’t like or need “the office”, workers who need enough experience so they too can look down on places like oDesk…
If oDesk is really that bad of an idea the market will catch on. I would note, however, that oDesk has been around since 2003 or 2004 so this is not a fad taking advantage of the (so-called) recession.
As an employer, I don’t want to micromanage my people. If they want to do their work at times and places that work for them, fine with me. If they find ways to do the job faster and easier, that’s fine with me also. Of course my field of work (church work) has the major limitation of being people centered, so we have to work around the schedules of the people we work with. But it’s just plain stupid to make people put in “office hours” simply for the sake of sitting in a chair in the office.
I strongly disagree with “jdm” – if the customer, manager, contractors, etc have no better method to measure productivity, THEY have a problem larger than a slacking IT worker. You should have fairly clear milestones and base your rates on them. If you cannot define the expectations, you are wasting your money paying for spyware rather than investing in better project management.
Managers that cannot measure the effectiveness of their employees through the deliverables they are responsible for need reassignment, retraining or termination. Shifting this management failure to technical controls is ineffective, counterproductive and an approach that will retain the least marketable employees, while the more capable employees will find alternative options.
I’m a governance, risk and compliance professional for a large financial corporation, and live more than an hour away from our office. When I have meetings, I’m always there in person, but the remainder of the time, I telework. Developing strategy for our programs, spending hours on conference calls and handling routine administrative tasks (emails, writing, etc) is much more efficient when focused in my home office. And if I didn’t deliver the output, it would be obvious.
If I encountered a manager suggesting these controls, I’d be discussing with our senior executives that we may have identified someone who needs to be “taken off the bus” as they clearly don’t understanding managing professionals.
Just another sign of the recession zeitgeist. Remember the last recession (2002) when The Man was going to put us all back in suits and ties or stockings? Casual Friday survived.
Gen Y won’t tolerate being treated like that, anyway….
To Jan in TX and a lesser extent, redherkey:
everything you both say is true. I agree.
However, you cannot close your eyes to the fact that oDesk has been serving a market since at least 2004. There are employers and contracters that *are* willing to work in the oDesk environment. According to the oDesk website there are almost 90000 contracters and over 100,000 jobs.
Follow the More link above and play the video there. The contractor interviewed doesn’t seem particularly bothered.
Harrumphing at me for merely pointing this out is rather like shooting the messenger.