Blue-collar workers are used to being surveilled at work, but a new kind of self-tracking is headed for your desk job, too. Here’s what I learned watching myself work for a week.
CCTV or surveillance operating in office - Stnazkul / Getty Images
"What about Wikipedia?" My manager is peering over my shoulder as I scroll down a list of websites I regularly visit, attempting to place each into one of two categories.
"Work," she says decisively.
"What about Amazon?"
"Private."
"OK, what about Seamless?"
"Private."
"What?! It was for lunch at work!" I protest.
"Sorry," she says, shaking her head. "I run a tight ship."
About a week earlier, I had decided to surveil myself at work using Sapience Buddy, an employee-monitoring software system now available to the masses for the first time as a workplace productivity tracker. Sapience runs in the background on any Windows computer, constantly collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data on metrics including the applications a user runs, the websites she visits, and how much time she spends online. (Plans are in the works to bring it to Mac, but the company hasn't announced a timeline.)
More...
Bookmarks