Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
During a recent internal meeting, Microsoft Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI Group Scott Guthrie promised that the company does not plan to follow Amazon's lead in mandating workers back to the office five days per week. However, two vetted Microsoft employees who attended the meeting told Business Insider under conditions of anonymity that the vow comes with the condition that productivity doesn't decline.
It would seem a bit hypocritical if the Redmond giant eliminated remote work, considering it literally makes Teams – a software suite that enables and encourages companies to allow employees to work from home. However, the question of productivity is a big one that no one has answered satisfactorily.
On the one hand, companies generally don't make wide-sweeping changes unless the government mandates it (lockdowns) or the beancounters find the changes save or make the firm more money (productivity). On the other hand, you have employees saying they "feel" more productive at home, which seems weak as an argument but is one that resistant work-from-homes cite time after time.
Microsoft's senior director of IT, Keith Boyd, says remote work can be sustainable as long as it's done right.
"If you make the time to do it right, your employees will be more engaged, more productive, and more connected, even when they're miles away," Boyd wrote in an August blog post. "And they'll be far less likely to leave for a competitor who has a more sophisticated and flexible model than you do."
The remote model has advantages from both the employee's and employer's perspectives. For example, a company that covers daycare costs can save money with a remote work program, while the employee can reap the benefits of not having to commute daily.
Unfortunately, the risks and disadvantages of remote employees primarily lie on the company's shoulders. Loss of productivity due to workers taking care of personal business or even napping is a genuine concern. It's not surprising to learn that there are actual products that circumvent monitoring measures employers frequently use to be sure their employees are working while on the clock.
Meanwhile, there are not many disadvantages for the remote employee, which is probably the most contributing factor to workers fighting tooth and nail to stay out of the office. Protests and unionizing efforts are more prevalent post-pandemic, and much of the bellyaching relates to employers reversing stay-at-home mandates.
That said, Microsoft thinks it has the remote work dynamic figured out. We'll have to see if its reassurances about continuing with the model help keep its workers in line without direct supervision.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Ox0000 on Tuesday October 08, @08:30PM (5 children)
A stopped clock is right twice a day... Heck, a broken clock, that spins backward can be right multiple times a day.
Treating your employees like adults is a wise move.
Now we'll have to see if they are legit about measuring productivity and about not punishing or penalizing those who are productive but are not in the office and thus can't participate in the office politics/jockeying/knife fights...
MSFT has a very (!) large footprint in Redmond and Bellevue, so there must be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about that precious and expensive real estate standing there (half) empty. But if they do this right, then letting people WFH will pay off more than holding on to that expensive infrastructure.
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday October 08, @08:50PM
I'm starting to read of some companies trying to find alternative uses for their expensive, half empty real estate https://atlantafi.com/georgia-pacific-headquarters-redevelopment/ [atlantafi.com]
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday October 08, @08:57PM (1 child)
This quote from the summary doesn’t compute in my head:
> For example, a company that covers daycare costs can save money with a remote work program.
So, working from home with a toddler/young child around? Yeah right, keep that daycare shit going! My wife and I could never really do that (the occasional day is fine), but we don’t put our kids in front of the TV, others might.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @10:58PM
> we don’t put our kids in front of the TV
Smart move, good for you!
Other possible alternatives to company day care:
Local day care (a young/divorced relative does this with her son when she works from home)
Tap into grandparent home care if you can, while you work from home (my SO volunteers for this 4-6w weeks of the year--she would do more but they are in different cities).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @12:25AM (1 child)
I had an older gentleman EE design / tech engineer. He knew how to do stuff and got stuff done. Part of how he did that was by "unwinding" in the late afternoons by reading tech journals, keeping up with the latest in components etc.
I had a younger gentleman with some personal responsibilities at home, he used to come in later some days and leave early. He also got his stuff done during the time in-between and a whole lot of other stuff that wasn't strictly "on his plate" but needed doing, so he took that on and made it happen because his primary role as component buyer wasn't really a full time gig.
Myself, I'd show up at 10 and leave at 6. I got more done between 4:45 and 6pm than I did in the whole rest of the day, because everybody stopped bugging me around 4:45.
We hired a CEO for his background in sales, contacts, etc. In his role, he opened new horizons for the company as we expected he would, but unexpected macro economic shifts basically made his mission statement impossible - so, like any Scotch soaked Rush Limbaugh listening 60 year old brat with two ex-wives just waiting for his rich mommy to kick off so he could retire and still eat out at steak restaurants 4 times a week, he started looking for scapegoats.
He would "stake out" the office from the coffee shop across the street - see: in his role as God Almighty unquestionable decision maker for the company, he felt that his time was best spent nit-picking our "productivity" based on when we rolled into the parking garage... he made a huge stink over people coming late (though, not me - I think he had been fore-warned by the former CEO still majority shareholder not to try that particular tack on me...) Then he would stroll past the offices at 4pm peering in doorways looking for signs of "slackers" because that was obviously the cause of our utter failure to gain sales traction in the marketplace: an engineer kicking back to read a magazine at 4pm... He actually put in writing a long Limbaugh inspired screed about how we were killing the company with our laziness - nevermind that we had delivered the product on-time, under budget and to every specification ordered, ready for worldwide sales that his old buddies were failing to deliver on. He hired a new (lower salary) EE to "help the old guy" because we could accelerate the schedule with a couple more hands... then two weeks later declared "the new guy is working out pretty good, gonna have to let the old guy go..." old guy had already had enough of this BS and took early retirement - new guy followed him out the door and now our schedule was slipping due to moving from one EE on-plan to two EEs ahead of plan down to zero EEs and making the quality and purchasing engineers fill-in with their EE skills from school 10+ years earlier.
It was never about reality, it was about having a story to tell about how it wasn't his fault the whole thing went to shit. It wasn't his fault, it was a major shift in the economic landscape moving investment away from medical devices into homeland security, nobody saw it coming, it wasn't anybody's fault, and there wasn't any kind of good pivot that would have allowed the company to "shoot for the moon" the way we had been before 9-11. But, it's all about the lazy staff, they are "the real problem" when the CEO delivers his excuses to the board.
I have seen a fair amount of WFH abuse in recent years, it can be a problem and people who can't handle it maybe do need a fat old alcoholic watching them from the coffee shop to make sure they show up every day and at least pretend to be on-task for 6-7 hours. I also know, from personal experience, that if I can get 3-4 hours of good work time at home, that's more productive for those solo task jobs than I could ever get from doing the commute, sit in the office, socialize in the meetings, etc. etc. of in-office work, even if I'm showing up at the office at 8:30am and not leaving until after 5:30pm. Then we can talk about what that get-ready-to go to work starting at 7am, don't get home until after 6pm kind of schedule does to your personal life obligations and how much of that ends up spilling over one way or another into your at-work productivity. Nevermind the tremendous waste of resources that is the daily commute, dry cleaned dress for professional appearance work-style.
Courses for horses, strokes for folks - WFH isn't ideal for everyone - but blanket policies enacted by scape-goat hunting management? That's about as counter-productive as it gets. Companies that resort to forcing the sheep back into the cube farms to make sure they're chewing their cuds for the company long enough every day are going to have a real competitive disadvantage vs companies that have figured out how to let their people do their jobs without a daily dose of presenteeism.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by ssvt on Wednesday October 09, @10:55AM
Thank you for your very nicely written thoughts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 08, @08:47PM (12 children)
So, "Please report to the office for flogging once productivity declines?" Sounds about right.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday October 08, @11:21PM (11 children)
Flamebait? Righto... well I will point out something. One of the links in the article is about Wells Fargo firing a bunch of people that had mouse-jigglers on their systems. One important detail that article omitted was the actual damage done to Wells Fargo. They do babble about stuff like the fake accounts created in 2016, but they don't actually say: "They had low figures AND they had a mouse jiggler..." Now maybe they legitimately busted several people "napping at work" and the journalist did not note that, but just saying they had the jigglers does not actually indicate mal-intent. Nor does napping, for that matter.
I actually almost bought a mouse-jiggler once because of an issue that came long involving long processing times, remote viewing software, and screensavers. Glad I didn't. While I don't expect my employer to be that fucking petty, it is a nice reminder that I do live in a world where people will rush to judgement over silly little things. I think krishnoid has a point. In another post I said MS wasn't in the wrong for expecting productivity from their at-home workers, that doesn't mean they won't find safe-from-legal-reprisal reasons to think their workforce down the road!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Tuesday October 08, @11:47PM (1 child)
Yeah, the Flamebait mod is used quite liberally (pun intended) here. It seems to be a way for the triggered to clap back at posters they determine to be disseminating "hate speech" or "disinformation", or in other words, anything that questions or contradicts their sacred narratives.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @11:58PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @12:37AM
I have an answer for "mouse jiggling" concerns - I just don't use my company issued laptop. I have it, I might log into it once every couple of weeks as-needed, but the vast majority of my productive work is done from my Ubuntu laptop that I installed the 24.04 image on myself. It's tailored to be similar to our fielded product, so I can develop on the laptop and readily test without having to always test on the product directly. It also does just about everything that the company laptop can do...
So far, nobody has complained that "he's never logged on" - and if they're not complaining about that, I seriously doubt that mouse jiggling needs to enter the picture.
I make commits to the git repo - sometimes 20+ times a day - sometimes not for a week straight. I document things in the wiki. I answer e-mail queries, I spontaneously make contact with colleagues via e-mail - and I make myself available to the "daily standup" 3 days a week. So far, that seems more than good enough for my team. I hope it continues to be for many years to come. I should have been working this way since about 1995, but management attitudes just weren't ready for that cultural shift until post-COVID although I had gotten down to about 2-3 days a week, 2-3 hours a day in the office in the 5-ish years leading up to COVID. Still, cutting those 2.5 commutes per week down to less than 0.05 commutes per week is a HUGE benefit, for me - and for them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday October 09, @08:33AM (7 children)
I get that installing spyware on devices isn't a great move from the bankers. But buying kit to auto-lie to the company who is paying you isn't a great look either.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Tork on Wednesday October 09, @02:23PM (5 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday October 10, @08:37AM (4 children)
I'm sorry but this is a bit ridiculous. Typically employees sign a contract that they will work X hours per week (at least here in the UK); that is the contract that you sign, that is what you are obliged to do. Work, especially from home, requires trust on the part of the employer that the employee is working to that contract. Installing mouse jigglers clearly breaks that trust.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday October 10, @08:49AM (2 children)
In most professions you are also expected to think. A moving mouse does not indicate that you are thinking.
How many times have you sat at home thinking of a professional problem that is niggling at you? I have done that loads of times, sometimes lying in bed awake mulling over the problem. Do you bill them for that thinking time?
Trust is a 2-way thing. I would present Microsoft for a bill and explain that they can pay for any time outside of normal working hours where I ponder the problem and accept that as a matter of trust, or they can stop believing that a moving mouse indicates any sort of professional progress is being made. Two way, remember?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday October 10, @09:39AM (1 child)
> In most professions you are also expected to think. A moving mouse does not indicate that you are thinking.
I totally agree. So when the boss says "you spend a lot of time not doing much" the employee says "I spend a lot of time thinking".
Installing a mouse jiggler is deceitful. Once you are lying to your boss about what you are doing during work, it has to be a short walk to the exit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday October 10, @10:21AM
I cannot argue with what you have said. You are absolutely correct - it is deceitful. But in my opinion it is the company that is forcing people to consider such options because the company does not trust its employees.
Joe has explained elsewhere how he has, after many years and a lot of experience admittedly, a very good working relationship with his employer. That should be the sort of relationship that both the company and all employees should be striving to achieve. Rather than installing a jiggler, perhaps somebody should explain to the company that thinking is a valuable contribution to the company's success. If they impose restrictions that the workforce feel are unfair then they will resort to methods to counter those restrictions.
Furthermore, if somebody is having serious problems outside of the workplace it gives them a little latitude for less than sterling performance, providing that it is a rare event. The company might be surprised to learn that to many people their family are more important than the company.
The company should judge people on their productivity overall, not at any specific instant, If after a period of weeks, months or years they are not happy with an individual's work then they should then begin to take appropriate measures against that individual, but not against all workers. Those that produce good quality work in an acceptable timeframe should be shown some respect. If I can appear to sit all day doing nothing but in the last 15 minutes I can type blisteringly fast and faultlessly thus producing a good days output then they should be happy. OK, that is an extreme and unlikely example, but the idea behind it is sound.
Treat the workforce with respect and, when the chips are really down, they might be prepared to go above and beyond what is expected of them - but that does not mean that they should be expected to work at that rate everyday.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday October 10, @02:23PM
Maybe so, maybe no, but if that's all they got on them they're just wasting their resources. Did they miss meetings? Where they unreachable? Did they miss their targets? If none of those are true then the firing is frivolous. If any of the above are true, then that's what they should be fired for. Trust goes both ways.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @02:37PM
It's a really good sign on both sides of the relationship that they should be seeking other partners.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday October 08, @09:48PM (8 children)
They want productivity to stay the same or increase, so.... they're giving them linux boxes for work from home?
Cos Windows boxes won't crash less working from home anymore than they do at work.
But doing the 'Developer developer developer' monkey dance at home is more fun... you get the kids involved, maybe the neighborhood kids. Fun for all! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Tork on Wednesday October 09, @12:00AM (7 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @12:44AM (2 children)
It's not Windoze - it's all the crap that comes with Windoze, Starting with ClownStrike, CloudFlare and their ilk, but oh so many more... it's a rotten ecosystem.
I'm sure if the corporate world really embraced Linux, they'd make it just as fail-prone with their houses-of-cards-ware.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday October 09, @01:01AM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @01:44AM
There are (still) a lot of things that just aren't available in Linux... Good CAD/CAM software springs to mind, but I'm sure there are many others. Sure, I use openSCAD for my hobby projects, and there are some (exceedingly lame) Autocad clone abortions out there, but they just aren't serious productivity tools the way that the big CAD packages are.
Some of that is (possibly justified) piracy FUD - and I get it, sort of... but on the other hand, I don't get why the open source community hasn't at least produced a viable CAD package at least on-par with what Windoze was hosting 20 years ago.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09, @12:54AM (1 child)
Yeah! Mine runs just fine.
I do *all* of my work inside a WSL shell, and when it doesn't freeze because I hit `escape-escape`, it works .... well, ok. I can't copy-paste with the keyboard, the terminal sucks, opening something in a web browser is a copy-paste. but it works!
The only thing I do *outside* of the console is zoom meetings, slack, e-mail. Basically nothing. So while I get constant pop-ups for those things, the system runs just fine.
And for everything that I *need* to do, except for building our code repo, WSL has been fine! I just have to run a few init commands at start, by hand, because the not-quite-systemd doesn't run the systemd startup scripts properly... no problems at all!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday October 09, @02:42AM
Ha ha, I work in a game engine!
Please pardon my poor sportsmanship, how many people really get a chance to dunk on Linux with Windows?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday October 09, @01:07AM (1 child)
Teh one i have to use at work is so locked down and sloooow and useless, when it's not crashed it is like the printer in Office Space: I. want. to. destroy. it.
Windows stresses me COMPLETELY.
Locked down: can't access the Shared Folder by clicking teh 'Shared Folder' icon! NO! It's locked down!
But if you type 'sha' into the search, up comes 'Shared Folder' and if you click that, you CAN access it. Admin and Windows stupidity.
HATE WINDOWS. Can't believe people still use it. Stress and nonsense. Nonsense i'm glad i use as little as possible.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @01:53AM
During the daily standups I listen to my colleagues belly ache about all the hoops they are jumping to make their M$ tools work on their corporate imaged Windoze machines... and I've told them there is a better way, I have told them that I have "been living the dream" for 10+ years now, and they still plod along in hip boots knee deep in the muck of corporate nanny-ware. Some work around it and live with the insults, some actively fight the system and get IT to give them things like unlimited Admin access.... all of them are wasting several hours a month, sometimes several hours on a given day, tilting at these windmills.
Now, I have developed an app that is targeted to the corporate imaged machines (tested it on my own) and part of the functionality is to connect (via TCP/IP) simultaneously to a server on our VPN and our product. I _was_ doing this using a direct ethernet cable from the corp laptop to the product's ethernet port, and then using the corp laptop's WiFi via VPN to the server, but oh-noes, the latest corp image shuts off WiFi access when a direct wired connection is made - don't we feel more secure? Now I have to put the product on the same WiFi infrastructure the laptop is using to connect to the VPN, broadcast search to find each other, then hook up and do what I was doing via a direct wired connection over this infrastructure of dubious cleanliness, exposing the product to whatever may be lurking on that network. The product _should_ be secure enough to handle it, but why do we have to continually chase these moving targets set in motion by our own IT departments?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by coolgopher on Tuesday October 08, @10:51PM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure that me snoring on the couch in the office is more disruptive than me snoring on the couch at home. I felt bad about doing the former, which detracted from the quality of rest I got.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @10:59PM
I have a similar issue with masturbation, but it actually enhances it doing it in the office so that's why I prefer going in.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 08, @10:52PM (4 children)
Does 'genuine concern' mean "we've measured a drop in these statistics we were capturing before the pandemic..." or does it mean "all my employees are out to screw me so it stands to reason they're napping." ...? The key difference here is really a matter of metrics. The former scenario will shake itself out, the latter will result in untargeted layoffs.
Here's what Amazon's CEO said in a letter to his employees recently:
This is vague. It's a race? High ownership? Scrappiness? Note that there are no measurable metrics, here. But... okay this paragraph isn't about that, it's about amping you up to put your kid in daycare and roll your sleeves up! It's a Startup so w're excited about the shitty working conditions of a startup, right? We need to get Andy on the next trip to space!!
On to later in the letter....
So... their conviction has been strengthened about the benefits! Great! So what are those? Here's a link [aboutamazon.com] that claims to clarify what those are, but you'll find pretty quick it's just a longer post with no real numbers to discuss. "Whiteboards are cool!" "Ppl can talk when they're working after hours!" Here's my personal favorite: "This rapid interjecting happens more often in-person because people feel less inhibited about jumping in or even interrupting sometimes." I've worked at startups and without exception I could sail right into their CEO's office and talk to them. Is it like that for Andy? I'm genuinely asking.
But what this doesn't have is: "We missed x% of our deadlines." or... "The code we wrote has y% more reported bugs since the lockdown." You know... tangible reasons why they need this mandate. Also note that it doesn't actually mention what they'll LOSE when they switch. "We are going to miss the performance boost we got from people working during meetings... ... or ... "You won't believe how much we'll be spending on AC..." Isn't it a little weird that they're not at least pretending they care about what their workers will LOSE during this transition?
Personally I think Amazon lacks strong tangible reasons to prefer in-office work. (If they did those concerns could be addressed and the mandate would not be required...) I think the whole "we wanna be a startup!" is a way of getting their employees to pre-accept the loss of benefits AND implying there's some big reward for success in the end. Maybe this is a scam to do layoffs without having to pay out severance (this is what I meant by 'untargeted layoffs', it's not employees leaving because their awesome-to-pay ratio is untenable by Amazon), or maybe there are other motivations like middle-management trying to justify their jobs. Hey, I might be way off base... maybe Andy Jassy is just completely clueless and is really serious about wanting Amazon to only have a 10% chance of success like every other startup out there.
So what the fuck does this have to do, at all, with Microsoft? Well... actually I think they're in the former camp. I said earlier that when they have metrics to go by things will shake themselves out. That's basically what Microsoft is describing. It makes me wonder: How many of MS's job applicants have Amazon on their resume?
The words 'anonymity' and 'vow' might make that paragraph sound negative but it's precisely the agreement work from home peeps should be operating under. Of-fucking-course you are expected to be productive, working from home did not introduce a new issue, here! Work-from-home does not mean napping employees are a problem, it just means you should have a trackable list of deliverables and deadlines, like you should be using anyway... even if you are a startup not operating during pandemic. Microsoft seems to get this, Amazon seems to want to lose their talent.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 09, @12:33AM (2 children)
Last time I was told "We want you to feel ownership", it meant "We want you to work extra hard and long hours, bringing your best A-game, but we don't want to pay you."
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @12:55AM (1 child)
>"We want you to feel ownership"
If I'm not getting at least 0.5% of the outstanding shares, I'm not feeling any kind of ownership at all.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Wednesday October 09, @09:30AM
In corporatist America, you feel their ownership of YOU...
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 09, @12:54AM
They weren't collecting any kind of appropriate metrics pre-pandemic, and they still aren't collecting appropriate metrics today. In a very real sense: appropriate metrics don't exist. If your peoples' productivity can be accurately measured by those kinds of metrics, you've got pretty much bottom of the barrel productivity in your workforce.
Real productivity is something you feel. Can your product development teams effectively deliver the products your customers want? Do they get adequate, but not too much, feedback from the field to be "best in category" and innovative even beyond what the customers are asking for, delivering things the customer didn't know they needed until they had them? Do your sales people connect with their clients and the development teams to make this magic happen? Do your customer service people actually connect with people who are having problems and get them solved - while simultaneously communicating to development how to make the product better to reduce the need for support? You can try to put metrics on all of that, but the only metric that really matters is: are you dominating and growing your market niches? Picayune ticket counts mean nothing - a ticket can represent anywhere from the time it takes to fill it out up to multiple man-years of effort, and sometimes those man-years of effort could have been short-cut to man-days by simply working smarter not harder (longer, really.) You'll never get a meaningful measure of individual productivity out of tally marks, and attempts to pump more meaning into the tally marks is just throwing more effort into what will still be a meaningless number on a management dashboard.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 09, @03:47AM
Whether somebody is moving their mouse or taking a nap is irrelevant. What actually matters is what they get done, and if somebody can take a 15-minute power nap, wake up, and churn out 3 new features in the next hour that's good for the company. Meanwhile, somebody who is alert and attentive and talking a lot in meetings, but getting nothing done, is bad for the company, but looks great in the monitoring software.
But figuring out who is useful and who isn't on that basis requires low-level bosses that are technically skilled enough to assess their people, and high-level bosses that trust the low-level boss's assessments of their people's abilities, and both of those are likely to be lacking in any large company. So instead, they substitute any other measurement they can get their hands on in a desperate effort to deal with the fact that their position requires that they evaluate their staff somehow, but their MBA gives them approximately zero understanding of how software works. And when they're in an office, "butt in the seat, hands on the keyboard" is often the main measurement they use.
And, well, they get results that indicate that no, this isn't a solved problem, and of course it can't be because to evaluate how good someone is at coding, you have to be a good coder.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin