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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Performance Monitoring
Message-ID: <710@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Oct-86 14:37:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.710
Posted: Fri Oct  3 14:37:29 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 07:24:46 EDT
Reply-To: throopw@MCNC.CSNET
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 58
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <681@hplabsc.UUCP>

This article is from throopw%mcnc.csnet@csnet-relay.ARPA
 and was received on  Fri Oct  3 01:53:59 1986
 
> 1. Is this form of monitoring *ever* good?  When?  Why?

Yes.  When the monitee has reason to think that the monitor has the
monitee's best interest at heart, as in when productivity measures of
control groups rise as a result of monitoring alone.  Because it creates
empathy between the monitor and the monitee.

> 2. Are there circumstances where this is *very* bad?  When?  Why?

Yes.  When the monitee has reason to think that the monitor has the
monitee's worst interest at heart, as in cases where productivity drops
off a sharp cliff under taskmaster administrations.  Because it produces
an adversary relationship.

> 3. What level of monitoring should be performed?  (this is obviously
>    relative to the task...)

Depends on what the monitoring is to be used for.
(Obviously, as you say.)

> 4. Are *you* being monitored at all?  Have you ever been?
>    If so, was it positive or negative, and how did you and your
>    fellow employees (and management) react to it??

Yes.  Yes.  My reaction is positive if I genuinely think it is "for my
own good", bad if I think otherwise, and I would "think otherwise" if
I am not informed of the monitoring beforehand.

(Note that some such monitoring is implicitly expected.  If you are told
 that you will be expected to run programs on a timeshareing system, you
 are often implicitly being told to expect accounting to be kept of your
 computer usage.)

> 5. Finally, would information of this sort be viable information to
>    exchange on the "market"?  (for example, an on-line search for all
>    programmers who take short lunches, type > 70 wpm and know how to
>    program in Fortran, by a placement agency).  A subset of it?   Do
>    you think this already takes place??

It would be viable.  Subsets would also be viable.  I doubt it takes
place, but would not be surprised, but seriously doubt that it is
widespread if it does take place.

(NOTE: I said such information exchange would be "viable", not that I
 would approve of it.  I would *NOT* approve of it, because it is an
 example of the naive perpetuation an archetypical computer risk, that
 of depending on overly simple computer-obscured models of reality.)

In general, I rather think that monitoring-plus-carrots works much
better than monitoring-plus-sticks if what you want done is to raise
productivity.  And covert monitoring is essentially *never* effective in
the long term.

--
"Duty now for the future."      --- Devo