>The bossware problem is a boss problem, in other words.
I think this is basically the core. Bossware, like all technology is essentially about increasing efficiency. If your boss is shit, this technology is going to make them far more effective at being shit.
They aren't just going to do all the traditional things that make them shit - unclear goals, over-rewarding presenteeism, being sexist, racist or misogynist. Now they're going to do all those things but a lot more effectively.
Maybe in general this is a good thing, it's going to increase the gap between good bosses and bad bosses and that will in the end cause the good bosses to outperform the bad bossess and the bad bosses' will be identified, or at the least the companies that have bad bosses will be outperformed.
I would say the problem of this bossware is actually worse in schools and prisons - because those environments lack the same feedback paths that regulate this.
I actually don't think this would be a good thing even for a good boss, because a good boss simply wouldn't use this surveillance bullshit in the way a good boss simply wouldn't sexually harass the intern.
Also, I would disagree that shitty bosses are responsive to their own bad management consequences. Remember that at Blizzard a manager harassed a report to the point of suicide[edit: to be clear, literally passed around explicit pictures of the report through the company, the report killed themselves around that time, so this is allegedly]-- what're the consequences for that manager? They are probably still managing somewhere.
I think this is basically the core. Bossware, like all technology is essentially about increasing efficiency. If your boss is shit, this technology is going to make them far more effective at being shit.
They aren't just going to do all the traditional things that make them shit - unclear goals, over-rewarding presenteeism, being sexist, racist or misogynist. Now they're going to do all those things but a lot more effectively.
Maybe in general this is a good thing, it's going to increase the gap between good bosses and bad bosses and that will in the end cause the good bosses to outperform the bad bossess and the bad bosses' will be identified, or at the least the companies that have bad bosses will be outperformed.
I would say the problem of this bossware is actually worse in schools and prisons - because those environments lack the same feedback paths that regulate this.