‘Bossware is coming for almost every worker’: the software you might not realize is watching you

Computer monitoring software is helping companies spy on their employees to measure their productivity - often without their consent

When the job of a young east coast-based analyst - we'll call him James - went remote with the pandemic, he didn't envisage any problems. The company, a large US retailer for which he has been a salaried employee for more than half a decade, provided him with a laptop, and his home became his new office. Part of a team dealing with supply chain issues, the job was a busy one, but never had he been reprimanded for not working hard enough.

So it was a shock when his team was hauled in one day late last year to an online meeting to be told there was gaps in its work: specifically periods when people - including James himself, he was later informed - weren't inputting information into the company's database.