100% this. remote work is great for some people, but it's definitely taken advantage by a others. And those who take advantage ruin it for everybody. I literally have friends who have bragged about how good their mouse jiggler is.
If a manager can’t tell if an employee is doing their job or not, they deserve to get bilked by an overemployed person. I can’t care at all about what some other person is doing or not doing unless it directly affects my ability to do my job.
Should we also ban sick leave because a few people call in sick when they gasp are not actually sick?
It keeps your Slack/Teams/etc. status as online. These apps will display your status as away if they detect that the computer appears idle (i.e. no mouse/keyboard inputs).
Are there really managers to constantly look at their report’s online presence indicator to determine if they’re being productive or not? What if they’re whiteboard or having an ad-hoc conversation that RTO advocates value so much?
It’s less about gaming metrics and more about keeping up appearances. The sort of person who uses a mouse jiggler is constantly absent from their computer to a degree that anyone who interacts with them would implicitly notice “huh, this person is literally never online” versus “this person takes a while to respond to messages, they must be busy.”
The platforms give reports to managers on idle time. If the manager is lazy and uses just that as an indicator of if someone is working or not then it's an easy metric to game.
