Your boss is watching | MIT Technology Review

But however carefully it’s implemented, the very existence of electronic monitoring may make it difficult for employees to feel safe and perform well. Multiple studies have shown that monitoring greatly increases worker stress and can break down trust between an employer and its workforce. One 2022 poll of tech workers found that roughly half would rather quit than be monitored. And when algorithmic management comes into the picture, employees may have a harder time being successful—and understanding what success even means. 

Ra Criscitiello, deputy director of research at SEIU–United Healthcare Workers West, a labor union with more than 100,000 members in California, says that one of the most troubling aspects of these technological advances is how they affect performance reviews. According to Criscitiello, union members have complained that they have gotten messages from HR about data they didn’t even know was being collected, and that they are being evaluated by algorithmic models they don’t understand. Dora Manriquez says that when she first started driving for ride-share companies, there was an office to go to or call if she had any issues. Now, she must generally lodge any complaints by text through the app, and any response appears to come from an automated system. “Sometimes they’ll even get stuck,” she says of the chatbots. “They’re like, ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. Can you repeat that again?’”

Many app-based workers live in fear of being booted off the platform at any moment by the ruling algorithm—sometimes with no way to appeal to a human for recourse.

Veronica Avila, director of worker campaigns for the Action Center for Race and Economy (ACRE), has also seen algorithmic management take over for human supervisors at companies like Uber. “More than the traditional ‘I’m watching you work,’ it’s become this really sophisticated mechanism that exerts control over workers,” she says. 

ACRE and other advocacy groups call what’s happening among app-based companies a “deactivation crisis” because so many workers live in fear that the ruling algorithm will boot them off the platform at any moment in response to triggers like low driver ratings or minor traffic infractions—often with no explicit explanation and no way to appeal to a human for recourse. 

Ryan Gerety, director of the Athena Coalition, which—among other activities—organizes to support Amazon workers, says that workers in those warehouses face continuous monitoring, assessment, and discipline based on their speed and their performance with respect to quotas that they may or may not know about. (In 2024, Amazon was fined in California for failing to disclose quotas to workers who were required to meet them.) “It’s not just like you’re monitored,” Gerety says. “It’s like every second counts, and every second you might get fired.” 

MICHAEL BYERS

Electronic monitoring and management are also changing existing job functions in real time. Teramind’s clients must figure out who at their company will handle and make decisions around employee data. Depending on the type of company and its needs, Osipova says, that could be HR, IT, the executive team, or another group entirely—and the definitions of those roles will change with these new responsibilities. 

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