This one goes out to the freelancers in the audience.

Where do you draw the line as far as your privacy is concerned? There are a growing number of workers who are turning to online job boards and other web based job placement services in order to allow them to work at home. Being able to work on your own schedule is attractive to many people tired of the daily commute.


oDesk

Until recently, employers who use these services to find freelancers had to trust their workers to manually log their hours, they could never be certain that their workers were actually doing the tasks that they were being paid for.

Enter oDesk with a solution that would make Orwell proud. As a part of taking on a job from oDesk, you become enrolled what they call oDesk Share. What does it do? Every ten minutes or so, the software takes a screen shot of your desktop that is made available to your clients. Wait, the fun doesn’t stop there. They also monitor your keystrokes and mouse clicks to make sure you are actually doing something on your computer, and they keep track of you via webcam just in case you were planning on renting out your desk for the duration of the contract. All of this information is made available to your clients for the duration of your contract.

While I agree there should be some way to dissuade freelancers from fraud, I assume that there are better ways to do so than by completely destroying their privacy. eLance, for instance, is going to offer a similar service but it will give freelancers the option of sharing what they would like.

As more employers start to recognize the infrastructure and efficiency savings that can come from tele-commuting, the number of home-based employees is only going to increase. How much transparency are we going to accept to be allowed to work from our homes? Is it OK to have your employer be able to monitor in near real-time exactly what you’re doing in your office just because you are under contract, or are there some lines in the sand that need to be drawn?

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