Australian News

This is the kind of thing that a person who's never had your average boss would say.

No. Wrong. Your typical boss has a need to justify their existence and "cut costs" and isn't particularly good at what they do so they're also insecure. If you give them a little dashboard that says you're spending the most time being "idle" (quantified with keystrokes or creepy camera or mic or network monitoring), it won't matter that you're meeting your targets because all they're gonna see is lost potential labor.

Also, management always wants ways to collect evidence that you deserved to be fired in case they ever want an excuse to do so. Maybe they're really firing you because you got in the way of some nepo promotion. Maybe it's because they think you might help form a union. Maybe it's because they think you're overpaid. Maybe it's because you're older or gay or have too much melanin. Little performance metrics like this can always be cherry-picked to give them sufficient legal justification to do (in reality) illegal things.

This is a weapon to be used against you and you should have solidarity with your fellow workers, not bootlick.

It's another form of coercive control.

It's the corporate version of governments with laws they don't consistently enforce. Yes, most people are technically doing things that are illegal pretty regularly. You won't get arrested or fined as long as you don't draw attention to yourself. But it gives the government the ability to target people at it's discretion.

Similarly a company that spies on it's employees doesn't care most of the time, but even if an employee is performing and hitting goals, it gives the company leeway to fire them if the employee gets on someone's bad side.