Alex Lockwood

Employers know "work from home" is a huge meme by now They have the data. These guys talking about how they're 3x more productive WFH are simply lying. Or delusional, maybe It's not like your macbook stops working when it's outside the office, everyone just dicks off if you can't see them Big finance firms used the miracle of capitalism to solve the issue early, but nobody likes what they came up with - "employee monitoring tools." Full OS access so employers can make sure you're not hiding personal browser tabs. Webcam access so they can make sure you stay focused on the screen for 8 hours straight Some even gift you a fancy new camera, purely because they care about you - and your eyetracking data that shows the exact part of the screen you're looking at. Companies using these systems noticed they improve employee efficiency regardless of whether they're WFH or at the office. Their new ideal isn't just banning WFH, but forcing the full office into one of these systems. It's a tough sell though, so most without a big name and reputation for being ruthless haven't succeeded yet. That'll change tho VR is gonna be used heavily in the workplace. Not every company, every role ofc - just some. Yeah, VR might not be good enough yet for hyper-realistic videogame simulations. The motion tracking might not perfectly replicate reality, either. It's fine for meetings and excel tho. It gives employees access to (effectively) unlimited monitors, too. And they can use these while traveling - or even working from home! Wait, what? Didn't we just say companies hate WFH? They don't hate WFH, they hate unmonitored employees. 'Extra monitors' isn't enough on its own, but fortunately VR is also the most advanced employee monitoring system of all time. The moment you put that headset on you're teleported to a perfect corporate panopticon "Oh wow! It's awesome how Apple Vision Pro just knows what I'm thinking! How does it get so much information just from where I'm looking??" Because it has like 20+ cameras and other sensors 2cm away from your eyes to collect the most detailed eyetracking data in the world If you thought the data mobile phone companies had access to was bad, VR is like some orwellian nightmare doomsday apocalypse scenario. It's about as close as you can get to neuralink chips in your brain without surgery. You cannot prevent your eyes from moving in reaction to your thoughts. It's all out there. They know where you're looking every microsecond of the work day, they know where you are because you're wearing cameras now and they control all data you access because it still flows through them. Using eyetracking to detect lies is trivial. This "most people break eye contact for a second when they lie!" meme lifehack stuff is done. There will be no guessing. They'll know the exact picosecond your gaze falters, how long, where you looked instead, how much your eyes widened at what point, whether you're defocusing in an attempt to blur everything out and trick the whole system, etc Even stuff like your heartbeat and breathing are easily inferred with enough gyro data, mics and hi-res sensors staring at your eyeveins. Plug all this stuff into the AI model they have of you and bossman's not gonna believe your excuse for missing the meetings anymore. They'll know exactly how you feel about everyone, too. And that you're thinking about Cassy naked now. And that you're still flaccid despite this - probably because your new SSRIs are interfering with the way your blood vessels dilate and contract. Just a guess tho idk Information collection wouldn't be incentivized solely to manage employees, either. In the early days of any infostream, that data's much more valuable than it will be later. Selling your personal information used to be a pretty profitable business model. Everyone already has it now tho, so it's worth less. They do not, however, have your eyetracking and biometric data. The faster they get it, the earlier they can go to market with whatever VR product they're developing and the more they stand to make. Companies might take a principled stance against selling employee data if doing so only gets paid back in $800 per employee annually and makes them look evil. But what about $4k? Or $20k? Seems like there's probably a number where people start sweating. Consumers probably just give the data away free if your product adds enough convenience to their lives, so the number might not get high. Fun thought experiment though I don't think this is something everyone has to deal with, either. There's only so much juice for the squeeze. I would not, however, want to be in a role with a lot of extra juice this next decade. Neuralink is a spooky, but it's probably a while before employers can force you to get chipped. In the meantime, I might suggest refocusing your fears towards a more "reasonable centrist" doomsday scenario. One where a good portion of workers get enslaved by dorky goggles Or maybe corporations decide their values and culture are more important than a minor 140% increase in your efficiency. Who knows