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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anselyn" data-source="post: 6859851" data-attributes="member: 55456">I see. Your ignorance seems to extend to the well documented cases of employers, such as Amazon, monitoring the productivity of workers on a minute-by-minute basis in their warehouses or equivalent monitoring of staff in call centres. I'm not saying this is universal but the practise seems to be following the technological capability.A rather different example is optimising the performance of elite athletes (rugby is the specific case here that I'm thinking of) by having GPS trackers on each player.  Data is then analysed for various aspects of individual performance, with as I understand it, comparisons being made to other players and previous history.   Actually that was for Physics - each "Unit of Assessment" (=subject) was also measured. However, yes it was for a unit not down to the level of individuals. That happens in our annual reviews. Yes, of course. We are people and have processes, up to an ombudsman, to deal with these things because it is a problem. We don't just accept it as inevitable and unavoidable. My dept is very collegiate, others not so much. These arguments tend to swirl around research groups, rather than individuals, competing for space.  I do have departmental colleagues who are seen as worse departmental citizens than others. There are, of course, people I find it more or less easy to work with.  However - to return to the starting point here - I've never heard whispers against someone based on their personal life. Now - I'm not saying there isn't gossip but there certainly isn't politics based on hobbies or interests - to my knowledge. (We probably need to think about definitions here. I assume that we'd agree that politics is "Activities aimed at improving someone’s status or increasing power within an organization"[oxforddictionaries.com] rather than the variety of interpersonal realtions.) I'm sorry to hear that he was so unprofessional, which is how I would consider it. I assume his peers would taken this into account if this dynamic were known to them?  Yes, but .... I find it dispiriting that you seem to be saying that this means it's inevitable and unavoidable. The same could be said of sexism, racism etc. It doesn't mean that it's acceptable anywhere.</blockquote>

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