Keyboard Jamming

 The Economics of Looking Busy


What Is Actually Happening

There is a small industry that has quietly grown around remote work, devices and software that simulate keyboard activity and mouse movement to make employees appear online. Workers buy mouse jigglers and keyboard jammers, tools that do nothing productive but keep the activity light green and the monitoring software happy. This as an incentive story is of great interest to Cedrunomist.


The Wrong Metric Problem

Freakonomics made this point memorably. When Chicago school teachers were evaluated on student test scores, some teachers simply cheated, feeding answers to students before exams. The incentive was right, but the metric measured was incorrect, what should have been measured, actual learning, was ignored.

Corporate keyboard monitoring is the same mistake in a different office. Once employees know they are judged on activity, they optimise for activity. A century ago, office clerks shuffled paper to look busy; today’s workers jiggle a mouse or jam a keyboard. The incentives remain the same though times have changed.


What Elite Sports Got Right

Professional sports coaches figured this out decades ago. A cricket captain is not judged by how many hours he spent in the nets; he’s judged by runs, wickets, and matches won. A Premier League manager does not survive because his players looked busy in training; he survives because of what’s on the scoreboard. Elite sports long ago separated effort from output, because the output is visible and financially consequential.


The Broader Point

Most monitoring systems were designed for factories, where presence and output are directly linked. Knowledge work does not behave that way. A programmer may spend three days thinking and produce the solution in two hours. Keystroke tracking misses this entirely and worse, it pushes talented people toward managing appearances rather than solving problems.

A 2023 Glassdoor survey of 2,300 professionals found that 41% felt less productive under monitoring. A study published in Harvard Business Review, found monitored employees were more, not less, likely to break workplace rules. The data points in one direction towards a disdain for overtly monitored work environments


Conclusion

When firms measure activity, they get activity. When they measure value, they get value. Elite sports learned this through the brutality of the scoreboard. The continued sale of mouse jigglers shows how corporates seem to have got things so wrong.









Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of Sridhar Vaidyanath and do not necessarily represent the views of Cedrus Wealth Partners or its affiliates. The content is based on publicly available information believed to be reliable and is intended solely for general informational purposes. It should not be construed as investment, legal, or tax advice. Readers are advised to exercise discretion and seek professional counsel before acting on any information contained herein. Neither the author nor Cedrus Wealth Partners shall be responsible for any loss arising from reliance on this material.

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