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We have a contractor working offsite. We would like to set everything up so that his screen is recorded to our Windows Server 2008 R2 machine in real time.

We've been using TeamViewer, but we've run into limitations.

What would you recommend?

p.s. Constraints:

  1. The contractor needs to be able to initialize the connection himself, from his end.
  2. The recording needs to be in realtime.
  3. The video must be recorded at the server end.

p.p.s. I've been a programmer for 15 years. I understand how programmers work, its more to see his coding style and to keep the investors happy, rather than anything else. I trust my contractor.

Contango
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    Jeez, just short-circuit the situation, tell him you don't trust him worth a damn and give him a copy of all your confidential data on DVD, to save him stealing it for himself. – womble Nov 01 '09 at 11:48
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    Erk! I seem to have touched a nerve here. I've been a programmer for 15 years, I know how it works. I'm more curious to see his coding style than anything else, and I need to keep the investors happy. Any solutions guys? – Contango Nov 02 '09 at 00:45
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    For the record, I encourage my programmers to take breaks. I don't actually care what happens, as long as they perform. This setup is no different to having an open plan office. – Contango Nov 02 '09 at 01:14
  • I see one major problem with this: Bandwidth. Unless he's got a lot of upstream bandwidth, you're going to have trouble getting all the data through the pipe in real time. – Michael Kohne Nov 02 '09 at 16:10
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    Also, the 'open plan office' comment - not quite. This is like having an open plan office, with a guy standing behind you looking over your shoulder all day. I kind of understand where you are coming from, but I don't think you can do this without the remote guy thinking you're a complete control-freak. Honestly, if my boss told me he wanted to do this, I'd be looking for a new job ASAP. – Michael Kohne Nov 02 '09 at 16:15
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    If you want to see his coding style 1)Ask for samples of his previous work, 2)Have him solve a lab problem of your choosing and review his work, 3)Peruse the code that he writes on the job AFTER he writes it. How would you like it if someone leered over your shoulder **while you coded**? The "I've been a programmer for 15 years" is a useless argument from authority. Just because you've been doing it for n amount of time doesn't mean you've 1)Been doing it right and 2)Received a "Get out of Jail Free Card" to be draconian in your management style and be the office Charrington. – Wesley Nov 02 '09 at 16:19
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    No boss watches his employees coding, continuously. And neither do I. I might glance at it every couple of hours, just like an open plan office. – Contango Nov 02 '09 at 17:30

4 Answers4

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I would recommend that you learn to trust your developers and judge them on the amount of good code they produce, not whether they stopped working to play a few rounds of Solataire while mulling over a problem.

Anybody who would work in an environment where they are so untrusted that screen captures of their screens are stored on a server for other people to spy on them is either desperate for work or secretly knows that they can't be trusted. Either way, they won't be any good at their jobs, or they'd go someplace where they were treated like human beings.

Paul Tomblin
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    Can't agree with this more than voting it up once. This is a developer that you've hired to write code for you. If you don't trust him, you've no business having him write code for you. – GregD Oct 31 '09 at 19:43
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    +1 here also. You can't expect a developer to sit there banging out line after line of code for X number of hours unless they're 1) plagiarising something or 2) freaking awesome in which case you're probably not paying them by the hour – squillman Oct 31 '09 at 19:50
  • +1 Think of it as paying him for the result he produces, not for the time he spends... –  Oct 31 '09 at 22:43
  • +1 From me as well. I'm wondering if there's a daily stocktake of the toilet paper. – John Gardeniers Oct 31 '09 at 23:22
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    Erk! I seem to have touched a nerve here. I've been a programmer for 15 years, I know how it works. I'm more curious to see his coding style than anything else, and I need to keep the investors happy. Any solutions guys? – Contango Nov 02 '09 at 00:46
  • For the record, I encourage my programmers to take breaks. I don't actually care what happens, as long as they perform. This setup is no different to having an open plan office. – Contango Nov 02 '09 at 01:12
  • And if you went around the open plan office taking pictures of their screens to put in their employment file, you'd have a lot of people quitting. – Paul Tomblin Nov 02 '09 at 01:19
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    And if you want to see his coding style, tell him he has to check in to source code control regularly and look at it there. – Paul Tomblin Nov 02 '09 at 01:21
  • Whether or not I agree with what you've written, this does not answer his question. – Mark Henderson Nov 02 '09 at 01:38
  • Is this a question worth answering? – David Thornley Nov 02 '09 at 03:53
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    -1 since he was not asking the ethics of doing this, but how it could be done. – SpaceManSpiff Nov 02 '09 at 13:34
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    @Farseeker, @SpaceManSpiff, If I ask you how best to set up a video camera to record you in the shower without you knowing, do you answer, or do you tell me not to do it? – Paul Tomblin Nov 02 '09 at 14:07
  • I think it's perfectly valid to question a poster's approach to a problem. Sometimes that is what produces the best results and can save a helluva lot of time manufacturing the wrong technical solution. Especially if you're trying to solve something that is essentially a Layer 8 problem. I concur with Paul - If you want to review his coding style then study his commits. Or perhaps you need to interview the contractor again. – Dan Carley Nov 02 '09 at 14:52
  • Me in the shower is I'm going to assume is BEFORE I go to work so I'm not on the company dime. And the poster said the developer would be initiating it so I would think that he knows about it. You comparison makes no point. – SpaceManSpiff Nov 02 '09 at 15:57
  • @Farseeker and @SpaceManSpiff, sometimes the correct answer does not directly correlate with the question. – Wesley Nov 02 '09 at 16:23
  • It always amazes me how people spend more time freaking out and trying to get around people watching them then just doing their jobs. You can say that "well I work", but I've worked with lots of people where these controls might have actually made them put in some real work instead of goofing off for most of the day. Lets think about it, if contractor wanted do so something besides work, he'd do it on his own computer that Paul is not monitoring. – SpaceManSpiff Nov 03 '09 at 00:10
  • @Willie Wheeler - I think that's called piece work. Personally I prefer salary. – SpaceManSpiff Nov 03 '09 at 00:12
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A lot of remote access software can do screen recordings, I don't know how they would be designed for saving the file, they would either be local (to his machine) or if its more a central management type there might be a server it could be sent to.

Since you wanted to him to initiate it, I'm assuming this is because of somewhat flex hours of work incase there is no one at the office to start it from your end.

You might need to do something like having a computer in the office that he remote logs into first, console session login, then establishes a remote session to his work station using something like GotoMeeting or GotoMyPC, hits record. Then he logs off the workstation in your office and just works away for the day, if you want to see what's up just check out the local workstaion. Because it was initiated from the office the file when the recording happens should be stored on the local PC.

It has a 30 day trial so you can see if that setup would work for you.

Another idea if you didn't need "real time" would be ad hoc, where you put in remote access software on his workstation and you can login anytime you want to see what's happening and record using any local screen recording software needed. This might be easier since LogMeIn free would work for this. Then you can do spot checks say a couple of times a week to keep the investors happy.

SpaceManSpiff
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What about http://www.timesnapper.com/

I've no particular experience of this product, but does it do what you want ?

cometbill
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You might be able to build a solution around vnc2flv. However, I'm not sure how the contractor would initiate the connection on his end, because your server would need to launch a VNC client to connect to his machine when he started to work.

Lorin Hochstein
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