Amazon Web Services announced Monday that its teams have been quietly trialing their new “BuilderView” initiative to improve developer accountability. BuilderView is a wearable device that clips to engineers’ clothing, recording their daily productivity.
“We’ve had great success with the program so far, and we’ve already identified and corrected several concerning developer behaviors,” said Ben Schreiner, spokesperson for Amazon Web Services. “After this successful pilot run, we’ll be rolling this out more extensively, and we think managers will appreciate the benefits of increased accountability for their engineers.”
Schreiner listed “productivity improvements” that the program had already detected. “We found a surprising number of engineers searching Google for things like ‘What is Javascript’ or ‘How to git commit,’ and in one case, ‘How to turn on Mac.’ BuilderView lets us flag these unproductive moments for next-morning performance review queues.”
When asked how the devices – informally referred to as ‘bodycams’ by employees – might directly impact engineers’ time, Schreiner said that there would be revised work expectations, including “narrating commits and pull request reviews out loud for audit purposes,” as well as “maintaining posture standards to ensure optimal camera visibility.”
After he was asked if the devices would be enabled for the entirety of a standard 40-hour work week, Schreiner emphasized the company’s commitment to balance. “We take work-life boundaries seriously,” he said. “The devices are only active during working hours, whether that’s in-office, remote, or in approved public work environments.”
Schreiner clarified that this could vary depending on team expectations: “For some teams, that may look like a traditional 40-hour week. For others, it may look more like a 9-9-6 model.”
The devices also feature what Schreiner described as a “bathroom mode,” allowing engineers to temporarily disable recording. “Employees can activate bathroom mode for up to two minutes at a time, once every four hours,” he said. “This ensures our engineers have the flexibility they need to manage personal moments without impacting overall visibility.”
This mode does not disable audio recording.
After taking questions, Schreiner finished his statement by adding that employees who are dissatisfied with the bodycam initiative would be able to submit a request for exemption to HR, with most decisions returned within 6-8 weeks. All exemption requests would be recorded by the BuilderView system for quality assurance purposes.